If you’re a morning person, you probably enjoy the dim quiet before the rest of the world wakes up.

If you’re a night owl, you enjoy the peace and quiet once everyone else has fallen asleep…but what if it’s not so peaceful?

These 15 late-night lovers are recalling the moments that had them jumping out of their skin.

15. Like a horror movie.

When I was 11, I couldnt sleep one night because I was sick. I heard something at my bedroom window. I ran out of the room to wake up my mom. She told me to stop being paranoid and go back to bed.

Instead, I went to the backdoor and turned on the porch light that was on the same wall as my bedroom window.

Next day, I went outside to check my window and there were two boot tracks just below my window.

14. Inexplicable.

I was up late playing video games in the house alone around 3 in the morning. My Dad was working the late shift, and came home in the morning, but sometimes he’d come home for lunchbreak halfway through the night, grab a quick bite, and head back out.

I heard the front door unlocking, open up, and someone step into the house. I paused the game and I yelled down the hall: “Hey Dad.” He always responded, this time he didn’t. I yelled down the hall again: “Dad, that you?” No response.

My heart sunk into my stomach, and I was frozen in fear. I sat there for a few seconds, and then stood up. I slowly walked down the hall to the front door. The door was locked, deadbolt and all. I flipped on all the lights and started searching every area of the house scared to death someone came in and was hiding in my house, but I couldn’t find anyone. In the morning I asked my Dad if he came home, but turned around and immediately left, but he said he brought lunch with him that night and didn’t come home to eat.

I still think about that night over 10 years later. I can’t explain what happened. I heard the lock, the door, and someone come into the house as clear as crystal, but no one came in. I can’t explain it.

13. “I thought he was…”

I was sitting up playing Xbox at like 3am and some guy kicked in my front door. As I’m windmilling falling backwards out of my chair (i sit in a computer chair while i game). I see my 100lbs black lab fly through the house, jump and knock this guy back through the doorway.

My dog was straight eating this guy, the intruder he’s screaming like he’s being fed feet first into a wood chipper. I finally run to the door and see this guy sprinting down the street and my dog hot on his heels.

I call the cops and they show up, I give them the report and about 20 minutes into it my dog comes sauntering up like he’s the best thing since individually wrapped cheese slices.

The cops were like is he friendly? To which I remember saying something to the affect of “I thought he was.”

My dog was/is the biggest ham of a Lab, All cuddles and kisses… until you kick in my door at 3am.

12. That last one gave me full-body chills.

My partner works overnight so I’m up during the night often. My experiences include a group of teenage girls just sitting in our back yard and watching a toddler play in the street alone around 3am (I called the police, the toddler was safely taken home).

My creepier experiences actually occurred more around 5-6am, with the sun up, when you’d think people would be a little less willing to be creepy. Once around 5:30 I felt watched, glanced up and saw a man peeking through the gap in our blinds. He bolted away.

Another time my partner told me he’d be home in under five minutes so I unlocked our front door. A man was in the process of crossing the street, looked up and grinned at me like I had opened up just for him. He made a b-line for our house and I slammed and locked the door so fast. (Definitely a different man than blind-peeker).

11. Oh my god.

I was up late, screwing around on the Internet as usual. Everyone else was in bed. And something was clattering out on the deck.

I ignored the noise at the first. I figured it was just the wind rattling the trash can lid I’d hung on the bird feeder to inconvenience the squirrels. But the racket kept going, and my mind started to wander.

Might be a raccoon, I thought. Maybe it crawled into the barbecue looking for food scraps. Maybe there are two of them in there, trying to make more raccoons.

The noise continued.

I stood up, walked over to the sliding door, and turned on the outside lights. They were the CFL bulbs that take about a week to warm up, so I couldn’t see much, and what I could see looked normal. Whatever was making the noise kept doing whatever it was doing.

By this point, I was getting nervous. I was annoyed that I was nervous, and I was annoyed that some pissant trash panda was making me nervous. So I opened the door, stuck my head outside, and asked, “can I help you?”

A bear stared back from ten, maybe twenty feet away. It was standing on its back legs, making it about as tall as I was. Its front paws gripped the bird feeder, which, despite the bear’s best efforts, remained connected to the house.

I stood there for a few seconds until my brain’s pattern recognition software decided that, yup, that’s a bear alright, and then I ducked back inside. When I looked back, the bear was gone, leaving behind a damaged bird feeder with a smashed trash can lid on top.

We don’t hang bird feeders anymore.

10. Weird, indeed.

I had the worst insomnia during covid lock down. Every night around 2-3 a red truck would park in my driveway and just sit there. The guy would chat on the phone and leave.

My house’s driveway was not easy to access making it unusual for someone to just park there. Between the insomnia paranoia and the sheer weirdness of this I caved and bought a Ring camera and downloaded the Next Door App.

Found out he was a newspaper deliverer but we never got paper deliveries and I never saw him leave the car. Super weird.

9. Creepy indeed.

I (F) used to clean movie theaters. Our shifts would start at 2am. On a slow weekday night I decided to go out and pick up the trash in the parking lot, around 4/5am. The theater was also next to a super busy road, so people passing by could see into the parking lot clear as day.

I had headphones in and a grabby thing in my hand to pick up gross stuff, when I suddenly get a call from my boss who is inside the building. She tells me she just saw a truck pull into the parking lot (on the opposite side where I was) and we weren’t expecting any vendors today. As she says this, the truck pulls up next to me and stops as a man starts to open his door.

There was a clear moment when he started to lean out and then saw that I was on a phone call (I had my screen facing him because I was talking to my boss through the headphones), and the grabby thing over my shoulder like a baseball bat. He sees my hands, then looks up at me and says “looks like it might snow today”. Then closes his door and drives off.

I’m 100% sure if my boss didn’t called me that man would have tried to grab me into his truck. I then warned everyone that no one should do the parking lot garbage until it’s light out and to always be on alert.

8. Kudos for not screaming.

Drifted a bit on the couch in the den with my head of the couch arm rest. I woke up when I felt the tiniest little paw tentatively reaching out and putting weight on my head. For some reason I didn’t jerk away. Then a second paw started reaching into my hair.

I slowly sat up to look at what was going on. A large brown rat had found its way into the house, up the couch, and was gently climbing onto my head. I coaxed him down to the couch and he didn’t run away. I just have a rat calmly looking at me from the armrest of the couch.

Eventually I got him into a box and released him into a field. Weird way to get a little friend at 2 AM.

7. Just a hungry ghost.

Was staying at an Airbnb and had to sleep on the sofa couch in the living room.

The microwave in the nearby kitchen kept randomly turning on until I finally disconnected it.

6. Lock your doors, people.

Someone tried to open the front door of the house that I am staying at. It was around 2-3am and sometimes people in the house forget to lock. Safe to say, I could not sleep the whole night

5. Good dog.

My auntie, many moons ago, was walking her dog late one night. She was crossing a field (well maintained as the kids played football on it but unlit.) The dog was doing his thing when all of a sudden she heard him pounding back toward her, growling and then barking.

She thought he was going to attack her but turned out there was a man about 10 feet behind her who had been quietly approaching her.

Who knows what could’ve happened if not for a very scary German shepherd.

4. Absolutely not.

When my husband was out of town a few years ago, I think our home was being cased because people kept showing up in the middle of the night ringing our door bell.

One was this really cracked out lady who wouldn’t leave and kept saying she just moved there and wanted to make friends for emergency contacts or something.

The other one that was really weird was a guy claiming he was a cop but was dressed as a normal guy and kept pressing me to know if a specific lady who I’d never heard of lived with us.

After my husband came back, we installed cameras and the night visits stopped. All happened after 10p.

3. A close call.

I was walking my dog and a man emerged from the woods between two houses and started following me back to my house. Once inside, I looked through the peephole and saw him standing at the end of the walk.

I called the police and they picked him up a little while later.

2. Keep one ear open.

As many of us were back then, I was gaming. The first Modern Warfare 2 had dropped recently and I had an entire wrestling team of friends with Xboxes. Great fun.

1am rolls around, the summer night air wafting in through both open windows. In-between bites of pizza rolls and “Our UAV is Online”, I SWEAR I hear someone say “help me”. Freaks you out a bit if you’re completely unsure, and that particular phrase isn’t uttered often. I pause and listen, taking off one side of my Turtle Beaches. A good half a minute passes. Nothing. I tell my friends about it. They roast me, telling me I’m imagining it. I shrug it off.

AGAIN I swear I think I heard someone distinctly say “help me”. I fully take off my headset and wait. Sooner this time and sure enough, there it is, a third time, and I hear it clear, a voice I do not recognize: “Can someone help me?”

Bone-chilling desperation in their voice.

The bottom level of the house which I’m playing in is below grade, with the windows maybe a foot above the soil outside. Below the deck. I am three feet from that window, feeling my teenage soul leave my body in fear.

I run upstairs in a panic and inform my parents. Dressed in bedware and armed with an airsoft gun, we investigate.

An elderly woman with dementia got lost a few hours before and had wandered into our backyard, fell, and became delirious. We called the police and she was taken to the hospital, confused but unharmed.

Glad to have helped her that day. Also glad to prove my entire team wrong. Felt nice.

1. That inner voice.

I was camping with a couple friends during a cross country road trip to save money on hotels. We didn’t bring a tent, we just threw a tarp over the bed of the pickup truck and slept back there. I have a very hard time falling asleep, especially when I’m not in my own bed, so I was up long after my buddies had passed out. While I was laying there, the only one awake amidst a calm and quiet night aside from my friend’s abnoxious snoring, I started getting this… feeling. Like a sinking feeling in my gut. Thought maybe I was hungry; went into the truck and grabbed some snacks, then tried again to fall asleep. I drifted off for a bit, but when I woke up suddenly, that feeling was still there, but worse. It wasn’t hunger, it was that deep in your gut “something is very wrong here” feeling. But nothing was wrong.

I tried again to ignore the feeling and go to sleep. I probably got an hour or so of sleep and then yet again woke up suddenly. All kinds of alarm bells were ringing now. I remember feeling shaky and nauseous at this point. I had no idea why, but my body was in full flight or fight mode. I didn’t care if they thought I was crazy at this point. I woke up my friends and told them we needed to leave, now.

I was able to convince them and we left in a hurry. Told them I’d explain in the morning. We found another campground down the road to crash for the night.

The weirdest part happened after we all fell asleep at the new campground. I was sleeping peacefully, only to be woken up by my friends shaking me and telling me that we need to leave again. The second I open my eyes I’m completely overwhelmed by the worst feeling of dread imaginable.

My buddies both looked totally freaked as well and were practically trying to pick me up and throw me in the truck cabin. There’s literally nothing around us that should be making us feel that way, as far as we could tell anyway, but my God it felt like death itself was staring us down. We got out of there as fast as we could and drove several hours until we reached a large town and got a hotel.

That was the end of it. We never figured out what the hell was going on. My friend thought we were being followed at one point during the drive, I don’t really know honestly, probably never will. By far the weirdest night I’ve had.

I love stories like these.

But I’m sure glad that none of them happened to me.