Creepy things that happen to us don't always involve the paranormal or things we don't understand. Our fellow citizens are just as creepy and scary as ghosts and monsters. People behave strangely for all sorts of reasons and most of the time we don't understand it. We get creeped out in all sorts of ways; whether someone makes a prediction about our future or crossing paths with a serial killer, these chance encounters always send a little shiver down our spine. Vote for your favorite non-paranormal creepy incident and tell us what it's your number one.
People Describe Terrifying Encounters With Weird Strangers,
Coworkers have serial killer encounter
"I used to work for a group home, taking care of kids with autism or developmental problems. The company had multiple group homes but none of them were within a mile of each other and they were all in the middle of farm country. Each had a driveway of about half a mile and surrounded by nothing but open countryside. The locations were chosen specifically for this so that if a client were to escape, they would have to run through a wide open field for quite some time.
One night at about 2 AM, I was working the graveyard shift with a coworker and we noticed some headlights coming down the driveway. We thought it was an administrator coming to check up on us so we started frantically running around doing our work. Then we realized the headlights hadn't moved. I stepped outside, took a few steps down the driveway and noticed a white van about a quarter of the way down the driveway. It stayed there for about seven or eight minutes then drove off.
My coworker and I were kind of baffled and came to the conclusion that the person was just lost and had to stop to look at a map.
Three days later, a serial killer was caught in our area. He was known for picking up women on the exact road our group home was on and he drove a white van."
Homeless man makes accurate prediction
"Being the manager of a chain clothing store, I sometimes help other locations out. A few weeks ago, I was asked by my boss to work a night shift at a store located in a different mall. I've never been to that mall before and figured working there would be interesting so I took the shift.
The mall closed at 10 PM and I left the store by 11:30 PM. Walking back to the parking structure was kind of creepy.The concrete structure was dimly lit. There were still several cars left in the structure, probably belonging to mall employees.
I had completely forgotten where I had parked, so there I was, aimlessly wandering the parking structure looking for my car. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an elderly homeless man coming towards me. He asked me, 'You looking for your car?', and not wanting to be rude I responded, 'Yes.'
The homeless man nodded and beckoned for me to follow him. Not really knowing what to do, I decided to follow. We walked for about five minutes across the structure and up a flight of stairs.
Then he stopped right in front of my car and told me. 'It’s not safe to drive a car that's low on motor oil, you know,' and then proceeded to walk away.
Getting into my car I noticed that it WAS low on oil. I have no idea how he knew where my car was or how he knew it was low on oil."
Aunt takes prank too far
“When I was younger, my aunt used to say, whenever she babysat us, that if we were not good she would take us to 'Wally Booger’s' house. We called BS one day to her while we were driving. We were acting like little asses so she turned around and drove to what she thought was an abandoned house to show us where 'Wally Boogers' lived. When she pulled up in the driveway she said, 'Do you want me to drop you off here?' All of a sudden some skinny old man in just sweat pants came running out of the house screaming and waving a big knife. We started screaming (including my aunt) and we got the hell out of there. We cried for an hour and begged her to never take us there again. Years later I found out the gentleman has lived in his home for 15+ years without electricity. He died about five years ago and they found some creepy stuff in his home including bones of animals he had butchered and set up in a shrine like fashion in one of the rooms in his house.”
Stranger tells man he's going to kill his girlfriend
“A few years ago, I was visiting my girlfriend who had just moved to New York.
We had a long wonderful weekend but it came to an end. We were on the subway and it finally got to her stop. I was going to stay on the subway to head to the bus station. As my girlfriend gets up, so does a large male passenger. She gets up to the door and he stands right behind her. I wave goodbye as she steps off the train. Then he (the large, male passenger) looks at me with a demonic smile, points at my girlfriend's back, and mouths the words 'I'm going to kill her.'
I jumped up and try to get to the door but it's closed by the time I get there. I tried desperately to call the police but I can't get a signal. At the next stop, I bound through the station to the surface where I called my girlfriend. She was fine but freaked out. I ran the 14 blocks to her place and stayed with her all night rather than going home.”
When a stranger calls...
"I worked at a campground on the night shift from 12 AM to 8 AM. I would bring in my PS2 game a good portion of the night, only having to deal with one or two people on busy nights. It was just me in this little 8' x 8' shack, with nothing around but darkness. My first week there, the other third shift guy who was quitting told me about this payphone a few feet from the shack where I worked. He said it rang every night at 4:17 AM, just once. It was probably just an automated test call, he guessed.He's never answered it himself. It was the middle of summer so most nights I had the windows closed so I couldn't hear the payphone go off.
Mid-August I started leaving the windows open during the night. Sure enough, at 4:17 AM every morning, the phone would ring once. The ring even sounded creepy, like the payphone was submerged in water.
One night I got up the nerve to answer it. I set an alarm at 4:15 and would go wait at the phone until it rang. When it did, I answered it. But there was no sound. Just dead air like someone was on the other line but wasn't answering. I said hello a few times, and hung up. I did this every night for a week with the same results. I didn't think anything of it and left it alone after that for about a month. The first week of October, I decided to answer the phone once again. I set my alarm and when the time came, I answered the phone.
'Hello? Hello?'
Then I heard what sounded like someone inhaling through clenched teeth. The voice sounded rough and like he had gargled gravel.
He said my complete name. First, middle, and last. It was a voice I'd never heard. My voice caught in my throat and I hung up.
I rattled some change into the payphone and hit *69. The number had come from California but I was in Indiana."
Stranger tries to blow up family
"When I was a kid, we'd go to these beach cabins in Maryland, right by the Chesapeake. They were small and rustic with basic comforts and no amenities. There were two bedrooms and a cot in the kitchen and my siblings and I rotated on the cot.
A small tradition was that my mom and I would have a hot cup of tea before bed, in our summer jammies which was our way of relaxing while everyone else went off to read or listen to music. One night I was settling on the cot when she picked up the tea kettle to fill it. Out of the corner of my eye I see her flinch, then say in a steady voice, 'What are you doing there?' My head whipped over to the kitchenette to see her looking out the window. Then she jumped back and started screaming for my father.
My dad ran from the back bedroom and saw my mom point towards the left side of the house. He burst out the door. I was 10 years old so I ran under my parent's bed. I still remember the smell of the old wood and the feel of my teddy bear shielding me from whatever the hell was happening. I remember seeing my 14 year-old-brother, then a medium ranking karate student, following my dad out of the cabin at full-speed.
My father, a former Army Sergeant and MP with a bronze star, managed to tackle the guy that had been peeping into our kitchen window. He put him in an elbow lock face down on the ground with my brother standing over both of them while my mom ran to get the cell phone we'd bought just two weeks earlier.
While my mom called 9-1-1, I remember hearing the guy talking. He was saying things like,'The ouja board told me...' 'I want the devil to suck my brains out...' 'Satan is in cabin 10, I have to get to cabin 10... The devil wants me to kill myself' and so on. We were in Cabin 3, over half a mile from where he apparently intended to meet the devil.
My dad kept a grip on him for probably a good 15 minutes until the cops showed up. The first thing out of one of the cop’s mouth was 'Jamie, when'd they let you out?' Jamie had been released from jail just two weeks earlier for arson, and guess where he was standing when my mom was at the sink in the kitchen? Right beside the cabin’s propane tank."
Mental patient threatens mom
“My mother works with mental patients. One night at around 9 PM, she told me she had to go to work because there was an emergency. Later, I get a phone call from her. She basically said my name and before she could finish, the phone got pulled away from her. In this high pitch, creepy voice one of the patients says, 'Devon 302,' (I assumed she heard my name mentioned by my mom), 'Devon 302? Your Mom isn't coming home tonight because I'm going to do something bad to her.' Then she hung up. I started freaking out and my mom didn’t call me back until two hours later. The woman ended up getting arrested, but quickly released since she has a mental illness. It was creepy as hell and very unnerving.”
Family possibly encounters the devil
“When my mom was about 12 years old, her family packed up the car and moved from L.A. to Chapala in Jalisco, Mexico. My grandma, my mom and grandpa were driving home late at night down a dirt road. Now typically, people are advised not to do that because of bandits and also because it's said the devil walks the road at night.
They were about halfway home when they saw a man in a white suit and hat, who looked really wealthy, walking alone down the road. He didn't look lost, just casually walking. The man appeared to be very attractive and they were tempted to stop the car and see if he needed help, but my grandma insisted they keep driving because she had such a heavy feeling of dread in her stomach.
The closer they got to the man, the more they could tell there was something off about him. He was extremely pale, so much so that his skin glowed, but he was absolutely beautiful. When he turned around to smile at them, they saw that his eyes were red.
My grandma hit the gas and they get the hell out of there. My mom said they said about 200 Hail Mary's that night and drank a ton of holy water.”
Friends have uncanny experience with beggar
“I lived in Ecuador for a few years in high school and my friend from Illinois came to visit. We took him to various tourist sites which included a number of small towns known for woodworking and hand crafted items. In one town, they had a market that sold baby chickens. My friend thought it was funny and bought one. He carried it around for a while, named it, and said it was his pet. When it came time to leave, he handed it to a beggar lady as we were getting in the car. We closed the door and drove to the next town. The road between the two towns was the ONLY road and my dad drives like a bat outta hell. We pulled up in the next town and immediately the SAME beggar woman is asking for more. We couldn't believe it was the same woman till she smiled at us and had the chick in her hand. We all freaked out. There was NO way she could have physically gotten from one town to the next faster than us, and yet... somehow she did.”
Man finds corpse in a garbage bag
“The summer after I graduated from high school I worked as a highway litter crew supervisor where I drove two younger teens around and had them pick up litter on the side of the road. One day one of the kids flagged me over to him and showed me a weird bag he'd found. The bag was a very thick, semi-translucent plastic, double bagged and tied off at the top with black electrical tape. It was down in a ditch covered with brush, so the kid and I dragged it to the side of the road for closer inspection. It was really heavy and it took two of us to get it out of the ditch. Once we got it to the roadside it became apparent that the bag was filled with a reddish-brown slush and a bunch of hard pieces of bones. It was then that I realized that this was a sack filled with a rotting corpse of some kind. I called my boss, and he told me to call the police. The police showed up pretty nonchalantly, but became visibly upset once he'd inspected the bag himself. He took down my statement and contact information then shooed us along as he called into the station for assistance. We never heard anything back from the police, and I never did find out what, or who exactly, was in the bag.”