Real-Life Scary Stories 🕯️

Helloouuu :ghost::spider_web: it’s the month of October :jack_o_lantern:, days are getting shorter :bat: and colder and I thought we could huddle together and tell scary stories around our virtual fire.:smiling_imp::fire: Everybody put on a kettle of soothing tea cos this could keep you up! :skull_and_crossbones: Whoever has for a tale of real life scary stuff, share! :scream: It can be paranormal :japanese_ogre: or not, ghostly or burglary. :orthodox_cross::coffin: Only rules are it has to have happened to you or someone you know and trust and the story has to be trooohooohoooo! :candle::candle::skull:

It doesn’t fit my character to go first but I guess I have to get the ball rolling. I share an experience from a few years ago. I obviously lived to tell the tale and tried to write it out as true and best I could :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye::ghost::ghost:
a few years ago in our late 20s my boyfriend and I had booked two nights in a cheap walkers’ lodge in a tiny remote Scottish hamlet during one of our trips to the Highlands. we had planned to camp one night, stay one or two in the hostel, depending on weather, then camp some more. as it was late autumn and the weather forecast was wild we needed some accomodation to be flexible and safe. I won’t name the place but it was a tiny forgotten settlement as you’ll come across anywhere in rural Scotland, barely a few houses left and right and far between along a windy narrow road, with all sorts of rusty rubbish in their yards and with overgrown gardens, fallen in fences, half of them uninhabited. it was a couple of miles walk from the nearest train station, which is how we arrived there around noontime. we were carrrying extra luggage as we had spent a few days with boyfriend’s family in the city so we were looking to leave our city bags as we call them at the hostel and then set of with only our camping and walking gear into the mountains. the house was ancient, very large and looming looking, with a roof that stretched low down towards the ground like eyelids drawn down to sleep. the front garden was all torn up, someone was trying to unearth massive old trees and the roots were half exposed and reaching up into the air as if in agony, suffocating. a few large black tarpaulins were stretched out on the ground, covering up what we did not know. next to the house was a shed. as we approached, no one was to be seen, no doorbell, no phone number. we yelled hello etc, but nothing. we looked around the untidy garden and decided to just leave our stuff in the shed. this is not uncommon for rural accomodation amongst walkers in Scotland. everybody is pretty trusting and respectful usually. surprisingly, this shed was massive and new inside. someone had obviously had a vision. it was neatly stacked with vast amounts of chopped wood, there were sharp axes and clean tools, tidily arranged, it was almost homely. even decorated with a few animal heads as trophies, if you’re into that kinda thing. we left left our stuff, then made off.
on our way out of the village we encountered a lone walker with no gear, making his way back home speedily. against highland custom, when we passed each other this guy didn’t give a friendly greeting or seem willing to exchange a bit of small talk regarding conditions on the hills etc, as you’re wont to do in these situations. I remember my boyfriend asking him if he’s from the village, meaning to enquire about the bunkhouse, but the guys is visibly uncomfortable and draws away, resuming his walk abruptly.
Anyway, off we went. we spent a night so windy in the tent I woke up a few times with the entire tent flattened against our bodies. we had attempted to summit one mountain but it was useless as winds were as predicted upwards of 70mph, so we just spent a loud night outside basically. it was pretty grim.
walking back to the village next day coming up to evening, we are tired from the day spent on the other side of the glen, up and down a few hills in the rain. as we near the village, eager for a shower and some food, we notice a walker is quickly coming up behind us with no gear. he must have gone for a day trip and he has an impressive speed on him! at some point he overtakes us and we notice it’s the same guy we had seen the day prior. again, he gives no greeting or sign of recognition. he takes a left where the main path curves right to return to the village and quickly disappears in the tall grass on the backside of the houses and gardens. weirdo, we think.
we approach the bunkhouse, hoping to find someone there this time. as we stare around for any movement on the property, all of a sudden someone walks into view between the shed and the main house. a slender tall guy is intently, slowly walking from the left, already looking in our direction as if he was expentig to see us as he came further into the yard, and he is carrying an axe. it’s the lone walker. we had just seem him on the path a few minutes earlier. now he seems to have been here the whole time, chopping wood. so he mutters.

the guy introduces himself as “Tony” and very quickly it becomes clear, everything about Tony is off. he eyes are intently staring, but he has a slight squint. he is looking at me, not the boyfriend, the entire time we interact, but his squint makes it as if he is trying not to. his mouth is constantly contorted into a massive smile but his eyes remain cold. he is visibly uncomfortable talking with us, especially I seem to be an anomally for him. he makes a big effort to do things right, show us the house, where the rooms are etc, but is evidently bothered by the fact we are even there and is socially so awkward, unfriendly, intense and giving off creepy vibes, he makes your spine tingle. he makes us take of our mountain boots and gear outside so as not to dirty up the place. usually walkers’ accomodation have a wet room outside, where you can hang up and air your filthy stuff, but this guy’s didn’t, I think we had to leave our stuff in the tiny 3qm bathroom. I remember thinking how good I was wearing proper leggings underneath my waterproofs, seeing as I had to undress before entering. I don’t know how this would have worked had the place been busier.
he mentions several times how he had to turn on the hot water for our sake (did he shower cold?) and pointed out shower times to us, even though we were the only guests. there were two rooms full of bunk beds at the ground floor, divided from the common area with comfy old sofas and a fireplace, by heavy full size carpets hung up as divisions. this makes the place extremely dark, disorienting and a few times during the evening I attempt to go back and forth to find our host suddenly appearing on a sofa or preparing logs for a fire where he had not been before. he must have taken shortcuts through the carpet walls regularly and always when I was on the move, or he wouldn’t have startled me so often. he keeps staring intently at me, yet seeming displeased the whole time, almost angry, and very uncomfortable. he mentions he had taken over this hostel from his Dad, also Tony, who’d been very popular in the village. the subtext is, that he himself is not popular with the neighbours. he mentions he had an intense dislike for the village as a young man which is why he spent his life in the city (I don’t know which, the nearest is a while off). the house seems stuck in between Tony the Dad and Tony the son. it is cosy with old battered furniture and simple practical things that give comfort after long days on the hills - but the whole atmosphere is clammy and sour, moody and hostile.
Tony - insane smile, constantly scratching his arms, cold dead eyes fixated on me - sais: village people are crazy. he asks my boyfriend who’s a doctor about a chronic dermatological condition. my boyfriend can’t say he has heard of it. Tony half smiles half nods. he mentions again about the shower times. no boots in the rooms. by the way, the room. we sleep upstairs, Tony says. and he sleeps next door.
we are not located in the large open bunkroom, but he leads us up a windy narrow staircase that gets so tight at the top we can hardly fit our backpacks through. it has an Alice in Wonderland feel. at the very top is almost no landing but a door to a room with slanted walls, directly underneath the roof. this room feels like a trap. there is only one way out and that is via the stairs. we swallow hard and try to make the best of it.
during this whole introduction and time spent getting to know the house and Tony, an increasing feeling of danger has grown in me and I had become very aware of the remoteness of our location. it is late autumn and by now pitch black out. on our walk home we had seen many of the houses remained dark, not many neighbours around. we feel trapped and hopeless, yet unpleasantly alert. during dinner (we have lost our appetite) we wonder what Tony meant by “he sleeps next door”. then we discover a second staircase, much like the one that leads to our room, on the other side of the house. we don’t go up. in a vain attempt to negate our growing panic and to do something normal we listen to a record in the common room, my favourite Johnny Cash. I remember we hear “The Man comes around” from an album I had played hundreds of times at the ends of nightshifts to ease my overwrought nerves. “And I looked, and behold a pale horse / And his name that sat on him was death, and hell followed with him.”
but the record doesn’t work its charm this time. we are exhausted and feel oppressed, mentally wanting to retreat after a long day in the hills and all this weirdness we don’t know how to place and so we go up to our room, as uncomfortable as it makes us feel. as we get ready for bed, we notice a small wooden door set in the opposite wall of the room, the same colour as the wall, only about less than half a normal door size. as there are no other rooms off our staircase, and judging from where the window is directly above our bed, Tony’s room must be adjoining ours on the side of the tiny door, probably at the top of the other staircase that we saw. calling a room with no shared corridor “next door” strikes me extremely odd. unless he was thinking of this tiny door.
all we want is to leave. but there is nowhere to go in this forsaken village in the night. and if we leave, Tony will know we are onto his weirdness, his potential dangerousness, and he could find us in the wilderness, he could follow us. so we stay. but we don’t sleep. we lie there rigid, with our contact lenses in/glasses on nose, rucksacks packed, all our valuables on our bodies, boots next to the bed open ready to be laced up in a hurry. we discuss how we would escape: up onto the roof, then down from there. it’s doable. my boyfriend jams a chair underneath the doorknob and we loop the ropes of our ice axes around our wrists and … wait. our mobile phones have not had signal for two days now, which is typical for remote Scotland.
as I say, we don’t get much sleep that night. true enough, I remember hearing footsteps on the stairs a good long while after we “went to bed”, muffled as there is carpet everywhere. I wake my boyfriend up and we both lie there, absolutely fired up inside. at one point my boyfriend positions himself in front of the door, staring at the chair, expecting the door to move. but no one tries to enter. we don’t hear footsteps retreat, I don’t know if we fell asleep - or if Tony fell asleep on the stairs, I cannot be sure. in ragged sleep I dream of a huge stag standing before me, watching over me.

I don’t know the deranged mental state we are in the next day as we hurry from the hostel on to our day walk. due to bad weather we will have to stay another night and somehow, because nothing happened to us, we convince ourselves that we maybe overrreacted. maybe it’s not so bad. also other guests are expected at the hostel tonight.
outside the village there is a large white horse. he comes up to us and bites our rucksacks, looking for food. he follows us a while.
we spend another night, uneasy but less scared. Tony is nowhere to be seen. the other guests are two older guys who seem unblinking and weathered. Tony obviously doesn’t feel the need to give them the grand tour or chat with them about his skin condition. in fact we don’t see him again at all.

I swear I will never go back there and am still periodically checking the news up there for hostel murders. Boo!

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Omg I can feel the anxiety in this scary story and my heart was almost racing while I read it. I’m never going to hike or sleep in a hostel ever.

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I’ve got a short one.

I was a cleaning lady in our local school a few years ago, it’s a small school because it’s a small village. But it’s also an old school so a lot of today’s kids parents have been to school here. I haven’t because I’m raised in the neighbor village. The school has been rebuild a few times and for some odd reason they’ve kept the old sports class locker room and the janitors Locker room and sink in the basement in one of the buildings. It haven’t been used for years the locker rooms aren’t possible to even lock up and open anymore. But there’s a long stair leading to a creepy hallways with locked metal doors a zink and an old entrance door with a big window and windows next to it. The ceiling and the walls is in desperate need of renovation at the tiles is broken on a few places. Like picked from a ghost school or a horror movie.

Anyway it’s a part of the school and it gets dusty so it had to be cleaned, and when we start work early we start at 05.00 in the morning. I live in Sweden so it gets dark like pitch dark in the morning at that time most time of the year.

I hated to be down there and it was just and eerie feeling about it all. And cleaning down there knowing I was the only person in the building for a few hours more before the teachers and everyone is starting to come wasn’t really on my favorite list.

There’s as many scary stories about that basement as there’s school kids, and I doubt any of them are true. And the kids don’t have access to the stairs, they are locked behind a bar gate and the cleaning ladies is the only one with keys.

One of those dark mornings I had to go down there I turned on every lamp I could in the building but the lamp for the basement was oddly enough out of function. We’re not allowed to change light bulbs because that’s janitors work so I decided to wait until they came and cleaned it later. While cleaning all the other places in that building while waiting for the janitor I thought I heard noises from that basement but I shook it off as my wild imagination. The janitor came changed the light bulb and I cleaned the basement, wiping the glass windows carefully as usual.

Next day I was at the same place doing the same thing and once again the freaking light bulb for the basement seemed to be out of function. So I did just like the day before waiting for the janitor to come and help me. Still thought I heard noises like someone or God forbid something was opened those metal doors in the basement, but once again I shook it off as imagination.
Janitor came just like the day before and wasn’t impressed by the broken light bulb and thought it might have been some electrical issues somewhere. So he had me walking with him down to the eerie basement to check it out. We got down just to realize that the light bulb did work and the janitor thought I just pressed the wrong button to turn the lights one. Just before we went up he asked me if I didn’t wiped those glass windows and the glass door the day before. I was sure I did, but when looking at them I could see that the windows was completely dusty and that there was letters written in the dust. Not letters that made words or sentences just random letters like in a small child’s writing. I thought I might have forgotten to wipe the windows the day before so I did. We walked out of the eerie basement and carried on with our day.

Next day same freaking procedure, same freaking issue. No lights working in the basement and strange noises,and now I started to get scared for real. Janitor came, lights worked and the basement got cleaned, but I forced the janitor to stay down there while ai cleaned it.

Day 4 same building, same procedure, no lights in the basement, and strange louder noises. I felt a bit stupid calling the janitor once again so during lunch that day after cleaning the basement without issues I more or less forced him to come to work earlier the next day to see for himself that the light didn’t work in the morning and solve the lights and strange noise issues once and for all. Maybe it was some old electrical cord that was having problems, maybe it was some old pipeline or just whatever. Or maybe it was a ghost, I didn’t told the janitor about the ghost thing, I didn’t want him thinking I was crazy.

Friday came, and the no light in the creepy basement issue remaind, just like the strange noises. But this time I had my secret weapon, the janitor and his big flash light. We turned on every light in the building and went down to the basement with his big flashlight to see what the problem could be.

At the end of the hallway in the basement there’s a big metal door that leads to nowhere since they rebuilt the school long before my time there. And just as we went down the stairs the light from the flashlight fell right on the door and both of us could see two bright red handprints on that door like they where made in blood. I’m not sure I ever screamed like that in my entire life, and the janitor who was about my age and pretty new on the job got just as scared. We run upstairs like in panic to go and get my boss. Dropped the flashlight and forgot to lock the gate.

Unfortunately my boss had the day off so we couldn’t get a hold of her until Monday. We never went down to get the flashlight but when the daylight had come we went to lock the door so no kids would go there. And we spent the entire day working close to each other, wondering if the morning experience really happened.

New week started Monday came and I didn’t clean anything until the janitor arrived that morning. When my boss came I dragged her and the janitor down the basement so she could see the prints but they weren’t there. We got the flashlight and my boss thought it was just our imagination running wild. So I was ordered to clean as normal next morning. Luckily the janitor was gold so he showed up early with me that morning. And we didn’t went down to the basement until daylight had come, just to see that the hand prints and the dust letters was back we turned and ran out of the basement.

Once again I forced my boss down the stairs to see the handprints and the dust letters and in full daylight as the rational woman she was she could state that the prints was made with the same paint they use in arts class and that the “dust” was nothing else than a dust layer of powder paint. After some detective work she found out that it was the second janitor who had borrowed an other cleaning ladies keys down there to pull a prank on us because we where both new, but after that I made my boss change my cleaning rut so I didn’t had to go near that stair or basement anymore.

That was a few years ago and nowdays my kuds goes to school in that building so I have to oass the stairs and basement every day, and I can see the handprints mock me from the top of the stairs.

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Omg Sophia what a story!! :scream::scream: I swear I would have given up looong before those creepy handprints!! What a dick this second janitor, that kinda prank can scar people for life! But the first janitor truly is a hero and I’m glad he was there by your side for this creepy shit! Janitors!!
Gold star for the scary story! :star:

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He was definitely a jerk, but he doesn’t work there anymore (neither do I but that’s another story :joy:)
And yes the janitor in my age is just a really nice guy, if ir wasn’t for him I would probably have been given up long before.

I’m glad you liked it, I must confess that I do avoid basements when it’s no daylight, even to this day :blush:

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Beautiful picture and great story! You’re a really good story teller-you had me at the edge of my seat :] glad you made it out alive to tell the story. Did you ever see Tony again before you left? I was expecting you to say he was a ghost lol

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Me too! Like there was a plaque from 1812 or something, lol

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I’d have to pay him back, lol

Haha! Love it! My ghost story isn’t as intense as the two above. But, it has been imprinted in my mind for the last 26 years!

I was 23 years old and living in an old house in Japan. My husband at that time was military and was constantly going on the ship in Yokosuka. We had two bedrooms upstairs and everything else downstairs. I had two sons, about a year old and two years old. They were in the room right next to mine. In looking outside my bedroom door, I could see the glow of my neighbor’s hallway light through my hallway window. The houses were very close to each other.
I had put the boys down for the night and I went to bed with all the lights off. I heard a noise at my bedroom doorway. I opened my eyes and saw a man’s sillohette standing there. Since my neighbor’s light was behind him, I could make out the shoulders and build of a man. However, I couldn’t see his face because the light was behind him. I got startled and thought to myself, “oh it’s just Bob.” Sometimes he would have late night duty and crawled in bed, not turning on the lights to wake me or the boys.
THAT’S WHEN IT OCCURRED TO ME! BOB IS ON THE SHIP!!!
I gasped and jumped. I always kept a large kitchen knife in between my mattresses. And so I grabbed the knife ready to fight. I thought he was a burglar.
But the dark figure didn’t move. He stood for what seemed an eternity. He looked in the room at the boys as if he was checking in on them. Turned, and walked four steps down the stairs…I know four because I heard the"creek, thump, creek thump", four times. And then it just, disappeared
I laid frozen in bed praying that this person would take my purse and just leave. I waited intently for a noise. A door. A creak. Something. There was nothing. I finally got up out of bed and ran down the stairs. My purse was there. Everything was untouched. The doors and windows were securely locked.
I ran to the neighbors house and got him to do a “look over” in my house. His Japanese wife was very concerned and wanted me to tell her everything. I did and when I got to the four steps part, she froze and her face dropped. She said, “four is bad. Four is death. You had death in your house.” I said WHAT? She was insisting that it was a ghost. I went back to bed with the lights on.
Years later, I also watched a special show on Halloween about different ghosts. It talked about what is called"shadow people." OMG they showed one that was caught on camera and IT LOOKED EXACTLY LIKE THE ONE THAT HAD BEEN IN MY DOORWAY ALL THOSE YEARS AGO!
SO…
You never know when a ghost will appear in your bedroom doorway-BOO!

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Thank you @mleclaire! We did indeed not see him or speak to him again. Me might have caught a glimpse of him the second night, I don’t remember one hundred percent, but he kept his distance from us and the other two walkers, not like the night before when he’d show up everywhere unexpected. I had less the feeling he might be a ghost, more deranged axe murderer and potentially even impostor, I couldn’t shake the image of the “real” Tony lying gagged and bound somewhere in the basement. :scream: :speaking_head: This was one of my least good times in the Highlands for sure! First the in-laws, then this! :joy:

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:scream: This gave me chills, did you ever had someone there to check if it was a ghost? Or did any of you get tge history of that place?

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Oh gosh Sophia! I wouldn’t have known where to start with getting someone to check it out. This was on the early 90s so there was no internet. Everything was in Japanese so I wouldn’t have been able to do any research. We lived there for a few years and that was the only time anything like that happened! That’s kind of why I thought it was a real person at first. Crazy though huh? True story :heart:

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Ahhhh!!! Shadow man in the house! Noooo! Absolutely terrifying! Any idea what he wanted or what summons them?
Also your neighbour lady was so unhelpful! :scream::joy:

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Interesting enough, the show said that shadow people are just ghosts that like to"hang out." They are usually not a threat. I know that it scared the CRAP out of me at the time though! No, my neighbor didn’t help much :joy:

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Well if it happens any other time my people (gypsies) have something similar to a solution. Whenever you move to a new house or place. The first night you put out a cup of coffee,use your favorite cup or your finest china. Fill the cup with hot coffee before you go to bed, put out cream and sugar as you would do for a guest. A cookie to if you can afford it. And before you leave the kitchen or wherever you choose to set it up, you say that you are greatful to stay at that place. And if there’s anyone there with you or anyone who was there before you, you hope that you can live in peace and says You’re welcome to sit down for some coffee. Enjoy.

If everything is untouched in the morning you know you’re alone. If the cup is broken you need someone to come and clear the place, or do it yourself. And if anything has been moved, used but it’s tidy you have friendly company that’ll do you no harm.

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I’ve got about 20 Terry pratchet books on a shelf with all similar art work and in the middle is one black covered book, the hobbit. Every morning I would get up and the black book would have been turned around so the pages are facing outwards, I would presume it was my 5 year old step daughter and never told a person on the planet. My partner went to visit a medium around this time and I was at home on my own watching TV when suddenly I heard a noise, I turned around and about five pens had jumped out of a cup and lay on the floor, the cup was still upright, while I picked them up the springs in the sofa started squeaking as If someone was on them. When Laura got home I asked how the night went she said apparently there are a load of books in the house that all look the same apart from one and we have a little boy ghost in the house that likes to play with the black one. also we had a huge argument one night and she stormed off to bed and I thought yeah good ridence then suddenly this wooden African mask that we had on the wall for 10 years flew across the room so I quickly went to bed :grin:also we had company and we were all sat about chatting and a minute streak of lightening appeared in the living room and left behind what looked like a small piece of plastic, when my friend picked it up it jumped out of his hand with static. Also I got home from work not long ago and found Laura in the kitchen looking a bit concerned I asked if she was OK and she said have you only just got home, I’m like yeah why, apparently she was on her phone doing a video chat with her daughter and her daughter said oh I see Paul is home, Laura says no he’s still at work and her daughter says well mum don’t turn around then bc someone is behind you and going up your stairs, at this point their phones cut off and that’s when I got home.

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Sounds like you guys would need the medium to come and visit your place instead of your wife going away to visit the medium. Or you can try and burn some sage.

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it’s friendly enough so far, not sure who the man is but the boy is Laura’s guardian angel and we think it could be her brother who got killed in a car accident when young. I think that’s who threw the mask across the room to show me he was angry with me.

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These are a great read.
Thanks everyone for sharing.

I don’t have a story myself, though always loved this very short scary story…

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NOOOOOOO :scream::scream::scream: TERRIBLE! :star: gold star for the terribility even though not personal experience! Argh

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