Everything looks different at night. Weird shadows make even the most innocuous landmarks suddenly unfamiliar, every voice or footstep can make you look over your shoulder, and even the knowledge that you’re walking alone is enough to make you shiver. Courtesy of Reddit, here are the scariest stories of people stumbling across the spooky and unnerving during their nighttime walks.


1. The lost toddler

During winter I was in a rural no cell service kind of area. Completely dark, no street lights nor anyone in sight. The temperature was low and it was snowing. I was walking my dog with a flashlight. Then I heard someone start screaming bloody murder. Flight or fight kicked in; it truly sounded like someone was being stabbed to death for what seemed like forever.

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What I found instead was beyond anything I expected. He was a 5-year-old boy wandering down the road all alone. All he was wearing were light flannel pants and a thin t-shirt. No shoes or hat. And screaming so loudly it echoed through the hills. I dropped my dog’s leash and walked up to him slowly; gently and repeatedly telling him that I’m a mom and that he’s going to be ok. I wrapped him into my arms and carried him to a neighbours home to warm him by the fire and call for help. We eventually found the parents, they’d gone out drinking and left the door unlocked.

BlueRaining

2. The mystery van

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I was walking home from a late-night gym session at 24hr fitness. A white van passed by me and slowed down. It then slowly took a right turn in front of me. A couple of minutes later I reach the turn and see the van stopped at the exit of a parking lot, facing back my way. It’s 4am: nothing else is going on and I’m creeped out. The van starts coasting forward slowly after I make the turn and I sprint across the street to a gas station and into this small dead-end water/air pump station and press my body against an area of the wall that the van can’t quite see me.

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It literally pulls into the air/water station and stops. I hear the engine running right next to me but they never get out of the van. I just stand there pressed against the wall until they pull out and drive around the gas station into the lot on the opposite side of the wall. I hear the van lingering for some time before it goes silent. Still, I wait a while longer before I leave and run the rest of the way home.

clark_kent25

3. Blonde on the run

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I worked the night shift for seven years. One night a young, thin blonde woman was walking down the street at two am with no pants or underwear on and a button-up shirt open. I tried to ask if she needed help but she just stared forward, slowly walking and staring. I called the police and they came and stood in front of her and she slowly walked into the cop’s hand and stopped.

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I didn’t stay because I had to go back to work. I still think about her and wonder what was going on. I tell myself that she was sleepwalking on sleeping pills or something, and that she wasn’t just assaulted and in complete shock. I’ll never know.

IndInka123

4. Bats on the way home

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I worked the night shift in Okinawa, Japan, and started walking to work because I didn’t have a car. I really enjoyed the walk, because it was a good way to wind down after work as the nights were cool and quiet and I could listen to my music without worrying about anyone else around.

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One night while walking home I heard some rustling in the jungle trees on the way home. The next thing I know all of the lights went black and all I heard and felt was a loud wooooosh coming right at my head. I screamed like a little girl, ran, and dropped my iPod. Once I made it past the trees I realized it was one of the giant bats that lived on Okinawa. It scared the heck out of me.

akroses161

5. Wrong place, wrong time

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I’m almost 100% sure I witnessed a kidnapping. I was going to get my mail late at night while living in an apartment complex and on the way back I noticed a woman in her pyjamas surrounded by a few men right by a car.

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There was an argument and it looked like they forced her in the car and drove off, afterwards I found her slipper nearby on the grass. I of course called the police and they came and I let them know what I saw but I never found out what actually happened.

kinetochore21

6. Sitting in the dark

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I was out for a late walk in the rain, which I always enjoy because it’s peaceful, smells great, is quiet and I never see anyone. I walked off this trail back into the road and saw a big pile of garbage under a tarp at the end of the cul de sac. I immediately got a creepy chill like “that could be a dead body or something and I’d never know” and it snapped me out of my calm walk.

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I picked up the pace, and about 500yds away there was a parked car with a guy sitting there. I got super creeped out at this point and changed my route back to the main road and hurried home. It later turned out that it was a dead body someone had dumped under that tarp, and it was under there for four days before someone investigated it. The guy in the car turned out to be just a random dude, totally unrelated to the body.

Marmoticon

7. Weekday stroll

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A couple of years ago, I was at the start of a typical weekday night stroll. I was living in an apartment complex in Florida at the time, so it was the only opportune time to do so, without being completely drenched. The exact moment I was crossing the sidewalk adjacent to the entrance of the said complex, I witnessed a middle-aged dude punch his wife/significant other in her face, in full view of me, and another passerby.

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The passerby called the cops and the dude was arrested. It wasn’t a scary situation to my own well being, but I did find the situation chilling for one, how nonchalant the guy was in assaulting his wife in public, and two, how both the abuser and the victim were pleading for the cops not to be called. It was domestic abuse so normalized, it happened in full public, without any second thought.

mediumsboi

8. Boyfriend to the rescue

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Many years ago my boyfriend and I decided to take a late night walk around his generally-safe neighborhood. We got a few steps past the driveway when a shirtless guy came running over with a hammer in one hand, and a machete in the other. My boyfriend stayed super calm and asked the man what was going on.

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Apparently, some man had just broken into his apartment and tried to kidnap his young daughter, so he was chasing him down to either shatter his fingers with the hammer or chop off his hands entirely with the machete, and he thought my boyfriend was possibly this man. My boyfriend gave me his car keys and told me to take myself home so I went and got his car and by the time I was backing out of the driveway, the man was screaming at my boyfriend, who was just standing there calmly with his hands in the air.

thismaybebadadvice

9. A squirrel outbreak

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There was an outbreak of rabies in a squirrel population in my neighbourhood during my senior year of high school. My boyfriend at the time lived about a 20-minute walk away and neither of us drove so we frequently had to walk through rabid squirrel territory.

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In the middle of the night hearing them make noises like something out of a zombie movie while skittering above you when it’s too dark to see them is horrifying. 0/10 would not recommend.

 

10. Taking the long way round

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In my countless hours of walking through dark paths and empty streets I only ever got freaked out once. I was in the last mile or so of a long walk home after a ten-hour shift. I wanted nothing but to drop in bed and fall asleep with no alarm set.

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My neighbourhood had multiple paths through small wooded areas that you could use as shortcuts. I was walking through one of those and about ten feet into the woods I heard someone whisper ‘Is that the guy?’ I noped out of there with no shame and ran the long and well-lit way home.

RaccoonCannon

11. A shock from the hedge

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It was about four am on a lonely street next to a public park with a hedge running its length. A deep, protracted scream from my left suddenly distracted me from the audiobook I was listening too and I removed my headphones. The scream swelled and was soon accompanied by fast-approaching footsteps which quickly overtook me on the other side of the hedge.

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I stopped just as a bare-chested man erupted out of the foliage about five feet in front of me. His face and neck were covered in what appeared to be white powder from his nose down. For a brief moment we locked eyes – me frozen still, him wide-eyed and still screaming – then he rushed past me; off down the road, into the darkness. I was so stunned I just stood there for a few minutes, listening to his receding footsteps and screams as they faded to nothing, before replacing my headphones and continuing on my way.

smartbluecat

12. Not asking for ID

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One of my old professors was a Florida Wildlife Officer. He would oftentimes be the only officer within a ten to 15-mile radius in the middle of the Everglades. He had some wild stories of things that he saw but the one that stuck out to me the most was when he told us about a time that he saw a truck in a road where it shouldn’t have been and let the guy off with a warning. He was somewhat new to the force and decided that he didn’t want to harass some guy fishing so he let him go.

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A few hours later he found the body of a woman in her early 20s further down the road. He contacted State/County Law Enforcement with a description of the guy and the tag numbers. The vehicle was found in Orlando months later abandoned and the owner was the dead lady they found in the Everglades. They never caught the guy driving the truck. The truck had not been reported as stolen and the lady was not reported as missing. He said he felt an immense amount of guilt after that because, he was trying to be a “cool” cop and didn’t ask the guy for ID or registration or anything, just told him he can’t be fishing there at that time and let him go on his way.

SuchRuin

13. A vanishing act

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In college, I would walk back from the library very late. One night I was walking back to my dorm and something told me to look up. On top of the parking garage, there was a person glaring over looking like they were about to jump.

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I had no clue what to do so I called the police. As soon as I looked back up they jumped to safety. I ran up the stairs to find them but couldn’t. The police never found them either.

rottenmilk

14. Not ratting out the neighbours

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I was walking the dog at night and when I got home, two shifty dudes were waiting outside my house. They asked if Hayley was inside. I said there was no Hayley in my home. They pushed for more, giving me a description of this Hayley. I said no again and offered to ask the local police since they weren’t from the area.

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They pretended to leave but actually waited in a car that didn’t belong on my street. Hayley was my next-door neighbour’s daughter. So I was pretty angry that my address had been used for some reason, but I wasn’t going to tell two random people where she lived either. I looked outside the window from upstairs in the dark, they were parked outside. They left after maybe half an hour.

Someone_Who_Cared

15. Playing chase

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I was walking home from my cousin’s house, who lived on the other side of the neighbourhood from me, right as dusk started. I was about seven or eight at the time, so I was thrilled to be by myself even if it was for a half-hour, but then I got a weird feeling that someone or something was watching me. I shrugged it off for a moment before I got completely terrified and started walking faster. Walking turned into a jog, and before soon I was running down the sidewalk, looking behind me to see if anything was chasing me.

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The third time I turned around, I saw a small shape about 80 feet away sprinting towards me. Of course, I freaked out and ran as fast I have ever run. Turning back around, I realized it was a Doberman with a collar following me. I think about that time and still, as an elementary kid not knowing what was chasing me, think it is easily the most scared I have ever been in my life.

FugginMilkshake

16. Halloween came early

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I always get up early and walk the dog while it’s still dark. Once, a block from my house I saw a ghoulish figure at roof level, with glowing eyes.

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It creeped the heck out of me. It turned out that my neighbour had decided to get an early start on Halloween decorations, and had some kind of flying zombie in his garden.

felixfelix

17. An ominous warning

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Over 25 years ago, I was walking in a park at night. It was pitch black in this park, with no lighting, other than the moon and the stars on a beautiful autumn night. I couldn’t see very well, but I knew the area and was walking along the road which ran parallel to a small river. The moonlight would bounce off the water, and all you would hear is the trickle from the slow running river and the slight breeze in the trees.

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I loved those walks. That was until one night, in the dead silence and pitch black, I distinctly heard a man’s voice out of the woods say very clearly: ‘Young girls shouldn’t go walking alone in the woods at night.” I froze. I looked in the direction of the voice and couldn’t see a thing so I ran home. That was the last evening walk I took in that park.

damnitarlene

18. Thirty pairs of eyes

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I’ll walk my dog at night and I always wear an LED headlamp, mostly so I can see any bear eyes glowing back at me. 20 feet down the ravine about half a mile from home one night, there were approximately 60 eyes glowing and blinking bank at me.

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I figured out that it was rabbits that were hidden due to undergrowth, but the eyes. I’m not going to lie, it got under my skin.

les196781

19. Out of a child’s nightmares

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I wasn’t walking, but I go to work at the crack of dawn and once on my way in, I drove past a dude in a full-on black trench coat and a black brimmed hat. It was the start of summer, so the attire wasn’t totally appropriate for the weather.

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It wasn’t totally scary until I thought of when my son was two or three, and how he used to talk about “the black man in the black hat” that used to visit him in his room at night.

JunieRya

20. A follower on the field trip

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Living in a city I used to drive out 20-30 miles into the country to do some astrophotography. As I’m driving out one night I see this guy walking at the side of the road with no lights, a few reflectors and a big backpack. I didn’t think much of it other than it being a little odd. Five miles later, I see the same guy walking again. I haven’t changed directions or turned, and I’ve been doing over 50mph. As I drove past he looked and waved at me. I was pretty spooked but I drove on.

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I get to my field in the middle of nowhere, park up and get the camera out, and turn off all the lights so my eyes adjust to the dark. All is going well, and for 30 minutes I’m content and starting to relax. Suddenly I hear a rustling near the hedge by the road. Crunching leaves, grass being kicked. It was footsteps. I immediately get a feeling of dread, like I was in severe danger and something bad was going to happen. I grab my camera, toss it in the car, get in, lock the doors and turn on the headlights. When I turn out of the field. I pass where I heard the noise and saw fresh footprints in the mud but no sign of anyone.

Rhavoreth

21. Hound of the Baskervilles

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I was walking one night in a pretty dark back road near my house at the time when glowing eyes on a round black body came bulleting at me. I shrieked like a child and felt super dumb when it turned out to be a big black labrador who got to my feet and rolled over wagging his tail and wiggling about.

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He belonged to someone in the neighbourhood who was taking him on a walk and ran from them when he saw me. He was a big fluffy boy who just wanted love I seriously felt so embarrassed but also had a laugh. So did his owner.

Divabatbrat69

22. Keep on the running shoes

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I was walking across the street back to my apartment building and halfway across the road, I saw a man come out of the bushes about half a block down. He was completely naked except for white running shoes. He started running directly at me. I ran towards my door and he ran towards me. As I got to the top of my stairs I started screaming for my partner to buzz the front door.

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I reached the door, and I could hear his breathing and footsteps behind me. The door buzzed and I literally slammed the front building door shut as he hit it. I watched from the window as he went back into a bush while I called 911. It became quite humorous, while safely in my apartment and watching five police officers tackling this naked man (except for the white runners!) in a bush. It could have been worse but what a seriously weird experience.

sidnie

23. Out of canine character

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My dog is a 14-kilo cockapoo, really friendly and loves getting pets from everyone he meets. We were coming out of a dimly lit lane that ran behind a local school and this older guy approached from off the path and is trying to chat. He starts saying “oh that’s a nice dog, can I pet him?”

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The dude reaches a hand out and I just hear this very loud deep primal growl which rises to a rasping snarl. I look at my pup and just see the light reflecting off his eyes and his teeth which are fully out (his coat is pure black and matte rather than shiny, so this is all you could see of him) I’ve never seen him like this ever and he’s all of a sudden firing out the scary big dog noises. The guy backs off so I’m just like “I don’t think he likes you” and he walked off at a brisk pace.

sheeptopod

24. Followed all the way home

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One time I was walking around my relatively safe neighbourhood with two of my friends after midnight. This loud red truck speeds by us, which is normal for the road we were on. Then a few minutes later the same red truck drives by the opposite way going much slower. Again just a couple of minutes later he drives by but this time stops a hundred or so feet away from us and just sits there. Realizing that this is not normal we booked it through the yard to the next street over.

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For the next 20 or so minutes we see this truck creeping up and down the neighbourhood while we hid behind some bushes and when we finally thought he was gone, we booked it to my house. He turned the corner onto my road just as we were about to open my front door.

Mattyb584

25. Weirdly large walking stick

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One night, I’ve had my noise-cancelling headphones on as always, it was freezing weather and I looked up and a man was walking towards me. He had a spring in his step almost as if he was also listening to music. As he got closer, I realized he was holding a giant wooden stick. It was way taller than him, around eight feet tall. It’s was nearly the thickness of a lamppost. Either it was hollow or else he was immensely strong.

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I just found it so bizarre and panic-inducing, I turned on my phone torch. That is when he noticed me, and he got wide-eyed and stopped dead. Then he just did an almost military-esque 180-degree turn and walked in the direction he came from.

JulyKai

26. Joining the game

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Back in Mexico when I was around ten years old, I and my friends used to play hide and go seek out in the street late at night. One night we had been playing, and it was my turn to hide. When my friend started counting we all took off running, and as I turned the corner I could hear someone running behind me, so I looked and I saw my friend following me, and like 15 yards behind him, there was this “white light” heading our direction.

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It was floating and it was like five feet tall. As soon as I saw that I ran even faster straight to my house yelling “I’m done I’m going home”! The next day I asked that friend if he saw it too and he sure did.

HoneeNutCheerios

27. Procession of torches

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My brother and I were working as deckhands on my father’s cray boat, just cruising up the West Coast of Tasmania. It had rough seas but good fishing because recreational fishermen can’t get there. We’d taken a dinghy and gone on-shore to shake off our sea legs and explore a bit. The afternoon turned into dusk and we came across this weird clearing with a flat stone slab in the middle, stones around the outside, weird things kind of scattered around and hanging from trees.

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My brother grabs my shoulder and spins me around and he’s just pointing at this not-too-distant hill. There are torches lighting up, like flaming torches out of a horror movie. We stood there and watched until the torches started to snake towards us and then we heard a noise. There was a guy coming through the bush and he seemed as startled to see us as we were to see him. He started saying something angry but we just turned and bolted back to the beach.

BeetDaggerAlpha

28. Ghost train

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It was actually a sound. I was walking along a school field towards home around seven at night after work. It was already getting dark and suddenly I heard a very loud screeching/metallic noise. I slammed my hands over my ears and jumped in fear.

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It sounded like a horrible old train barreling down some tracks squealing the brakes. But there were no roads or trains around. There were no cars, no nothing. I ran home.

Royalchariot

29. Peek-a-boo

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I used to run at like two or three in the morning, and one time I was taking a rest on the swings in the park and I swear I saw someone – like a dark, shadowy someone – watching me from around a tree. Like one hand wrapped around the tree, and the head and shoulders coming into view periodically as they peeped at me.

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I just sat there for a long time, I was totally terrified because I couldn’t tell if it was a real person or my eyes playing tricks on me. I was very ill at the time and I’d hide in my room all day and then make myself run at night. There’s a high likelihood I was delirious or my eyes were playing tricks on me but I’ll never really know if I was hallucinating,

Ichbindertod

30. Waiting in the fog

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I was leaving a friends house at two am, dead sober and not tired. I jumped on my motorbike and decided to take the short way home which is normally ten minutes. I remember seeing the road covered in fog… and then I was home. I walked inside to see my mum looking at me all worried because I had apparently sat on my bike for 20 minutes in the driveway.

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and she thought I was texting but got a different angle and realised I was just sitting there with my helmet on. After hearing this I checked the time and it was almost six am, and all my clothes and my phone were wet as if I’d been sitting in heavy rain.

-CuriosityBot-

31. Who watches the watchers?

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I once saw a guy hiding behind a dumpster watching this young woman that was oblivious to his presence. She was in a secluded and fairly dark area just yapping away on her phone. The guy was definitely a complete creep.

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I was passing by on my way to get some food, and I didn’t say anything to either of them. I regret not saying anything. I passed by again about ten minutes later and they were both gone. I did check the news for any missing women, and I did not see anything. These days, I would have said something to both of them.

Meows_And_Purs

32. Not exactly an animal

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When I was in my early 20s I used to go jogging at midnight around a medium-sized lake after work. The place was in the middle of the city so it wasn’t inherently scary. One night I smelt a dead animal in one spot.

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Over the course of two weeks, the smell got worse and worse every night until I actually had to start crossing the street in that section. A few days later I’m watching the nightly news and apparently that day they had found a missing woman dead and decomposing right at the spot. I stopped jogging there at night.

deezwalnuts

33. A second set of footsteps

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I live out in the country, with more woods and fields around me than houses. There are several dirt paths through the woods that farmers use for their tractors and all during the day. I like to run on these paths because it’s usually quiet and no traffic, unlike the road. During the hottest part of the summer, I run at night because it’s cooler outside.

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So one night, it had rained during the day, so all the tracks on the path were gone. I was out running around midnight. I had an uneasy feeling but didn’t see anything. But then I circled around and on my second pass down a particular way, I saw my footprints, but then I saw another set of prints, bigger than mine, that hadn’t been there before. Then I saw they made the turn the same way I had earlier.

VictoriaEuphoria09

34. A criminal retreat

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Not walking, but driving somewhat late at night once through Hollywood I saw four or five men in ski masks with AK-47 assault rifles run out of the side door of a building, then around the corner into another door of the same building.

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I immediately called 911 who had me wait at the scene while they investigated. They called me back and let me know that it was actually just a live, interactive audience-style production of Point Break. Oops.

Nikkipickle

35. Spotting your doppelgänger

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It was quite surreal but I saw someone who could’ve been my doppelgänger. He was just walking away after seeing me. It was strange because I have a pretty unique look so it’s unusual for me to chance on someone similar looking.

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I have long hair and some very specific looking tattoos. He looked exactly the same height and build. Had a hoodie on that, while not super unique, had the same white trim line as mine. I never saw him again, and I’ve never come across anyone else that looks like me since.

Long-Sleeves

36. A litter of sewer puppies

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I was a 20-year-old American girl on study abroad. All of a sudden, I saw a giant rat climb out from a sewer. It was bigger than I knew rats could even be, and bigger than the biggest rat depicted in any movies or books that I’d come across. It was about the size of a small dog. Then, out from the same sewer grate, another gigantic rat. And another. And another. About five or six dirty rats were all climbing out of the same sewer and I was about to have to face them all on my own.

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I was terrified and I knew no one would ever believe me, but there was no way to get away from them or change direction. So, I pull out my phone to try and use the flashlight to scare them off. I direct the light at them and every single one looked right at me. They’re dark and dirty and now they were running directly at me. But wait! I was wrong! They weren’t rats at all but a whole litter of dirty puppies that had been hiding in the sewer together. Still gross but way cuter and less scary than expected.

mcnearlm

37. A rustle in the bushes

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I was staying at a friend’s place in the woods, and I walked out by the river and thought it would be nice. But my phone died and the light went out, and suddenly it was just pitch black and there I was at the side of a river.

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I could hear something in the bushes, and then suddenly there was this cracking sound of what I thought to be a big branch snapping. I turned around and some huge bird was sweeping by. Maybe a turkey vulture or just a huge owl. Anyway, I thought I was going to die. I ran back up a hill and into the house.

danieltkessler

38. An absence of deer

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What creeped me out was what I didn’t see. We were in Montana just north of Yellowstone, staying in a cabin in the middle of nowhere on a former ranch. We misjudged our hike and ended up coming back right at dusk. We were a little nervous, but to reassure each other I reminded myself and my husband that as long as we saw the usual 5,000 deer on the way to our cabin we were probably okay.

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Every night there were tons of deer everywhere on the ranch who really weren’t scared of us at all since the owners didn’t allow hunting, but that night there was not a single deer. We didn’t hear or see any animals at all, when every other night we’d seen at least four or five deer, possums, and a very cute skunk just from our porch. It was nerve-wracking as heck, but we kept our bear spray ready, talked loudly, and walked at a steady pace. The owners called us the next day to warn us to be careful after dark because a cougar had been sighted at a neighbouring farm.

PM_ME_YOUR_KNITTING

39. A flaming bible reading

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The worst thing I ever saw was in Seattle. I was walking down the street under an overpass in an industrial district and a homeless woman asked if I could buy her a beer since she didn’t have any ID. I bought her a 40, talked to her about her daughters, watched her smoke some substance, all in about two minutes. She started reading to me from a lightly singed Bible, about the devil specifically at which point I was looking for a quick and polite exit.

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At which point three men rode by with a gallon jug, and doused her tent in something, maybe gasoline, perhaps turpentine or kerosene, I really didn’t want to stick around to find out. It lit her tent on fire and she ran into the burning tent. I’ll never forget watching her run out screaming and crying, holding a duffel bag, her white coat completely engulfed in flames.

getThatManAThrow

40. A woodland companion

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I once took my dog on a walk down a well-known path through the woods at ten pm. I went late so we wouldn’t run into anybody, but about a mile in my dog stopped in her tracks. She’s a scaredy-cat so I didn’t think much of it. In the illumination of my red headlamp, I saw what looked like a person about ten feet in front of me. I kept walking and sure enough, there was a person. An old lady wearing sweatpants and a windbreaker was sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth muttering to herself and cradling what looked like a towel. I thought it was pretty weird, but didn’t think much of it.

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My dog and I went along for a little less than a mile to our turnaround point and began walking back. Within a minute there was this same woman, on the opposite side of the trail doing the same thing. At this point, I realized she had been following us since we passed her the first time. At this point, my dog and I are just short of two miles in down this trail, and I always brought my handgun with me so I felt fairly safe, but still. There was something in the back of my mind that was very on edge about this whole situation. I kept looking over my shoulder on the walk back, and never saw her, but I could hear her. She never came close to us and never spoke to me.

itshima

41. The disappearing man

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I was hanging out with a friend one day and lost track of time, when night fell I got on my bike to ride home and about halfway home I saw a figure standing under a streetlamp.

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Being a teenager I said screw that and went to turn around until I realized I was already too far to turn back, so I turned back around to brave the night and the figure was gone. There was no way he could have run off in that time without me seeing him, so needless to say I went home as fast as I could.

Xandaman7

42. Interrupting a raccoon meeting

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I was out jogging in our local junior college parking lot and ran into a family of raccoons. There had to be more than six of them and I didn’t notice them until I was about five feet away, since it was dark and my eyesight is not the best.

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When they noticed that I was looking they all stood up at the same time and raised their arms. I didn’t want to stick around while they were doing that so I minded my own business and continued on my jog. Their hands were so similar to kids hands.

The5thBeatle82

43. The creepiest couple

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One morning I went for a long run. About two miles in along a sidewalk out in the middle of nowhere next to a cow field I saw two individuals, a male and female fully dressed in what I would describe as fancy/couture clothing standing on the sidewalk. The man had no eyebrows and was wearing sunglasses while the woman stared at me with a look I can only describe as Lady Gaga in American Horror Story. It was completely dark minus a small light above the cow field about 20 yards away.

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They didn’t say a word, and they didn’t move when I was running towards them. They were just staring at me without moving a single facial muscle. I immediately ran to the other side of the street and ran as hard as I could. As I ran past them they both turned their torsos with the exact same facial expressions in unison. Both of them had this weird smile on their faces, almost like they knew who I was. It almost felt like they were analyzing me, or as if their eyes were seeing through me.

ThatsHim

44. A song for no-one

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I was walking near some farmland and heard someone singing to themselves, it sounded like it was a woman’s voice coming from one of the fields to my left. I couldn’t make out the words but it was like an opera song. They would sing two lines then do two long aaaahs. As I carried on walking they kept singing, then suddenly in the middle of an aah they abruptly stopped singing and said in a normal, clear voice “I see youuuu” and then silence.

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The singing didn’t start again, and I was so freaked out I couldn’t move for a second but then I came to and started walking quickly towards the end of the lane. As I turned the corner they started singing again, picking up where they left off in the middle of the aaaah.

Chaoyu

45. Held at (water) gunpoint

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My dad was a retired cop turned social worker, very good at defusing situations, so when a dude confronted us with a pistol and demanded my dad’s money at night he was very calm. He just frowned, squinted at the gun and exclaimed in an indignant voice “Did you spray paint a water pistol?!”

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The dude literally blustered a corny “N-no! It’s real!” and my dad said: “I can still smell the paint fumes, idiot! Get the heck out of here, be glad I’m not callin’ the cops!”

The5Virtues

46. The woman in black

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I was walking home on my own, just about halfway across town, when I passed by the church near my house. A woman in all black, whose face I can’t even see, walks up slowly and sits on the church steps.

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She folds her hands, not in a praying position but just clasped together, and starts talking to herself, loud enough for me to hear from across the street. She then gets up, starts pacing up and down the sidewalk, and I speedrun the last maybe 300 feet to my house.

kanzaniko

47. An extra playmate

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Back in high school my buddy and I were walking to another friend’s house around midnight. We lived in this tiny town and to get to my friend’s house we had to walk across a massive field with short grass, about two football fields in length. The far end of the field was backlit by a street. As we were just entering the field we saw the shadow of a human figure stand up at the far end of the field.

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We just thought it was our friend coming out to meet us until we saw the shadow turn and look directly at us. It then just dropped and started sprinting on all fours directly at us. I’m thinking I must be going crazy and seeing things but my buddy grabs my arm and points telling me to run away. We both sprint out of the field and across the street as far and as fast as we could possibly go. To this day I have no idea what was chasing us or if I really saw it, but my buddy remembers the exact same details the exact same way.

NW95

48. Stumbling on a crime scene

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I don’t personally feel particularly unsafe walking alone at night, which is helpful because the first two years I lived in Los Angeles, I didn’t have a car so I had to rely on public transportation. The first month I lived in Hollywood, I was getting off the last Red Line train at Hollywood at like two am and saw a guy who’d just been hurt bleeding out on the sidewalk in front of the Forever 21 near the corner.

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The blood was running down the stairs on the sidewalk towards the street and a cop was just standing there all nonchalant as this dude cried into the lap of someone trying to comfort him. I wish I knew what happened to him, but when I tried looking it up, there were no reports of anything and they’d just hosed off the sidewalk in the night for the morning tourists. It’s like it never happened.

pourthebubbly

49. Mystery beast

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I was out longboarding late at night on a newly paved backroad. It was a trip I’d made a dozen times. Something about cruising under the stars and listening to some vapourwave or sad piano music is magical, especially after a drink.

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Anyway, I was cruising down this road, when my Bluetooth headphones disconnected. Right as they do I hear what sounds like panting and a tree branch break on the side of the road. My lungs turn to ice, the hair on the back of my neck stands up, and I hop off my board and sprint so fast in the opposite direction that I screw up something in my foot.

TheGentlemanBeast

50. Leopard on the run

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2 years ago I was living in north Mumbai, near the national park area. I was 15 back then so my mom and dad didn’t usually allow me to go for late-night walks since I’m a kid but I somehow convinced them to go for a walk provided I’d stay in the society premises. I actually had to meet a friend who stayed 350m from my house but in a different society. No worries right? The locality where we lived was pretty safe for 11 at night and I wasn’t scared of anyone since I was quite tall for Mumbai standards (6’1 and 82kgs). So I go out to meet my friend 350m from my house and I see a big animal with a huge tail some 100m away from me on my way to her house.

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All my courage left my 15 yr old and I was terrified. I couldn’t make out what animal it was but I surely knew that it was some wild animal. There were many cars parked around so I could hide behind them but I ran back to my society premises coz I was scared. I later called my friend that I can’t visit her coz of a beast. The next day, the newspaper had a small section about a leopard coming out the forest reserve area and roaming into the urban complexes.

itsmechinz

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