Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
Hey, fellow pandas! Quarantine is bleh, so let’s hear some true horror. Share your real-life haunting horror stories here! They can be personal experiences or friends' experiences. But please, do not post any fake stories or copy and paste someone else’s work.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
When my kids were little my oldest claimed they had an "imaginary friend" I've always been open to the super natural so I never dissuaded them. One night while lying in my bed (I could see the hall way from my bed) I saw this little girl peek out from my kids bedroom. She couldn't have been more than 6. She had a white night gown and short brown hair with a ribbon in it. (she looked like from the 1800's to very early 1900's and we lived in a historic part of town) she giggled but no sound came out but I heard it in my head. (that was weird enough right? but no there's more) She started to come out of the room when a very large shadow emerged from the living room (adjacent to my kid's room) looked like a large man no features, just a shadow. She looked visibly frightened and ran back in to the room. It literally took longer to type this out than the situation itself. The next day my daughter looked at me dead pan "You met "Sarah" Momma? I said "how did you know?" My daughter said, "Because she said she likes you, she likes that you protect us." Scared the shit out of me. Later on in the week I started to ask my husband if he had seen anything in the house. He said, "like the little girl?" I was like "You've SEEN her?" He was like "Yea but she won't leave the kids room it's like she's scared to come in here." (he was a very large man too so that makes sense.) To this day I think that "man" hurt that little girl. I eventually prayed and told "Sarah" that she had to go that her Momma was waiting for her and thanked her for being such a good friend to my kids. They never, and I never saw her again.
Final score:
20points
#2
2020.
Final score:
15points
#3
Happened to my husband (let's call him Joe)... told to me separately by him and on another occasion by his mother. It all happened at a well known raceground in the UK where Joe's mother cleaned at the old manor house between race events. Joe and the children of the other cleaners would play in the empty rooms while their parents worked but on one day in particular several odd events occurred. Firstly, the two dogs with them refused to go up the central staircase. It had never been a problem before. The boys all tried cajoling the dogs upwards but, no, the dogs refused to move. They stood hackles raised, looking up at nothing and growling. Confused, but more interested in playing, the boys just took the dogs upstairs via a back staircase and proceeded to play hide and seek in the old unused bedrooms.
Joe hid in one of the shabbier rooms, huddled on the floor beside the bed waiting to be found when a door to a cupboard in the bedroom suddenly slammed shut on its own. The slam was heard by all the boys and they panicked and fled down stairs to seek sanctuary with the ladies in the kitchen. Fussed over and fed tea and sandwiches everyone looked on in horror as a tea cup suddenly, inexplicably, flew off the table.
Final score:
11points
#4
These two stories happened to my mother, not me. Now, it would be worth noting that my mother and I don't believe in ghosts and angels and all that. Although, these stories scared the both of us.
When my mother was a teenager, she was in her room, on her bed, reading a book. But while she was reading she heard a female voice in her head telling her to get out of the room. My mother was freaked out but thought it was only her imagination so she ignored. About a minute or so passed by when she heard the same voice again, but this time, the voice yelled at her to get out of her room right now. This time, my mother complied and ran out of the room. Right as my mother got to her bedroom door, the light bulb above her bed exploded. the glass sprayed all over the bed and some even embedded themselves in the mattress. If she stayed in the bed for a second longer, she could have died.
The second story is:
One day when she was pregnant with my older brother, she was in the passenger seat while my father was driving. Although, she suddenly heard a calm (but stern) female voice talk to her in her head, telling her to be calm and to put the hood of her jacket over her head, and to tuck her hands in the sleeves of her jacket. Now, my mother recognized the voice as the same voice who saved her from the exploding light bulb, so she immediately complied. A few minutes passed when suddenly, the car drove over black ice, and my father lost control over the car. The car ended up flipping over a few times before coming to a stop. When my mother opened her eyes, she saw that there was glass absolutely everywhere, and that there was blood on her (my fathers blood). A woman saw the crash so she got out of the car to help my mother and father. The whole times, she stayed with my mother because she was obviously pregnant. A little later, EMS arrived and brought my parents to the hospital to see if they were alright.
There are 2 other freaky stories like this but I'm going to add them on another post.
Final score:
8points
#5
On Tuesday, November 8, 2016 I found out that Donald Trump was going to be the President.
Final score:
7points
#6
Once I walked into the bathroom in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. I reached for some toilet paper... AND THERE WAS NONE!!!
Final score:
7points
giraffescupcakesandlove 4 years ago
I'm so so sorry!! That's terrifying...how did you get through it?
#7
I was 13 and alone in the music annexe at my school which used to be the stables to the main building. I was messing around on the keyboard and suddenly I heard this clicking - like a metronome - so I stopped playing and listened. It grew in volume and clarity until it formed the sound of horseshoes and carriage wheels on cobblestones. I bricked it and bolted.
Final score:
6points
#8
My grandmother died when I was 5 and after she died my mom and I moved to her house.
When I was about 10 years old my mom and I sat on Christmas Eve and talked about my grandmother. My mom sat in her chair and I sat on the couch. Between us there was this dresser with a lamp on it. The lamp is one of those that lightens up a bit more every time you touch it and when touching it the fourth time it turns the light off.
So, we are sitting there and talking and suddenly the lamp turns itself on – none of us is touching it and it is too far from us to let us touch it. My mom says ‘Granny, turn it off please’ and bling, the light is off!
My face got white as a ghost and I just ran away from the couch. My mom was come, but several years later she told me, that she almost lost it but had to keep cool because I freaked out.
I still get goosebumps writing this as a 32-year old.
My mom still has the lamp and it never did anything like that again. You still have to touch it three times to turn up the light and the fourth time is shuts off.
Final score:
6points
Alex Bailey 4 years ago
I had one of those once and it happens. If you google it you'll see it's something that they are known for so, sorry, coincidence.
#9
I was staying at 3rd floor of a serviced apartment in mid levels Hong Kong for a period in 2017 and often used to hear the sounds of furniture being moved on 4th floor between 2am and 4am which used to wake me up. I complained to the conceirge but they said no one was libing on 5th floor coz apparently there was no 4th floor. One night around 3:15 am I woke up with the sound from my living room so I went to check it and found that my TV was turned on. I switched it off and went back to sleep in my bedroom. Around 3:35 am or something the TV in living room switched on again and some horror movie was playing on it. I was frustrated because my sleep was being disturbed so I pulled out all the plugs and went back to sleep. I woke up again around 4am coz i felt like someone was pacing in my living room. Now this jolted me properly out of my sleep and I switched on the bedside lamps, saw a shadow of a lanky man, I could not sleep now because I was still feeling the eerie presence in my living room and had this weird feeling of someone telling me to not close my eyes even for a second.
I was trying to rationalise and find a logic behind the events when around 4:20 am the desk phone in my living room started ringing. I ignored it hoping that whoever is calling will come to senses and will stop calling after all it was early morning but the phone kept ringing continously for 3-4 minutes without a single drop, so I gave up and tried to pick the call but the screen kept flashing unknown number and the phone kept ringing, even trying to disconnect the call did not work. I got irritated and removed the wires and battery and went to my room. I tried to use my personal phone to call the concierge to check if anyone else is facing any issues or if they could come and check my apartment but no network. I was going to my bed when there was a knock on the main door of my studio, I felt better thinking that someone from the concierge might came to check the ongoing issues but it was still around 4:30am so I thought to ask before opening the door. I called out the names of both the night duty personnel at the concierge but no one answered and the knocking got louder so I thought I would check through the key hole but weirdly there was no electricity in the lobby. I decided against opening the door and went to get a glass of water, as soon as I reached my kitchen there was loud banging on the kitchen balcony door. The weird thing is it was a small studio and it hardly took 10 seconds to reach the kitchen from the main door, however, the main door and the balcony door opened in different stairwells on opposite ends of the building. I ran back to my room and shut the door between my bedroom and living room and got in my bed.
The weird thing is after all this freak show suddenly my eyes started getting super heavy and i could not keep them open even when I was shit scared but then suddenly someone shouted and ordered me to not close my eyes in any event. I heard the same voice around 5:30 am telling me it's all ok now and I should sleep and I slept as if I that voice turned on my sleep switch.
Final score:
6points
#10
Okay, so I was at my sleepaway camp, and it was around the middle of the night. In my cabin, there were about 10 other girls and they were all sleeping. I had just woke up, like I sometimes do at night, and was about to fall back asleep when I saw a red light. It was sort of like a silhouette of a grown man, outlined in red. Our cabin had two doors, one on either side, and this shadowman was coming in through one of them. He didn't have any eyes or facial featured but I could swear he turned his head and stared right at me. I was frozen on the top bunk of my bed, not sure what to do, but then he RAN out of the other door. The thing was...he didn't open the door. He just went through it like a ghost.
A few days later, 2 other girls in my cabin saw it at night. One saw it crawl into one of the cubbies by her bed, which is way too small for a normal person to fit into, and then raise its finger to its mouth as if saying 'shhh'.
The last girl saw it when she was in the bathroom. She was looking in the mirror and then she saw it reflected behind her.
All of these happened at night.
Final score:
6points
#11
First of all, I don't believe in ghosts but have never been able to explain this one. As a teenager, I was with three friends, hanging round what we used to call the haunted house (it was abandoned in a regular street in the UK). One of my friends was brave enough to go up to the front door and talk through the letterbox. The other three of us stood on the pavement watching. All of a sudden, we noticed the door open slightly, but from the side of the hinges. The friend at the door didn't notice this, but we all ran away in fear. Even writing this aged 47, it sends shivers down my spine.
Final score:
5points
#12
Okay so, I got some juicy ones.
First story happened directly to my mother (it also concerns me), while the second story happened to both my mother and I.
First story is about how my mother went out shopping while my father took care of me (I was about 1.5 or 2 years old). While my mum was in the middle of shopping and about to pay for the items in one of the stores, she heard a female voice (the same female voice that was mentioned in another post). But this female voice was calm, yet stern, and it was in her head. This voice told her to go home right away because I was in danger. My (scared) mother, immediately dropped everything she was doing and drove home. When she arrived at the house, she saw me on my back struggling to breathe, and my father kneeling over me, panicking. I got rushed to the hospital where they found out I had asthma and a ton of allergies lol.
The second story that directly involved my mother and I is when we were camping with my older brother and father (we were staying in a lodge/small wooden house). My mother and I were sleeping in a separate room, and in the same bed. At about 2AM-ish, my mother slaps my body repeatedly and keeps calling my name in order to wake me up. I finally woke up enough to open my eyes. When I opened my eyes, I saw a really big and bright light about me, on the ceiling. The light just looked like a ceiling light that was turned on, when you have tears in your eyes (it was blurry but there was definitely a light). I remember asking why she turned on the lights, and then seeing the ball of light disappear. In the morning when I woke up, I looked up and saw that where wasn't (and never was) a ceiling light above the bed (or anywhere near the bed for that matter). Right as I noticed that, my mother told me that she woke up at 2AM and saw a bunch of little tiny lights (she said they reminded her of fireflies), moving around our heads on the ceiling. She also said some were flickering, but they were moving around the room for a good 3-5 minutes. But the part that was really freaky is that she said after they were moving everywhere, all the little lights moved towards each other and made a huge ball of light. She then said thats when I made noises and woke up. She also said that after there was a big ball of light, it slowly got smaller and smaller until it disappeared. Later that day, we realized that it was the one month anniversary of her father's (my grandfather's) death date. Writing this now, still sends chills down my spine
Final score:
5points
#13
when i was around 11 and my sister was just able to talk she would talk to the corner of the room when nothing was there and when we asked her about it she said: its morty like bat" then she would do this for the longest time until w decided to do the stupidest thing, we said if there really is a ghost in this house then he will make that light go off then a few seconds later the light stopped working. then a few nights later at around 3:00 am we heard a toy in the garage going off and it said: hi im morty want to be my friend?" we never saw that toy or bought it before. then a few years later we moved out and when we moved into our new house she said: oh no, Morty followed us" this still scares me to this day
Final score:
5points
#14
I was riding in the car with my mum and we were being directed by this GPS to my grandmother's house. It was a mostly main-roads drive (2 hours), but an hour in it had us pull down this little side road - in the night. We were following this other car that looked vaguely similar to ours. The road kept getting more and more broken up as we went down until we got to this dead end with a house and as we were turning around this woman in a red coat comes out and the car in front of us stopped, and a woman and her child get out, and the woman is looking more and more similar to my mum. They all sort of stopped moving and stared at us and we bolted back to the highway. I haven't seen that side street since.
Final score:
4points
#15
One time i was righting the cosplay game downstairs and i heard thump thump all the way up and down the stairs again and again then i heard bang bang on the door and heard a woman scream it sounded like she was also gargling tar while screaming i open the door and saw my cat sitting their yowling in pain. She was trying to catch a bee but it stung her.
Final score:
4points
#16
In second grade there was this one weird girl that I always feared/respected. Once we were playing basketball in the gym and she comes up to me and asks if she can have my basketball. I said no, because I was playing with it, she needed to wait. But this girl just keeps asking me like two or three times more, getting angrier, cause ya know, we were second graders. Normal, right? Except then she gets super close to me, like toe to toe in the middle of the gym. Staring me straight in the eyes without blinking she says, "Give. Me. The basketball." In these WEIRD low, menacing voice. I swear she hypnotized me. I seriously just went into a trance, stared back at her. and just slooowly reached out my arms and handed her the basketball. Zombie. Then this literal second grader grabs the ball and gives me this huge grin, skipping away calling; "Thanks!" I kind of woke up and thought 'hey.. that's not fair, is it´ But I didn't go after her. No one ever believes me but that's just one of the crazy stories about that girl. She was a witch. (idk not really a horror story but just freaking WEIRD)
Final score:
4points
#17
One time when my was very young, I was in my crib getting fussy, while my mother was in another room. My mother heard me so she was coming in the room where I was, but right as she entered the room, she saw the mobile turn on (it was off before and she saw it go from being off, to turning on). She automatically said "Stop it Dad, you're scaring me" in Italian (the language that my whole family speaks). The mobile immediately stopped when she said this, but heres the kicker, her father in law died recently before that happened. Shes still confused as to why the mobile stopped when she told her Dad to stop lol.
Final score:
4points
#18
There was this one night where I woke up around like 3:00 ish and I needed to use the restroom. So I got up out of bed and walked down the hall but something felt off. I don't really know how to describe it. It was like someone was watching you. I brushed it off as nothing but still felt a little unsettled. I finished in the bathroom and while I was about to turn off the light I saw something in the mirror out of the corner of my eye. I turned and briefly saw the reflection of a girl with long black hair covering most of her face. I booked it back to my room, locked the door, and tried to process what I had just saw. I was the only one in the house cuz my parents were gone and wouldn't be back till around noon that day. It could have been that I was just tired and seeing things but I won't forget that feeling of being watched and seeing that girl in the mirror.
Final score:
4points
#19
I was about 14, i was messing around with my friend and her dads golf cart we drove it down this dirt road near her house. a woman stepped out from behind a tree and scowled at us. she was wearing a red coat. we got real scared and drove back to her house, and when we went back down there out of curiosity 2 days later, we found a red plastic coat button and a smear of blood on a rock. we have never told anyone in case they thought we were crazy.
Final score:
3points
#20
oKAy so i'm sitting in am empty classroom with two of my friends and we're looking at the door on the other side of the class and the lock on the INSIDE keeps changing from locked to unlcoked. But we are the only people in there and we haven't touched the door.
Final score:
2points
#21
sometimes i'll hear a kind of whispery voice of a woman saying my name.
Final score:
2points
Chris Jones 4 years ago
I think there is a psychological explanation for this - remember reading something about it before.
#22
recently ive been seeing this black silouete out of the corner of my eye and it never hurts me or anything it just sits there and stares at me its like 3ft and the other day i heard it whispering something so im now staying within 1 inch of my father at all times
Final score:
2points
Kiss Army 4 years ago
I know this sounds weird... but I kept seeing a shadow out of the corner of my eye and I thought someone/something was sneaking up on me. It kept happening over and over... I thought I was going to crazy. Jump forward to an eye appointment, turns out I had a detached vitreous (this usually happens in the elderly but I was in my early 30s). Still happens all the time but since I know what it is, I have grown to be able to ignore it.
#23
So, I'll add my own. Me and my friend (we'll call her Abbie) were hanging out in my yard. We were talking about things that she found in the woods behind our houses, like a red balloon once (pretty normal) and a dead fox. Abbie saw the grass press down, like footprints, behind us. But there was nobody. We got a chill of cold. It was in the summer, mind you. Anyway, we saw birds fly out of the woods. My friend got scared and told me it was probably a coyote. (She doesn't like coyotes.) But then, we saw a shadowy figure run between two trees. It was tall, human-like and slightly hunched over, and it had horns on its head. My friend screamed "IT'S THE DEVIL" and ran off towards her house. I decided to go to the woods and investigate, but I didn't see anything. No one else ever believed me when I told them. So, I still don't know what it was, but I definitely saw it.
Final score:
2points
Up All Night 4 years ago
I guess she went from being scared of coyotes to being scared of the devil.
#24
My friend had a Ouija bored and he used it like a party trick one time when we were hanging out it spelled out my name. I was like HA HA so funny and the were mortified. his friend goes can i pray in your living room he goes sure as SOON as she finishes we herd a door shut and the power went out
Final score:
2points
#25
I was 11, house sitting for my neighbors the next day I came into the house all the mail I had put in the table was in different places.
Final score:
1point
#26
My friend always thought her house was haunted. One day I was at her place in the restroom. I could hear my friends talking in the other room, and no one else was home. While I was washing my hands, the door knob started turning repeatedly. I still have no explanation.
Final score:
1point
#27
When I was about 9, my friend and I saw what appeared to be a smoky figure coming out of my neighbors chimney. The chimney wasn't functional, it was only for show, so seeing the smoke come out of it was strange. After a couple of seconds, the smoke took the shape of a humanoid and scampered off into the night. Two weeks later, an ambulance pulled up to my neighbor's house in the middle of the night and took her away. A couple days later, she was dead. We never saw that figure again.
Final score:
1point
#28
I feel like I had a haunted teddy bear I slept with it for a little bit but whenever I woke up in the middle of the night the teddy bear was always sitting up and it freaked me out but it was always if I woke up at night not in the morning so... yeah..
Final score:
1point
#29
In the first grade, my class was doing some math when a ceiling tile started shaking, then we heard a quiet screech and it broke and fell to the floor. One girl yelled "ITS A GHOST" and that set off almost every body crying (except the teacher, who just looked annoyed that a ceiling tile broke) she then called the janitor, who was very old and JUST HAPPENED to never talk at all but occasionally made a weird choking sound. My friend was convinced he was a zombie. (I was in the bathroom at the time, I just heard the crack of the ceiling tile, and the teacher filled me in when I got back.)
Final score:
1point
#30
This was when I was 11 or 12. I was in my room drawing, when I heard a noise, sort of like a footstep. It was around 8 PM at the time, so it was pretty dark. Since my parents were home, I immediately assumed that it was one of them coming up the stairs. So, I went to go say hi, and opened my door. At the end of the hallway, there was a figure of a man that seemed to be around the same height as my dad. I thought that it was my dad, and reached out my hands to go hug him. My hands went through thin air, and what I thought was my dad was gone. My dad was sitting downstairs, reading a book. He was never upstairs. This never happened again after that night.
Final score:
1point
#31
Back when I was 21 and home for the winter from college, my parents and I went to a discount Entenmann's and Thomas' English muffins outlet. The cashier asked my mother if I was their child. He then told us that I looked exactly like his son and showed us a picture of him. Sure enough, he looked exactly like me--except for 3 differences. He was fourteen, I was female and he had been dead for a year. A coworker of his also agreed that I looked exactly like his son. I refused to go back to that store for a while and would constantly ask my parents if they had seen the "creepy" guy at the counter.
Final score:
0points
Up All Night 4 years ago
Is this creepy? Had the boy been alive, you wouldn't have been scared. Imagine the cashier's feelings when he saw you!
What do you think ?
MD Martinez 4 years ago
I used to see a shadow cat out of the corner of my eye when and animal was going to die when I was working at a vet office.
Apollo Ghosh 2 years ago
the scariest incident is when your mom surfs through your web browser history. XD
MD Martinez 4 years ago
I used to see a shadow cat out of the corner of my eye when and animal was going to die when I was working at a vet office.
Apollo Ghosh 2 years ago
the scariest incident is when your mom surfs through your web browser history. XD
Related on Bored Panda
