16-20 Creepiest Reader Stories
16. I was in Taiwan one year when I was younger, and had travelled to a busy night market (these are popular gatherings of food/shop stalls that usually operate in the evening). Nearby I spotted a sign for a netcafe in a 5-6 story tall building. Thinking I’d fire off some quick emails, I walked in the dark, small entrance of the building. The building was older and hasn’t been well maintained, but it’s not out of the ordinary in Taiwan. The entrance just had a dark hallway that led to a small elevator.
I pressed the elevator call button and entered. The elevator was uncharacteristically new compared to the building, but I didn’t think much of it. Like some Chinese/Taiwanese buildings, there wasn’t a fourth floor (it’s considered bad luck since “four” sounds like “death”), so it just read 1-2-3-5-6, which was usual. I looked for the floor the netcafe was at– 6th floor, and pressed the button. It lurched into action quietly and began the ascend. When it stopped, I figured it was my floor so I instinctively began to step out. Right before stepping out, however, the sight outside the elevator stopped me. It was pitch dark, only lit by the light in the elevator, it looked like it hasn’t been occupied for decades, with some random pieces of furniture covered with white cloth or similar. It was a small building, so each floor were single occupancy, so I could see pretty much see the entire floor from the elevator. Thinking I must have gotten the wrong floor, I checked the light (that indicates which floor you’re on). Strangely, there was nothing, none of the indicators were on, but the floor button to the netcafe was still lit so I know I haven’t gotten there yet. All this happened within a couple of seconds.
That’s when I noticed a figure moving in the distance of the floor– it was not very visible but I could make out what looks like a person dressed in some kind of gown, moving slowly towards the elevator, where I was. I was thoroughly creeped out, so I started pressing the close door button. As soon as I pressed it, the elevator light flickered off, and I am in pitch dark. I am this close to pissing my pants, and it’s actually kind of freaking me out thinking back to it. The lights flickered back on under a second and the door closed, the elevator jolted back to life. A few moments later it opened again to the netcafe.
I am beyond relieved at this point. I walked out immediately and sat down at a computer. After gathering my wits a bit, I walked over to the cashier’s desk and told them what I saw. The girl working there listened and her face turned a bit ashen, so I asked her if she heard of similar.
She told me that she’s never experienced it, but some coworkers and occasional customers have brought it up– basically, the building has 6 floors, and the fourth floor had a history. Apparently the floor used to be a hair salon of sorts, until one of the employees killed herself there for some reason. She slit her wrists over the hair wash station and died. The store continued operations despite stories of weird appearances– when customers got their hair rinsed the water would look a little red, like the customer was bleeding, little things like that, and a couple people reported seeing someone’s figure walking away in the mirror, but wouldn’t see anyone when they turned to check. Naturally, the business closed down a few months later.
The building owner tried to re-rent the place out, but never had any luck. Most businesses are quite superstitious, and no one wanted to rent the fourth floor after someone had died in it, even at a very cheap price. Finally, after dropping the price to nearly nothing, a stationary supplies store wanted to rent. During the renovations of the floor, however, several accidents would happen. Tools would end up in strange places, a mirror from the previous business shattered when no one was near it, and finally a worker had his hand jammed between the elevator doors when it closed on him unexpectedly. The workers refused to continue working and finally, the business left and the building owner finally gave up and shut down the floor. He then had the elevator company come in to replace the panel so that the elevator could not go to the fourth floor.
Let me repeat that– the elevator was programmed to never go to the fourth floor. It doesn’t even have a button. But for some reason, sometimes when people take the elevator, it would go to the fourth floor and the doors would open, and some, like myself, would see a figure walking around in the dark. – Posted by SMPX
17. Driving in the middle of nowhere in central New Mexico. On a dirt road that leads to an abandoned mine. We come upon a car (maybe a early 60’s Ford Fairlane). The car had US government license plates and I counted 11 antennas on it. We have to slow down to pass it and I look inside and I see two men dressed in thin lapel black suits with white shirts and thin black ties and regulation “high and tight” haircuts. The driver lifts a walkie talkie up and start saying something into it (the walkie talkie is very large).
We drive by in silence and just stare at them. Me and the driver don’t say anything to each other for a couple of minutes as we are quite stunned. Then we both start talking, “Did you see that?”, “Who do you think they are?”, “Why does he need a walkie talkie if they have all those antennas?”, “Didn’t they look like they are from the 60’s?”. After less than a mile we decide to turn around and maybe talk to them. We race back to where they were and they are no longer there. We decide to try and catch up to them and we drive like hell all the way back to town. We never saw them and there were no other side roads. – Posted by Anonymous
19. I was in middle school, my parents were out. I put in a new CD I hadn’t listen to yet. I fall asleep on the couch. I wake up to someone loudly whispering “There’s someone in your house” repeatedly. It was just one of those stupid “hidden” tracks on the CD that played after a half hour of silence, but I don’t think the cats ever recovered from the noises I made waking up to that not knowing where the noise was coming from. – Posted by Lilith
20. This just happened this summer. I was home alone and heard the door bell ring. Opened up to see a this man there holding a large square bag. He starts talking about how he’s an artist and is opening up a gallery soon and wanted to sell a couple painting for a lower price to drum up interest or whatever. I’m Canadian and über polite so I just nodded and let him open the bag and start showing me the painting. They were nice, couple landscapes, couple portraits… And then the nudes started. This went past nude art. First one was painted and was okay, then the second one seemed more photo realistic and depicted a very messed up orgy. Then it went through bestiality and gore and just got really intense and awful. The man just stood there flicking through the canvases and grinning at me. At one point he made a small step towards me and I just blurted out I didn’t have enough money to pay for anything and slammed the door. Checked a couple minutes later and he was still there. I shouted out from a window that I was gonna call the police and he left. – Posted by Nikki
21-25 Creepiest Reader Stories
21. I was 16 (a depressingly long time ago) and on GCSE study leave so I was home alone in the middle of the day. My family home is near a huge military base. I went into the kitchen to get a drink and suddenly hear the base’s siren start. The siren that signifies a major incident, i.e. nuclear attack. I’d recently watched “Threads”, so I almost wet myself in fear, ran and grabbed some food, water and blankets and shut myself in the tiny hallway that is the only room in the house without windows. I genuinely thought I was about to die all alone in a nuclear holocaust. Anyway, an hour or so later and the blast hadn’t come so I thought I’d risk crawling out, retrieved the phone and rang my mum at work. Turns out the base had notified everyone in the area that they’d be testing the siren and not to panic, mum had just forgotten to pass on the message. – Posted by Cin
22. Creepy and simply unsolved. I had a roommate in college, that I met a week prior to moving in thru a posting on one of the school boards. We met each others families and they helped move us in, we rented one side of a twin house with some stairs so the help was needed for the bedroom furniture. We had our own bedrooms, and we were the odd couple, she had a messy room with clothes, books, etc. everywhere, and I was simple. About a month in, she started complaining about having a tough time sleeping, something was keeping her up, and she had a few weird bruises and scraps on her back, we didn’t know where they came from, she didn’t have a boyfriend or anything, we were both nerds and studied or watch movies, no sports. Then one night, I came home from the library around 11pm. My roommate was home watching a movie. I said goodnight and went to bed.
Woke up at 7am for class. Walked by her room and her door was open. As I walked by I looked into her room as I walked by. Her entire room was empty. She was gone. No note. I called the cops, and they didn’t believe me that I had a roommate and left, even after showing the cops her parents checks they send for rent. I called her cell, disconnected. Called her parents, disconnected. Asked around campus, no record of her. To this day I have no idea how she moved all her stuff out between 11pm and 7am without me hearing anything and waking up (I’m a light sleeper) and as of 11 pm no one was in the house to help her.
To this day I can’t explain it, hence, its the creepiest thing that has ever happened in my life. I moved out a week later. – Posted by Ron
23. My sons were about 2 and 4 when their pet goldfish died. I attempted to use the situation as an opportunity to discuss death and mortality. After I finished my explanation, my four year looked up at me with his big, blue eyes and asked, “Mommy, someday, will you die?” My heart filled with love and a little sadness, knowing this was one of those pivotal moments when the first bit of childhood innocence was lost,and I told him yes, someday, mommy will die. “Good,” he said with a totally deadpan expression, and walked out of the room. Later when we were about to flush the fish, he asked if we could eat him instead. I said no, we don’t eat pets because we love them, and he said, “When you die, I’m going to eat you.” – Posted by J.H.
24. One night last year, around 3 in the morning, I wandered into my kitchen after watching NetFlix for a few hours.
I walk up to my sink that has a window above it. I glance up and look into my backyard and see a guy standing there, about 15 yards away. He looked to be a mid 30’s, semi balding white guy with a bright orange jacket. I freaked out and slowly backed away from the window. Luckily I left the light off, as my kitchen is fairly small and it was bright enough from the street lights outside and could maneuver around just fine, so he didn’t see me. I watched him for a good 10 minutes, my heart ready to pound out of my chest. It’s hard to describe, but he had this sort of 1,000 mile stare while looking at the ground a few feet in front of him. It was really weird.
Finally he started to pace back and forth, and after about 10 seconds he left and walked down my street out of site. I haven’t seen him since, but I make sure to lock all the doors and keep my pistol grip shotgun loaded near my bed. I wouldn’t be so freaked out if it were just me in the house, but my twin sister lives with me and takes the bus to work everyday. We work different schedules, and she is home by herself more often than not.
Oddly enough, a few days later I came home from work around 8 during a snow storm. I park in the back (driveway loops around my house into the back) and just as I’m getting out of my car I notice foot prints leading from the street and onto my deck, and back to the street again. About an inch of snow had formed into the prints, so whoever it was had been there about an hour before I got home. I asked my sister, and she hadn’t left the house since earlier in the day, so I knew it wasn’t her. Nothing like this has ever happened again. – Posted by William
25. Story my grandpa loves to tell. He lives alone, and was lying in bed one night with an uneasy feeling. He just felt like something was wrong. He’s very hard of hearing, and it was bedtime so obviously he didn’t have his hearing aids in. It was pitch-black dark, and a little windy in the small Georgia town so it had that eerie feel. Time passes and he felt more and more worried. At one point he felt like someone was in the room with him. He hollared out “Go on! Get!” and sinked down to bed. At this point, he could tell there was a face staring right at him, next to the bed. He pulled the covers up over his head and started praying for God to let him live through the night, absolutely terrified. About this time he heard the slobbery huff.
The bulldog he kept in the basement had somehow got out and was exploring the house. She was a good dog, he just kept her in the basement to keep her from tearing stuff up at night. To this day he claims he had to decide between strangling the dog and giving her a hug. – Posted by Wolf God
This just happened to me a few weeks ago and I’m still recovering. I knew it wasn’t safe to be a single female walking around downtown after dark, but I was out of options. The bus wasn’t working and I didn’t have the money for a cab. I don’t have friends or family to call that could come get me. I realize /now/ I could have called the cops for a ride home, but I didn’t know then. I was trying to keep to myself, sticking to lit areas and trying to keep track of the cars and people just in case. I was on a deserted street in between an office building and approaching a church. Suddenly, I was struck with this deep dread and everything was telling me to cross the street /immediately/. I sprinted across the street and kept going for quite a few blocks. Now, I hadn’t seen a soul and there wasn’t a car in sight. I made it back to my dorm safe and sound and worked on forgetting that night.
The next morning, I was at breakfast. There’s usually some news on but I don’t watch until a name caught my attention. They were talking about the same church and how there had been a shooting late the night before. A robbery gone wrong. I was gaping in shock. I think my Guardian Angel or whatever was trying to keep me safe. I don’t like to think about what might have happened if I’d kept walking without warning.