17 people share stories of the scariest thing they've ever experienced.

Please enjoy these hauntingly true stories compiled from Reddit, in response to this question:

'What is the scariest, creepiest or most unsettling experience of your life?'

1.) From MonkeyCube:

On a way to a camping trip, I passed by an old, painted up car with decorations of muppets and stuff on it. Obviously owned by a crazy person who couldn't drive over 50mph. Without stopping, we passed the same car 40 minutes later.

2.) From nehala:

I was visiting my hometown and decided to pick up my old high school friend from his house and take him to dinner and a drink to catch up. He is kinda stressed and tells me that his ex, with whom he had broken up with over 2 years prior, has been stalking him and harassing him.

I drive him home afterwards, and it starts to drizzle. As I drop him off at his house (the neighborhood was dark and quiet by now), we both notice a bag tied to my side view mirror...it was likely attached when we were at the restaurant. We open it to see a poorly taken photo of a tree taken at night with flash.

There was a brief letter, obviously written from his ex, that said: 'I buried our first love letter under this tree years ago. This tree is growing from our love.' I made sure my friend got into his house all right and got the heck out of there.

3.) From judgeymcjudgerton:

15 years old. I had just got home from work, so I went to my bedroom to change out of my work clothes and get ready for bed. I'm in the middle of undressing when I look to my bedroom window to catch my reflection... and I see a man's face. I dropped to the floor and turned off the lights, scrambling to get dressed, still watching the window.

The face is gone, but I'm still watching, then... a f**king camera. No face, just a camera pointed at me sitting on the floor. I bolt from my room and tell my mom and brother. My brother went outside, and our ladder from the backyard was lying there. But nobody around. Couldn't sleep for a year after that, just stared at that window.

4.) From Nick357:

I was watching scary movies and I got hungry so I decided to go out for a late night Taco Bell run. I lived alone at the time so it was quite a shock as when I opened the door a hand was reaching in after me! I slammed the door on the offending arm and ran and grabbed a butcher knife.

After closing all the blinds and sitting in the dark for an hour I worked up the nerve to look outside. I was shocked to find a bunch of Chinese food menus for a new restaurant scattered all over the ground.

5.) From AGKontis:

My brother and I were probably about 7 and 5, respectively. We used to wake up every weekend and play computer games before my parents woke up. One day, we turned on the computer, and got an eerie message that was directed to us, it said:

'Hello Kid A and Kid B, this is your computer talking and I. AM. ALIVEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Do not run and tell your parents, they cannot help you now!!!' Turns out my dad had programmed the computer to say that upon start up.n This was mid 90s.

6.) From 386519B:

When I was a teen I worked at a cable access studio and made mini movies. My neighbors gave me their father's old video camera. They told me he never used it but it didn't seem to work anymore and had a tape jammed in it. I fixed it up and on the tape was hours of him driving around at night and filming people through their windows.

Nothing sexual was on it but there is something unsettling about seeing peeping tom footage of a guy eating dinner with his family or over 20 minutes of some girls dancing around in their room.

7.) From WybieLovat:

When I was around 16 my rapidly growing family finally moved from the house I had spent my entire life in. As you would expect, we spent a lot of time fondly remembering things we used to do in the house as we were packing everything up. At some point I decided to go into the downstairs closet with a flashlight and read, something I used to do when I was younger to get some peace and quiet.

Now, this is one of those deep closets that goes under the stairs; it went back around 8 feet and then had a left turn into a very low maybe 3 foot high space. This space was largely occupied by a mountain of old blankets and stuffed animals. Of course, this is the most fluffy spot to sit and read.

About an hour in I shift a little to get comfortable and I hear a low, slow, warped, hoarse voice say 'you always make me happy'. I flipped my shit, hit my head on the low ceiling, and practically broke the door down getting out. After hyperventilating and explaining to my family why there was no color left on my face I went back to see what it was.

It was my stuffed Little Bear from when I was 3 or 4 years old that I happened to lean on juuuuust right to press his belly. When I pressed his stomach again though, nothing. This poor bear I hadn't played with since I was a toddler used the last of it's power, used it's dying breath to tell me I made it happy. You make me happy too little bear. When you're not making me piss myself.

8.) From JoshSecond:

Not to me, but to my sister. Her husband and her had just had their first child a few months prior. My brother in law was working the graveyard shift at his job as my sister stayed home taking care of my nephew. Around 2am, she heard loud knocking on her back door.

She went to go check it out and saw a lady banging on the door asking for my sister to let her in. The lady told my sister that her husband had just beat her down the street and was looking for her. My sister was hesitant to let her in since she had a newborn in the house and didn't want to interfere.

She told the lady that the best she could do was call the police for her. The lady told my sister to not call the police and to let her in. This is where my sister got suspicious. She went to get her phone and called 911. When she went back to the door, the lady was gone.

The police arrived a few minutes later and they told my sister that the same situation happened a few streets down. Apparently the couple would do this act to get into peoples homes. I'm sure this is very common but having it almost happen to my sister and my nephew just creeps me out. Some real Clockwork Orange shit.

9.) From loosesealbluth15:

I volunteered as an EMT in a small village just outside NYC as a senior in High School and my first few years of college. This night we were on call for not only our town but the surrounding two villages, who were out of service. One of the villages isn't exactly the best neighborhood.

Now, generally we always have a police officer on every scene we go to just because they can always get there faster. This time around, though in this bordering village, there was a fire on the other side of town and some sort of crime investigation elsewhere. Basically PD resources were stretched thin.

A call came in for a 25 y/o male with a facial wound at a private residence with instructions that the patient was in the backyard. We were dispatched and told that there was no PD available and no Advanced Life Support (ALS) available. It was just me and my driver. (Note: this is standard in most agencies, it just felt very unnerving for me.) So we get on scene and it was an apartment building with a open yard in the back that we could drive onto.

My driver pulls onto the field and he sees the patient sitting in the shadows as though he was hiding. Something felt off and that feeling prompted me to hit the flood lights on the ambulance illuminating most of the yard.

The moment the lights came on we saw 5-7 men with tire irons and baseball bats standing in what was once pitch blackness. My driver hit it in reverse and we got the hell out of there. I got on the radio and called for immediate assistance. Turns out those guys were planning on jumping us, stealing the narcotics from the ambulance, and taking the rig for a joy ride.

(Poor planning really because we don't carry narcotics on a Basic Life Support Ambulance). To this day I fear what would have happened if we had just walked up to the patient. TL;DR: Volunteered as an EMT, almost got jumped on a call one night.

10.) From [deleted]:

Back when I worked Night shift as a Security guard, I would experience mild hallucinations due to my poor sleep schedule. I was doing my patrol and I was feeling particularly out of it, so I kept getting those flashes of movement in the corner of my eye, but I was convinced it was just my brain f**king up. At the site I was working, there is a large warehouse filled with chemical waste that has only one light on in it.

As I'm going along, I see a pale shape on the ground and quickly recognize it as a body. My adrenaline spikes and I nearly pass out. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a CPR dummy the workers left out for training.

11.) From Mac2663:

I was sitting in our office room home alone when I was 19. I was typing a paper for one of my college classes. The office room used to be my sisters room before she moved out, so a lot of her decorations are still there.

She had a photo of a mountain range, an oval shaped mirror, and three different hangings that read 'faith', 'hope', and 'love'. This makes 5 total things hanging on the wall in the room.

Suddenly, I got random chills. Which happens all the time it was pretty cold. But this time, as soon as I got the chills, everything in the room hanging on the walls fell off simultaneously.

This really freaked me out, but it got a tiny bit worse. I got up and walked out of the room only to notice EVERYTHING hanging on a wall in my house had fell (besides the television in my room). All the pictures in the living room and other rooms, all the trophies in my room from little league sports, and even a stand that held candles.

I wasn't sure what to do. I picked up all the stuff and hung it back up, which actually took me around 15-20 minutes. Then I drove to campus to finish my paper. Never told my parents.

12.) From Call_Me_Egg:

Growing up, my bedroom was the only one that faced the front of the house/street. When I was about 8 or 9, I woke up to my dad calmly but firmly telling me to get up, go in the bathroom, and shut the door. I was annoyed because I was half asleep, but I listened. Apparently I was more tired than I realized, because I feel asleep on the bathroom floor.

The next morning I asked my mom what happened. She seemed oblivious and confused. I looked at my dad like she was crazy, and I asked him why he had woken me up. He denied doing it. I was becoming frustrated to the point of tears, but I ultimately let it go.

Fast forward to college. I was home one break, and I decided to ask again. I had thought of that night off and on for years, and it still bothered me. This time, my dad goes, 'Ha! I was wondering if you even remembered that.' Turns out that a lot of houses on our block were being vandalized and robbed all those years ago. Someone had broken into the garage and was inside the house.

My room was partially over the garage. My dad heard it happen and quietly got me to safety. Police were called, the guy ran. He was never caught, however, and my parents didn't want a terrified kid on their hands, so for years they pretended like nothing had ever happened. It wasn't supernatural, but it was unsettling for sure.

13.) From Tudpool:

I've had multiple times when i've woken up in the middle of the night and was sure I could see a figure in my room until I turned on my bedside light.

Usually this scares me a bit but my most memorable one was waking up thinking I saw some short figure at the end of my bloody bed and saying 'f**k off I'm trying to sleep' then returning to burying my face into the comfort of my pillow.

Seems like it worked.

14.) From sizzlorr26:

On my previous job when our building was still under construction, the only floors that were occupied were the 1st,2nd,5th,6th and 7th. One time I was alone inside the elevator going from 1st to the 6th floor when suddenly it stopped and opened on the 3rd floor. Normally I would just disregard it but rumors where all over that a ghost child was playing around on the vacant floors.

So I pressed the closed button as I fast as I could. When it closed I heard noises like someone was tapping their fingers on the walls of elevator.

15.) From NinaLaPirat:

When I was a kid, I woke up in the middle of the night to my bed shaking. Normally that would scare the crap out of me, but instead I was just kind of annoyed. I rolled over and muttered, 'Stop it.' The shaking stopped immediately. Then a male voice speaks right beside me, saying, 'Sorry.' That's when I freaked out. I'm pretty sure my childhood house was haunted.

16.) From Reddit-Loves-Me:

My family told me this.

I had fever very often when I was young. The medicines didn't help. One day, a stranger on the street asked my mum if I was always sick and who was the elderly following me. My mum was confused as there was no elderly nearby. The stranger pointed into the air and described my dead paternal grandmother's look, the hair style and clothes she wore to her grave.

My dad was from a different town and my mum would have known it if the stranger was a mutual friend. The stranger instructed my dad to call my grandmother to go back. My mysterious fevers stopped.

17.) From fineillmakeausername:

Cop here. I've posted this story before so it may sound familiar. I was dispatched to a house at about 1 am for a prowler. We get there and talk to the residents. Long story short they saw 2 people wearing masks (one Jason style hockey mask, don't remember the other) in the yard across the street. It was like 2 weeks past Halloween so it seemed believable. We check the area and don't see anything. 10-8. It's worth noting the residents didn't seem drunk/high/crazy at all.

However, back to the story. An hour later we get called back. This time we have our dispatcher on the phone with them while we are surrounding the area. We (about 5 of us) are in a perfect position, dispatch tells us they can still see the prowlers in the next yard. We start to move in. Dispatch says the residents saw the two prowlers wave and move into the shed. Guess where I am?

That's right, next to the shed. I give verbal commands, bang on the door, and nothing. F**k it, fine. I'll come in after you. Doors open and......empty. I even think to check for a trap door. Nothing. It is raised about 4 inches so there isn't even a possibility of a door leading out. Again check the area and find nothing.

I talk to the residents. They said as I was moving in on the shed the two put their finger to their lips (giving the shhhh sign) and then they both waved. They moved into the shed as I was next to it. We went over every possibility trying to come up with an explanation. If the caller was just f**king with us they had no prior history of it (as in repeated calls for service at the address).

I'm not much of a believer in paranormal stuff but I can still appreciate a situation where I can not logically explain what just happened. Doo dee doo dee dee doo.......​​​​​​