I don’t know about you, but I’m always down for a scary story. I’ve been down for scary stories pretty much since I started reading my own books – even if that meant I had to sleep with the lights on some nights as a kid.

Scary stories that are true are even better, so let’s dive into these Reddit gems.

OMFG!

Not as scary as some of the stories here, but I was pretty horrified when my dad told me the story.

There are some really big houses in the woods in my hometown. One of the owners went out drinking with his buddies and realized he forgot the key to the gate when he got home. So he decided to just climb the gate. While climbing in his drunken state he slips and his leg gets pierced by one of the spikes on the gate. He was hanging there but too afraid to call for his wife. Since he was sure she would just open the automatic gate from inside the house and since it was one of those gates that slides to the side it would just rip his leg off if she did.

He was hanging there the entire night until his wife woke up, saw him and called the fire department. My dad (who is one of the firefighters that showed up) said they had to saw of the spike to get him off.

Just imagine hanging from your own gate all night not being able to call for help.

A twist ending.

I would call it creepy more than scary, but my mom’s friend had a small house and lived alone. She noticed weird things: a batch of soup depleting faster than usual, missing eggs, damp towels in the hamper when she hadn’t used any, extra dishes in the dishwasher, etc… This went on for months, she thought she was just being forgetful.

One day she heard some thumping around in her attic and went to investigate. She found some make shift living quarters. Small radio, hot plate, sleeping bag, pillow, food wrappers, etc… She called the cops who came to keep an eye on the place. They ended up catching a homeless man climbing a tree, trying to sneak into her attic window. He had been doing this almost daily. He would wait for her to go to work, then go down stairs and help himself to food and amenities.

The funny part about this story is they got to know each other throughout the ordeal, and the guy was actually very respectful, just down on his luck. She didn’t press charges, instead, let him move in, helped him get a job, and he lived in the attic until he got back on his feet. Creepy shit with a happy ending.

An amazing ending.

This is from South Africa. The woman is called Alison Botha and she was abducted, raped and then choked until she blacked out. She was driven into a secluded area, stabbed 30 times in the abdomen and 16 times in the throat and left for dead on the side of the road.

She had to use her shirt to keep her organs inside her body and hold her head up because of a damaged muscle in her neck and proceeded to crawl to the road where she was eventually spotted and rescued.

She survived the attack and now does motivational speaking I believe.

Always lock your doors.

My mom was driving, and a guy ran out in the road, so she stopped so she couldn’t hit him.

It was night time, so it was pretty dark out, and 3 other men emerged from the forest around, all trying to use the door handles of her car to get in. She locked them luckily, and gassed it to the nearest town.

Remember to always lock your car after you start it, because if it wasn’t unlocked who knows what would’ve happened to her.

So not normal.

I spent my first 10 years in New Delhi. Back then, we would find dead women (burnt with acid or set on fire) and it used to be so “normal”. Like oh look, another one of those dowry cases where her family didn’t pay the husband enough money so they killed her.

Many years later i revisited those memories and realised how insane that actually was! I’d totally forgotten about all that.

You never know what’s coming for you.

Nishapur train disaster is something that reminds me how death can come at any moment.

A train with 51 wagons of sulphur, fertiliser, petrol and cotton wool somehow broke loose and rolled down the track about twenty kilometers until it derailed in the town of Khayyam, Iran. There were no humans on board.

Chemical leaks ensued and authorities tried to extinguish whatever fires broke out.

At one point, the whole thing explodes. And it really explodes. The whole town of Khayyam is literally demolished, 3 nearby towns are badly damaged and it was heard 70 km away. The wreckage continued to explode for several days after. Around 300 people died and more than that injured.

An earthquake of 3.6 on Richter scale was produced

The hair on the back of their neck.

Many years ago, before there were cell phones we had these things called pagers strapped to our hips. Someone would page you with their phone number and you would call them back when you got to a phone. As an “on call technician” working in the Audio Visual field, my pager would go off all the freaking time.

Like most people who used pagers, our clients knew that if you followed up your number with a 911, that would indicate to the technician to stop what they were doing and call right away. Although I was always busy I rarely if ever got 911’s. One afternoon traveling from Orlando to Saint Petersburg via Interstate 4, my pager goes off with a number I don’t recognize, followed by the 911. I find the first exit, and pull into a little truck stop looking place outside of Plant City, to use the pay phone.

This takes maybe 3 minutes tops. I walk in, ask for some change and head to the wall where there are 4 pay phones to choose from. I pop my quarter in and dial the number displayed on my trusty pager. It rings…….. and rings…… and rings……. and rings. I’m thinking to myself WTF ?!?! Who would page me with a 911 and not answer their phone? it’s just about then that I notice another ringing sound in addition to the one in my ear…..

I pull the handset from my ear and two phones over on the wall another pay phone is ringing, but with an incoming call. I hang up my the handset and the ringing stops on the other phone. I walk a few paces over, pick up the handset and look at the phone number printed above the buttons , I look at the number on my pager, I look at the number on the phone, I look at the number on my pager again, I look at the phone AGAIN….. except for the 911 they are identical. I kinda loose my breath for a second and then I make my way over to the girl at the counter and ask if she saw anyone use the pay phone.

She said I was the the only person in the store in the last hour. The whole episode probably took 15 minutes, but man, I was freaked out! The hair on the back of my neck was standing straight up and I just wanted out of there!

I get about 10 miles down the Highway and come upon a scene that looked like a bomb went off…….4 car pile up involving a tractor trailer hauling a load of steel that had come loose, State Troopers and Paramedics just arriving. I pulled over to the side and helped the best I could, but it was all pretty much over once it began.

I have no idea why I got that page or from whom or what but I’m convinced that if I hadn’t, I would not be alive to write this today.

A nightmare for sure.

The 1904 Cincinnati Privy Disaster. In 1904, nine schoolgirls drowned in an outhouse after the floor collapsed.

They literally drowned in human waste.

I hope his family sued.

The driver one of the Semis we took in on trade died in the truck. The sleeping area is a “bunk” with a mattress that can be flipped up and under it is a seat and a table. So during the day it’s a Dinet set up. And at night, you pull a lever and pull the bunk down to sleep.

Well something happened and the bunk flipped up while the driver was sleeping and it pinned him against the wall. He couldn’t get it to drop back down and suffocated. He was stuck there for somewhere around 12 hours.

Someone had noticed that he was parked for an unusually long amount of time for the kind of deliveries he did.

The company that built the sleeper did something to the bunk so that couldn’t happen again and supposedly recalled all of that sleeper style.

How horrifying.

My friend’s boss bought an Audi A4 convertible, back when they were new and interesting. One of the talking points was the pop-up roll hoops that were hidden unless you rolled it.

A few months after buying it he got to test those roll hoops out, as he lost control and skidded down a steep bank about 10m (~35ft) deep.

The roll hoops did their job, and he survived with just cuts and scratches from the bushes he’d plowed through. The car ended up the right way up and he got out, walked back up the bank to the side of the road, then got on the phone to the police to report the accident. While he was standing there a driver from a car that had seen the accident came over to speak to him.

Approaching from behind the other driver asked if he was okay. My friend’s boss turned around to reply and dropped dead. His neck had been fractured, but was in one piece right up until he turned his head, when it severed his spinal cord.

No one wants to be that person.

I worked for U-Haul when I was 18 and it was located in front of a club that was known for being really sketchy. I came in to open one morning and it was common for people to knock on the door hoping to get in early and get their truck.

On this day, I hear frantic knocking on the door. I’m there alone still so it kind of startled me. I look and there’s a women, completely naked, covered in what looks like blood. I called the cops and grabbed one of the moving blankets and went out side to cover her up. She smelled really bad and was a mess. Ended up being blood and her own shit she was covered in.

Found out later she was drugged at the club that night/early morning, raped and left blacked out in the alley. It was just a f**ked up and surreal situation to be involved in.

It wasn’t his time.

Artimus Pyle the drummer from Lynard Skynard survived a plane crash and walked to a nearby house only to be shot by the homeowner.

The homeowner saw a bloody long-haired man and winged him. Pyle survived that as well and made a full recovery.

Neither knew what to do.

i was in a crappy motel. the room had bedbugs. i was too exhausted to go to the front desk. i just needed to make it until the morning. i slept in the tub. hours later i hear someone breaking through the window. i had a big knife with me and ran out into the room to find a man halfway through my window.

we stared for awhile at each other in shock. i think we both were scared. then he says,” is this your room?” im like,” yes, this is my room man!” more staring. then he slowly starts backing out while cursing me for leaving my window unlocked and not expecting him to break in.

motel on watt ave, sacramento.

Saved by a ghost.

Before my Dad died, he once told me a story from when he was in Vietnam in the 1960s. He told me about a mission where he and one other American with five CIDG strikers (South Vietnamese villagers turned fighters) were tasked to emplace seismic ground sensors along a trail network deep in the jungle.

He said they were about two days into the mission when he and two of the strikers split off from the main group to go watch a nearby trail intersection. He said the jungle was pretty quite that day, just the sounds of birds and bugs and an occasional monkey. He said they had been watching the trail intersection for about three or four hours and were deciding on whether to move further down the trail or to turn back and link up with the rest of the patrol.

Before leaving the cover of the brush my Dad said he checked the trail ahead of them one last time and prepared his men to move. Now here is where the story gets interesting and he told this part with absolute dead seriousness. He said just as he started to step out onto the trail he sees a light skinned Black Union Cavalry Soldier in full battle gear laying alongside the trail just shy of the intersection.

My Dad said the Union Soldier had two pistols, a Spencer rifle and a short curved club at his hip. As my Dad was trying to process what he was seeing, the Soldier looked directly at him and smiled. Then the Soldier slowly placed a finger up to his lips as if to tell him to be silent and then motioned my Dad back off the trail.

My Dad said he signaled for his men to remain hidden and he recalled that as he slipped back into the jungle on one side of the trail, the Union Soldier did the same on his side of the trail. Less than 10 seconds later he said the lead element of a group of NVA (North Vietnamese Army Soldiers) walked right through the trail intersection some 30 feet away. My Dad estimated that the group was comprised of some 70 – 80 Soldiers equipped with automatic rifles, light machine guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers. He has no doubt that his entire team would have been wiped out on the spot.

He said as soon as the enemy Soldiers had passed, he and his team beat feet out of there as fast and as quietly as they could and rejoined with the rest of the patrol. He reported the enemy Soldiers his team had encountered, but decided not to say anything about the Soldier he had seen.

My Dad kept this secret for many many years; only telling me just before he passed and earlier only telling his Grandmother on her death bed in the 1970s. He said when he told his Grandmother, she smiled and without opening her eyes told him, “you saw Old Red Tom”.

Red Tom was my Great Great Grandfather. He was a half Black / half Creek free man who was a scout for the Union Army during the Civil War and later served with the U.S. Cavalry in the American West. He was know for carrying two pistols, a Spencer rifle and a Creek warclub into battle.

And no one knew.

Guy goes into a small building and dies. Later, investigator shows up and sees the body, calls 911 and then dies. Paramedics show up to help them, then die.

The reason? Oxygen levels at head height were normal. Oxygen levels went bent over was basically 0. Bending over in this room killed 4 people by asphyxiation.

The air they were breathing contained no oxygen. The human body can’t tell the difference.

The will to live.

A female friend in college disappeared from a party at another university in the city town 25ish miles north of our school. She had arrived with another friend who I believe had driven. At some point she split off to play corn hole or something and was later inexplicably gone. Phone calls went to voicemail, police were called, but she was simply missing.

About 10 days later she was found by a homeless man who witnessed her crawling up to a bus stop in the city, begging for help. She had broken a leg and an arm, and was in very bad shape.

At the (quite large party) she had her drink secretly drugged and was then led off by a group of men into their vehicle. She was taken to an apartment where she was drugged, repeatedly raped, and locked in a small room in between with a bucket to use as a bathroom. At one point after being injected with heroin and raped, she somehow managed to convince one of her captors to allow her to use the actual bathroom to clean herself up. This bathroom had a small window to the outside, and with the shower running, she managed to squeeze out and fell from the third story into a large hedge/bush. From there she crawled from the apartment complex to the road and bus stop, where the homeless man saw her and called police. Many cars stopped upon seeing her, making her captives unable to recapture her.

Three men were later arrested for the crime after surveillance cameras allowed police to locate the apartment which she jumped from. She returned to our university almost two years later, graduated, and became a nurse. She was obviously traumatised, never “partied” again, carried a gun everywhere she could, and somehow moved on with life. It was a terrifying tale none of us ever forgot. She was an 18 year old freshman when the incident happened.

It’s always the quiet ones.

Old janitor from high school, friendly Ecuadorian man who went by Ping.

Worked at the school for 20+ years and nobody had a problem with him

I guess his wife was leaving him and in the process of moving out

He caught her in bed with her new man. Next day, in the middle of town, he opened fire on her, the man and then killed himself before any cops had time to respond

Always trust your gut.

When my aunt was about 16 she was working at a grocery store and had a boss in his mid twenties. One day he called the house and was begging her to sneak out and hang out with him. She was considering it because it was her boss and she didn’t want to say no. My mom, who is two years younger than her, always gets these incredibly spot on “gut feelings”. She had one that night and begged my aunt not to go out with him.

Thankfully she listened to my mom and told him no which made him really angry. He ended up going out that night and meeting another girl. He took her out to some cliffs and raped her and pushed her off. Somehow she lived through this and was able to get him sent to prison. I feel so sorry for that girl and so thankful for my mom and her gut feelings.

Always trust your gut.

I might have to bring back the “lights on” policy tonight.

These were pretty darn terrifying, and I’m glad they didn’t happen to me!