True fans of horror rarely need to turn on the lights or cover their eyes while watching something terrifying on their screens. But it’s something else when eerie, uneasy, and downright spine-chilling situations happen in real life. Then, the first and most reasonable thing we want to do is look for comfort by telling someone about it.
But if you think living through a spooky experience is bad enough, it’s even worse when those you decide to share it with look at you with suspicious eyes. Reddit user chrome-hearttagz decided to find out how many such poor souls are out there. They asked people to open up about the scariest thing that ever happened to them yet no one believed.
Below, we collected a handful of answers from Redditors whose friends and family insisted they're either lying or just imagining things. Bored Panda was also interested to learn more about what kind of impact unpredictable situations or life-threatening incidents have on our lives and how to best react to them, so we reached out to trauma specialist and therapist Shari Botwin.
"Life is full of surprises and change can happen at any moment. Most of us like to be in control of our destiny and the future, but that is impossible. Accepting that unfortunate things can happen at any time reduces our anxiety and allows us to be more in the moment." Read on for the whole interview!
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#1
When I was about 12 or 13 I woke up in the middle of the night and smelled my fathers cologne, thought it was a little odd since he lived about an hour away but was to tired to care. Went back to sleep, woke up the next morning and for some reason my mother didn’t wake me up for school. My father had passed away the night before. Never told anyone for years about that night, but around the age of 23 I told my mom she was glad to know that she wasn’t crazy, that same night she got startled awake, and the dog was staring at the door wagging his tail. Almost like he was saying good bye before fully leaving.
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391points
#2
It was the night before my stepmom died (lost her battle to cancer). I was 22, was spending the night in bed with my 9 year old half-brother, cuddling him and telling him his mom was gonna be okay, it wasn’t gonna hurt any more. It’s about 3am at the time, and after a while he immediately sits upright in bed, smiles, says “I promise to be a good boy, mommy. I love you.”
Now my stepmom has been bedridden for the last month, so she’s not moving anywhere. But I swear on my life, and my little brother agrees with me, for a split second I saw her standing in the doorway wearing her big giant fur coat, just smiling at us and just looking relieved.
Brother went to sleep about 2 minutes later. I left to go into my dad and stepmom’s room to check on her to see my dad awake and telling me she’d died about half an hour ago.
I genuinely believe she “stopped by” on her way to the other side to check in on her two kids and make sure we’d be okay without her before she left.
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389points
Shari Botwin, LCSW and author of Thriving After Trauma: Stories of Living and Healing, explained to Bored Panda that when unfortunate things occur, trying to control what happens next will result in higher levels of anger, anxiety, and disconnection from the lives we are living in the present. "Focusing on the things we can control alleviates some of the fear. Change is a part of life. It is in acknowledging this fact that we can live a healthier, less stressful life from day to day," she said.
When asked how these unpredictable situations or accidents impact us, Botwin told us they leave us feeling flustered, hypervigilant, panic-stricken, and stressed. "From the moment something scary happens, our lives have changed forever. I have met clients who got in terrible car accidents and then avoided driving for weeks. I have met other clients who lost a family member or loved one suddenly. For months and sometimes years to follow, these clients have developed severe depression, panic disorder and have become addicted to a variety of substances," she revealed.
#3
Every god damned time I'm having a hard time and cry my father knows. Even though we live in different cities. He'll call me and tell me he knew I was crying. That he could hear me. He never takes a wrong guess.
When I move in another apartment, he can describe to me how my new place looks like before he sees it. Before I even talk about it.
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304points
#4
I was playing outside by myself and a truck kept driving down the streets.I got uncomfortable and started to walk home,they followed,I stopped,they stopped,I ran,they drove faster.I started sprinting home and when I came near other people they turned around and drove away.When I arrived home I told my mom and dad.No body believed me.It’s been 5 years and I’m still shocked
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286points
#5
I was about 4 years old, visiting my great grandmother in NJ. She made a bed for me that sleep on in the living room. I fell asleep easily, but at some point I woke up and saw my great grandfather. He sat on the edge of my bed, smiled, patted my leg and got up. He put his jacket on and walked out the front door. He had been dead for longer than I had been alive and I had never met him. Adults the next morning all laughed at the silly kid with a big imagination. At grandmas request I described exactly what he was wearing: flannel shirt, suspenders, khaki pants... Generic description of any grandpa for the last 100 years. Everyone was still giggling at my cute story. But when I got up to show her how he snatched his jacket from the hook by the door and slung it on in one motion, I turned around smiling only to see her completely pale faced with tears running down her cheeks. Everyone got really quiet, and we never talked about it again. She knew I had seen him... No one else's opinion matters.
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279points
"The despair and anger and fear in the aftermath of something bad happening leaves many people feeling stuck and isolated." However, Botwin mentioned that sometimes she meets individuals who become empowered by the event that happened. For example, a few of them were diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses. "Rather than succumb to the fear and heartache, some of these clients choose to face other fears or live more in the moment. They flip the fear and turn it into action that results in them living fuller, happier lives."
#6
I was 6 and remember playing in my room and my grandpa walks in and talks to me for a few minutes. After a bit he gets up and tells me to “be a good girl for mom”, kisses me on the forehead, and walks out. Mom comes in about 5 mins later hysterical and told me my grandpa had died overnight and we had to leave to go be with the family two states over where he lived.
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256points
#7
I always put my keys in the exact same spot after I get home from work; no matter what, they always go in the dish in my living room. One day last August I had been home from work for a few hours and was cooking dinner when the thought of “where are your keys” for stuck in my head. I looked around the corner, sure I was going to see my keys in the dish, but there were no keys. I looked around the surrounding area and expanded my search to my purse, jacket, bedroom only to turn up empty. I drove home from work and let myself in with my keys, I was home alone and my roommates had been out of town for a few days at that point, so I knew I had them and I knew no one would have moved them. I flipped my house upside down, searching for about 4 hours before I half heartedly shook my heaviest winter coat hanging in the back of my closet... I found them zipped up in the inside pocket of that coat I hadn’t worn since mid-February at the latest.
Everyone always brushes off the story as I must have moved them and forgot about it, but that makes no sense to me. I have absolutely no clue how they got there and I really only have 4 possible explanations: paranormal activity, glitch in the matrix, I blacked out and moved them for whatever reason, or there was someone in my house and that was the only thing they did.
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247points
#8
There was one moment that will stick with me forever that I get mixed reactions to when I tell the story.
Let me start with adding some context: I was 20 at the time, and was helping my girlfriend move from Alabama to Los Angeles. Because she had all her belongings and her car, we decided to drive. At that time, she had a suspended license so I was the one who was forced to drive the whole way. Because I didn’t want to get any speeding tickets, I brought my radar detector from home to take with us on the drive.
Now it was the second day of our trip, and we had recently crossed into New Mexico. At the time it was already well past sunset, so most of my drive that day was spent on the I10 at night. Because I was the only driver, I made the decision to stop every couple of hours at rest stops to use the restroom, stretch, or eat.
I remember stopping that night really late at around 11 or 12 at a rest stop in Gage NM. From what I remember, the rest stop was really the only thing off the exit, and there was nothing as far as a town or homes in the area for miles. The only thing there was a small area with many identical concrete structures covering picnic tables. They were like concrete boxes, three sided, with window cut-outs and a light in the middle. As we were pulling in, the radar detector started going haywire, showing codes for multiple different bands including X, KA, and Laser, all at once.
I turned the radar detector off, not really thinking much of it at the time, and pulled into a picnic area near the back. From what i remembered, I was going to eat a snack or something to tide me over, and as i was grabbing the food from the middle row, i heard a low rumble/squeak, as it someone was rubbing their palm along the side of the car. As I was grabbing some items from a bag in my lap, my girlfriend at the time grabbed my arm with the most intense grip and fear and just started saying “we gotta go, we gotta go” with increasing panic.
I’ll never forget what I saw tbh. In her side mirror, there was a large, rough sillouette leaning against the car just past the back door. Even from a glance, I could tell that the figure had to be much taller than the SUV, as it looked a bit hunched over. Seeing this, I immediately started to panic, as I was not sure if this was a person, animal, or whatever. As I was fumbling for the keys in the cup holder, I glanced in my side mirror and say the same exact figure, motionless against the side of the car. A few seconds later I started the car and punched it out of there. Where our car was parked, there was nothing visible from the light coming from the picnic awning.
I’m not a huge believer in paranormal stuff, but this was an experience that I would 100% call my only real paranormal encounter. The size of whatever it was was definitely not human, and although it was somewhat human, the amount of hair it had on its head made it hard to tell what it actually looked like. A friend that I met later in college from New Mexico who had lived on a reservation once suggested that it could have been a wendigo, or some other native fork lore beast. I still don’t know at all what it was for sure, but I still occasionally have nightmares about that night.
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205points
Living through circumstances that turn out to be a tad scarier than fiction does beg the question, how is it best to react to them? According to Botwin, when we find ourselves in frightening or life-threatening situations, it is most important that we try to stay calm. "The panic and urgency will set in immediately. You may feel your heart racing or an impending sense of doom and gloom."
"It is natural for us to go into flight or fight mode when we feel scared or in danger," she added. "Take a minute if it is appropriate and assess the situation you are facing. Ask yourselves, 'Is the fear I am experiencing in my mind and body matching the current situation, or am I also reacting to other events that left me feeling traumatized or stranded in the past?'"
#9
Back in the 90s I was on the track team in high school. After school we would run 5+ miles down the dirt road just on the outskirts of town because it was near the school. Around that time there had been reports of a man in a white pickup that tried to kidnap a couple of girls walking home from school in our town.
I wasn't feeling well one day and fell behind my team mates during one of our after school runs. I'm running alone along this quiet dirt road when a white pickup slows down next to me. The guy started up with some friendly chit chat about the weather and stuff. I was terrified but tried my best to appear calm and unsuspecting, all the while trying to plan my escape. He started asking me my name (I gave a fake one), age, where I lived, etc., and asked which way I was heading. I lied and told him I was going to head right at the turn up ahead and run a few more miles that way. The turn was actually the turn around point and then I would head back the way I came. He bid me a good day and drove on up ahead and turned right, where I told him I was heading. As soon as he disappeared around the corner, I turned around and ran faster than I ever had in my life. It was probably a good two miles back to the school. I kept looking behind me in case he came back that way in which case I would run into the woods and hide until he passed. Thankfully, he never did come back that way. I always wonder if he was waiting somewhere along that false route to approach me again.
I made it back and told my team mates about it and they didn't believe me! They didn't exactly call me a liar, but I could tell they thought I was making it up, maybe because we had been talking earlier about hearing it in the local news. I caught a couple of them exchanging looks, and others barely responded at all. The more I tried to convince them, the more I sounded like I was clinging to a lie. I just dropped it and resigned to be thought a liar. Still pisses me off that nobody believed me. My coach didn't even seem to believe me, he just kind of shrugged it off. I should have told the police about it, but I was so ruffled about not being believed that I just let the whole thing go.
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185points
#10
Ostriches are not friendly. I used to run on this back road with my dogs and at the end of the road before I turned around to run back there was a pond. As I’d get closer I would see an Ostrich come into view with a little baby and they would watch us run by. One day I’m running and I feel something behind me. So I turn back and see this TRex looking Ostrich running after us, starting to close in on us. I had been running a lot at the time so I started hauling ass. My dogs thought this was a game but I had seen what Ostriches can do to people and I didn’t want any part of it. It’s about 50 yards behind me, gaining quickly and is massive and looks very angry. Just then a green truck comes sideways around a curve and pushes the Ostrich off of our tail. It was the local game warden and he pulled up laughing his ass off. I was very thankful as I thought it was my final run. Turns out they had been working on trapping them and getting them to an animal rescue but they had only caught the baby so far. He decided to come check on the trap at the right time and saw the protective Momma coming after the runner that she probably thought stole her baby. Game Wardens wear a lot of hats. This was in San Angelo, TX.
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154points
#11
About a year ago I was up watching movies late at night when I got hungry and went downstairs for a snack. My room is across from my daughter’s room and her door was open. As I was coming back upstairs I start turning left towards my room when I hear, clear as ever, “daddy can you close the door?” I turn around, don’t say much and just close it. Once I’m back in my room, I lie down to watch tv when it hits me...my daughter isn’t there. She’s spending the night at my parent’s. I get up and go to her room and sure enough, it’s empty. I woke up my wife and she thinks I’m crazy. Says I was probably tired and maybe it was the tv. I remember the voice so clear and coming in the direction of her room. It’s very possible that it was just my head playing games but, it definitely made me question a few things.
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137points
The trauma specialist suggested that it is best to respond to your fear with words of reassurance and compassion. "Try and put the fear in perspective. Don't go through these feelings alone. Call a friend or talk to a family member. Process what you are feeling so you can sort through where the fear is coming from. Remind yourselves it is perfectly normal to feel afraid at times. It is an emotion that comes and goes, especially if you have experienced anything that left you feeling afraid," Botwin advised.
#12
I grew up in a haunted house. My parents still live there to this day. Most traumatic experiences of my life. The one memory that tops the list is one I hate telling and rarely do. I would always wake up in the middle of the night and see s**t. From as young as I can remember until I moved out at 18. One night, I was about 6 maybe, woke up to see a man and woman, both dressed all in white, palest skin id ever seen, both standing at the foot of my bed looking out the window. The woman looked average height while the man reached the ceiling. I tried to convince myself it wasn't real, that I was dreaming until the man turned and look at me, his eyes were red. I turned sideways and covered my head, trying again to convince myself I was dreaming. After a few minutes I looked over the covers and the man was now standing at the side of my bed looking down at me. I remember nothing after. I talked to a specialist when I was older, thinking maybe I suffered from sleep paralysis due to these experiences but that was not the case. In every experience, I could move, and even ran out of my bedroom multiple times. Great times.
135points
#13
An out of body experience which I hope is never repeated. Almost cr*pped myself in fear. I was about 11 (maybe younger, hard to remember), and was sick at school, in the nurses station (called a sick room at my school). Laying on the camp bed, feeling just generally weird, looking out the very tall thin windows that are typical of Victorian schools in the UK. Then I felt this strange, I can only call it a juke to the side, but mentally and I saw myself outside the window, looking in, and at the same time I was looking out from the bed through the window at myself.. floating outside.
Apparently I yelled but I don't remember that part. Then the nurse called my mum to pick me up and I went home. I think I slept the rest of the day but I have no clear memories of that part.
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133points
#14
I live in an extremely old house. It creaks, it groans, the house isn't completely level so sometimes unlatched doors swing open "on their own " but really because physics. If you sat in my house on a windy day you'd swear to God it was haunted because the window frames aren't great and the wind screams through the gaps and rattles the glass as though it were angered...
I've lived here for a couple of years now. I know every noise this house makes like the back of my hand. I hardly notice it these days. Which is why I found it odd that when I was brushing my teeth one night a few months ago, I clearly heard two men's voices on the other side of my bathroom door. Now, it's just me, the dogs, and my boyfriend here. My boyfriend was across the hall laying in bed, and the dogs were with him. The voices I heard were clear as day, two older gentlemen.
"Should we tell 'em?"
"No... (indistinct mumbling)..."
"They in there?"
And the second voice did not reply. I obviously yanked the bathroom door open and looked to see who was in my hallway. But there was no one there. I listened for a few minutes, thinking maybe I heard the TV or something. I don't hear anything. I call out and ask if my boyfriend said anything, he hollers back no from where he's at in the bedroom...
I go back to my nighttime routine, shut off the bathroom light, and now the hallway is dark. I'm gonna go to the bedroom. I bring my hand down from turning the light switch off, and my hand brushes up against a cold, rough-feeling hand. Like someone with a lot of calluses on their hand... I felt the thumb and palm distinctly. Like someone had reached out to grab my hand but my movement kinda pulled out of the grasp before they could actually grab my hand, if that makes sense.
The hand came from behind me, from in the bathroom. I obviously know there's no one in the bathroom - I just left the bathroom. And then I heard someone mumble, from behind me. Not words exactly, just kind of a voice, like someone grumbling under their breath. I jumped, turned the bathroom light back on, saw no one, left the light on, and hauled [butt to the bedroom to tell my boyfriend what just happened because I was extremely freaked out. We checked out the entire house for an intruder. Found no sign of any. Everything was locked up as usual. Its never happened again. I have no idea what it was.
131points
Unfortunately, when we decide to share these feelings with others, they sometimes seem hesitant to believe our experience. Whether they completely dismiss it as fantasy or think we’re lying, it can cause even greater discomfort to a person. Botwin explained that these situations happen because people tend to avoid any feelings that call up fear.
"Often, people will think things like, 'There is no way that could have happened.' People do not want to think that evil or disasters exist. Many distances themselves from these stories because they cannot digest the facts without going into a heightened state of panic."
#15
When I was 7 or 8 I just got done watching an episode of FBI's Most Wanted, then went out onto the front porch to blow some bubbles. As I was doing this, I saw a guy run out of the neighbor's house and hide behind some bushes with a gun. Then I realize I hear police sirens getting closer, before they suddenly stop before they get to my street. The guy looks over at me, makes the "shush" gesture, then runs across our lawn to the other neighbor's yard. To this day, and I swear to god this is true, I recognized his face as one of the guys on America's Most Wanted. Don't remember who, as far as I know the cops didn't find him, and no one in my family believes that it happened. I was frozen in fear/shock until he ran out of my sight, at which point I ran back inside and told my parents what I saw. I don't blame them for not believing me, but at the very least, I did see a wanted criminal run across our yard that day.
117points
#16
I live alone and (at the time) had 2 cats. I have one of those galaxy projection lights. The kind that basically projects something onto your ceiling.
It has an IR or bluetooth connection because it uses a remote to change the colors and settings on it. It also has a speaker on it for some reason to let you know if the remote is connected.
One night I had it turned off and sitting on my chair next to my bed. I was in a dead sleep when I heard the voice toggling on and off, saying "bluetooth disconnected" That was the initial thing that scared me because all I could hear was this disembodied voice. I found the source quickly and realized I had thrown some clothes over it so the IR port was blocked.
I fell back to sleep and was awoken again, this time in the morning, by a MALE voice saying "Oh, Hello blaze!" It was coming from the direction of the light. Blaze is the name of my cat. I laid still for a moment, my heart pounding. I rolled over and found my cat sitting on the other side of my bed. He WAS in the room. that scared the s**t out of me even more. I leapt out of bed and ran over to the thing and ripped it out of the wall.
I haven't turned it on since. It's been sitting in a corner of my room with the plug detached. I'm afraid to plug it back in.
I would blame hypnogogic hallucinations because I have had them before. Mostly my mom's voice calling my name. But the fact that my cat was in fact in my room, sitting basically in front of the light TERRIFIED me. My cats don't have collars/bells so It's not like I would have passively heard him in my sleep coming into my room and then imagined the voice. Not only that, but he seemed freaked out too, like he had heard the voice as well. I have no idea if it was that or he was just reacting to me waking up.
I inspected the whole device, looking for cameras and microphones. I was going to take it apart but I was too scared of what I would find.
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113points
#17
I was abducted into a house by my dads friend.
Long story short my dads friend was homeless and my dad was letting him sleep on the couch. I never thought anything about it but I would go to my room with towel on but I’d usually pass by him on the couch, this would become a much bigger deal in the future. This guy kept going on about his daughters and how he wanted me to meet them, they where a couple years older (14-16) but being a young kid I figured I’d just meet new friends. He lived with us for a couple months, until one day while walking to school he calls me from across the street. I lived probably 1.5 km from my house but a straight shot and a pretty busy road. He ended up luring me into the house saying his daughters lived there and they wanted to meet me. He literally gave me a tour of this house, but I kept asking him questions like where they were and who was their mom. He eluded that they where showering in the basement, instantly I felt a bad vibe and just sat on the couch in the living room, refusing to go into the basement. I started panicking because I could see the time and knew I was late for school. At this point he brings up that he thinks I’m coming on to him because I walk past him in my towel, I was so thrown by It just said no and told him I had to go. He asked for a hug and rub my thigh in a sexual way, I literally ran out the door. I was raised very old school and was so scared to get into trouble I literally went back to school, when I went home I told my parents not realizing how big of a situation it was and they called the police. I came to find out that wasn’t even his daughters house, he literally broke into a house on my way to school to lure me into.
Even though the police where involved and the guy literally left everything at parents and never came back years later my parents befriend his brother and eventually him again, and his brother kept denying that it ever happened and my parents started question it too. LMAO
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112points
But at times, people will embellish their stories because they are afraid others will invalidate or disbelieve what happened to them, Botwin argued. "Once someone has gone through a traumatic or life-changing event, he/she is more likely to believe another person who is reporting going through a scary experience," she added.
#18
When I was around the ages 4 and 5 I would constantly see weird things in my bedroom at night. There would often be shadows on the wall talking to each other. It happened so often that I just took them to be normal occurrences. I saw all sorts of weird things at night but the shadows were one of the things I saw most often.
One night in particular I was dreaming about being in a large landscape of rolling green hills. Dotting the hills were odd buffalo type creatures. Something seemed off about them. They seemed unnatural, evil, and slightly monstrous. I started to get scared and woke up. Laying in my bed, I turned over and saw a horned shadow figure on the wall directly above my door. I tried to ignore it and flipped back over. I could feel it watching me and kept flipping back hoping it would be gone but it was always there. It was staring and smiling. After a while I couldn't take it anymore so I started yelling for my mom. As soon as she came in it vanished.
I have no good way to explain the things that I saw as a child. There seemed to often times be a blurring between my dreaming state and awakened state so I may have just had a very active and odd imagination to the point where I was truly hallucinating on a regular basis. When I was about six years old I had had enough of the crap so I remember opening the front door of our house and screaming "Get out!" to everything that was bothering me. Thats when my nights began to become more normal and I eventually never had any more problems with them.
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97points
#19
My bathroom is weird. One time it illuminated from the out side as if someone put headlights up to the window. Empty lots behind me and next to me. No outside light source.
Same bathroom: I often find the bottom vanity drawer pulled completely out and on the floor. It would have to be lifted off the rollers
Same bathroom: cat was growling and freaking out and doing the stalk stance.
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95points
#20
I saw something crouched in the road driving around one night. It's eyes glowed when my headlights hit it so I assumed an animal of some sort, but when I got within about 15 feet of it, it stood up and looked like a girl standing there. I slammed on my brakes immediately, but suddenly the road was just empty. My friend in the car hadn't seen anything, but asked me a few minutes later if it looked like a girl. He'd apparently seen something similar with his sister a few weeks before in the exact same spot.
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95points
If reading through these stories made you feel like you want to wrap yourself up in a warm blanket and never take another step through your front door, remember the wise phrase Forrest Gump told us, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get." And Botwin completely agrees with this line of thought.
"There are benefits to living an unpredictable life. If we always knew what was coming or could predict the future, we may not be able to appreciate the moment and live life to its fullest," she concluded.