People Share Their Most Disturbing Personal Stories, And It’s SCARY!

I was on a backpacking trip on the Appalachian trail, and my dad and I stopped at one of the many public cabins. We set our bags down, and join the campfire. It was just us and a middle-aged Asian couple. We begin talking and the sun sets, so we don’t expect anyone else to come. Nevertheless, this huge guy with long silver hair sets his small pack down under the awning, and joins us at the fire. He was no less than 6’8, extremely muscular, and had his hair tied back into a ponytail. Imagine a more muscular Geralt from the Witcher. We start talking and he seems very friendly.
 
Then, my dad asks the man: “So, where are you from?” No response. My dad repeats the question, thinking the guy didn’t hear him. No response. The Asian guy asks the question, and suddenly, the big guy explodes yelling “I DON’T KNOW! I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!” He, then, takes a out a huge bowie knife and a whet stone, and starts sharpening it. All of us decide to pack our stuff and book it to the next cabin, which was about 7 miles away. It was a walk, but we eventually made it there, and there was a dirty hippy dude already there. He stunk like hell, but was harmless.

We stop at the campfire hang out for a bit, then I see a reflection out of the corner of my eye. I turn around and see the big, silver haired guy standing in the treeline, spying on us. At that moment, I nearly shat my pants, because there was no way all of us could take this guy on. He was built like a WWE wrestler, and we were all under 6 ft. I let the other people know, and the Asian guy took out a revolver, and told the man to “go the fuck off”. Big guy stands there for a moment, and silently walks off into the woods without making any sound. After that incident, we agreed to have someone keep watch. Since the Asian guy had a gun, he volunteered while we slept. In the morning, I was so glad big guy didn’t come back, because Asian man fell asleep. That shit still gives me chills.
 
TL;DR Run into large, creepy man on Appalachian trailer, who follows us until someone pulls a gun on him.

IlikeFOODmeLikeFOOD

My ex husband kidnapped my kids. A church was helping him hide them from me. I was a catholic (therefore an idol worshipper) and he was baptist. He wasn’t religious when we got married, but was in his past. I guess when he hits a life crisis his answer is the nearest mega church.
 
He was in the army and told them I was killed in a car wreck and had to go get the kids. Then he went into hiding.
 
I got a colonel up at 3 am and he was back with the kids in 72 hours. Scariest weekend of my life.

ohiomensch

A few years ago I went to the kitchen around 2am to get a glass of water. I figured why put the lights on if I’m gonna be done in 5 seconds, right? So, 10 year old me was in complete darkness when I noticed someone staring through our window, with their hands pressed against the glass (we had see through curtains.) I screamed at the top of my lungs and froze, mom woke up and came running to the kitchen to me crying like a baby in my pajamas. He was already gone but I told her what happened, so she went outside with a knife to look for him but never found him. And that’s why we don’t have see through curtains anymore. I still have an irrational fear of the dark.

RICE_WITH_YOGHURT

There was an ER physician who came to my med school to give a lunchtime talk. While he was there he told a story about an event that happened when he was a resident physician working under a very well-respected attending.
 
A teenage girl came into the ER with all of the text book signs of bacterial meningitis- fever, stiff neck, sensitivity to light, and a severe headache. Bacterial meningitis is a medical emergency, it can and will kill an individual within 24-72 hours. There is a short list of bacteria that cause it, which can be identified by doing a procedure called a lumbar puncture, taking a sample of the fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord by puncturing the space around the spinal cord with a needle. However, if the patient is showing signs of increased intracranial pressure (from swelling around the brain), making an opening in the spinal column, even with a needle, can have the effect of opening a window on an airplane, and parts of the brain can actually be sucked through the bottom of the skull and herniate into the spinal column, resulting in death. If patients are showing signs of increased intracranial pressure, treatment can be started with broad-spectrum antibiotics without doing a lumbar puncture. There’s no reason that the causative organism needs to be identified before treatment.

The ER resident did a quick physical exam and noticed signs of increased intracranial pressure in the teenager. He reported this to the attending physician along with his treatment plan which he planned on starting immediately. The attending physician ordered him to perform a lumbar puncture. He wavered a bit, but ultimately wanted to keep a good relationship with his attending, so he documented what he had found in the patient’s chart and then performed the lumbar puncture. The patient’s brain-stem herniated through the bottom of her skull and she died.
 
The theme, or point, of the talk wasn’t about the dangers of the medical hierarchy or advocating for patients, it was about the importance of good documentation. The physician, who at this point had been independently practicing for 10+ years, even stated with pride, “And guess who wasn’t included on the lawsuit brought against the hospital by the girl’s parents because of his excellent documentation?”
 
This hierarchy and these people still exist in medicine, and you have no idea, when you receive medical care, if you are being treated by one of them. It’s frightening, the amount of medical errors that are knowingly made every year because someone didn’t want to speak up or ruin their reputation, even at the risk of a human life.

Eshlau

Myself and 6 friends (aged 18-28, mixed European group) were on a 5 day river canoe trip up a tributary of the Orinoco around Merida in Venezuela in 1998. Our guides were an older (60’s) rough looking German guy and a slightly younger but shifty looking Orinoco basin Indian. One of our group knew fluent German, but for some unexplained reason, didn’t share with the guide that she could speak it. Later told us she didn’t want the creepy dude making comments to her that no one else could understand.
 
We were 3 days in, roughing it in hammocks on the side of the river, not having seen a village for at least 8 hours. The guides kinda kept themselves to themselves after dinner, which was fine, but this evening they were a bit further away and we could tell they were having a pretty heated discussion in a mix of German and local dialect. Suddenly, the German girl in the group turns white and looks terrified and it takes us s few minutes to calm here down. She explained she heard the German guy talk about ‘making sure the others will be at the place and they will have the guns’ and that ‘ the crocodiles will get rid of the guys and the girls will go with them to (some village)’ the day after next.

We kinda freaked out, but decide that being alone with these two dudes days from anywhere in the middle of the fucking rain-forest, we were pretty much trapped. We decided on a plan, which, fortunately, went our way. Early the next day, we decided that the next time we saw another canoe expedition pass us, we would essentially shout and scream at them that we were being kidnapped and needed help. Fortunately, a 4 canoe group came past and we enacted our plan. Our guides immediately just got the fuck out of there, didn’t even protest about our crazy accusations or anything, other than to pull a sawn off 12 gauge from under a blanket and point it at us to stop us chasing them (which kinda validated to us that they were planning to kill/ traffic us, and they didn’t hang around to get caught). We got taken to the nearest village a few hours down a branching tributary, where we explained the situation to the local police and some soldiers that were on exercise or something.

Turns out there was a suspected serial killer operating out of the Maracaibo area targeting tourists going into the forest, active since 1996. I was never able to corroborate any of the info we were told by the police using any western media source or internet searches.
 
We still occasionally email each other about our close call but it’s been 20 years and we’ve moved on with our lives. I’ve never told family or my wife, and I don’t think anyone else ever told more than a handful of people.

Yeahnotquite

I was in the Italy near the Alps when i was around 7 and I would walk down the hill to play with this kid that lived there even though neither of us could understand each other. The kid had a dog that we would play with too. One day when I walked down there, the whole yard was covered in bugs. They might have been locusts or some equivalent, but they were EVERYWHERE.

I was about to turn and run but I saw a mass in the middle of the yard. I then realized it was the dog, just laying, covered in bugs. I thought it might be dead but I ran to it and pulled on his collar. He just looked up at me then put his head back down. I kept pulling and I was yelling for the neighbor kid. No one responded. I then convinced the dog to get up and at this point bugs were also covering me and I was terrified. I pulled the dog into this shed and I hid in there with him and cried. I think I was in there for like ten minutes and there was a knock… It was the neighbor looking at me through the window. He opened the door and started yelling at me but I couldn’t understand him. I looked behind him and the yard that was previously covered in a plague of bugs was now empty. I tried explaining what happened but it was all lost in translation. I didn’t go back over there again.

stavarz

One day my friend and I go to Disney World. I’d renewed my ticket online but had to take the paper up to the booth for a new pass. We’re going to Magic Kingdom so we stop by the Ticket and Transportation Center because there isn’t a line. Fast forward to later in the day and I start getting texts. ‘Hey LayMayLove ! How you doin ?’ Weird, because it’s from a number I don’t recognize and they call me by name. I don’t really hand around my number a lot so it’s odd and I say ‘Hi person who’s name isn’t in my phone’ So he says his name was Steven and asks what I’m doing with ‘that ugly guy.’ Okay, so there are people who would know who I’m with but it is very unlikely it would be anyone who would text me this.

Also, I surprisingly know very few Stevens. The texts go back and forth for a bit with him saying not to worry, that I know him. He sends me a WDW badge that has Steven on it (not sure if he was trying to play the odds on me knowing a Steven who works at WDW or what). And then says have a good day at Magic Kingdom. This adds to the creep factor because we decided to go to MK as we were driving there. Neither of us remembers really telling anyone which park we ended up at. I say that I have no clue who he is (because obviously you should say something more by this point if I’m not catching that you’re that Steven I actually know) and he sends back that I don’t seem to care to find out and have a good day. So, I stop responding because this seems like a good place to end it.

He sends me a ‘Maps’ of a screen shot from wherever he is to my home address with ‘not a bad drive.’ So my friend and I start walking to guest services because this is obviously no joke and he’s reasonably identified himself as an employee of theirs at this point. It is also worth mentioning that almost no one I knew at the time had my home address because I lived at home and didn’t like having people over and bothering my family.

The last message he sent me was ‘LOL well don’t get too creeped out I don’t want to mess with you that much I promise you that I am somebody you already know’
 
He was the guy who printed my pass. In a transaction that took all of 2 minutes MAX he decided that he should take my cell and home address off of my account. Disney fired him that day is my understanding (although they didn’t really want to say too much, I think they started moving in to liability control and even a cop came in and told me there wasn’t a crime but I chose to file a report anyway because MFER HAD MY HOME ADDRESS). I end up getting a detective call later who tells me that I can press charges and I do. I kind of asked his opinion and without interjecting an either or, he said that based on how the guy messaged me, he’s probably done it a lot but I’m the first one to connect the dots and do anything. Get a letter from the states attorney and send back that I’m still willing to testify.

I’ve heard nothing since. I’m guessing among all our crazy FL cases, mine didn’t justify much man power. Luckily, I was at least able to put a face to it because the idiot had his cell phone connected to his facebook account.
 
I still get the heebie jeebies looking through the messages years later. I kept them because the detective instructed me to. Even knowing that the case probably isn’t going anywhere at this point, I feel reassured that I have them if anything did happen-since he still has that address.
 
It is almost funny that my friend at one point suggested that was who was messaging me, but at the MK point in the conversation. It was one of those outlandish ‘wouldn’t it be crazy if’ comments that turned out to be true.

LayMayLove

In high school me and a buddy made the dumbass decision to smoke weed in a graveyard around 8-9 at night (summertime so it was just now getting dark). I smoked to the point of being totally out of it. We were just chilling next to a tree when I see a man walking down the graveyard. I got a little nervous immediately but blew it off. I then see the man pull out a hand gun and aim towards something (he didn’t notice us at this point and I couldn’t see who or what he was aiming it at). I was so terrified I thought I was mildly hallucinating, I couldn’t even move. My friend hit my side and said “dude this guy has a fucking gun out we gotta get the fuck out of here”. We both slowly got up but like the stoned idiots we were, we hit a rock trying to get up and the man finally noticed us. He was a good 200 feet away from us, but the second he saw it he slowly moved towards us with the gun in his hand. We started running at this point, I looked behind my shoulder once and saw him start to run towards us as well. We booked it out of the graveyard and were finally back in my neighborhood. I was terrified for days after that.

DueyCoyne

When I was 12, I saw two tourists struggling to communicate with the cashier at a bookstore in Indonesia. I’m bilingual so I just hopped over and helped translate before going back to browsing my books.
 
After paying, one of the guys came over to thank me. He wanted to take me out for dinner to repay me. Being 12, of course I told him I can’t have dinner without my parents’ permission.
 
He went, “I’m sure you can sneak out, right?”
Er, no.
 
By now, I noticed his friend came up behind me so I’m kind of boxed between them in the middle of 2 bookshelves. My sister had already ducked under one and ran off, leaving me alone.
 
They were really persistent and asked me if I could grab lunch or drinks instead. Er, I’m 12.
 
Finally, one of the salesgirls noticed something was off and came to ask if anything’s wrong. I got the fuck out of there.
 
My sister and I went to another store, and suddenly, my sister started freaking out since they were right behind us. Ok, maybe it’s a coincidence.
 
We went to a lingerie store. They followed. Ok, we’re definitely being followed.
 
We ran to the store our mom was in and the salespeople there called security. I thought they were slightly creepy at that time, but now that I’m older, holy shit they were fucking creepy.
 
Oh, and I’m Asian, so at 12, I looked 8-9.

eraser_dust

Recently a friend and I were swapping our favorite horror movies. We were childhood friends that grew up in the same Detroit suburb. I was thinking about an incident that had happened when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade (30 years ago) and she says out of the blue “I don’t know if you remember this but the police started patrolling our neighborhood when we were in 2nd or 3rd grade because when I was walking home from school two men in a blue pickup truck rolled down the window next to me and said ‘hey girl you need a ride home’ and one tried to grab me. I took of running tearing through yards and I told my Mom who called the cops and walked with me to the bus stop after that.”

I confessed that I was thinking about a time when my cousin Sean (recently passed away so he’s been on my mind, also he was really smart, much smarter than I) and I were wandering around the neighborhood like kids did in the 80s. This blue pickup truck pulled up to us and one of the two guys asked us to “hop in for a ride” Sean said “no thanks” and instructed me to sneak into a neighbor’s back porch (luckily unlocked) and stay down. I whispered I was afraid we would get in trouble for not asking the neighbor for permission (not the brightest kid–I would rather die than break the rules I guess) and Sean goes “stay here and hide. Act like we went inside because we live here.” One of the two guys GOT OUT OF THE TRUCK and went into the yard to look for us. We laid low. About 15 minutes later he left. I look back on it now and think “what a close call.”
 
We lived near the area of the Oakland County Child Killer (though in a much poorer neighbor than he targeted) and I’ve spent the last few nights reading about the case and thinking about that blue truck.

StaceyMS

My girlfriend and I went to Wal-mart one night at about 11:30. We park close with only one spot open to us on our left. As we were slowly making our ways down the grocery aisles I happened to notice a guy out of the corner of my eye with no buggy or cart. When I looked over he grabbed a box of something and stared intently at it, you know not the kind of absent minded “i am shopping” kind of look.
 
I make a side note of it, and we continue down a few more aisles. After seeing the man in our aisles and vicinity a few more time I tell my girlfriend let’s go aimlessly wonder around other parts of the store for a bit so I can gauge if my suspicions are correct.
 
About 30 minutes later we end up at the self checkout, guess who is sitting on the bench in front of the self check out with no bags? I think to myself, maybe coincidence maybe not.

As we leave the Wal-mart, all of a sudden I get this feeling and tell my girlfriend to stop and I stop abruptly as well. When I turn around this guy has almost run into us he was following so closely and we had stopped so abruptly. He stared at me like a deer in headlights, and so did I because I couldn’t really mentally process the implications of what he (presumably) intended to do.
 
After a brief deer in headlights, he keeps walking like nothing happens then gets into a windowless white van that is now occupying the empty left parking spot next to my car.
 
This was a few years ago, and I still think about it a lot and what could have happened. There were too many coincidences for that to merely be my anxiety interpreting the situation as something it wasn’t.
v
ayydance

This is actually kind of embarrassing, but anyways, last year I was watching my parent’s house while they were out of the state. They live on a wooded plot of land, and have been known to have trespassers on their property.
 
I got home one night at about 11pm, and I’m standing in the foyer and the way the foyer is I can see into the kitchen which has windows, the only light in the house is the moonlight coming in the windows. Against the light I can see the silhouette of someone standing there. My heart immediately started slamming against my chest and I ask whose there. No answer. I ask again, and as I’m asking I’m moving my keys that I was holding into the spaces between my fingers so I had a weapon. Again there was no answer. I start moving and the figure starts moving too, exactly the same way I was. I put two and two together and I flick on the lights and I see a reflection of myself in the mirror that’s in the foyer.

mordorxvx

Not nearly as serious, but a little creepy: my neighbor is an old lady. She comes outside everyone once in a while to chat with passerbys and garden. The first conversation she had with my dad, she complimented the painting he has hanging in his bedroom. No big deal, she probably saw us moving it in, or glimpsed it at some point before we got curtains. But then she meets our dog and says “well, he’s much scarier through the window, isn’t he?” Again, NBD, we know he has a habit of pushing aside blinds to stare outside. She comments on things like this often, asking us why we didn’t walk our dog that morning or when we got a new sofa, but she’s just an old lady, right? She’s probably bored and outside a lot. Then she meets me. She swears she’s already met me, but I had never seen her before in my life. She asks me how I like my room and tells me about the girls who had it before me. Weird, but okay… she rubbed me the wrong way but I don’t really mind- she’s fairly easy to avoid.

Or so I thought.
 
As I was taking the dog outside, I happened to glance over and see her staring at me through the window. She lowers the blinds when she sees that I saw her, but is peeking through them watching me. Later, I go to the kitchen and see her again watching me very intently through the window (our blinds were slightly open to let light in). Then upstairs in my parents room (there’s a window in their bathroom), I see her again as I’m replacing the towels, watching. The more I looked for her, the more I saw: she was watching basically all the time. Not only from her window- she sits in her car and watches us from the street. She sits on her porch and watches. She slowly walks down the street and watches us- literally all hours of the day. And she does it to her other neighbors, and she did it to the people who had our house before us- everyone knew to keep your blinds and curtains shut at all times, otherwise you can guarantee she watches you. It freaked me the hell out.

QueenSkunky

A guy followed me home from the train station once. I think he still knows where I live.
 
I got out of work and was waiting at the train station. I had my headphones in and was staring at the TV with the arrival/departure times. This guy suddenly appeared out of nowhere, got really close to my face, and asked me if I had a boyfriend. I said nothing and walked away quickly. He looked/smelled homeless and had these big, crazy eyes that were darting around the room as he spoke. He also had an erection, and had gotten so close that he’d spit on my cheek.
 
There are weird people at train stations. Whatever. I’ll never see him again anyway. Move on.

After I get off the train, I take two buses and walk a few blocks to get home. I was focused on the podcast that I was listening to and wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings. All of the buses were also very crowded. When I reached my stop and started to walk home, I noticed that the creepy guy got off the bus behind me. There was nobody else around, so ran home. When I got to my door and started to unlock it, he was standing at the end of my driveway. I was crying and fumbling with my keys. Then some of my neighbors pulled up in a truck, and I screamed “HELLO! SIR! HELP!” Then the creepy guy turned and walked away into the woods. I called the police, but they didn’t show up for a while. They had me write a statement, but seemed uninterested. My husband left work early and came home.
 
We saw the creepy guy lingering around the neighborhood and walking past our house a few times in the following days, but he eventually stopped. Haven’t seen him since.

sparklehorseys

I witnessed an argument between my mom and step dad about some green Heinz ketchup my mom had bought.
 
His response was to drag my mother by her hair to the bedroom where he loaded a shotgun, then pressed his head against hers and tried to force her to pull the trigger. All the while I’m standing in the doorway watching in complete silence.
 
She ended up saving herself by putting her finger behind the trigger and was left with a blood blister, from him trying to pull it regardless. She eventually wriggled free and he says, “I’m just going to kill myself then!” To which my mom responds with, “Well do it outside… because I really dont feel like cleaning up the mess.” That took balls. He could have just shot her right there…
 
What’s crazy is at the time it all seemed so normal to me.

Tramm

I ran on the track team in high school and during my first two years, I rode the late after school bus to get home. On Tuesday-Thursday there were two buses that took students home, but on Mondays and Fridays everyone had to ride one bus and the bus was driven by this really creepy guy. He would look at girls through the rear-view mirror and stare at them for lengthy periods of time while giving this really unsettling smile which made all of the girls uncomfortable. One day this guy was the bus driver who took our team to a track meet at another school. The buses would normally stay parked in the parking lot for the duration of the meet.

Well, I had a while until my next race, so I decided to go and watch my teammates run and I went to watch by the gate which was near the track’s entrance. It started to drizzle, so I go to stand under this pavilion to keep dry and after a few minutes I see the bus driver there and he comes over to me and asks me if I want to get on the bus to keep out of the rain. At this point, I’m really nervous, but I say yes anyway because I’m afraid of what will happen if I say no. So the two of us start heading to the bus and I’m freaking out when a few of my male teammates see that I’m about to get on the bus and they decide that they want to get out of the rain too.

They come over to the bus as I’m about to get on and ask if they can get on, but the bus driver shakes his head and says, “Not you guys. Just her.” Now I’m really scared and I stutter out that I’m sorry but I don’t want to go on the bus anymore and I take off to the bleachers where I stayed for the rest of the meet. Even though nothing happened, I still get sort of queasy thinking about what could have happened if those guys hadn’t come and I had gone on the bus.

OccasionallySara

Its really not that bad, and maybe there are some other explanations, and maybe its not actually my most disturbing true story, but I’ve been thinking about it the last few days.
 
So near where I live is this little place called Concrete City. Its just this circle of empty concrete buildings that used to be homes to coal miners or something like that, but it is totally abandoned now and some of the structures are crumbling. Its like a giant, concrete playground for young adults to smoke up, tag the walls, and play paintball.
 
So me and a couple others are wandering around the place, and we start coming up on this parked car. I could two people in the front shuffling around and I was just thinking “Oh great, we’re about to walk up on two people screwing.” nobody else in the group seemed to pay it any mind, so I keep walking.

Then I notice its not a couple. Two big dudes are in the front, staring us the fuck down, sitting stock still and looking shady as fuck. Still, we all just keep going and at this point, I’m just glad we’re in a group of five and still kind of worried we’re about to get fucked. As in, chopped to bits and spread around in piles.
 
And then I see why I get this exact feeling. We’re all right up alongside the car now, and I can’t help but glance in the back window. An open cooler filled with bloody ice, a second, closed cooler, probably filled with the same, and a pile of clear plastic bags.
 
I keep my mouth shut and keep walking. When we’re just passed the car, the engine revs up and those two dudes tear out of there like hell’s behind them.
 
So it could be a couple of poachers, or maybe organ theft and somewhere in concrete city lay a man with a missing kidney. I dunno, but it was shady as fuck.

MyBrassPiece

When I was a kid me and my friend were walking into a nearby park just after lunch. As we entered an older guy who was probably in his mid to late teens approached us. He asked if we wanted to see the guns he had in his trunk and we of course said no and tried walking away but he grabbed my friend and tried dragging him toward his car. We screamed for help and he let go and ran off towards his car, a little while later a couple of police officers stopped us and asked if we had seen a teenager matching his description so we told them what happened. Luckily I had a great memory as a kid and remembered his licence plate so after telling the cops everything they escorted us back to my place. A week later we found out this guy had abducted and raped 6 kids and ended up being tried as an adult instead of a teenager and is probably still in prison. I still remember the incident pretty clearly.

envirex

Found a body when I was 14. Me and my family were hiking Easter morning along the Grand river and me and my sister wanted to explore the riverbank so we each went our separate ways. I saw a backpack hanging from a small tree so I went over but when I got closer I saw a manikin. The manikins hand was holding onto a branch and it was laying face down in the mud wearing jeans and a hoodie with the hood up, there was a gun on the ground (I thought it was fake) and an empty pack of scooby doo fruit gummies. I decided to kick the thing but when my foot connected with its thigh I instantly knew it was a person. Bolted out of there and I told my dad. I thought I kicked some sleeping homeless dude and I was super paranoid sprinting back towards my parents. My father went to investigate and said it was a body so we called 911.

Later found out the guy had killed himself (bullet to the roof of the mouth) but he slightly misfired and probably lived for around 30 seconds after the shot. The police were very surprised we didn’t hear a gunshot because it was that recent. The reason why I thought it was a manikin was because his hand was elevated, this caused all of the blood drain out and pool in his body which made his hand look snow white like a manikins hand would.
 
Never saw any blood and never got to find out what was in the bag. Thank god I didn’t see his face.
Sockmonkey33

I was 12 years old, and we were three kids sharing 2 bedrooms. So my dad decided to put up a half wall to make a third. If I stood on my bed I could see into my brothers room. We were young and used to throw a ball over before falling asleep. One night I was just drifting off when my mom taps me on the shoulder and says “pssst. What are you doing?” I thought, that’s a very weird question, obviously I’m sleeping. So I turn around to answer her , only it’s not my mom. It’s not a person. It looked like a 3D shadow of a man. Just black. I screamed while my eyes were closed , the figure disappeared.

My mom and dad came running into my room, I tell them everything, they think it’s just my imagination, but tell me if I’m scared to go sleep in the room with my brother. I tried to sleep but I was shook. My brother woke up once to go use the bathroom upstairs and I pretended I was asleep. I didn’t want him to know I was still afraid. I hear him go into my room, right next door, climb on the bed (springs) and then just stopped. I thought he was trying to purposefully scare me so I look up to show him I’m awake, and see the figure again. Arms crossed with its head resting on his hands. Even though it had no facial features whatsoever, I knew it was looking at me. I try to convince myself it’s just dark, it’s my brother playing a prank and I’m seeing things… then I heard the toilet flush upstairs.
 
It was just that one night. I never saw anything like it again, or even close. But yeeeaarsss later, in my 20’s. I was living alone and felt the tap on my shoulder. “Pssst. What are you doing?” I’ll stop there cause you’ll think I’m crazy. But that was the last time I heard it. And I’m 31 now. It’s not a ghost story. I will remember that day until I die.

bottomsup4pups

Mine’s a bit more down to earth than most here.
 
A few years ago I decided to try out “night mountain biking.” Basically you outfit yourself with a few really freaking bright lights and go mountain biking. It’s a hell of a lot of fun… most of the time.
 
The first time I tried it I decided to go by myself because I didn’t want to bother any of my friends to do something that may turn out to be really boring.
 
So I’m cruising along up a local mountain bike trail. Now, mind you, this is in the Rockies so the trails here are steep, with lots of switchbacks. Also, there are a number of animals here who will gladly attack you and can kill you. Mountain lions, black bears, grizzly bears, etc, etc, etc. You honestly DO have to be careful, especially when you’re alone. Especially tonight as I completely forgot to bring my bear spray.

 About 1/3 of the way up I come to a small repose, down a slight hill, so I stop for a second to admire the stars. It was all very peaceful. I can hear some crickets and pretty much nothing else. Now, for many people this wouldn’t be too creepy, but I’m pretty much by myself, the only human for miles in any direction. In those situations you always have a heightened sense of “fight or flight” because there is no help coming for you if something goes wrong. Suddenly, to my left I hear twigs breaking. I spin my head around (lights attached to my helmet) and I see nothing. My left is basically just a cliff.

Ok, so it was just a harmless animal. No harm done, I’ll just continue up the trail. However, at this point my stomach is in knots.
 
So I ride up the trail a bit further, enjoying the nothingness surrounding me. I come to a bit of the trail with lots of switchbacks. One right after another, about every 75 yards or so. As I’m about to reach a switchback turning to the left, I spy eyes up on a tree in the middle of the trail (to my left). They were about 6.5 feet off of the ground. I quite literally said to myself “oh it’s gotta be a squirrel, nothing else would be that high up.”
 
NOPE.
 
I turned the corner of the switchback and freaking 10 meters in front of me is a BULL MOOSE. Now, many of you may not think that is super scary, but moose are terrifying. They will attack you for no freaking reason, and they will tear you to shreds. They are more scary than black bears.

I just stopped. I stood there, watched as this moose TURNS IT’S MASSIVE HEAD AND BODY TOWARD ME. Completely blocking the trail. I could hear my heartbeat in my head, feel it in my hands gripping the handlebars bars. My feet were firmly planted on the ground. I had nowhere to go. The trail I had just come up was only a few feet BEHIND the moose, and I certainly couldn’t go forward… Not to mention that I heard something about a mile DOWN the trail, so I didn’t want to go that way… I briefly thought to myself two quick things.
 

1. Why the hell did I not bring my bear spray?
2. The best way to get away from a moose is to run downhill really fast while weaving in and out of trees (their antlers will get stuck.)

 So I’m sitting here, 10 meters from a bull moose, and we’re staring each other down. His glowing eyes imparting more and more fear every second. My stomach is in even MORE knots than it was. I was paralyzed with fear.
 
Then, he snorted. Breathed out really hard. I said to myself “FUCK THIS SHIT, time to leave.” Grabbed my bike by the top tube between my legs, pointed it down the hill and pedaled as hard and as fast as I could. Now, the trails here in the Rockies often have cliffs beside them, and this one was no exception. So I was flying down this 2 foot wide trail, in the pitch black, running from a freaking moose, with a death cliff to my left.
 
Lovely.
 
Fortunately, that went well. About a mile down the trail I looked back and no moose was following me. Thank goodness.

So then I was riding at a moderate pace, at this point thoroughly freaked out, vowing never to ride in the dark again. I’m heading to the point I stopped at on the way up, where I heard the noise the first time. After this point is a small, maybe half mile uphill, but it’s rather steep.
 
I’m fully aware that the last time I rode through this part there was some sort of animal in this area. I’m willing my bike not to get a flat tire or stop for any reason. Then, as I crest a small hill about to go up the steep half mile hill. I see it. At this point I say to myself “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”
 
It was not a “harmless” animal that I heard the first time. It was a fucking black bear.
 
This time it’s off to the side of the trail, about 15 meters, but I literally have nowhere else to go. There are no more trails. I can’t turn around. So I pedaled. I pedaled as hard as I could. Up this hill. Internally screaming “DON’T STOP, DON’T STOP, DON’T STOP, YOU’RE NOT TIRED, DON’T STOP, DON’T STOP, DON’T STOP”

I kept pedaling and never looked back. As I crested this hill I was fully aware that I had about 2000 feet of descending to do. My heart was pounding out of my chest, my legs were burning more than they’ve ever burned, my lungs had no more to give. Despite riding down the side of a mountain, I felt my heartbeat throughout my entire body the whole way. I could hear it in my ears, feel it in my feet. This trail was also a 1 way trail, so this direction was NOT made to descend. No berms, no nothing. I fall off the edge and I fall down a cliff. Every time I approach a switchback I dread pulling the brake lever for fear that something will catch up to me or short cut through the trees and attack me from the side. Every time I have to go around the switchback I sneak a peak back up the hill looking for glowing green eyes following me but I never once slowed down more than enough to keep me from dying. I swore I saw the eyes on the first switchback down the hill. After that I was afraid to look.

I eventually made it to my car. I rode up to it and parked behind it (relative to the trail.) I just sat there, in the dark, with my head on a swivel. Waiting for something to attack me. After a few minutes my heartbeat left my ears and I dismounted my bike. I could barely stand. My chest hurt, my knees were quite literally weak and shaking. My hands weren’t steady enough to undo the zipper on my pack to grab my keys and unlock the car. I had to force myself to take a few deep breaths just to get the bike on the rack and me in the car. I drove home that night with no radio, no windows, barely moving. Just staring forward at the road. Didn’t even bother to take my bike off the rack until the next morning.
 
It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced.
 
I haven’t ridden my bike alone at night in the mountains since then.
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