The Scariest True Stories People Know

Reanimation

"My dad worked in a morgue in during college in the 60’s. One time on the night shift he was training a recent hire who was wheeling a body down the hallway. The body was under a sheet but all of a sudden started to sit up. The guy immediately freaked out, ran out the doors and quit."

"Apparently a dead body can have muscle contractions in the abs causing it to start sitting up. The more you know I guess"

– PJammas41

"My uncle was a mortician. Once a body reached up to slap him when he started the embalming process. Same thing - just a muscle contraction, but it freaked him out."

– jhope71

A Shattered Worldview

"I grew up in a funeral home. I helped out in the office. When I was about 15, we got a call from a man whose wife and infant baby had been murdered in cold blood."

"There were very few clues. It made headlines. Cops set up surveillance at the viewing. It was heartbreaking, as the mother was holding the baby in her arms."

"I was asked to take the flower cards and periodically get the husband and ask if he recognized the names. I then photocopied them and put them back. I did it because I was a “kid,” people knew me, and I was unobtrusive."

"I talked to the husband quite a bit. He seemed devastated and shaken."

"The cops told me they had an eyewitness to someone leaving the house the day of the murder."

"The witness was a three year old girl. She recognized the man leaving. It was the husbands best friend."

"Turns out that the friend and the husband had made a pact to kill each other’s families and run off with their secretaries. The little girl identified the friend, and I guess one of them cracked."

"They both went to jail on multiple counts, all on the testimony of a three year old."

"I still cannot believe to this day that that man stood right beside me, multiple times, and I had NO CLUE."

"I don’t think I ever looked at life the same way after that."

– RareBeautyEtsy

Truly Man's Best Friend

"My great aunt woke up in the middle of the night, she heard her dog making these low growls. She was single at the time and living alone in her ranch style home. She walked out to her living room to check things out. She didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary, so she decided to make sure her door and front windows were locked. Door was locked, first window she checked was locked. When she lifted the mini blind on the second window, it was wide open and a guy in a ski mask was standing there. She said he laughed this evil laugh and said “party time” then he started to climb in. She screamed that she had a gun, her dog started barking his head off. My aunt did get a gun after that and learned how to use it."

"I can’t even think about what would’ve happened to her if she didn’t have her dog to warn her :( "

– belai437

Never Truly Know Anyone

"I lived next to a murderer. Faye Swetlik was 6 years old when she was kidnapped out of her front yard. It was all over the news. I had news crews, cops, even the FBI all over my townhouse complex. My fiancée and I met with the FBI 3 times. They searched our home and everything. I remember clear as day, my fiancée FaceTimed me as the cops were digging through the trash cans directly in front of my townhouse. They pulled out her boot and a bloody knife. Then they found her body, dumped maybe 300 feet from my house. He had watched them find the murder weapon. Dumb*ss put it in a trash bag along with his other mail. He went to his back porch and opened his own throat. It’s crazy. I had conversations with the guy. I never knew he was a psycho. This all happened a year ago."

– SCRhyperior

A Tragic Accident

"I'm sure everyone has already hit on the pop culture ones, so I'll go personal. I grew up on a ranch, raising large hoofstock and poultry. Over the winter, we would buy hay from a neighbor and store it in the barn. Something like 80 tons. We get a call one summer from the hay guy's wife, in hysterics, that we have to find another hay guy, because her husband was crushed by the baler. These weren't cowgirl bales, but half-ton ones. She told us the baler had gotten twine snarled under the tilt table that slides complete bales off. He hopped off the tractor, wriggled on in under the table to reach the twine, as he had undoubtedly done many times before, only for the tilt to collapse backwards with a mostly complete bale on it. Pancake from the hips, up. Mom had nightmares about my dad getting killed in a similar manner for months"

– Sad-Bus-7460

DNA Doesn't Lie

"This one kid back in the early 20th century named Bobby Dunbar. He went missing, and after like a year of searching for him, his parents came across a man with a kid who looked a lot like Bobby. They believed it was their kid, and after a legal battle with the kid’s supposed mother, they brought the kid home. A while parade happened due to the missing kid’s return. He lived and died believing he was, in fact, Bobby Dunbar."

"Well, a few decades later, his granddaughter asked Bobby’s (nephew I think?) for a DNA sample so she could see if her and Bobby’s nephew were related. Turns out, they weren’t. Meaning the real Bobby Dunbar is still missing and, probably died alone without his parents."

– yaboispringy

Absolutely Disgusting

"So this isn’t necessarily a horror story. Okay, it kind of is. It was a definitely a nightmare inducing experience."

"So this was years ago. One evening my brother is getting ready for bed, and he had a retainer he was supposed to wear to bed."

"Now here’s the thing. My brother is a clean freak. Especially with personal hygiene. He actually has some minor OCD with personal hygiene rituals, and he’s gotten better as he’s gotten older, but the point is, he is rigorous about personal hygiene."

​

"So my brother was getting ready for bed and opens the sealed container where he keeps his retainer after he washes it every morning and pops his retainer into his mouth."

"And he feels it start wiggling."

"So he pops it out of his mouth like WTF, and there’s a GIANT MAGGOT in his retainer."

"No freaking clue how it could have possibly gotten into his retainer case. He threw the retainer away."

– Squirrelgirl25

Close Up Those Doggy Doors

"Happened to my boss’s best friend when they were around 17yo:"

"Best friend’s parents were out of town one weekend and she had the house to herself. Went about her business having dinner, watching tv then decided to go to bed. She was lying in her bed with her back to her closet when she heard the door open. She somehow pretended to be asleep - the man who was hiding in the closet walked around her bed to the side she was laying/facing, gently stroked her hair and face then left. She immediately called her boyfriend to ask him to come over then called her parents and then the police. Long story short this man had been getting into their home via a doggy door (they didn’t have a dog and didn’t bother to secure it) and he’d been living in a tent in the foresty area behind their home for months to creep on her. They found a ton of surveillance footage of her sleeping and pieces of her clothes and stuff."

"If I recall correctly this happened somewhere in Alabama, most likely mid-2000s."

– halfyellowhalfwhite

The Relief!

"That's scary."

"My godson's parents couldn't find him for hours one afternoon / evening and started to panic. They called family close by to help look, and eventually called the police."

"Turns out he climbed between his mattress and box spring playing hide and seek with his brother and fell asleep."

"He woke up when his parents were talking to the cops in the kitchen and just kind of walked in like, "what's everyone so upset about?""

– equality-_-7-2521

That one made me smile. We need a funny one after all that scary!