Unfortunately, there seem to be almost as many creeps in the world as there are stars in the sky. But no two creeps are exactly alike. Some are total monsters, some are just bizarre, but all of them have a way of sticking in our minds. Only one thing is certain—if you’ve ever come across anyone like the chilling people below, we feel sorry for you.
1. I Feel Like Biology Was Probably Not Her Top Subject Back in High School...
When I was like six I went to my dad’s small town 30-year reunion. His ex-fiancé (not my mom) was dressed in her prom dress. And kept talking to me saying she should have been my mommy. Even then I knew that was weird. Keep your crazy in, lady.
2. An Unsolved Mystery
My friend is a female who we’ll nickname "Mystery." Last year, Mystery gets her first car. She takes it on her first drive alone, to McDonald’s. Afterward, Mystery drives a few hours to her best friend’s house, who had moved away upstate a few months earlier. Halfway through the drive, it happens. She feels a tap on her shoulder as she’s driving.
Some stranger pops up from under the back seat and asks her if her name is Mystery. She slams on the brakes and jumps out of the car. All the surrounding cars stop too to see what the fuss was all about. In front of this whole crowd, the guy gets out and jumps off the low bridge they were on. He was never seen again or identified.
3. Taking You For A Ride
The scariest person I ever met was a cab driver. The drive with him was so terrible that I actually considered getting out at a stoplight. But I couldn’t because I was in a hurry to get to where he was driving me. From start to end, he was loudly sniffing and saying I smelled so good he could "eat me up." He also kept trying to make up his mind about what kind of flower I smelled like. He was sniffing audibly all the while.
4. Got Any Plans This Evening?
This complete stranger approached me in Hollywood once. He was super tall and bald. On top of that, he had an absurdly protruding belly and super-long arms, like a wax figure that's started to melt. Then I noticed that one of his eyes was clouded-white and he was missing a tooth or two. But that was just one part of what terrified me.
He walked up to me as I was drinking coffee on a patio, stopped inches away from my face, smiled at me, and said, "I might get rid of you tonight" in a low voice before walking off.
5. Van Life Gone Wrong
One day I was walking home from somewhere around 7 AM. Two vans began to circle around the block while I was walking home. This continued for about five minutes until one of them stopped behind me. That’s when I knew something was really, really wrong. One of the men got out and stared me down. He was in his 50s with long white hair and a beard. As soon as the other man started to open his door, I ran away as fast as I could. That was a very close call.
6. An Evil Man
I occasionally worked with a man who always seemed a bit "off" to me. I could never really place it. I thought maybe he was just kind of slow. I felt bad for being judgemental and just did my best to be nice to him. I later came to find out that he'd spent time behind bars. He told everyone it was for substances, but then, the disturbing truth emerged.
In reality, it was for abducting a bunch of kids and some other messed up stuff. This all came to light after he abducted two young girls from our community. One of the girls escaped from his place and told the authorities what had happened. Tragically, he took the life of the other one before taking his own life. Always trust your gut.
7. Leave the Swords in the Game
Met a girl I really liked on World of Warcraft, but she lived in another country. After a couple of vacations there, it turned into a relationship. Made the decision to move and start a new life there with her. After living there for four months, I slowly realized she was crazy as heck. Huge mood swings paired with a lot of aggression. Ended up getting stabbed in the side by her while I was asleep.
Needless to say, after getting out of the hospital I took the first plane back home. She's still in a psychiatric hospital.
8. If I Only Had A Hammer
One time, I was on a late-night Greyhound bus ride from Sacramento to San Francisco. There was a creepy-looking dude sitting right across the aisle from me. In his hands, he was holding a hammer. He had no luggage. Just a hammer. Nothing else. He had this weird look in his eyes, too. I have never had a more awkward moment than when he and I made eye contact.
9. Warning Signs
I work at a psych hospital. I was in the cafe with an adult unit and the adolescent unit was also there. I had known one of the kids from when she was on the children’s and normally we had a good rapport. I went to say hi and told her I was proud she had been staying out of trouble, a few of the other girls reacted weirdly to me saying it and the girl looked guilty.
I told the staff on the unit and said they should keep an extra eye on the girls because I had bad vibes about it. The staff kinda brushed me off. A half hour later four girls—including the one I knew—literally the two staff barely survived, one got her head bashed in and suffered brain trauma and the other staff was blinded in one eye.
10. Friends in Low Places
I accidentally once gave a ride to a wanted fugitive, without realizing who he was until weeks later when he got caught. To give some context, I don't watch the news. Like, at all. I don't read the paper either. I only have Facebook because people don't answer their phones when you call them, so Messenger is unfortunately a must have these days. And I've only just recently become more active on Reddit and other social media. In other words, I am very disconnected from any awareness of what’s going on in the world 99% of the time.
Anyway, I picked this hitchhiker up and he seemed super normal. I just thought he was some kind of an addict who needed to get himself clean. The dude looked super rough, but he was also very friendly and nice. He chatted with me about a lot of different things, and I even got him a sandwich and some water at one point.
Then he said that he's been clean for a week and was thinking about taking his own life or turning himself in. I thought he was just talking about drugs the whole time. Then he went on a rant about politics and how everyone is so crooked these days. I tuned him out after a bit because he was just going on and on. I eventually dropped him off and went on with my daily errands.
A few weeks later, I was out to eat with my friends when one of them brought up this article about that very guy being caught. I knew it was the same guy because of how close he got to me when he was going on his rant. None of them would believe me when I tried to tell them.
11. Bad Fingers
One time on the train, this old dude slipped his little finger in the mini pockets of my jeans. When I pointed this out, he turned away, whispered, “bad finger,” and slapped his own hand.
12. The Bad Guy Next Door
When I was a kid, my grandparents lived next door to this creepy couple who kept trying to get me and my cousins to come and sleep over in this little shack that they lived in. None of us ever went, and we all thought that these people were scary as heck. Years later, this couple was in the news for having kidnapped a bunch of children…
13. When in Doubt, Spam
A guy that I was close with told me one night when we drank too much that he had a photo album on his phone just dedicated to me, like hundreds of photos of me. I noticed he'd been screenshotting my Snapchats then giving excuses when I called him up about it. I then found a post from his old page that was paragraphs long about me and he made up quite a few lies on it and said he was in love with me and he put a lot of my personal feelings on this post. Then when I distanced myself he started spamming me with messages and stalking me online, not good.
14. It’s Time
I had a teacher who added all my friends and me on Snapchat immediately after graduating high school. He got loaded and snapped me almost every weekend saying how he wished we could screw, and I should come to his house and show him a good time. In high school, he was the “hot teacher” that every girl drooled over, but he has some serious issues.
15. Cooking The Books
A co-worker's cousin who I met at a cookout was the eeriest person I have ever encountered. He had no emotion whatsoever in his eyes when he spoke, and he just gave off a generally weird vibe. He looked at everyone kind of oddly, but the way he looked at women felt predatory. Any time I broke from conversations with others, he appeared.
He kept bringing up how people are touch-starved these days, especially men. I just kept saying, "that's deep" and would then dart off to find someone else to talk to. The fourth time he brought up men being touch-starved, he asked what I thought guys should do about it and got way too close to me. I told him he should get out my face and go get a freaking massage.
16. Unholy Alliance
The creepiest person that I have ever met in my entire life was this person who went to my church for a little while a few years back. He was 48 years old but hung out exclusively with people half his age, and he always made all the university-aged girls at his previous church feel uncomfortable. He was just the kind of character that gave everyone a bad feeling whenever he was around.
17. Wherever You Are, I Won’t Be
The girl I was friends with was going crazy. She would break into her ex-boyfriends’ houses in the middle of the night and watch them sleep. She’d throw a brick through their car windows. I knew she would turn on me if anything happened. I moved away and never told her.
18. Just Passing Through
I was with my cousins playing in the woods circa age seven when this guy in an all-black outfit just sprints right past us. Two minutes later, about 15 uniformed officers come and question us about the guy. I wonder what would have happened if he had thought he had gotten away from them, and that we were alone there with him…
19. That’s Not Comforting
I had a student who wasn't the best behaved, but hadn't caused a ton of problems yet. Then a rumor started going around school that he had attacked the neighbor's dog. I don't remember why, but it’s obviously concerning. Another student said to him, "Hey, they say you killed your neighbor's dog. Did you really do that?" or something to that effect. And this kid immediately said, "It didn't die." Nothing else, no emotion or explanation.
20. The Favorite
My little sister took ceramics during her freshman year of high school. They had to do some project and she wanted to look on Google for some reference images. She went to ask her teacher if she could use his computer, and she saw that he had a computer folder open that was full of pictures of her. Talk about creepy.
She was like, "Why the heck do you have pictures of me on your computer?" and he came out with some lie, so she told my mom when she got home. My mom called the school about it and he denied everything. The school did nothing about it. So my mom called him personally and threatened the life out of him.
I don’t know what she said but he definitely left my sister completely alone for the rest of the semester.
21. Curbside Pickup
I was walking to the parking garage on campus late at night after studying for my finals. As I am walking to the pedestrian overpass leading to the garage, I notice a girl, maybe 18 or 19 years old, walking alone in her bare feet. It strikes me as odd, but I keep walking until she sits down on a curb and puts her head in her lap.
Concerned, I walk over to her and say, "Excuse me, is everything alright?" As soon as I speak, she stands straight up and starts walking towards me, but looking past me with a glazed look in her eyes. By this time, I don't know what to do. So I just stand there while she walks directly by me, almost touching shoulders with me, all the while looking directly ahead.
Eventually, she walked out of sight. It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen.
22. A Pocketful Of Miracles
When I was 18 years old, I worked the evening shift at a convenience store. For three nights in a row, three stores from the same chain had been held up at gunpoint in my small city, so my manager had basically been prepping me all week to get robbed. I was, understandably, on edge all night. I thought my life was at risk.
I was down to the last few hours of my shift and I was finally starting to calm down a little bit when a guy with his hat pulled down low walked in, came right up to the counter, and started reaching into the inside of his jacket. He said "You know those days when you should've just stayed home? I think today is one of them."
Time immediately started moving in slow motion at this point and my heart was beating out of my chest. After what felt like an eternity, the guy pulled his wallet out of his jacket and asked for a pack of smokes. Anticlimactic, I know, but scary nonetheless. It was the most scared I have ever been of another person.
23. Try, Try Again
One of my teachers took in a girl in my class to live in his house with him and his wife. Heartwarming, right? Not so much. After graduation, he divorced his wife and married that girl. This was during high school, so she was probably 16 when she moved in and he was in his 50s. Just a bit of an age gap. The girl had a rough family life so he posed it as some sort of charitable act, but that was quickly called into question when they started dating publicly.
He was later fired for something similar that had happened years before with a young student, but that relationship never panned out.
24. Time to Face the Music
We were gathered at the dinner table with some friends and I had been offered a drink, despite not having been 21 yet at the time. I took it and casually turned to look out the window while drinking it. As soon as I looked out, I suddenly felt a weird sensation as if someone was staring back at me. I then spotted a man with no face standing on the sidewalk outside, way off in the distance. He was tall and very thin, but he had no face.
There was just a blur where his face should’ve been. I obviously freaked out and let out a scream. When all the adults turned to me, I stammered trying to explain what I had just seen. Of course, nobody believed me. They all said I was probably loaded off of the tiny amount I'd drank, but I know what I saw. I still get this acute sense of dread whenever I think about it.
25. She Longs To Be (Close To You)
In Toronto, there is a subway system run by the “TTC,” or Toronto Transit Commission. They often close off certain parts of the subway route in order to do some upgrades or fix bits. Lately, they've been shutting down the subway rides into the downtown area on the weekends. Anyway, they were doing some upgrades on the tracks one time while I was on one of their trains.
When we got to the area where the folks were working, we were going by pretty slowly and making sure not to run over anyone while they scampered out of the way. Then, out of nowhere, the power cut out. Now, I should say that I wasn't the only one in the train car. The cars are decently long and I was at one end. Some woman was at the other end.
When I first walked onto the train, there was a giant bubble of empty seats around her. She was displaying the typical signs of a crazy person and everyone was avoiding her. But by the time the lights went out, she and I were the only ones left on the train. Even though we were sitting on opposite ends, I became very nervous.
She was laughing audibly, and I tried to tune her out by listening to some music. But that never really worked. It was so chilling that my brain sort of just kept ignoring the music and focusing on her. So, eventually, I just unplugged the music and sat back, trying not to poop my pants. When the power cut out, she immediately stopped laughing.
In fact, she stopped making any noise at all. When the lights came back on about five seconds later, what I saw made me want to jump out of my skin. She wasn't at the far end of the subway car anymore. She was now about three seats away from me. Staring at me. The second the train stopped at the next station, I bolted for the door as fast as I could.
After she “relocated,” she didn't make another sound the entire time. She just kept staring at me. It was the single creepiest moment of my entire life.
26. I Don’t Wanna Be a Princess Anymore
I had the creepiest bus driver when I was seven. We called him Mr. Mike. He was young, probably in his 20s. He assigned all of us girls to sit in the front of the bus. He gave us all individual pet names, usually, the name of a cereal or snack treat. Every day he would “pick a princess” and that girl would get to sit on his lap while he drove.
I didn't realize how creepy it was until I was much older. He got fired the next year.
27. Sticking Like a Molecule
Mr. Highberg. This creepy old dude was a horrible teacher who lost half my work. So much wrong with this guy. First of all, he had a giant map of our county, down to the street names. He gave us all a pushpin and told us to go pin where our house was. I put my pushpin in the middle of some lake. Nice try, Highberg.
He would call the girls things like "sweetheart" and "honey" and "baby." It gets worse. He made everyone get up and pretend to be a "water molecule" or something. We had to put our fingers in each other's belt loops. If they didn't have belt loops we were supposed to put them in each other’s pockets. Well, Mr. Highberg decided to take part in this activity, he also decided it would be a great idea to put his hand in some poor girl's back pocket.
Worst teacher ever.
28. The Stage is Set Perfectly for Round 2
2009 ten-year reunion. There was this dorky guy in high school who ran for class president one year and lost in a landslide. Seriously, he got demolished. Ten-year reunion rolls around at a private venue downtown and this guy shows up pregame wasted with a woman who was giving off a prostitute vibe.
The guy is now a detective in one of the surrounding towns’ and proceeds to get even more wasted at the reunion. He starts telling everyone there about how he has his conceal-carry gun on him. The night ends with him getting into a very loud argument with the woman in the parking lot. Owners of the venue come out and threaten to call the authorities.
He shows his badge and tells them to screw off. Continues cursing her out and gets in his car alone, almost hitting her as he speeds off loaded, leaving her there. Everyone else shifted the party to a local bar (private venue closed). At the bar I see the girl he brought basically hitting on a guy looking for someone else to finish her night with. The guy she's with is closet gay (came out a few years later).
20 year is coming up and I can't wait.
29. Just a Bad Dude
The principal of my high school was detained for embezzling one million pounds. It was later found out that he was a creep. At the time he was detained, he was around 50 years old and his girlfriend was 19 and pregnant. They tell people that they started the relationship when she was 16 years old and out of high school. In the UK, 16 is the age of consent.
People in my high school found out they started at least two years before this and he was forced into early retirement.
30. Joey Fakename
A few years ago I was in the passenger's seat of my friend's car when he hit someone in a crosswalk. He didn't want to stop, but I yelled at him till he eventually pulled over. When we went back to see if the guy was okay, the guy said he thought he should go to a hospital. I took my cell out and called an ambulance while my friend was talking to the guy.
When the guy asked what my friend's name was, he looked at me, looked back at the guy and gave him a false freaking name. Right after I called the ambulance, I also called the authorities. I never spoke to him again after that incident.
31. Car Trouble
When I was five years old, a guy popped up out of nowhere and threw my mom out of the car as she was entering the door. I was in the back seat at the time. The man shoved his way into the car and was about to start the engine. He didn’t know that he’d messed with the wrong person. My mom ripped the door open and fought the guy off. She saved my life. I love her more than words can express.
32. Looking for a Mommy
I was 18 years old and working retail. An older man in his mid-40s came in with a young girl who looked around 3. He came up to me and started chatting. I was polite at first, but then the conversation shifted. I don’t remember exactly what was said that led to this, but the guy was trying to get my number and being overly flirtatious.
He then looked at the girl in his arms. What he said next was so disturbing it’s unforgettable. He told me, I kid you not, “She needs a mommy.” I got away from him so fast. I still think about how gross that made me feel, and I actually worry about that little girl.
33. Glory Off The Battlefield
My aunt's husband was the weirdest and creepiest guy I have ever met. He is a former soldier. He always had very wide eyes when he spoke, and was tall and lanky. He often talked about wanting to start up a network of civilian armies or something like that. This huge, creepy smile would always appear on his face when that topic came up.
34. Don’t Cry Over Spoiled Milk
I had a child who enjoyed stalking and terrorizing younger children at daycare. You could see he got a wicked kick out of it and we were basically powerless aside from taking children away from him. He was beyond awful. A colleague looked after a child who was so jealous of his younger brother that he was slowly adding household cleaners to the milk.
Then his parents tried to get him to have milk one day and he refused and admitted there was cleaner in it...at four years of age.
35. All The Lonely People
Growing up, I always wanted to go on a bike ride at night. Something about it just seemed really cool to me. It wasn't until I was 13 that my mom finally let me. She told me to wear my helmet, take my phone and flashlight, and follow the parameters she had set for where I was allowed to go. She gave me about four miles, which was a lot to me.
So, right after the sun had set, I was off. I loved it. I rode along this path for 10 minutes before the only thing I could see was some of the lights from the houses on the inside of the limits. After 15 minutes of riding along this dirt path, I suddenly hear singing. It sounded like it was just a few feet in front of me. I stop riding to hear it better. It was a woman's voice.
She was singing “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles. But she wasn't singing the words, just the melody. Her voice was strange. You know how when you have phlegm in your throat, your voice gets kind of scratchy? That's what her voice sounded like. I inch forward to try and see her. I get close enough to see the silhouette of her hair bouncing up and down, like she was headbanging.
I decided to get my flashlight out. I'm thinking that maybe this person is in need of help or something. Or maybe this is an insane person and the light will scare them away. So I take the flashlight out of my pocket, point it at her, and turn it on. The moment the light hit her, she stopped moving completely. She was facing away from me.
She had disgusting hair that seemed to be sticking together in clumps. Some of her hair was ripped off, too. She was wearing a very oversized, bright red hoodie. I was almost too scared to move. I think she was, too. I conjured up as much bravery as I could and said "Sorry" in a very, oops-this-is-the-wrong-room kind of way. She didn't respond.
I turned off the flashlight and put it back in my pocket. Just as I was turning my bike around, she screamed. She screamed in an awful, horrifying high-pitched voice. I nearly pooped myself as I threw myself back onto my bike. I heard her voice getting closer to me. I booked it as fast as I could. I didn't once look back behind me, and I didn't stop pedaling.
Her screaming eventually grew quieter and quieter until it dissolved into the howling of the wind.
36. What…You Don’t Cosby?
I had a friend in college from some classes. Didn't know him too well, but I started dating a new girl and they were friends. So, one night, the three of us went out for drinks with three other girls. The four girls all went to use the restroom together (Women...) and he and I stayed at the table. He broke out a little plastic baggie of pills and dropped one in the drink of one of the girls.
He didn't even bother trying to hide what he was doing from me; he just kind of grinned. When the girls got back, I poured the drink out and loudly announced what he had done. I never saw that guy again.
37. Dining And Diving
One time many years ago, I was sitting in a McDonald’s in New York City eating a cheeseburger and minding my own business. All of a sudden this big fellow comes right up to me, pats me on the head, giggles enthusiastically, and then runs away. I have no idea what this guy’s deal was, but he creeped the heck out of me.
38. Mr. Daddy
I always thought this was so weird. There was an advanced math teacher in my all-girls Catholic high school who had a daughter who attended the school. When she got to the point where she was in his class, she didn’t want to address him by “Mr. (insert last name here)” because it felt awkward so she just kept calling him “dad” or “daddy.” Not a huge deal. At first.
Kids are weird, so it became a trend apparently for that whole class to refer to him as “daddy” after a while to kind of lightheartedly make fun of the girl and her situation. A normal, responsible guy would shut that down, of course. Even if it was a weird joke, he should be aware and make them aware in turn that it was inappropriate and gave off terrible optics.
This teacher was not a normal guy, nor responsible. He not only allowed them to continue doing it, but actively encouraged it by “jokingly” refusing to answer to girls who didn’t call him by his “proper title,” i.e. daddy. I was older than the daughter by a couple of years but knew some younger girls in the class who told me they were SUPER uncomfortable.
He seemed to enjoy being called daddy way too much. The only thing he told them about it was that they shouldn’t let administrators or other students hear them call him that/they couldn’t do it outside of class because people wouldn’t “understand.” We understood perfectly, you sicko. The moral of the story is this: never call your teacher daddy, not even as a joke.
39. Die-Hard Follower
I had a 7th-grade kid in my class last year that needed to be institutionalized. He would fixate on a girl in his class, follow her everywhere, and wait for her outside of class. She reported to us that he would sneak up behind her and just breathe or whisper horrible things like threatening her or her friends and family. He even threatened to kill her rabbit. When her friends told him to stop, he would threaten them as well and imply that any resulting injury would be the first girl's fault for not bending to his attention.
This is a public school so he was listed as a disabled student; we're not allowed to expel students with disabilities in our state. Mom insisted that we were lying, nothing was wrong, her kid was a saint, and refused to institutionalize him. It got so bad for the little girl he was harassing that she had to be escorted to and from every class.
I caught him hanging around outside my class a few times waiting for her. He was wickedly sneaky; would ask to go to the bathroom ten minutes before the passing period of a completely different core and would wait around. I would tell him to get his butt back to class or he'd be spending the rest of the day in the office for truancy.
He was very good at never getting caught. We documented everything we could but he was clever enough to never say anything in front of a teacher. The reports were too frequent and from too many kids for us to ignore them. Eventually the little girl changed schools (we kept in touch with her and she was much happier at her new school) but freako kid is still in our school. He remained creepy and abusive all the way until he graduated. No attempts of getting him help at school or at home helped.
I just know I'm going to see his name on the FBI most wanted list someday.
40. Fear thy Neighbor
When I was around 20, we had this weird neighbor that we didn't think about too much. One night, I was up at 2 am and noticed flickering light, like a fire, reflecting on my window. So I went into the completely dark living room and peeked through the front window to make sure it wasn't someone's house. It was the weird neighbor, with a bonfire in his driveway, just standing with his back to it, staring directly at me.
Now, I hadn't made a sound or anything, and the living room was dark, so there is no way he heard or saw me coming. And yet, he was just staring directly at me. So, being completely freaked out, I went to bed and couldn't fall asleep because I was convinced he was going to murder me. About half an hour later, I heard crunching sounds.
I told myself that it was probably just a raccoon in the driveway, but then I heard the clapping. I looked out from my window to the driveway, and there he was, standing in my gravel driveway, clapping, and staring directly into my bedroom window.
41. Looks Like He’s Going Back There...
Not my personal story, but when my mom worked as an ER nurse, a guy came in from a car accident and was losing blood. In the midst of resuscitation, the man jolts awake and screams "Don't let me go back there! Please, please, please don't let me go back!" A few seconds later they lost him.
42. Bargain Basement
My mother used to work in real estate when she was younger. Once, she was asked to go out, alone, to a creepy and strange house in the middle of the country with a seeking buyer. This buyer was an equally creepy and strange man. My mom kept getting a bad feeling from this guy, and he seemed nervous and kept jumping around the whole time they were speaking.
Eventually, he asked her to go down and see the cavernous, unfinished basement with her. Very calmly, she responded, "Oh, no, I'll just wait up here while you check it out." The more she thought about that afterward, the creepier it got. When she told her boss about it the next day, he said that under no circumstances were you supposed to ever go out to a house like that alone with any customer.
43. The Remains of The Day
When I was in high school, our teacher had an assistant who I’ll call “Tim.” During class, Tim was showing me something on his phone when a kid came up to ask him something. Tim left his phone and went to help the student. So of course I check his phone’s pictures folder, expecting to find the usual dirty secrets one might find there. Instead I learned that Tim’s phone was harboring much darker secrets than I expected.
Inside an album with an all-too appropriate name were over 300 pictures of various poops in toilets. Thick poops, small poops, chunky poops, diarrhea... it was all there. I just kept scrolling down and down and it was just all poop. I was honestly just in shock, and as soon as Tim came back I couldn’t just pretend I didn’t see.
I had to know. "Dude. Why do you have so many pictures of poops on your phone???" "Oh, I, uhh, those are all mine...I send them to my friends as a joke sometimes. Nobody’s ever seen that before." And that was it about that. Long story short, I found the poop folder.
44. There’s No Place Like Your Home
When I was younger and we had just moved to this town, the lady who lived down the block from us attempted to break into our house. She banged on the windows but couldn't get in. Fast forward about six years, and there she is again outside of our new house on the other side of town, asking us if we can help her with some gas money.
45. Singing Duty
I had a librarian who kept the library full of fake plastic plants. She would water them all daily and talk/sing to them like they were people. If you had a work detail in the library for punishment one of the things you would be expected to do was help water the plants. It was a whole different kind of creepy.
46. Let Me Teach You
I had a professor in college that would constantly bump into me in the halls after waiting outside my classes, send me personal emails, knock on the glass windows next to the doors of other classes to wave at me, and ask me out to study sessions all the time. He wasn't even my professor, at any point in time...ever.
He came in on the first day thinking our class was his for about 10 minutes before figuring it out. That was the closest he ever got to being my teacher. The final straw? One day I left class early to go see some dance competition that was going on. Stayed for about 20 minutes and was heading out. Got to my car when an email came in, "Are you still at the dance thing?"
Nope... nope nope nope nope nope.
47. Tarzan The Ape Man
I took my ex-girlfriend to Red Rocks one evening. It's a natural amphitheater that is sometimes used for concerts just outside of Denver. If there isn't a concert going on, it's just a park that you can run around in. We got down to the stage without being bothered. Then, we see this silhouette of some guy not too far away.
He is creeping around and trying to be quiet, but I could make out his shape while my ex could hear him breathing. We go up a few rows of steps and make a big circle around him to get to the steps. The guy is following us. We climb the stairs looking back at him. He'd creep from seats to the side of the wall. He must have thought he was being stealthy and he followed us up like that.
We didn't let on that we knew he was there until the last few steps. I had my ex run for it with the car keys while I half ran, keeping myself between her and the guy. At this point, the guy is following us while doing an ape impersonation. He was literally running with his hands on the ground and grunting loudly with every step.
When we get to the car, he is hiding from us. My ex unlocks the doors while I look around. But it wasn’t over yet…we get in and the guy jumps out at us from behind another car just as I start my engine. He beats on my windshield a few times, yells something that I don't understand, and then just runs off. He was probably on something pretty powerful…
48. Love Notes
It was the summer the cicadas were really bad. I took my class on a field trip to the pool and one girl, about 13, ran up to one of the male instructors and gave him a folded-up piece of paper. He mentioned that he's gotten love notes from younger girls before. When he opened up the paper it wasn't a love letter. She drew a pentagram and had smashed a cicada at each point of the star.
I personally thought it was hilarious.
49. A Little Tied Up At The Moment
My cousin and I went out drinking in Ohio one night. I was totally intoxicated. I stepped outside for some fresh air from the crowded bar. There was this guy outside who was kind of lanky and having a smoke. Feeling disoriented, I sat on the bench to rest my head a bit. The guy immediately came up to me and started talking.
He said: “Dude, you ain’t ever gonna make it in the real world. If I had my way, I'd take you back home with me to my tool shed where I'd tie you to the wall and torment you for as long as you live.” Alright then. Thinking on my feet, I said: “You know what? That sounds like a lot of fun. I definitely want to do that! Let me just go use the bathroom first real quick.”
I went back into the bar, marched straight over to the men's restroom, and locked the door. I stayed in the stall for a few minutes until my head cleared up. It took me a while to register what had just happened and my faculties were still not at their full capacity. After calming myself down, I exited the bathroom and told my cousin that we should leave right away.
50. A Strange Enemy
When I was a youngling, my brother and I once went for a walk in the woods behind our new house. We came upon an unfamiliar area and noticed plaster body parts thrown around willy-nilly. We kept walking and discovered a mannequin that appeared to have been destroyed. Then, we discovered dozens of lifelike plaster mannequins lying around in various states of disarray.
Some had burn marks, some were tied to trees with forks and knives stuck into them, and others hung by their necks from high up branches. The mannequins were all dressed in human clothes and featured detailed facial expressions of pain and fear. We left terrified, and wondered who in the world would have done this and why.
Whoever did it was by far the creepiest person I have ever encountered, even indirectly.
51. A Real Headbanger
Several years ago, I had to spend the night in a psych ward. I couldn't sleep the entire night that I was there for because this creepy woman, who was also staying overnight, was banging her head against the wall and shrieking at the top of her lungs all night. It was a very strange and horrifying experience...
52. A Shot In The Dark
My older brother and I were once playing in a cemetery in a small Texas town. The cemetery sat next to some railroad tracks which led into an unfamiliar part of town. It's a huge cemetery and there was no one around. Then, we suddenly heard these little popping sounds, and pieces of the headstones began flying off around us.
We looked toward the railroad tracks and, off in the distance, there was an old man shooting at us. So scary.
53. Uncle Comes Home
A guy came to the door one day, looking for my mom. I was probably 13 at the time. Immediately, I had most of my body behind the door, ready to shut it. I just had this awful feeling about him. He said he hadn't seen her in a long time, and that he was just coming from church and was in the neighborhood. Ok, so this guy is trying to communicate that he's a good person, and that and his weird smile just made me trust him less.
I told him my mom was napping. She wasn't. She was at work. So, he left a note for her with his name and number on it. I took it & closed & locked the door. Then I looked at the note & immediately recognized the name. It was my uncle. I hadn't seen him since I was 5 when he got locked up for murdering my aunt and cousin.
54. Room Service
I once worked as a live-in staff member in a college dormitory. During the summer, we housed the few summer school students who remained on campus. They totaled about 30. It may be significant to point out that these students tended to be highly academically-motivated, often high-stress students. They also tended to be more on the quiet side.
One warm day in late June, my office received a call from a concerned sibling, saying that she and her family had been unable to reach her brother. Her brother apparently lived by himself in a room on our summer school floor. This wasn't unusual, as our office frequently dealt with students avoiding their kin due to frayed nerves or general social awkwardness.
Since I was on my own, I decided to ignore the usual protocol for this situation and just pop up to his room to check on him. When I arrived on his floor at around 2:00 in the afternoon, the floor seemed deserted as I had expected. I found his room number and immediately noticed the sound of a movie playing on a TV or computer from behind the door. I knocked three times and announced that I was a staff member checking on his health and safety. There was no answer.
This is when my instincts started to buzz. I had worked in residence halls for a number of years as a professional, and something about all the pieces of this puzzle weren't adding up. The family concerns about his health and safety, the electronics running, summer school students, and their idiosyncratic behavior, something wasn't right.
I knocked on the door one more time for good measure and again announced myself as the hall director. I finally keyed into the room and my spider-sense went off even stronger. The room appeared relatively vacant. The student appeared to be living out of a suitcase, which is unusual for someone staying no less than eight weeks for a summer school session.
I turned to leave, planning on trying to reach the student later in the afternoon or evening. As I turned to leave, I noticed another odd piece of evidence that caught my attention…The old, creaky accordion closet doors were closed. Odd. I couldn't remember the last time I had actually seen someone use those dysfunctional old doors. Then, my intuition spiked higher than ever.
OH NO. I realized that I was alone in a room with a potentially unstable student who may, in fact, have just taken his own life. Ugh. I felt like I was talking to myself when my voice cracked as I spoke to the closed doors and announced my name and title and that I would be opening those accordion doors in three seconds.
I fumbled with the latch on the doors, and finally managed to get them disengaged. As I slid the doors apart, I was unprepared for what came next. I don't know what I really expected to see, but I'll tell you what I didn't expect: a seven-foot-tall student staring at me embarrassingly as though I had found his secret hangout.
We stared at each other for a good 15 seconds without blinking, breathing, or speaking.
I finally realized what was going on and my natural emotion was disbelief. All I could think to say was, "Umm, are you in here hiding from me?" He looked at me and said, "Yeah." My heart was still racing. I turned to leave and, before I shut his door, I turned back to him and said, "Call your sister, she's worried about you. And, frankly, I am too."
55. Gotta Go Fast
In eleventh grade, there was a girl (let’s call her Carol) who was crazy about the cartoon Sonic the Hedgehog. To the point where a teacher threatened to fail her on a writing assignment if she turned in yet another Sonic fanfiction.
Instead of actually doing work properly, she handed in an angry letter to the teacher as her assignment. Can’t remember what the specifics of that letter were, but I do remember it was such that she got suspended for the remainder of the year. When she came back in grade 12, she had to apologize to everyone in her homeroom for her actions the previous year. It’s in this apology that she tells us she had a brain tumor the size of Quebec. The kid from Quebec, naturally, yells at her for comparing Quebec to a brain tumor.
Carol did a lot of other stuff besides the angry letter that year. She mentioned in her apology that: She got a girl in trouble for vandalism so she (Carol) could get the lead role in a school play. She dressed up as a grim reaper for some old person's funeral and accused my friend (whom she never had any prior connection to) of tricking her into thinking the funeral was a Halloween party (since this happened in May, the excuse was made of toothpicks).
She got a zero on a term project for math because she accidentally submitted a poorly written and creepy Sonic fanfiction instead of her assignment. She threw a temper tantrum to get the teacher to change the due date. Nothing came of it.
And that's just the stuff she admitted to.
56. I’m Going to Speak to Your Manager
My mom is a teacher and she has plenty of these stories but the one thing that sticks out to me is the one time she reprimanded an 8-year-old girl for being aggressive to the other children. Nothing too serious, just “NAME, please let go of OTHER CHILD, you’re hurting him and he doesn’t like it.” The girl turned to my mum, looked her up and down, and said, “I’m going to make sure you lose your job. You’ll never teach again.”
My mum said that the threat didn’t scare her because my mum had done nothing wrong, but the way the child said it shook her to her core.
57. Squeaky Clean
My teacher showered six times in one night on a trip when I was 10 as an excuse to walk around naked.
58. To Thine Own Self Be True
I work as an EMT, and the one I have that best fits the question is an elderly male who had fallen and hit his head a few hours before they called for an ambulance. The guy was screwed. All of the signs of a traumatic brain injury. All of his responses to our questions to this point were nonsensical. We were about four minutes from the hospital when we tried talking to him again, and he seemed to come as clear as day and open his eyes and stare at us to say "I'm dead."
My partner tries to say "Oh, don't say that" and he stares more intensely at us to reiterate and say "No, I mean it, I'm dead." He passed an hour later. Creeped me right the heck out.
59. Oh, You Beautiful Doll
I was out on a service call to an apartment one day, and the lady who lived there seemed to have an obvious obsession with dolls. Specifically, she seemed to really like those 15-inch tall pioneer style dolls. Anyway, she was not home on the day that I had to go over there, so I just went about my business as I normally would. I had no clue why, but I was feeling very uncomfortable from the moment I first set foot in her apartment.
When I entered her bedroom, that feeling quickly escalated at least ten times more. She literally had more than 300 dolls sitting all over the room. On some of these dolls, the heads had been removed and were hanging by strings from the ceiling. There was also a small little altar of some sort in the corner of the room, with a severed chicken head on it as well as a gargoyle-like statue and several pictures of children.
There was a pig's hoof hanging from a red cord in her bathroom, too. When I finally made it into the dining room, there was a Ouija board sitting there, along with multiple dolls, which were all arranged around a dismembered doll that was drenched in what appears to have been real blood. I think I broke the top human speed record that morning. To this day, no one believes me about this experience.
60. More than a Feeling
I was in the Navy, stationed inland because I was in a school. One day, I had a friend drop me off at a store when class was finished, and when I was done, I started walking back to the base. As I was walking, I noticed a car driving slowly along the road, keeping pace with me. The driver was some weird guy smiling at me. He had “More Than a Feeling” playing extremely loud on the stereo.
Eventually, the car went ahead of me, but then there it was again on a side street, waiting for me to pass. Again he drove next to me slowly with the same song playing. This scenario went on for about seven or eight blocks, with the song on repeat. I finally made it to a nearby mall and went inside. I stayed in one place inside the mall to make sure I had lost him, so I was pretending to talk to someone on a payphone.
Suddenly, there he was inside the mall peeking around a corner at me! As soon as he turned around, I ran out of the mall through the closest exit and ran about another two blocks to the Navy base. I never saw him again, but it creeped me out so much that every time I hear “More Than a Feeling” playing, it reminds me of the experience.
61. This Is My Stop
My friend and I were once building a treehouse in the woods behind my house. And by treehouse, I mean nailing some boards to a tree to use as steps. That is as far as our treehouse plans got. But I digress. There we were, nailing cut up 2x4s to the tree, when we suddenly heard a clanking metal sound. We turned around to look.
Behind us, on an old ten-speed bike, is this tall, lanky fellow who is as white as a ghost for lack of a better term. He sees us and stops, turns his bike around, and bolts off. It freaked us out and we came tearing out of the woods, leaving the tools and everything behind. We went back later to get them, like we were medics in a war zone going in for someone wounded, running and ducking behind stumps and trees, grabbing the goods and bolting.
62. On a Murderous Path
I'm a teacher. The one kid that I was convinced was a psychopath just quietly refused to do anything he didn't want to do. I never saw him angry, and yet I did see him hit people and say awful things to them. He was always eerily calm. He was tiny and very cute but he used to manipulate people and watch chaos unfold with these huge unblinking puppy-dog eyes. It was like he was carrying out an experiment.
ANYWAY, that was when he was about 14. He's 19 now and serving a life sentence for a horrific gang murder.
63. A Cultured Form Of Crazy
When I was around 13, I was sitting at the airport with my family waiting for a flight when a woman in the waiting area just got up and started loudly quoting from King Lear for no apparent reason. She was wearing pajamas, and didn’t appear to be directing her words to anybody in particular. She also paused after every few lines to awkwardly giggle. The experience was very unsettling to witness.
64. On The Road Again
I lived in a rather rural area, but on a road that takes you to the local gas station and Walmart. It's just gotten dark, and I'm pulling into my yard after getting gas. Walking on the road is a man with a bag and a young girl. There is no sidewalk, so they are literally walking in the middle of the street. It seemed very odd right from the start.
They came from a direction where there isn't a store for 10 miles, and the direction they were headed in didn't have a store for another three. I'm still in my car, but in front of my house. I think about going in and telling my parents, but instead, I just go over and ask if they are okay. I ask if they had a car breakdown. The man says no.
He doesn't take the opportunity to elaborate. The whole thing is weird, and I'm the cautious type. Since he has a kid with him and I want to make sure nothing sketchy is going on, I volunteer to give them a ride. I ask where they're headed and he says, “Just up the road a bit.” How informative. The girl gets in the back seat and the man sits up front with me.
I forget the name he used, but he then says to the girl: "Stacy, I mean Amber, isn't it nice that this girl is giving us a ride?" He got the girl's name wrong. This whole time I've been trying to judge her demeanor to see if she feels safe and if this is her father, so that didn't help. It's fully dark now and he tells me to take the turn away from the gas station and street lights.
At this point, I'm thinking the joke is on him, because if he tries anything I'll floor it, without hesitation, into a tree that will hit his side first. We are coming up on an abandoned restaurant now, and he tells me I can let them off in the parking lot. He still hasn't told me anything about them, so I ask “Do you live around here?” He just says “Yup” and I let them out.
They thank me and I go on my way. In retrospect, it's pretty funny because I'm sure he thought nothing of it, but I spent the entire ride contemplating every paranoid violent possibility. I've never seen them again since.
65. Getting The Message
I first got social media when I was about 13. I wasn't very smart about using it, so I was always talking to these random people that I didn't know. One day, some guy who claimed to be from my school sent me a message and we started talking. Being 13 and naive, I talked to him for days and developed a "crush" on him.
He asked me if I wanted to meet up to "hang out" and we even planned a specific time and place to do so. But as the time approached, I became a little skeptical. I made the smart choice to ask my older sister, who was the age the guy claimed to be, if she knew him. She didn't, which was a red flag to me, since the school is small and it's impossible to not know someone there.
I decided not to meet the guy, and I blocked him on social media too. I was creeped out that he had obviously been lying to me. The scariest part? About three years later, I saw a news article with that guy's name. Turns out he didn't lie about that, or the fact that he was from my town. But he was really 25 years old.
Why was he in the news? He was convicted of assaulting three young girls who he'd lured to his house through social media.
66. A Familiar Face
I remember when I was younger I was playing hide and seek with my cousins at my grandparents’ house. I went into my grandparents’ room and hid under the bed. All of a sudden, a naked old man walked in and scared the heck out of me. I then realized it was my grandfather, who had just gotten out of the shower without knowing I was in there.
Mentally scarred for life, and he will never know.
67. Eye Of The Tiger
I work in a grocery store in a very rural area. When my son was an infant, I would take him with me to work most days. One day, this soldier comes in and he's just as nice as can be. Then, he sees my son and starts talking to him in a cutesy baby voice, saying how cute he is. Then, out of nowhere, and in the same cutesy voice, he says to my son "Oh you're so cute! I just wanna gouge your little eyes out!"
It caught me way off guard. I just laughed nervously before picking my son up and walking into the back room.
68. You Saved The Day
When I was 17, my friend and I were walking down the street near my house at about 1:00 AM. We lived in a dense neighborhood dominated by three-story houses. We came around a corner to see this huge man on his knees, standing over a woman. He was furiously smashing her head into the concrete sidewalk. His muscles were huge and bulging.
He reminded me of the Hulk. Only, he was not green. He was red. Red as if he was having heatstroke. We screamed at him right away. He looked up, and I will never forget that face. There was snot pouring out of his nose. Long strands of it hung all the way down to the woman's head. His eyes were bright white, crazed, wide, and far too circular.
His face expressed a murderous fury that I had never seen before, and hope I never see again. He lifted the woman's head by her hair, and with a loud "crack" spiked it into the cement like a football, and screamed, "You want some of this, huh!" I had not seen my friend pick up the rock he had, but he threw at the guy's snarling face. He hit him right in the nose.
It was a big rock, but it did not even phase the guy. The guy lunged at my friend, who took off running. The guy took off chasing my friend. I knew there was no way a guy that size would be able to catch up to my buddy who was a track and field athlete. I ran to help the woman. Her hair was all over the place, and dark red blood was gushing from a huge deep gash across her forehead.
I could not believe she was still conscious. I tried to tell her I was here to help and she became combative. She started punching me, screaming to leave her man alone. I was afraid that her screaming would bring that monster back to us. With that thought, I said "screw this" to myself. I grabbed her wrists, dragged her to the nearest door, and started pounding on it.
I was scared that the guy would be back before I got to someplace safe. Two men opened the door and pretty much freaked out when they saw that I was restraining a small woman covered in blood. I think they were about to take me out, but I screamed "Call an ambulance!" I told them that we needed to get inside before the abuser came back. I told them "He WILL come back!"
We quickly dragged the woman into the hallway, then shut and locked the front door. One of the guys called the authorities and they showed up in what seemed like seconds. An ambulance arrived soon after. My buddy, seeing the lights of the squad cars, returned to the scene. He had outrun the guy and gotten to a store where he could call for help.
So I guess they were already on the way before we made the call. The officers had a lot of questions, of course. We had no idea who the guy was. We never saw him or the woman before. In the end, they gave us a card and said that if we ever see this guy in the area again, we should call them right away. Like I would even hesitate!
The next day, the events of the night before were in the paper. I read the article sitting on my porch. It said that the woman was in critical condition. It mentioned my name as well as my buddy. It also said that the man was yet to be identified, and was yet to be apprehended. Here is the part that really messed with my head.
The place where this happened was one block away from my porch. I looked up and could see the spot where he had been smashing her head. I remember thinking, "That evil man is still out there!" and then, looking down at the paper, "He knows my name." Two weeks later I turned 18, and I immediately boarded a plane to boot camp. This guy scared me THAT much.
69. Mechanical Mind
When I was around 12 years old, a neighbor had a party where I met a girl my age. My mom was happy to see me making friends, so we headed to my house to play games. My dog was very sweet and had never been angry or growled ever. This girl walks up to him to pet him, and he immediately growls and barks at her.
I couldn't believe it, but even at that age, I believed you don't just ignore a dog's intuition. So, I take note of the sign, and we go play and then go for a walk. Not even ten minutes into the conversation, I made a disturbing realization. It was clear that this girl is an obvious sociopath. I realized what I and the dog had felt about her. She was empty and fake, in a very visceral way.
She starts talking about assault, and saying things like “Doesn't that sound interesting? How do the logistics of it work?” She specifically wondered how one could assault another person while also holding a knife to their neck at the same time without losing their balance. Her parents invited me to spend the night at their house. I declined.
70. He Bit Off More Than He Could Chew
I remember back in high school, I was hanging out with a new group of friends. What was weird was that they warned me to "never touch Fergie's hat." I didn't get what that meant, but okay. Fergie was a big tall guy with red hair. He was nearly twice my size. Well, one day, Fergie was being annoying and obnoxious to me, and at one point he got all up in my face.
Irritated, I bat my hand at him. I didn't intend it to hit him. I just wanted him to instinctively flinch away. Well, he did flinch away. But, in doing so, I managed to accidentally knock his hat off of his head. “Uh oh,” I heard someone in the group literally gasp. Fergie glared at me and suddenly darted forward. He bit me on the shoulder.
I was too startled to fight back because I couldn’t believe what had just happened. Suddenly, he pushed me backward until I was sitting on the wall behind me. He lifted my leg up and then bit me on the shoe. And then he started laughing. I tried to kick at his face but missed, and he kept laughing. I grabbed my backpack and left the group.
I never hung out with them ever again. A week later, one of the girls spotted me and started talking to me. She said, "You know, you should come back and hang out with us again. Fergie really misses you." I got chills and said, "Um, thanks but no thanks." I then quickly walked away to my class and never spoke of this whole matter again.
71. More Isn’t Always Merrier
My friends and I had this online friend who lived in a bordering state that we played games with all the time. He found out we were planning a big LAN party and asked if he could take the train down and come. We all thought it'd be cool, and I agreed to let him stay with me at my mom's place. The guy was 6' tall, 400+ pounds, and I don't think showered often.
In the four days he was there, didn't take a shower. Now, I'm not trying to rag on him, he was a nice guy and fun to play with, but it just goes with the story. He ended up falling asleep on my bed at one point, which was next to the window. We lived in basically the desert and it's about 100 every day during summer. The blinds happened to be open and he literally was roasting in the sun.
The sweat had completely soaked the mattress—I so wish I was kidding—and the smell wouldn't go away no matter how much we washed or scrubbed. Sadly, had to get rid of the mattress.
72. Play Me Off
When I was in elementary school, the kindergarten music teacher got “fired.” Let’s call him Mr. G for this story. Mr. G was pretty nice to a lot of his students, including me and most of my classmates. He also taught private piano lessons for a lot of the kids at my school. All in all, he seemed like a pretty cool dude.
He would always focus his attention on one girl in our class—calling on her significantly more than anyone else in the class, looking weirdly at her, etc. Mr. G also always had his computer on with a bunch of image viewer programs open in his dock. Any time anyone would approach him when he was using his computer he would switch to the same paused game of solitaire, which I thought was suspicious even back when I was in kindergarten.
Around two years later, me and my friend overheard Mr. G yelling at the principal of our school about something, then we saw him storm out of her office. He never showed up back at my school. I later found out he quit because he was puffing cigs in class and on the school campus around a ton of kindergarteners and preschoolers. But that wasn’t even the worst part.
One day, he threw a kid off stage, which broke the kid’s leg. He was also acting creepily around the girls at my school. As soon as he was fired, he also ghosted all of his piano students, and some of the parents who knew Mr. G well said he left the state.
73. Don’t Mess With Guard Dogs
My brother's girlfriend's nephew was watching his house one day while his parents were out. They had two German Shepherds, and all he really had to do was feed the dogs. A man in his 60s was walking past the house and saw him playing in the front yard, alone. The man asked him if anyone else was home, and he said "No." It was a huge mistake.
The next thing he knew, the man just walked right through the gate, into the yard, and grabbed the kid by his arm! He got about two steps back towards the street before the two German Shepherds came charging out of the house and mauled the man, quite violently. Thankfully, their house had a security system with working cameras, because the guy tried taking them to court.
He claimed that the dogs came out and mauled him while he was “just walking past.” The footage showed the real story.
74. Don’t Take Knives From Strangers
My wife and I went to CreepyCon in Knoxville one year to listen to one of our friends give a panel speech. On our last day in town, we were meeting up with one of my wife's cousins for brunch. We were in a parking lot across the street from the restaurant when a guy walked up to me. He was trying to tell me to park on some side street because it was free, but my wife was already at the pay machine.
Plus, I had already parked and really didn't want to risk a ticket on the word of a stranger. As it turned out, he didn't really care about where we were parking, he just wanted to make some money. He said he had something he wanted to sell me and then he pulled out a knife. I stepped back and looked at my wife, who stayed back, looking terrified.
The man tried to reassure us. He said, "Don't worry man, I'm not going to stab you. Do you want to buy this knife?" I told him that I didn't really want a knife and that we didn't carry cash. In his defense, he didn't stab me.
75. Man’s Best Friend
When I was about 8 or 9, my Mom’s friends took me along with her kids to see the puppy they were going to buy. The owner offered to let us kids walk the parent-dogs (two Rottweilers) while my friend’s mom talked to the owner. They were super friendly and walked off-leash with us. When we arrived in a grassy area surrounded by trees, a tall guy in a long, leather trenchcoat approached us.
He grabbed my shoulder and the dogs went completely nuts. I remember that he had a small mirror and tried shining light into the dogs’ eyes to confuse them, but it didn’t work. The mother dog stayed circling the three of us while we ran to the house, and the other dog chased after the creepy guy until he was gone.
It was terrifying, but what really stands by me is that those dogs had just met me, yet they protected my friends and me as if their lives depended on it. I think we got lucky that day, and I'm forever grateful for those dogs.
76. A Long Commute
My friend's mother was walking home from the train station and became aware that she was being followed by a man. She took all sorts of detours and the man continued to follow her for the entire journey. After about 25 minutes, she arrived at her house but had the good sense to walk straight past it and continued on to the local detective station.
Once inside, she turned around to see the man walk past. But first, he stopped to give her an extremely creepy wave. That story still terrifies me.
77. None Of His Business
When I was maybe seven or eight years old, I went to a local Burger King with my mom. I was impatient to eat, so I went to go play around in one of those plastic playground things that are about 20 feet high. There were no other kids in it, so I just started to climb to the highest point. But things got really weird, really fast…
A businessman in a white shirt and tie looked at me climbing up, then calmly put his burger down and proceeded to climb up after me. He didn't say anything as he did it. I was old enough to think that this was weird, and had flashbacks to our school counselor talking to the class about getting kidnapped and such. I rushed to the slide and ran straight to my mom.
I gave her a giant hug. I didn't tell her about the incident until later.
78. Coming In Handy
My sister's bedroom was on the second floor of our childhood home. Late one night, she suddenly screamed and said she saw a hand on her window. We thought she was just having a nightmare and told her to go back to bed. The next morning, when we all woke up, we made a truly chilling discovery. We found a ladder leaning up against our house by her bedroom window…
79. Getting Up Close And Personal
I drove my sister to get sushi in a not so good part of town one time. We were in the car about to get out, and I reached down to get my wallet. I looked back up to find the creepiest, most strung-out looking human being I've ever seen in my life. He had his face against her window, licking the glass. He then pulled his sleeve up to show us some scars on his forearm, face on the glass all the while.
I don't drive out to get food at that restaurant anymore...
80. Fortress Of Solitude
This story is 100% true. I experienced it myself in the summer of 1991. When I was about 10 years old, I lived on Woodway Drive in the Fox Harbor Apartments in Paducah, Kentucky. If you look up the address, you will see some woods just to the north of the apartment complex. My friends and I played in those woods every day after school and all day on the weekends.
During the few years I lived there, we cleared a small area in the woods and created a fort from various things we got out of dumpsters. It was our own place that no one else knew about, and it was awesome. One day, as we were walking to our fort, off in the distance we saw a man walking through the woods. He was walking parallel to us, but in the opposite direction.
We stopped talking and halted dead in our tracks when we saw him. We never saw anyone in the woods, especially not adults. When we stopped moving, he did too. He turned towards us and looked right at us. As I stared at him and was able to make out the details of what he looked like, I felt my heart stop in my chest. Not only was he was wearing what looked like a Halloween mask, he was also carrying an ax in his hands.
We stood there in silence and motionless for what was probably about 10 seconds, him looking at us and us looking at him. Then, he started sprinting straight at us. We did the only thing we thought to do, run straight to our fort. We were probably about 50 yards from the entrance to the fort and, in those 50 yards, he gained a lot of ground on us.
When we finally made it, he was upon us. All of my friends scurried up a tree and were screaming, but I was the last in line. By the time I could try and climb the tree, he was standing right there by us. He was screaming like a lunatic and waving the ax in the air. I was scared, had no idea what was going on, and my mind was blank on what I should do.
I grabbed a large stick and took a nice big baseball-style swing and cracked him on the face with it. He stumbled back a bit, moaned, and took the mask off. The craziest part? I recognized the face. It was the landlord and manager of the apartment complex. A man who was probably about FIFTY years old. He wanted to play a joke on us and thought this was the most appropriate thing to do. He was insane.
81. Dancing with a Faker
I teach dance and had a 6-year-old I'll never forget. For the record, all 6-year-olds are terrible. Developmentally they're all starting to flex their egos and it can be a mess of personalities. But here’s a collection of things that occurred that made me realize this child was a sociopath. I'll call them A.
I had a child fall asleep in the middle of class. Poor thing didn't get a nap that day and just flat out passed out in the middle of dancing. I picked her up and placed her on the side and she slept through class. Next week A spends the whole class pretending to fall asleep. The fact that they had remembered the previous week and knew to emulate the behavior is very odd for that age.
Fake cries on a dime anytime I tried getting her to follow along with class. Absolute crocodile tears. Dry face. Isn't allowed to be the line leader because they were it last week? Fake tears. Isn't allowed to guess the Disney song because another student already guessed it? Fake tears. Anytime they didn't get to be the special kid. Fake tears.
I had them sit out once due to not following instructions (after giving a clear if you do X one more time you will sit out and then following through). Proceeds to start whining like a dog because she claims a student kept staring at them. Completely disruptive.
Turns out one of my students is autistic and the fake crying and whining A was doing for attention was overstimulating them. It was a freaking feedback circle of these two triggering each other for a whole year.
What really got me though was A came up to me and said they had a rash and need to sit out. This is after they spent 10 minutes suckling their arm to make it appear that they had a rash. Told grandparent after class and they just, "yeah, they've been doing that." UM WHAT. How does a 6-year old have the wherewithal to plan out faking a rash like that?
At the end of the year the mom gave me a gift card and a note that basically said thank you for putting up with my child.
82. Evil! Evil! Evil!
I work at a nursing home and went in to feed a dementia patient her supper. So we were eating and were about halfway through the meal when she became fiercely agitated. Now, this resident has a lot of social anxiety and she does normally get upset, so I didn't think much of it at first, just spoke to her softly and tried to calm her down so she could finish the meal.
I got her settled down enough so she would go back to eating and I was about to put something in her mouth when all of a sudden she sat straight up in bed. She stretched out one pale white arm and pointed with her bony fingers at the corner of the room and started moaning and saying, "evil evil evil," over and over again, and telling someone in the corner to get out and then looking at me with terror in her eyes.
Now I know people with dementia often think things that aren't true and she is a very confused resident, but regardless, I got chills and had to keep myself from running out of the room. I finished her meal as quickly as she would let me and then had the other nurses take care of her for the rest of the night.....
83. He’s Not Who You Thought He Was
A man just got convicted for breaking into multiple people’s houses, tying them up, and violently assaulting them. Although he only got caught recently, the attacks were 33 years ago. When the story was in the news, my dad and I were shocked. This man worked at the ticket booth at our nearest big train station. We both used to say hi to him every day, because he was so friendly.
I just found out about this today. I'm fairly creeped out.
84. Musical Interlude
I'm a DJ in a local bar. I’ve met many, many weird and wonderful people in my time—emphasis on weird—but one stands out in particular. Her name is Alice, and she lives in her own wonderland 24/7. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure she's harmless. She's always happy and dances like she's auditioning for a new workout DVD, but she's the kind of person you don't wanna make eye contact with.
The creepiest moment with Alice had to be this one night when I was working. I had the headphones on, doing what I do, when I suddenly became aware of someone standing to the right of me, not dancing. I instantly got the feeling that you get when you know someone is staring at you, and you just have to look back.
So I did. What I saw was Alice staring right at me with the strangest "smile" on her face. I say smile but it wasn't a nice look. Her teeth and gums were in full view, and she had a crazy look in her eyes. "What on earth??" was my initial reaction. I stuck the headphones on again and continued what I was doing. Alice continued what she was doing too.
After a good couple of minutes, I removed the headphones and asked her, "Is there anything in particular I can help you with, Alice? Do you want a song request played or something?" Her reply will stay with me for the rest of my life. She just calmly said to me, "No, I'm good! Just showing you my teeth!" Umm, say what now??
85. Granny Knows What's Up
We had a psychopath murderer in South Carolina a couple years ago. No one knew what he looked like yet but he had three people under his belt at this point. Well, my granny has lived alone since my paw-paw passed about 15 years ago. She lives at the end of a long dirt road with about 10 other families but the closest one was about a quarter-mile up the road.
One afternoon some random guy comes knocking on the front door of her house. My granny is a practical woman, she has never been to school because she grew up on a farm and was expected to pull her weight, but she is a smart woman. She goes to the door but doesn't open it—it’s a glass door. The 40ish-year-old man is there asking if he can use the phone since his car broke down, but Granny doesn't like the look of this guy. If he doesn't live here there is no reason for him to be on this road and if he was visiting someone their house or anyone else's house would have been closer since she lives on a dead end.
Anyways, she tells him that no he can't use the phone and needs to leave. She backs up and picks up my paw-paw's 410 as she goes. Once he sees the shotgun he hightails it out of there. About a week later the cops finally catch the psycho and lo and behold if it isn't the same man.
86. Limits Officially Reached
Here is a very creepy thing that happened to me. One winter, I was pushing my limits and winter camping a lot, but I had this crazy tent with a fireplace. The limits part was just the fact that I was solo and pretty remote in these places. This was rural southwestern Colorado canyon country. There wasn't that much snow at all on the ground, but it was zero degrees that night.
Well, it was a full moon and I was restless. So at about 2:00 in the morning, I got out of my tent with the fire still going and went for a long walk. I ended up climbing up some stuff that was probably a quarter or half a mile from my tent and vehicle, but up above it so I could still see down on my tent and campsite clearly.
It was really beautiful down there, dimly lit from the inside by the stove's fire and dimly lit from the outside by the big moon. I was enjoying myself and just about to head back down when I suddenly heard distant gravel crunching. I had been there since noon that day and not a single vehicle had driven past, so I was kind of put off and decided to stay up there until whoever it was drove past.
The noise slowly grew louder and, eventually, I could see that it was a car on the same road. So, I stayed put and watched. It was going really slow. I could see a lighter being used quite a bit by the driver. It appeared to be a really old car. So I'm just watching, still in a very wistful mood and feeling somewhat powerful from my perch.
They approach the bend where they'll be able to see my tent from, and round the corner. Their brake lights immediately come on. They slow way down and seem to pause and stare at my tent for an eternity. I was now on high alert and feeling very nervous. I had nothing to defend myself with, just a hatchet down by the tent for firewood.
But they eventually start driving again. I'm pretty relieved but still shaken up. I’m now thinking about what to do if they come back. So, I decided to chill for a little longer and make sure I see them actually exit the area. Nope. They turned around a bit down the road and came back. I watched as they parked a ways down the road, got out, and started walking down the road towards my camp.
I watched the distant shadow approach my tent, look all around the outside, mess with my vehicle, and then walk back to its car and leave. I did not go back down to my tent for the rest of the night. I just stayed where I was and never took my eyes off the tent until the sun came back up in the morning. By then, I had already started to wonder whether I had imagined the whole thing.
As I approached the campsite, I saw that there were clear footprints in the snow on the outside of my tent, indicating that it really did happen. I kept imagining what it would have been like to have just woken up and not known what happened, just seeing the footprints. After that incident, I never went camping again unarmed.
87. Peeping Tom
I once lived in a sort of bad neighborhood, in a very tiny house with just myself and my brother who was rarely there. It was an old house, so it was a little creepy and also felt like anyone who wanted to could have broken in. One night, I was getting ready for bed. It was pretty late on a hot summer night and we didn't have A/C, so I opened my bedroom window.
I began to slip out of my clothes and change for bed. As soon as I put my pajama shirt on, I heard something that will forever stay seared into my brain. A low, masculine voice said, "Let's see that chest again." I think my whole body stopped working for at least five seconds while I absorbed the fact that there was a creepy man spying on me from right outside my window and I was alone in a house that he could easily get into if he so wished.
It was the first and only time in my life that I have ever called the local authorities. I had a full-blown panic attack while waiting for the officers to show up, and the very nice dispatch lady had to calm me down on the phone while I waited. On the bright side, it was an apparently slow night for the officers and they sent no less than three cars to come and help me.
I was so happy when I moved out of that house...
88. Knowing What Is Best For Your Daughter
My oldest daughter (30-something) stopped by my work one day and introduced her new boyfriend. He seemed a little off to me, but I decided it was just "guy dating my daughter" and let it go. Later, he met my wife and I and she told me later that he seemed off to her, too. She has pretty good instincts about people, so we decided to investigate him a bit.
Typing his whole name into Google, the first result was a mugshot from a couple of years ago. The third was an active warrant. More searching resulted in finding three warrants from different counties, an extensive record (check deception, theft, driving while suspended, driving after a lifetime suspension, and driving while a habitual traffic offender), and a brand-new marriage license for him and my daughter. They were going to get married later that week.
We, of course, told her about him, but she insisted that he'd already told her about all of that and had "taken care of it." We emailed links to her roommate, who showed her, but she didn't have any luck talking her out of the relationship. They were in love, and everything would work out OK in the end.
We sent in an anonymous tip, and he was apprehended the next day at her apartment. My daughter then found out that he'd been lying to her about pretty much everything. He had entangled her in a business he was trying to start that mostly involved her financing things for him, because his credit was trash due to records for bounced checks and theft. She's still working to untangle herself from that.
He is still locked up, and, according to her lawyer, will be for at least two years depending on what happens in two other counties.
89. Knocking On Heaven’s Door
In the morgue at my hospital, I would always hear knocking coming from inside the freezer. It really creeped me out, especially when the pathologist looked up, grabbed me by the shoulders, stared me straight in the eye and said "You hear that? You never open that door when they're knocking. Never." It turned out to be some loose pipes, he thought it was hilarious. I didn't sleep that night.
90. Dog’s Best Friend
My first semester at university, I got stuck taking all night classes and didn't get out until about 10:00 PM most evenings. I then would walk from the campus to the New Jersey transit station. Not too far a walk, but it starts to feel spooky in that area at night and I wasn't 100% sure where I was going since I was still new to the school.
So here I am, already a little on edge, when all of the sudden I hear a sound that will haunt me until the day I die. There was someone barking at me. That's right, barking. I look up and discover a man sitting up in the tree barking and growling down at me as I walk by. I was freaked out, but afraid that if I ran it might provoke him to follow me. So, I speedwalked to the corner, then ran across the street and didn't stop till I was at the train platform.
91. Famous Last Words
Principal took me outside the class for a while to talk about something, the minute I came back everyone was silent and one kid was standing at the board, marker in one hand and razor blades in the other, one jammed into the marker cap. No idea why he would do that apart from "holy, he wants to see me cut my hand off." He was suspended if I recall correctly.
Yearly project for 10-11th grade, the kids had to assign themselves into groups of 4. They all ended up in their groups apart from one kid who remained, the stereotypical loner kid at the back. I asked him if he wanted to join any group he saw or make a project of his own, and he just looked into my eyes and said "I don't care, they'll all soon be dead anyway." (?????)
I had to take him to the principal and he simply said, "I didn't mean it as a threat, I just relish in the fact that one day each and every one of them will be actually dead." I just... I still remember this to this day and it's been like 7 years.
92. That’s It, No Tip!
While working in Lagos, Nigeria, I was sitting in a bar on one of the lagoons, when a body washed up naked except for underwear. I called the waitress over a bit frantically and pointed at the body. She made a face and went back into the bar, where I was expecting that she would call the police—but no! She returned with a long stick and started stabbing the body repeatedly!
She then pushed him back out into the sea! When I tried to tell my fellow travelers about this, they all thought that there was no way this could have actually happened.
93. Muscle Inspection
I had a high school PE teacher who liked putting his hands on his students. I don’t know about the football players, but the rest of us were uncomfortable with it. During class, while we were taking a break I was talking to friends and he grabbed my shoulders and started squeezing them. I removed his hand and he yelled at my friends and me to get back to working out.
For the next few weeks, he would single us out to do extra work until we complained to the principal. He ignored us the rest of the year which was fine by us.
94. A Dear Abby Column for the Ages
When I was about three or four years old, I had a best friend named Abigail. The two of us did everything together. We played in the sandbox, in creeks and rivers, in playgrounds, you name it! We were sidekicks and everyone knew it. I even drew her portrait one day and told my mom to save it somewhere safe so that I could give it to her as a present on her birthday.
I drew a girl with dark, shoulder length hair and a red bow in it. She was wearing a blue, jumper-style dress, with a long sleeved red shirt under it and a brown pair of shoes. I still have it somewhere and could show it to anyone who wanted to see it. I just remember that I really, really loved playing with her.
And then one day I just never saw her again. I never received any warning or clue as to where she went, and no one else around me seemed to even have any memory of her at all. It was more than as if she had just disappeared completely without a trace, it was almost as if she had been retroactively erased from existence.
Now, if this were my mom telling the story, she would probably just say that, at this age, I was a highly independent little girl who liked to play and be by herself. She just thinks that Abigail was nothing more than an imaginary friend of mine all along. Then one day when I was about 11 or 12 years old, the local historical society posted a researched historical article detailing the events of a tragic farmhouse fire that happened about 75 or 80 years prior on the property that our subdivision was built on.
The fire was a devastating one, in which an entire family of six, including two parents and four kids, none survived. One of those kids just happened to have been a four-year-old girl, and her name was Abigail. A black and white picture of the family was included in the article, and you could clearly see that the little girl had dark, shoulder length hair with a bow in it. She was also wearing a jumper and a long sleeve shirt underneath it. To this day, my mom still refuses to believe that my childhood best friend was probably a ghost. Needless to say, I feel otherwise.
95. Confessions of a Serial Thief
My next door neighbor in college. I wasn't really friends with him, but he was an OK guy I talked to a couple of times a week. Strange, but nice enough to have a conversation. Then towards the end of the year, he told a friend on our dorm floor that he secretly stole girls’ panties from the laundry room downstairs.
Not just anyone's, but specific girls’. He even showed him the collection. This friend told the RA and after about two weeks he was kicked out of the dorm. It took them two weeks because they didn't have proof, but all of the girls this guy said he'd stolen from mentioned they were missing panties. He came to me and asked if I'd put in a good word—naw dude, we're not cool anymore.
96. Thinking with the Wrong Head
Had a male bestie for more than 10 years. One night, I was upset and crying because I witnessed my friends die at the beach a few weeks earlier. He stays over to comfort me and suggests he sleepover so I wouldn't be alone. He promised he wouldn't do anything. I believed him. So, he held me while I cried myself to sleep. I wake up to him touching me...without my consent, obviously.
I lost my mind. And told him off and kicked him out of my house...he came back a few days later to apologize but I was so disgusted with him I told him to frig off and never talk to me again. I blocked him. I felt so disgusted and betrayed...
97. She's Not Done Yet
I'm a nurse. I got called into a coding stroke patient. We worked for 45 minutes, but she passed. They called the family to say goodbye. By the time they were on their way, she'd had been brain dead for almost an hour—and that’s when the most disturbing moment of my life happened. Her family walks in the room, leans over her, rubs her chest lightly, and says her name.
Suddenly, she explodes back into life—she regains a pulse and regains consciousness. She had come back. I'd never seen that before, though apparently, it can happen. Freaked me right out.
98. Sometimes, One Guy Can Ruin It For Everyone Else
The day of my wife's high school reunion, she got a call saying that it was canceled. Apparently, five years earlier a classmate got creepy and stalkery with another classmate. The people organizing the reunion invited him, expecting him not to show up. Then the guy posted some vague threats on his social media accounts.
99. Day Care Blues
I worked at a daycare. One of the mothers gave me the heebie-jeebies. She would show up randomly and be like “my baaaaaaby, i neeeed my baaaaby.” Like, moms love their kids and miss them, but her obsession with her daughter really made me feel weird. She ended up strangling her daughter so that she could be an angel. It really messed me up when I found out.
100. I Can See It in Your Eyes
My boyfriend’s younger brother and I were taking a bike ride down the street to the shops late one afternoon. As we get onto the main road, we notice a dude across the street heading in the opposite direction. He is walking with a limp, his head is bowed, and he’s got a plastic bag in his hand. We're only a few metres away from him when he crosses the street onto our side.
As the bro rides past him, this stranger lifts his head up and smiles in his direction as they pass each other. I'm a little while behind, so I don't pay too much attention to this—that is, until the bro stops, turns around, and gives me a funny look, just as this guy is passing him by. I still don't think too much of it at this point, assuming that he had just stopped to let me catch up.
As soon as I myself passed the stranger and made eye contact with him, I realized that this was not the case. When the stranger looked over and nodded at me, I saw nothing in his eyes. When I say nothing, I mean like black pits where his eyes should have been, or just an eyeball that looked entirely black. I don’t know how else to describe it.
When I finally catch up to the bro, we stop around the corner and he says to me "Did you see that???" "You mean his eyes?!" I asked. "Yeah, it looked like they weren't even there!" he replied. We then kind of sat there for a while processing what we had both just seen. Had the bro not related the same feeling and experience to me as I had felt when the stranger looked at me, I doubt I would have ever thought anything of it.
I probably would have just assumed it was the light angles playing tricks on me or some such thing. It was a sunny afternoon, so glare certainly could have played a part. He could've been wearing contacts, I don't know. But none of those explanations feel like they fit. We got home later on and told everybody what had happened, but no one believed us. They still don't to this day.