43 Horrifying Things People Have Woken Up To That Still Haunt Them

When I was 18 I was in a house fire. Since then I've been terrified of fire. This story takes place roughly a year later when I was 19 and had just moved into my own apartment. As an incomplete quadriplegic, this was a huge deal. It was around 2 am and I'm asleep. I suddenly wake up to my dog howling and the fire alarm blaring.

I am terrified. I'm also only wearing underwear. I throw on a shirt, get into my chair as quickly as possible, and head to the exit. I'm in the 8th floor with no way down. I'd taken so long getting in to my chair there's no one around. I just started sobbing uncontrollably. I feel a tap and see my two male neighbors standing over me. They ask if they can help and I stammer yes. Without hesitation one picks me up out of my chair and the other grabs my dogs collar (I forgot her least in my panic). They carried me down 8 flights of steps and held me outside in the ~50-60 degree cold until they somehow found a chair for me. They also got a blanket from somewhere to cover me up with. They consoled me calmed my dog. After we were allowed back in one went upstairs and brought my chair back down. They walked me to my door and told me to come to them if I ever needed anything. They moved shortly after but that experience is one that will always stick with me.

I lived w/ my oldest sister & her two daughters. Her youngest (3 years old) was a sleepwalker. She was tiny, white-blonde & liked to wear a white nightgown that was too big for her.

Yeah, wake up to the sound of thumb-sucking right next to my head, roll over & see the world's shortest ghost.

A kid banging on our door at 3 AM who had just escaped from their drunk parent beating them. That scream...

Woke up to the feeling of something on my face, tried to brush it off and in my half asleep state thought it was attacking me. Cue absolute freak out because something is crawling all over me and i cant get it off, just for me to find out it was my own hand that had gone numb while i was asleep.

My family owns a house on the mountains of Jordan with the neighbors being only family. Anyways the first time I ever visited (2-3 years ago) I left the door open for the breeze that there is. Anyways, I woke up to a wolf next to me. The wolf fell asleep within a couple feet of me. It turns out my uncle had domesticated the wolf and no one bothered to tell me that it sleeps next to my house.

We have a window AC unit basically right above our bed. One night, ice must have gotten built up inside, and it fell onto the fan that blows the air out. I remember hearing a loud bang and then being sprayed in the face by liquid. My first thought was that someone broke in and shot my wife and I got covered in blood. [Freaking] terrifying.

Edit: The liquid was cold, and that should have been an instant giveaway that it wasn’t blood, but I was in such a panic and confused from just being woken up that the temperature didn’t register right away.

“OPEN UP! POLICE! WE HAVE A SEARCH WARRANT!”

It was about 6am, accompanied by banging that was loud as [hell]. Turns out it was for the apartment beneath my bedroom window but I sat straight up and my first thought was, “Oh no, they got me!” despite being one of the least shady people alive.

Housemate coming home drunk after midnight from a Halloween party dressed as Jason from Friday 13th, walked into my room by mistake in his full Voorhees costume and just stood in the middle of the room looking around trying to work out where he was.

Woke me up as my door opened and I was frozen terrified for a good 30 seconds. Bought a lock for my door the following week.

The unmistakable sound of a pet getting ready to vomit on the floor. Terrifying.

I woke up to a cockroach that had crawled into my ear. Excruciating pain, tried to flush it out with water, no luck. I had to lie there for 6 hours before mum took me to hospital while it moved around, scratched my ear drum and fluttered it's wings (that sound is terrifying when it comes from IN your ear.

My ear was bruised from how hard I was pushing in an attempt to stop it moving. They first tried to blast it out with a high pressured little hose, which hurt like [hell] and didn't work. So then they poured oil into my ear to drown it, then sucked [it] out with a little vacuum.

Husband running into the bedroom, choking.

Something about the way his footsteps were pounding in woke me up instantly. He swallowed one of those "easy swallow" tylenols, ironically enough and it caught in his throat. I asked if he was OK and he violently shook his head no.

So I went from asleep to Heimlich in about 2 seconds - a really terrible way to be woken up, especially since he said the last time it happened (he has a constricted esophagus from stomach acid scarring so he's prone to choking while eating), his ex-wife had been unable to do it and he had passed out. You expect some big heroic adrenaline wave to come sweeping over you and empower you to magically save your spouse, but I was just terrified and swearing. I also thought I did it incorrectly, because it wasn't a neat little ptooey like in the movies - He bent over, violently throwing up. (Do I still do it? DO I STOP? WHAT DO I DO) but he was coughing and could speak - told me to call 911. The 911 op reassured me that if he was coughing, he was getting air, and to encourage him to keep coughing. Then she let me off the line which in my state of hysteria, I took to mean that NO ONE WAS COMING. The paramedics and firemen showed up and filled my kitchen while I stupidly stood there in half a nightie with a blankie wrapped around me, and they took him off in an ambulance. The capsule apparently melted on the way to the ER, but I'll never forget the horrible sound it made, rattling with WRONGNESS in his throat as he would grab and pinch at his neck.

Eight year old son at the foot of my bed, vomiting blood.

He was ok. It was a rare complication following having his tonsils out (and he actually managed to do it twice, which never happens). I'm a firefighter and have seen some [stuff]... but goodness gracious I don't think my eyes have ever gone so wide. It took a couple of serious deep breaths to collect myself to give him a hug, dial an ambulance and start treatment.

My cat giving birth on the corner of my bed.

A bear outside my tent.

I used to live a few minutes away from Buncefield oil storage facility, it was the fifth largest oil depot in the UK. On the morning of 11th December 2005 it exploded! The explosion threw me out of my bed, and the doors of our house burst open. I looked outside my bedroom window and the sky was engulfed by a giant fire ball! 11 year old me genuinely thought it was the end of the world...

Exploding head syndrome...

"alternately termed episodic cranial sensory shock, is a benign condition in which a person experiences unreal noises that are loud and short, like a **[explosion]** or a **gunshot**, when falling asleep or waking up. These noises are often jarring and frightening for the person. **Neither the cause nor the mechanism is known.** Though harmless in and of themselves, episodes have been known to create distress or impairment in the lives of individuals."


It happens to me once or twice a year. It keeps things interesting.

During a break at college I stayed at my house with one of my roommates (she lived upstairs, I downstairs). I woke up in the middle of the night to what I thought at first was a dream of a man peering through my window. Then he began to slide open the window, which snapped me out of my dream state. I didn't know what to do, but when he started crawling through I jumped up, pushed him out and screamed/ran upstairs. It was so scary knowing all the houses next to me were empty and he could have done anything he wanted if I didn't wake up.

Someone slamming on the door of the apartment across the hall screaming “your apartment is on fire.”

It sounded like it was on mine. Woke up and immediately started choking on smoke. The fire alarm then went off.

Everything ended up being okay (someone flicked a cigarette b**t off their balcony, it landed on the one a few floors beneath it and set their patio furniture on fire, hence why someone saw it before the alarm went off). It was just so disorienting and terrifying to wake up to the pounding on the door, the screaming, and the smoke.

Falling down the stairs. I was 12 and I was sleepwalking. I woke up as I was falling from the first step and proceeded to tumble down 18 stairs. All I got was a bruise.

A field rat in my hair.

Field rats are about the same size as a pet rat, so nothing like those giant scary city rats, but i still don't want one IN MY F*****G HAIR.

One summer at my father's acreage a few field rats had found their way into the house, and this particular night I was sleeping in the basement where they were sometimes a bit more active. I had really long hair (to my lower back) and in my sleep the ends had fallen down over the edge of the bed and almost reached the floor. I awoke to a field rat climbing my hair like Rapunzel and it was absolutely terrifying.

I was not a fan of rats, or that basement, or sleeping after that experience.