To start this story off I’ll give a short intro for some context on the area and situation. This is a true story.

I was about 13-15 I can’t remember exactly what age I was due to it being so traumatic, and I’m almost 23 now.

I was living in a small, remote, country side city of Missouri (Holden, Missouri to be exact). It has a population of about 1,000-1,900 people overall so not a very populated city considering all the empty land and fields that are out there.

I was living with my mom, step dad, and step sister at the time. My step sister and I loved to spend time outdoors when we were younger, exploring all the land and deep woods (we lived on almost 50 acres of land our neighbors were very far apart from us and we lived on a private gravel road).

Outside of our small neighborhood past our gravel road we lived on, it turned into pavement on a 2 lane road. To the right was highway 50 and to the left was a large hill with a creek bed underneath and 2 houses at the top of the hill (not sure who lived in either of those houses).

My step sister and I used to go to the bottom of the hill and climb below the small bridge that connected the hill to the creek bed underneath to explore. Lots of cool rocks, and crawdads/frogs to catch. To the far left of the end of the creek was a cow field with barbed wire fence that traps you in the creek from the left side (this part is important).

It was getting late and was pretty dark outside while my step sister and I were exploring the creek one night, and as we’re looking for creatures or rocks to find I look to my right and see a very tall, large, adult man holding a rifle in his hands staring us down. He was blocking the only exit out of the creek.

As my I stand there in shock, and complete utter silence, my step sister doesn’t even notice him. I see him raise and aim the rifle directly at us, I immediately grab my step sister by the arm and pulled her over to the left out of the creek which led us into the cow field.

We’re running along the barbed wire fence across from our gravel road, down the street from my house. My step sister keeps yelling at me “what’s wrong?” and “why are we running” which I was still in so much shock and terror that I didn’t even speak, I just kept running with her.

I helped her jump the barbed wire fence as I see the man exit the creek and start walking towards us (it’s
so dark during this entire situation that I never saw his face or any recognizable features besides him wearing ripped up overalls).

I attempt to jump the barbed wire fence but my shorts I’m wearing get caught on them and I sliced my hand pretty deep ripping my shorts off the fence once I was on the other side. Once I was free my step sister and I took off full sprint down our road towards our house. We’re looking back as we run but I never saw him chase us past the fence, he never fired a shot either.

That creek wasn’t private property and we never damaged or vandalized any part of the bridge or the creek, I never saw a reason for someone to point a gun at a couple kids just having fun and exploring. He never spoke to us either, no “what are you doing?” or anything just a loaded gun pointed at us…

We get to our backyard and I explain to her what I saw and she claimed she didn’t believe me but I think she was just as terrified as I was. I told my parents once we got inside and they also thought I was messing with them until I showed my sliced open hand to my mom.

After that we never returned to the creek bed and never spoke about it either. I’m just glad my instincts kicked in, for all I know my step sister and I could’ve died many years ago if I didn’t run with her.

всем привет, хочу поведать страшную историю из жизни, которая приключилась со мной год назад, и все еще не дает покоя что это было. В этой истории я бы услышать разные предположения что за нечесть потревожила меня и моих друзей. Были это люди или же что-то из потустороннего мира.
Для начала расскажу вам откуда я и как все началось.(все имена заменены) Меня зовут артем, живу в России на юге, в Ростовской области. Довольное приятные и красивые края. Месяц назад с того как я поехал на ту дачу, мои друзья Алекс и Джек поехали туда первыми. Дача принадлежала Алексу, приятная и уютная, с довольно просторным двором за городом. По соседству находился заброшенный двор с открытым забором. Двор был весь заросший и в нем находился заброшенный обваленный дом, в котором по рассказам жил наркоман и умер. Они поехали туда попросту провести время и отдохнуть от города. По их рассказам днем их ничего не тревожило, все было тихо и спокойно. Но начинало постепенно темнеть. Джек и Алекс захотели в 12 ночи выйти во двор без освещения сходить по нужде. Алекс занял место у крыльца, а Джек подошел к забору заброшенного дома. По словам Джека когда он закончил свои дела, за забором выглядывали белые глаза и довольно большим ростом( то что доказывает что это не животное, к тому же в наших краях не обитает животных с белыми глазами в темноте). Когда Джек это заметил, он сразу побежал в дом вместе с Алексом. У них началась большая паника, и на крыльце начались громкие шаги и скрежет. Ребята испугались и просто легли на пол, ожидая когда все это прекратится.
Услышав эту историю от них, я в это не поверил, и захотел поехать туда с ними. Мы закупились едой и взяли с собой нож на всякий случай. Приехав туда на автобусе, я удивился с того насколько эти дачные сектора тихие, будто в них никто не живет. Мы дошли до дома, и начали располагаться. Сначала слушали музыку, ели, курили. После отмывали бассейн и разговаривали, и так продолжалось до самой ночи. Ближе к 11 ночи мы зашли в дом и хотели посмотреть сериал на телефоне, но там пропадает связь после 9 ночи, и мы этого не знали. Решили просто полежать и поразговаривать о жизни. Уже к 12 мы начали слышать шаги по крыше, довольное громкие и тяжелые, далеко не похожие на кошачьи и птичьи. Затем начался скрежет и вместе с ним громкий топот. От страха мы замерли лежа на кровати, и старались максимально успокоиться спихнув все на ветер и деревья. Когда эти звуки закончились ( примерно через полчаса) мы с Алексом вышли на улицу по нужде. Но проверив тщательно весь двор, мы убедились что никого нету, но самое странное что не было никакого ни малейшего намека на ветер. Мы с Алексом решили остаться ночью на крыльце поговорим о жизни, а Джек пошел спать. И так разговаривав до 4-5 утра мы услышали на соседнем дворе шорохи, а затем увидели как через траву кто-то выходит с заброшенного дома и стремительно идет к нашему забору. Мы с Алексом моментально побежали в дом и закрылись, затем разбудили джека чтобы сообщить ему об этом. В этот раз никто по крыльцу не ходил, но снова напугал нас. И так мы не спали всю ночь, и ближе к 12 дня нас
забрала мама Алекса на машине.

Рассказывав эту историю, я хотел бы поотвечать на ваши вопросы и прийти к самой возможно теории что или кто нас тревожил

My mom was the one who mainly told me all the details because I was only five years old when this happened. My dad owns a construction company, and a client wanted us to fix his roof, so he let us stay at the house while the work was being done. It started off nice. The house was a beautiful, three story mansion. However, I remember waking up in the middle of the night to see the little access doors in the room where my brother and I were sleeping just opening and closing on their own. I ran to my mom and told her what happened, but by then, it wasn't going on anymore, so she just told me to go back to bed.The next night, she moved us into her room because she was starting to see weird things as well. Fast forward to the middle of the night my mom woke up and saw someone crawling across the floor in the hallway. At first, she thought it was me, but then she looked over and saw me still fast asleep. Suddenly, a voice told her to look towards the wall.Once she looked towards the wall, she heard a man yell, "Get out, bitch" But no one was there, and everyone else in the house was still sound asleep.The next day, she instantly knew we had to leave. By this time, my dad had already replaced that specific section of the roof, but a large stain kept mysteriously appearing on it even though it was a completely new cut of roofing material. We left that house immediately, and I hadn’t thought about it again until recently.

I just made a recent post on this subreddit so I thought I’d share another true terrifying experience I’ve had.

For some context I’m living in a bigger city in Missouri which I won’t name for privacy reasons as I still live in this city now.

I’m almost 23 living alone and it’s about 10:30 PM at night. It’s one of my days off work, and as I can’t sleep I decide to head to my local gas station down a few streets from my house for a couple cutwaters and a pod for my vape device.

I grab my things and get dressed. I walk into my garage and open my garage door, then I closed it. My car is about 2 feet away from me in my driveway, I unlock it and walk to the driver door as I hear a voice shouting from across the street.

I live in a quiet, nice, suburban neighborhood so this caught me off guard heavily as most of my neighbors aren’t out this late. I hear the voice again yelling in a deep tone “HEY LITTLE BOY!”.

My heart felt like it stopped and my stomach dropped, I searched around looking across the pitch black street (we don’t have street lights this is a very newly built neighborhood). I see a man directly across the street standing next to a dirt pile in the driveway of a house that’s still being built… I can’t see him due to it being so dark.

He yells again “HEY LITTLE BOY!”, I’m still standing there trying to make sense of the situation in my head. He yells it again, and again, and then yells “HEY LITTLE BOY STOP PLAYING IN THAT DIRT!”. I’m a grown man so him yelling “little boy” still confuses me.

After he yelled again and again I eventually was so disturbed that I jumped into my car and locked it as I started it up with my heart racing. I planned to drive by him to see who it was and possibly kick some ass. As I drive by it’s just some man in very normal clean looking clothes standing by the dirt pile staring at it, he never looked up at my car.

I went to the gas station assuming it was probably someone on drugs or homeless or playing some sick joke on me. I got back and he was gone, I had some trouble sleeping that night, kept every door and window locked. Haven’t seen him since.

This story took place in 2017.

I am Korean, and I served in the Navy for two years, from 2017 to 2019.

In the South Korea Navy, soldiers who have served six months on a ship can be transferred to shore-based units.

Unfortunately, I was assigned to an island in the South Sea of Korea. (Everyone avoids life on the island because the buildings are dilapidated and there’s nothing to do.)

Because it was a remote outpost, there had been incidents of hazing and beatings until recently, and I’ve heard there were frequent cases of military police committing suicide because they couldn’t endure such abuse.

The most recent suicide, as of 2017 when I was stationed there, had occurred over 10 years prior, but even back in 2017, there were frequent rumors that military police had seen ghosts while standing guard all night.

It was a military unit where the entire island served as an ammunition depot. There were roughly 15 ammunition depots on the island.

Interestingly, about five of them were over 100 years old. This is because they were built by the Japanese military during World War II, when Japan was occupying Korea.

That’s why, when I went inside the ammunition depots and looked closely at the graffiti, I saw some written in Japanese. Since I’m Korean, I couldn’t tell exactly what it meant, though.

My military specialty was ordnance specialist. As an ordnance specialist, when serving on a warship, my role is to maintain the ship’s guns, various machine guns, rifles, and other weapons.

However, since I was stationed with an ammunition depot unit on land, my main duty was to receive ammunition from numerous warships—which needed to offload their supplies for repairs or other reasons—and organize it in the ammunition depot.

Let me briefly explain the work process. A driver would operate a forklift to transport the ammunition to the ammunition depot.

The ordnance specialist would then guide the forklift to load the ammunition into the appropriate locations inside the depot.

There’s an important point here. The drivers wore “navy dungaree uniforms” while working, as this was the official work uniform of the South Korea Navy in 2017.

Yes, up until then, the South Korea Navy wore uniforms that looked like something straight out of a World War II naval movie.

However, the ordnance specialists wore standard digital camouflage uniforms, as they often had to physically move heavy artillery shells. (The “navy dungaree uniform” is made of a fairly thin and soft material, making it unsuitable for heavy labor.)

There were only two drivers in our unit, so when the entire unit assembled, those two were the only ones wearing dungarees.

And that was the day. It was a cold December day.

There were usually five ordnance specialists on ammunition duty, but that day was particularly busy, so we were split into three groups: two, two, and one.

And I was the lone one. My job was simple.

That day, a minelayer had docked for repairs and was unloading naval mines, and my job was simply to organize those naval mines in the ammunition depot and record their serial numbers.

Naval mines were equipment that came in only very rarely, so we decided to store them in an ammunition depot that wasn’t used very often. I climbed the hill and walked along a grassy path to reach the remote ammunition depot on the island.

It was an ammunition depot built by the Japanese military during World War II; although it had been remodeled, it still showed signs of age.

A massive tunnel-like hole had been dug into the slope; about 50 meters inside the tunnel entrance was a space roughly 20 meters wide and 10 meters long. Continuing further into that space revealed a semi-cylindrical bunker, slightly smaller than the tunnel itself, extending for about 100 meters. Thus, the ammunition depot was 160 meters long in total.

Due to the nature of the semi-cylindrical structure—which was smaller than the tunnel itself—there were narrow corridors, about 2 meters wide, extending 100 meters on either side. At the end of each corridor was a solid, blank wall, and the air trapped within those narrow corridors acted like a thermos, keeping the temperature inside the ammunition depot constant.

And so the work began. I stacked naval mines, stacked them, and stacked them some more… I was frantically focused on my work, writing down the serial numbers.

That’s when I heard footsteps. At the time, I was 150 meters deep inside the ammunition depot, but because the interior was like a cave, the sound of footsteps coming from the entrance echoed very clearly throughout the entire depot, so I could hear them. I looked toward the entrance.

Although the interior of the ammunition depot was lit, it was darker than the outdoors, so a bright light poured in from the entrance. As a result, I could only make out a rough silhouette. Someone was walking toward me. A figure in a navy coat, hands in his pockets, moving very slowly—toward me.

I instinctively realized it was the driver. This was because the navy coat was part of the navy dungaree uniform. (Ordnance specialists wear a field jacket in addition to their uniform in the winter, not a coat.)

Since one of the two drivers was on leave, there was only one driver who would come all the way out to this remote ammunition depot that day.

At that moment, a slight doubt crept in. It seemed strange that, at a time when he should have been working frantically, he was approaching me so leisurely with his hands in his coat pockets.

'Maybe the forklift broke down, or there was a problem unloading ammunition from the ship, or maybe he just came in for a moment because it was cold—there must be a reason,;

I thought, and then went back to writing down the serial numbers.

The driver was still walking slowly toward me. His footsteps grew louder.

He walked about 50 meters and reached the open space in the middle.

When his footsteps stopped, I looked up at him. His face was still obscured by the bright light coming from the entrance. He stood there, slowly swaying his body from side to side.

It was a bit strange, but since it was quite chilly that day, I figured he was just swaying to ward off the cold, so I turned my head back and went back to work.

At that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of him turning and disappearing to the right. That was where the narrow corridor on the right was located, and there was no exit from the ammunition depot there.

Thud, thud—the footsteps continued for about 10 seconds before stopping.

At that point, I thought to myself, 'The driver must be hiding to try to scare me.'

As I chuckled inwardly at the obvious and childish prank and wondered how to react,

A forklift drove into the ammunition depot.

There was only one driver on duty that day.

The other one was on leave, having gone to Seoul to have some fun.

So what was it that I had just seen?

The driver noticed the look on my face—a mix of complicated thoughts—and asked me what was wrong,

and I replied that it was just because of the cold weather.

I was about to be alone again, and I felt that if I were to voice the thoughts swirling in my head, some kind of entity would materialize and confront me.

The driver drove the forklift away and disappeared toward the docks,

and I, holding my flashlight, carefully shone it down the right-hand corridor.

There was nothing there. Not even a single spider.

I cautiously shone the light down the left-hand corridor.

As expected, there was no one there either.

I stopped what I was doing and quietly—trying not to make a sound—moved slowly...

A little faster...

Faster still...

I sprinted out of the ammunition depot.

It was a cold December day. The sky was overcast.

I wanted to smoke, but since even lighting a lighter near the ammunition depot would result in severe punishment,

I pointlessly kicked a nearby rock with my foot,

sighed, and peered back into the ammunition depot.

I looked down at the pier, where many people had gathered, for about a minute,

then went back into the ammunition depot, where I still had unfinished work. Just like a sinner being dragged to hell.

I started writing down the serial numbers again.

Writing, writing, and writing some more,

as if nothing had happened—

No, actually, nothing really did happen there.

Right?

One thing is certain: after finishing my work, I picked up the fire shovel that had been lying in the corner and kept watching outside until someone came to get me from deep inside the ammunition depot.

I couldn’t walk out of that damn place on my own. No way.

This happened almost 4 years ago now. I didn't get into reddit until recently and this is something I experienced that I have been wanting to share because I still think about it sometimes and what might have happened if I had chosen to act differently.

It was night time, I don't remember the exact time but it was dark out, and I was driving home from my cousin's house. There was an area on the drive I went through that was not a good area, beaten down houses and apartments, prison across from the neighborhood, etc.

I was driving through this area, minding my business as usual when I noticed a lady standing in the road up ahead. There were two lanes to the side of the road I was on. I was in the right lane, closer to the neighborhood and that was where the lady was standing, kind of in the middle of that lane. She was waving her arms. I switched lanes and planned to just try and drive past her, because I knew to never stop for anyone while driving, especially in a bad area, when it was dark, and when I was a woman alone.

But when I had switched into the other lane she moved, basically jumping in front of my car to stand in that lane instead, forcing me to slow down. While I had slowed down, I did not stop. I honked at her and luckily she moved. So once she had kind of stepped aside (she was standing on the passenger side of the car) I sped back up to get out of there, and as I did she banged her fists/hands on the window/car a little bit.

I think about this a lot as a part of me felt bad, thinking “what if she needed help?” But I remind myself that there were plenty of houses nearby, and some stores/gas stations only a little further up the road, and if she really needed, the prison right across the street. If she needed help she had plenty of places to go to to get it. So I hate to think about what her intentions had been, what would have happened had I stopped and rolled down my window or opened the car door. In hindsight I am glad I did what I had, keeping myself safe. But it's just something that still haunts me to this day. After that incident I had become extra nervous to drive through that area, and luckily I do not have to anymore as I live somewhere else and have a different route to my cousins house. But yeah, probably one of my scariest experiences.

I used to travel around and hop trains and hitchhike around for about 8 years. I usually traveled with a friend or a group of friends and we would either camp outside or find abandoned buildings to sleep in. Sometimes we would get motel rooms. It really just depended on the town we were in. In the country I tended to camp more, in the city I tended to squat in abandon buildings more.

This story took place in Minneapolis Minnesota in 2013, I was 19 years old. I was traveling with a good friend of mine named Jess and we went to Minneapolis to attend the mayday parade in south Minneapolis. The parade was this huge event with tons of punk shows and parties, a group of welders in town make these dystopian mad max style bicycle powered parade floats with caged half pipes and flames and all this crazy shit, it’s really incredible and totally worth the trip.

After the parade most travelers were clearing out of town. We had been sleeping in an abandoned house on Chicago avenue for a couple weeks, it was this creepy multifamily apartment building that had been gutted down to the studs so each floor was one big open space with studs separating the different “rooms” if you could call them that, since they had no walls between them. We would sleep at the very top floor in the back corner where you were mostly hidden from anyone coming up the stairs. Jess and I were staying at this building with two other travelers and we had been partying and drinking in this house for a couple weeks during the festivities.

During our time camped out here, we realized that the outside walls of this building were all insulated with old news papers from the 1910’s and 20’s. Like stacks upon stacks of these old news papers lined the studs on the inside of the outer brick walls. We pulled some out and found original Walt Disney comics in the paper, the old school kind with the old version of Mickey Mouse.

One night, after drinking some whiskey, we found a candle and a baby doll in the basement, and being the dumb crust punk edge lords that we were, we decided to make a satanic shrine in this abandoned house. Our idea was that it would look really creepy and then when teenagers or people break into this abandoned house in the future they will think someone was doing some kind of black magic or something and get freaked out. It was a joke. We made a pentagram with the melted wax and we melted wax onto the eyes of the baby doll. We took news papers from the insulation and cut our pictures of faces from the paper and stuck them into the wax. It legit looked so creepy in the dark in there. We thought we were hilarious, but we moved on.

Over the last couple weeks there was four of us sleeping there, but two of the travelers had left town already, and my friend Jess that I was traveling with had met a guy at a show and went to stay at his place for a couple nights. I didn’t want to be a third wheel so I just decided to stay by myself at the squat and give them some space. I’m not sure why I thought sleeping in an abandoned building by myself was better than being a third wheel, but I was young and dumb and far more reckless than I am now.

Once it got dark I realized how stupid I was. This house that didn’t seem scary at all with a group of people laughing and talking and having fun. My friend has a Pitt bull, so we also had the dog as security. Suddenly I had none of that and no one and the big three story building seemed silent and dark and creepy as hell…

To make myself feel better, I took all the bottles from around the room, mostly whiskey, soda, and plastic water jugs from our two weeks of staying in there, and I set them up around my spot in a huge circle. My idea was that if someone stumbled into the dark room they would knock over the bottles and it would wake me up, giving me time to react or at least give me some warning that someone was in the room.

I slept like a rock and woke up with sunlight streaming by through the windows, my bottle ring was intact and nothing had knocked any bottles over. I went to the park and charged my phone and texted Jess and asked her when she wanted to meet up and leave town. It was still super early in the day and I wasn’t hearing anything back from jess so I decided to go back to the abandoned house and take a nap.

I went back to the house and headed through the back door from the alley, went up the stairs, and crossed the top floor to my little corner. That’s when I noticed something right in the middle of my spot. A pile of something. At first I thought I had left something but it instantly looked out of place. Most of the windows were boarded up so it was still pretty dark in there even with light shining through a couple unboarded windows. As I approached my spot I finally saw what I was looking at. Directly in the center of my ring of bottles, right where I slept the night before. Was a big pile or news papers taken from the insulation in the walls, it was piled up right where I slept in the shape of a human body. My mind was racing as I tried to figure out what was happening. To me the message was clear. “Your bottles didn’t keep you safe, I watched you sleep right here”

I ran down both flights of stairs, out the back door, across the back lawns, down the alleyway, and didn’t stop until I reached the corner store. I called Jess to make sure she wasn’t fucking with me and she said she didn’t place the newspapers there. That’s when I remembered the satanic shrine we had built. I think I cling to the idea of a paranormal encounter because the alternative is so much more disturbing. We didn’t see or hear anyone in that building over the weeks we had been staying there, but was someone living in there with us the entire time? Maybe watching us from the attic or the floor below? Either way, someone or something watched me sleep that night. Something knew exactly where I had been laying and they clearly sent me a message “you were not safe last night” either that or there was a really hospitable ghost trying to lay out a little bed for me. I was only gone for an hour or so, so whoever did it couldn’t have gotten far. I wonder to this day if they were in the room with me, watching me discover the pile of newspapers….

The house has since been remodeled and is currently someone’s house, I wonder if those people have experienced anything strange happening there.

I still remember this story incredibly clearly, even though it happened over a decade ago. Strangely, everything that happened after it is almost a complete blur. But I can picture every detail leading up to it and the moment it happened.

This happened when I was around 10 or 11 years old. I’ll also be using fake names for privacy. I was there with my friends Daniel and Lydia who were both around 12 years old. I can’t remember exactly which beach it was, but it was either Coogee Beach or another beach very close by.

Lydia’s mum drove us to the beach. She would usually just sit and tan on the sand and we would go off to do our own thing and have fun.

We decided to play hide-and-seek around the beach, park, and surrounding walkways. Daniel was seeking and found me first, but neither of us could find Lydia. We searched everywhere. The beach, the nearby playground, and around the paths.

Facing north there were stairs leading up from the beach to a walking path that followed the coastline, overlooking the ocean and cliffs as well as a small patch of bushland in the middle.
We decided to head up the stairs and walked the entire path around to the other side before climbing over a fence into the bush to have a better look. About five minutes in, we came across what looked like a campsite.

We saw a filthy tent, a sleeping bag hanging out of the zipper, a non lit campfire, and empty bean cans scattered around the floor.

We both immediately felt uneasy. Something about it didn’t feel right.

Without saying much, we decided to walk away from the tent, cut through the bush to get near the stairs we came from.

Daniel was walking behind me as we made our way through the bush. Then suddenly, in the most stern voice I’d ever heard from him, he said:

“Run.”

I didn’t ask why. I didn’t look back.

Daniel was running behind me the whole time. Looking back now, I know he would have been much faster than me, but he stayed behind me the entire way. I sometimes wonder if he was doing that to make sure I didn’t fall back behind.

Whatever was happening, neither of us cared about anything except getting out of there.

We reached the fence, it was probably about four feet high. For reference, I’m only 5’1” as an adult, so I would’ve been around the height of the fence or maybe shorter.

We both leaped over with no issues.
The second we landed on the other side, we looked back.

Standing inside the bush was an homeless man maybe in his late 40s with a long grey-white beard, a dirty brown beanie, and worn, ragged clothes.

In one hand, he was holding a knife.

With his other hand, he kept motioning for us to come back, quietly saying,

“Come here… come here…”

We ran the entire way down the path until we found Lydia and her mum. From memory, we told them. But I don’t think anything was done about the situation.
I’m not sure if Lydia’s mum told our parents, or even reported it. If I’m being honest, I can’t remember if I told my parents or if Daniel told his.

It became one of those experiences we just… never spoke about again. From how I saw the situation at that age, I kinda just shrugged it off.
We all kept in touch for a few years after the incident but eventually lost contact after I moved to a different state.

Lately I wonder about it more, what could have went differently… I still wonder what Daniel saw before he yelled for us to run. What I do know is that if Daniel hadn’t been there that day, I probably wouldn’t be here today telling this story.

I count my lucky stars every day that Daniel was with me.

So, to the man that was in the bush with a knife,

Let’s never meet again.

I recently came across the old urban legend about The Smiling Man, and it's one of those stories that sticks with you.

Imagine walking home around 2 AM. The street is completely empty. Then you notice someone standing perfectly still... just smiling at you.

You look away for a second.

When you look back...

He's much closer.

No running.
No footsteps.
Just that same impossible smile.

Whether it's real or not, it's one of the creepiest modern urban legends I've read.

I enjoyed the story so much that I turned it into a short horror animation. If you're interested, it's here:

https://youtube.com/shorts/ZDYazlY8rZs?feature=share

What's the creepiest urban legend you've ever heard?

This happened when I was 11 but I still remember it
All my family was going to a them a park but I was sick so I was alone in my grandparents home since my grandfather passed away the atmosphere always felt weird like creepy noise,since my grandmother lived in Algeria they were always creepy story but I never believe them until that day,I always locked the door cause I was scared,and then somene opened the door it was my dead grandfather who were staying in front of me without a word and then he said. « you didint go ? You stayed alone ? »and I just said that I was sick and I asked How was he doing? He just stared at me and said good.and he said that I don’t have to be sad about him.I didn’t realize yet but after 10 minutes I realized nobody was home I tried to search him but nothing i asked tye Same question for 20 minutes Who was I talking to just before? I just got scared and hide myself in the closet when I told my mom about she just said «we all see things maybe you miss him too,don’t you ? »but I was sure I saw something open the door and asking me Why didn’t I leave? Anyway if you guys have any tips of knowing what it his just tell me anyway bye guys

To begin with, I want to apologize if anything doesn't sound quite right; English isn't my native language, so things might come out a bit off, which is why I'm asking the chat to help me with it.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, several strange and inexplicable things happened. Once, a blanket floated over me; another time, a securely fixed chandelier simply fell out of nowhere. I always felt a strange presence, but nothing that truly frightened me too much. Since these things always happened in a sleepy state, I kept wondering if my brain was just playing tricks on me.

Well, it was 2017, and my daughter was about 10 months old. I was getting her used to sleeping in her own room. That night, I wasn't sleeping, nor did I feel sleepy since I had napped in the afternoon, so I simply couldn't fall asleep. Since it was new to have my daughter sleeping in another room, I would get up every hour to check if everything was okay. This time, when I got up and reached her little room, she was awake, quiet, and sitting up, without crying or anything.

That was when I heard her father shout my name really loudly, in a very deep voice. The distance between our rooms was quite far, and the moment he shouted, I turned around and came face-to-face with him. It was impossible for him to be there that fast. If you've ever seen the movie Split, you'll know how he looked. You know when the character transforms into the Beast? He simply looked much bigger than he actually was, his breathing was heavy, his face was distorted, and he was talking, but I couldn't understand him—it sounded like he was speaking another language.

That's when I started to cry and felt an overwhelming weakness. Before I knew it, he was normal again, asking me what had happened and why he was standing there.

It was terrifying, and to this day, I still don't know what happened.

I’ve gone back and forth on posting this because I already know people are gonna say I am exaggerating and it’s not that scary, but my grandma died a few months ago and I’ve been thinking about this almost every day since then because now I can’t ask her what actually happened. My mom won’t talk about it. I’m changing some details and obviously I’m not saying exactly where this was, but my family is Creole and we’re from deep south Louisiana.

My grandma practiced Voodoo, and before anybody starts acting weird about that, she wasn’t sacrificing animals in the backyard or sticking pins in dolls or any of the movie stuff. She knew herbs and roots, she prayed over people, she made teas and washes and poultices, and she knew how to treat things that doctors couldn’t or wouldn’t fix. Things people in our community had been treating at home for generations. She also believed in doctors and hospitals, so we aren’t one of those families where nobody was allowed to get real medical care.

Kids weren’t allowed in the room when she was working and nobody really explained why. We were just told to stay out of the way.

This happened when I was around 14 or 15. I know I wasn’t driving yet because one of my cousins had dropped me back off at my grandma’s house after we’d been fishing, and it had been raining all day so I was soaked and mad because my shoes were full of mud. There was an old truck parked outside that I didn’t recognize but that wasn’t unusual because people were always coming by.

I walked in through the side door and the first thing I noticed was that the TV wasn’t on. My grandma always had either the news or gospel music playing, even if she wasn’t watching it, so the house being completely quiet felt strange before I even saw anything. She was in the kitchen and there was a man sitting at the table. He looked rough as hell. His shirt was ripped around the shoulder, there was dried blood on one sleeve, and his hands had these cuts across them that looked deep enough for stitches. He had mud all over his jeans and boots too, like real dark swamp mud, so my first thought was that he had gotten lost somewhere or attacked by an animal. Maybe a gator or a dog or something.

My grandma wasn’t cleaning the cuts. She was checking him over like she was looking for something else. She checked his pulse for a long time, looked inside his mouth, pulled one of his eyelids down, then did the other one, and kept asking him to look at her. He wouldn’t.

That’s the part I remember the clearest. He was sitting there completely still and staring at the wall behind her. I don’t think I saw him blink once. I know people say that in creepy stories all the time but I swear I stood there long enough to notice because it started making me uncomfortable. Tears were running down his face but he wasn’t crying like normal. He wasn’t making a sound, his face wasn’t moving, and he wasn’t wiping them away. They were just coming out of his eyes while he stared straight ahead.

My grandma kept checking him and talking under her breath, I couldn’t hear everything she was saying but I know some of it was prayer. She didn’t ask where he had been or what attacked him, which didn’t seem weird to me at the time but it does now because you’d think that would be the first question.
I don’t know how long I had been standing in the hallway when he finally spoke. It was so quiet that I almost didn’t hear him. He said, “I thought it was him. He looked like him.”

My grandma stopped what she was doing. She didn’t ask who he meant and she didn’t look confused. She closed her eyes for a second and then said, “I know.”

That was it. He started breathing weird after that, like he was trying not to panic, but he still didn’t move or look at her. My grandma finally saw me and told me to go change my clothes because I was getting mud on the floor. Her voice sounded completely normal, which honestly scared me more than if she had yelled.

I went to the bedroom and stayed there for a while. I could hear them moving around later but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The truck was gone before dinner.
I asked my grandma that night who the man was and she said he was somebody who needed help. I asked what happened to him and she smiled and said I asked too many questions. She always did that when she didn’t want to answer something, so I let it go. I never saw him again and nobody ever brought it up.

I had honestly forgotten most of it until we started cleaning out her house after she died. She had a lot of notebooks. Most were normal stuff like recipes, herbs, Bible verses, phone numbers, and notes about people she had treated. Things like fever, burn, baby not sleeping, infection, headaches, stuff that made sense. Then I found one notebook that was different. There were dates but most of the pages didn’t have names, just short notes. Some of them said “came in through the window,” “mimicked her mother’s voice,” “found outside praying,” “kept asking to be let inside,” “didn’t remember walking there,” “heard it from the water,” and one that just said “smiled with his brother’s face.” There were a lot more but I didn’t read all of them because my mom came in and took the notebook out of my hands. I asked her what it was and she said it was private and belonged to my grandma. I told her about the man I saw when I was a kid and she got this look on her face like she knew exactly who I was talking about, then said I was probably remembering it wrong.

I asked her what the notes were referring to and she told me to leave it alone. I asked her what “mimicked her mother’s voice” meant and she got mad and said my grandma spent her whole life helping people and I needed to respect that.

I wasn’t accusing her of anything, I just wanted an answer, but she wouldn’t give me one.IDK Maybe the man was having some kind of mental health crisis. Maybe he had been attacked by an animal and was in shock, and maybe my grandma wrote down weird things people said while they were sick. I know there are normal explanations for parts of this. What I can’t explain is why she already knew what he meant when he said he thought it was him, or why she had years of notes about different people seeing or hearing something that copied voices, came through windows, waited to be invited, and sometimes looked like somebody they knew.

I keep thinking about how calm she was that day. She wasn’t trying to figure out what happened to him.
She was checking to see how far it had gotten.

I live with my mom, who is 50 years old, and I am 15. We have been living in this house since I was 7 years old. Over the years, we have experienced strange things, such as noises coming from the attic, including dishes falling, banging sounds, and things being knocked over. We have also noticed food and other items going missing around the house.

Our attic does not have stairs, so we have to use a ladder to access it, but right now we only have a step stool. The times I have looked into the attic were when I stood on the step stool and turned on my camera to record. However, we could not see much in the footage because objects like vents were blocking the view. One time, my mom and I found a sock in the house that did not belong to us and was not from anyone who had visited.

Just a week ago, I was in my room playing Roblox. My game was muted, and I had my headphones on with one ear uncovered. Suddenly, I heard a door slam, which scared me. I thought it was my mom, but I would have heard her door open if she had gotten up. My dog heard it too and lifted her head. I looked under my door while grabbing my mace for protection.

The bathroom light in our house turns on automatically when someone walks past it, but it was not on. There are only three bedrooms with doors: my mom’s room, my room, and the extra bedroom next to mine. The experience scared me so much that I stayed awake all night and did not leave my room.

The next morning, I told my mom what happened, but she said she had not woken up at all during the night. We have also seen the extra bedroom door open before when no one had opened it.

I am genuinely scared, and my mom and I do not really know what to do. If anyone has any ideas or advice, please share. I will try to post updates if anything else happens.

You know the ritual. Lights off. Stand before a mirror. Say her name three times.

Most people who try it see nothing. A trick of the dark. Their brain playing games in low light. Scientists even have a name for it — the Troxler effect. Your mind distorts shapes when you stare long enough into a dim reflection. Case closed.

Except it isn't.

Reports of Bloody Mary stretch back over a hundred years. Not just in America — different countries, different centuries, different languages. And yet every single account describes the exact same woman. Same hollow eyes. Same outstretched hand. If this were just a trick of the brain, why does no one ever hallucinate a different figure? Why no man in a baseball cap? Why no shadow animal? Why always her?

One researcher decided to find out.

Controlled room. Cameras recording. Every variable accounted for. The ritual was performed.

By the next morning, the footage had been deleted.

Before he vanished, his assistant noticed something strange: every mirror in his house had been covered. Not broken. Not removed. Covered — like he was making sure nothing could look back.

He never explained why.

I covered the full account — the science, the cross-cultural reports, and what happened to the researcher — in this short video: [https://youtube.com/shorts/XBtUqI9uM8U]

So like rn I’m laying on the couch scrolling on my phone at exactly 3AM and I hear Smt fall off the table behind me,i get up and turn the lights on and I see a bunch of markers scattered on the floor which we’re supposed to be on the table. Mind you they have been sitting on the table for hours and they didn’t like roll or anything it s like as if smt pushed them off of the table what do you guys think. Oh and it scared the shit out of me🥰🤟🏻🤟🏻

It was the summer vacations, I wasn't quite enjoying em tho, mostly because of the insanely long power outages around the area which made it extremely hard to sleep.

Random day I was just on my old creaking bed which I'd inherited from God knows who. It was bout 1:20 AM, id always hear the steps on the roof and it was usually my grandfather smoking and managing some bunch of technical mombo jumbo on his keypad mobile. He would actually delete all the important notifications 'accidently' for some reason.

He usually went down after 10 mins or so, but he wasn't coming down even after half an hour. My parents were asleep in other room and didn't really bother with the grandfather often.

I went upstairs for the roof, saw the door locked there. But I could see him through the small window, sitting on his usual spot, a broken fiber we used to cover our doors and windows.

I wasn't freaked out at all cuz there was other way to get on the roof too, a ladder that was attached to the wall. It was quite easy to through that and grandpa also slept outside mostly.

I called out to him, he turned towards me and kept smoking, I called out again, no answer. It was more like he was ignoring me which he never did. He was just staring, I got goosebumps, more cuz of those severe burn scars around his face that he got in past.

I went to the ground floor, yea the house was crappy but big. I knocked on my grandma's room, she came out and I instantly told her everything. Then she stepped aside and I got look of my grandpa sleeping under the covers. I still didn't freak out.....well i guess I did, just a little bit tho.

Granny then took a wooden handled broom with her and went upstairs, told me to stay put but I followed her anyways. She didn't unlock the roof door, she just peeked through the small window and then looked back at me, stared at me for some seconds and asked me to peek through. There was noone on the old fibre. BUT, someone was standing aside the one roomed storage we had on the roof. I pointed at it and told granny to look again, but she was already calling my dad and told me to shut up and keep an eye ont he figure, she really wanted to catch whatever that was.

My dad came with his licenced shotgun, mom followed with two flashlights for some reason, one didn't have the battery tho.

Everyone peeked one by one, they also saw it, it obviously didn't disappear like some horror movie.

Dad also didn't go blasting around with his gun, ofcourse. That would be insanely dangerous, but, we also didn't have survival instincts of a horror movie main character. We didn't unlock the door and approach the figure face first. We nagotiated with granny to go and sleep, cuz she was heaving constant headaches that day, and surprisingly she accepted and went downstairs after she passed down her broom to my mom.

Dad didn't waste a single second and called police, they said they'd be there in 30 mins or so. Then there was footsteps again, hurried and anxious, it was granny. She came running upstairs, with bloodshot eyes, trembling hands she could only utter one sentence: "he isn't there....".

Everyone freaked out, the figure was still there, I could swear on the whole bloodline I had seen grandpa sound asleep under the covers, granny said there was nothing. She came upstairs AFTER locking her room. No one knew where grandpa went. We could only anticipate the figure to be grandpa and gods how we hoped it to be him....

Mom took granny to my parents' room, the police still wasn't there. The figure was too much under the shade of the storage room to be seen clearly. It was just leaning against the wall.

Dad opened the small window, gun still in his hands, he called out, then looked back at me. I also called out many times but the figure wouldn't answer. It was just there.

Police finally arrived, three officers, came rushing upstairs after mom opened the door for em. They saw it too, the figure. I was told to go in my parents' room where mom and granny were. Ofcourse I didn't go in my room, I'd wet my pants.

I don't know what happened afterwards, but after police approached the figure, it came out to be grandpa. He'd reached there while in sleep, later the reports stated he had REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD). We never knew.

The moment I found out it was grandpa, i literally just glanced downstairs towards granny's room. Granny knew what was wrong, dad knew, mom knew too, everyone in that house knew. Even though the police had searched the whole house after that, we never found out the answer to our question, nobody believed us. And we still don't know.

Who was that on the bed?

I ran away from home and then met this special forces cop and she said oh look we’re connected then a tear fell from my eye and her eye. After that weird stuff happened then my house shifted and this woman pretending to be my mom said no come stay at my house and my family disappeared. After that people would look at her and say my name. Someone tried to help me saying do you need help getting an apartment then turned and said it in her ear instead of to me.

It’s weird my body has forced me to walk away from important people in my life trying to help me and then they said bye and I don’t know if I’ll ever get to see them agian