Scared to Death: Creepy and Scary Stories that are Unexpectedly True

April 7, 2017

Demons, vampires, zombies… these terrible creatures are often featured in horror films and novels.

Their ghastly forms are often the stuff of nightmares, and most of us couldn’t imagine what would happen if we were to see these forms in real life.

But perhaps what is even more terrifying are things that happen in real life, scary true stories that occur to people when they least expect it.

Here are five accounts of scary true stories you wish weren’t real.

1) The Man in the House – Shadows in the Closet

An anonymous little girl was five years old when her parents had decided to separate.

She had her own room in her mother’s new, ground-floor apartment, but she preferred to sleep with her mom when she could.

It was a hot summer night, and the girl quickly fell asleep beside her mom, listening to the crickets outside the window that was open behind the headboard.

Hours later, the little girl woke up. The door to her bedroom was directly across from her mother’s and she noticed that her cat was sitting in the doorway. The little girl found this odd, as their cat usually slept in bed with them at night.

As she watched, the cat turned into her bedroom and meowed. Feeling odd, the little girl turned and woke her mother up, who promptly asked her what was wrong.

Both turned to look at the little girl’s bedroom and saw the silhouette of a man standing there.

The girl’s mother quickly picked her up and tossed her out of the open window, where she landed safely on the ground.

Seconds later, her mother crawled out of the window and began to scream for help, insisting that someone call 911.

When the police arrived, they could not find any signs of forced entry. They only saw that the front door had been unlocked, which the girl’s mother insisted she had chained shut before they had gone to sleep.

A few weeks later, the girl’s mother was cleaning the house when she entered the small closet where the water heater was. In the closet, she found a pair of gloves, gum wrappers, and a notebook full of names and pictures.

The man had been in the apartment and had waited in the closet until they had fallen asleep.

2) The Severed Head – A Christmas Story

Another young girl dealt with her parents’ separation when she was ten years old.

This girl decided to move in with her dad and was relieved to find that a twelve-year-old girl lived nearby with her single mother and two siblings.

While the girls never grew incredibly close, they wound up having the same circle of friends when they became teenagers.

One night, their mutual friend, Rob, was hanging out with the other girl and her younger brother at her mother’s house. The three teens were alone in the house at the time.

The girl’s mother had been a healthcare professional and had befriended an elderly lady through her work. The elderly lady once mentioned to her in an offhand way that her sister had been living in a mental institution but had been recently released.

That night the girl and her friend Rob were hanging out, they heard a knock on the front door. Rob was not supposed to be at the girl’s house at the time, and thinking it was her mother arriving home, rushed out the window right before the girl answered the door.

But it wasn’t the girl’s mother … it was the mentally ill sister of the elderly woman.

Months before her release, the elderly woman had spoken about her friendship with the girl’s mother to her sister. The mentally ill woman forced her way into the house and attacked the girl.

Her younger brother managed to sneak to the neighbor’s house and call the police, but they arrived too late. The mentally ill woman killed the girl, decapitated her, and left her body naked in the bathtub.

Afterward, she hid the girl’s head somewhere in the house.

Police later found the severed head amongst the wrapped Christmas presents under the tree. The girl who lived with her father was not allowed to attend the funeral.

3) The Visitor – Footsteps in the Snow

A young man was visiting his aunt one day when she told him about a horrific incident that had happened to her when her nephew was a few years younger.

One night she was home alone in the house when she thought she heard the front door open. She listened closely and could hear someone walking in the downstairs hallway.

Her husband had told her earlier that evening that he would not be home for a few more hours.

Worried, the man’s aunt slowly went downstairs to see who was there. Nobody seemed to be in the house, but when she looked outside, she saw footsteps leading up to the house, but not away from it.

When she returned to the downstairs hallway, she found an unfamiliar pair of shoes not far from the door.

Terrified, the young man’s aunt ran across the street to the neighbor’s house and contacted the police.

When the officers arrived, they searched the premises and found a homeless man hiding in a small storage room. Clutched in his hands was her husband’s shotgun.

Thankfully, her husband kept the ammunition in a separate location from the gun itself. The homeless man was promptly arrested.

4) The Ashtray – True Scary Stories You Can’t Unread

A few years ago, a woman lived in an apartment complex where she had several neighbors. One of her neighbors was a former state park ranger.

The man had been retired for a couple of years but had told the woman that when he had first gotten the job, a young boy had gone missing while on a camping trip.

The park rangers organized an elaborate search party, but nobody could find the boy, nor any clue as to what had happened.

A few years came and went when suddenly new evidence came to fruition. Part of the boy’s camping equipment had been found.

The rangers realized they had been searching in the wrong area of the forest the entire time. The woman’s neighbor began to search the forest during his off hours, hoping for more clues.

Just outside the state park, lived a very odd couple who lived in a small shack. One day, the park ranger had to visit them on unrelated business and was invited into their dilapidated, cluttered house.

While speaking with the couple, the park ranger noticed they had a unique-looking ashtray on their coffee table. Upon closer inspection, he realized that it was a small human skull.

The police got involved shortly afterward and an intense investigation into the couple began.

Forensic evidence proved that the skull belonged to the missing boy, but that he had not been killed by the couple.

The man told the police that he had been out walking in the forest when he noticed that his dogs began to bite at something on the ground. It was the boy, and he was already dead. Though it was clear by his state, that his death had been recent.

Rather than contact the police about the corpse, the man took the boy’s head, carefully removed his skin and tissue, and cut off the top of his skull so he could use it as an ashtray. The man later took police to the spot where he had found the boy’s remains.

5) The Phone Call – A Premonition of Death

Sometimes, some true scary stories do not involve an attack at all.

This terrifying true tale is of a woman who often experienced strange apparitions and premonitions. Her husband was at work one day when his wife called and told him to check on his friend, Danny.

She told her husband that he needed to call and ask him if he and his family were alright.

When her husband asked why he needed to call his friend, his wife replied that she had had a bad dream about them, but could not recall what had taken place in said dream.

After they hung up, her husband called his friend Danny and told him about his wife’s bad dream. Slightly amused, Danny told his friend to thank his wife for her concern, but that he and his family were just fine. When the woman’s husband called and told her this, she seemed disinclined to believe him.

The following day, Danny called his friend, clearly very upset. It turned out that a half hour after speaking with him about his wife’s dream, Danny’s uncle who lived in Florida had called him. His uncle informed him that Danny’s son had hung himself.

Scary True Stories Are Everywhere

Most horror movies these days are full of frightful monsters and camera tricks that make us leap out of our seats.

Unfortunately, some people experience horror in their real lives, from violent intruders to macabre intuition.

True scary stories happen all around the world. It is these types of experiences that make one realize that scary movies and novels are based on real events, not the other way around.

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