67 Real-Life Scary Stories That'll Freak You The Hell Out

    I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in ghosts. I swear, I don't.

    I grew up in a haunted house. From the ghostly violin music that played in the guest room at night to the excited whispers we'd hear throughout the house after returning from vacation, something was out of the ordinary.

    A dark stairwell illuminated by a slightly opened door at the top of the stairs

    So why am I telling you this? Well, to prove that countless people in the BuzzFeed Community, myself included, have lived through supernatural experiences they just can't explain. Here are some real-life scary stories that I can't get out of my mind:

    1. "My aunt used to live in this old house that everyone in the family joked was haunted. On Christmas, she woke up and went down to the living room to find all the sofa cushions arranged into a cross on the floor. Only she and her husband lived there, and they both swore neither of them did it."

    chinacatjs

    2. "At almost the exact moment my grandfather died, the large mirror over the staircase at our family cabin cracked down the middle. Since then, several times when my mom and her siblings have discussed their dad, they've found or heard broken/breaking glass."

    "Once, every glass on a shelf spontaneously cracked. Another time, all the glasses in the dishwasher broke. They always say my granddad loved living so much and couldn't stand dying so soon, so this was his way of coming back."

    MNWildbuddyboy

    3. "My sister and I were home alone playing with Barbies, and we sat a Ken doll on the couch. We threw Barbie in his direction, and both of us saw him LIFT HIS ARMS and catch her."

    "She wasn't out of place; she landed perfectly in his arms. We were stunned and tried re-creating it multiple times but had no luck. We were creeped out and left him in a drawer, untouched, for months."

    Moaning Lisa

    4. "When my sister was 12, she was seriously ill in the hospital for several months. Her class bought her a teddy bear, which became her mascot while she was having treatment."

    "Shortly before she was discharged, the bear went missing. We assumed that it had been stolen. One day, after she’d been home a week or so, the bear appeared on her windowsill. The weirdest thing was that it had muddy paws, as if it had walked there!"

    —[deleted]

    5. "My grandmother was very sick and dying. For a few weeks leading up to her death, she would stare off into space and talk to dead relatives. She'd say things like, 'I'll see you soon, Alice,' or 'I'm coming soon, Mabel.'"

    "She would always name deceased relatives. Then, one day, she started talking to her brother, Henry. We thought it was weird because Henry was still alive. We got a call the next day that Henry had died the previous day."

    Nameless

    6. "My family and I used to live in a cult when I was younger, and while we were there, we experienced a lot of supernatural events."

    "I now choose to explain these events as shared psychosis due to the trauma, but there's one event that happened a little bit after we left that I can't explain. It was in the middle of a really bad storm, and because of lightning and the threat of tornadoes, we were all hiding in the safest place in the house. During a huge crack of thunder, we heard the sound of shattering glass in the living room. After it was safe again, we went back out, and the globe on one of our lamps was missing. We searched everywhere for it and the broken glass, but it had just vanished. I can't explain that one because it wasn't just seeing or hearing inexplicable things; we physically had the globe, and then it completely disappeared."

    i_like_things_sometimes

    7. "My mother lost her wedding ring a few years after she and my dad married."

    "They tore the house apart and never found it. Eventually they moved away and she got a new ring. A year or so afterward, my dad's mother died. A few days after the funeral, my dad was away, and my mom fell asleep on the couch. She opened her eyes and saw her old wedding ring on the arm of the sofa. No one had been in the house except her, and it had definitely not been there when she dozed off. My mom isn't religious, but she's convinced her mother-in-law found it for her."

    colleend9

    8. "I went to a funeral and saw the deceased standing next to her own casket at the front of the church."

    shawnab12

    9. "One time, my mom called me to let me know it was time for us to head somewhere. I walked out of my room and saw her out of the corner of my eye walking into her room."

    "I followed her, calling her name, and once again caught a glimpse of her, this time walking into her bathroom. I walked into the bathroom, and no one was there. My blood ran cold. I called out to my mom, and she had been downstairs the whole time."

    DWinchestersflannel

    10. "When I was 6, I spent a long weekend at my friend's house in Montana. I slept on the floor of his room in a sleeping bag. One night, I sat up covered in sweat and shaking. I was 100% awake."

    "Then I watched as a Grim Reaper–like figure floated from the shadows to the other side of the room, where there was a wall. He peeled back the wall as if it were a curtain; then I saw my home city at dusk covered in flames with people screaming. He pointed at the city and said, 'This is how it ends.' I ran to the bathroom and stayed there the rest of the night. No one believes it happened."

    jamests09

    11. "One night when I was around 15, my best friend and I stayed home alone at her house while her parents were away. The house had a long driveway off the road and was surrounded by woods."

    "It snowed that night, and in the morning when we were leaving, we found footprints that went all the way down the driveway and stopped by the back of the house. There were none leading away. We left immediately, and she refused to go back until her parents were home. Nothing was messed with, no windows appeared broken, and nothing was stolen. It was just weird."

    jdyeria

    12. "About 15 years ago, my younger sister and I were having a movie night in the living room. My parents were asleep, and our older sister was out with friends."

    "As we were getting ready to sleep in the living room, we heard a deep and raspy voice whisper my name from the room around the corner. We both looked at each other, freaked out, and turned off the TV without telling each other what we had just heard. The next morning, I asked her to tell me what she had heard, and she confirmed she heard my name. To this day, we don’t know what it was or why it said my name."

    Luna07

    13. "My younger sister lost the only key to her lockbox. It just vanished. A few months later, we were sitting in my bedroom and we heard what sounded like a piece of metal hitting the floor."

    "We looked around but couldn't see anything. We looked back to where we were sitting, and there was the lost key. We told our family about it, but we can't explain it."

    severussnapesdaughter

    14. "I had a dream where I was engaged to a man named Bool. When I woke up, I thought it was weird, but I went about my day."

    "I had a little weed that evening, and I had the worst panic attack of my life. I went to the hospital, and my doctor was named Dr. Bool."

    skarlytte

    15. "I was driving to work one morning when a school bus suddenly overtook another parked bus and came straight for me with no possibility of me stopping in time. I was terrified and closed my eyes, expecting it to hit my car, but when I opened them again, I was about half a mile up the road."

    "There was no possible way that the bus could have managed to stop in time before hitting me, so to this day I still cannot explain what happened and how I ended up farther up the road."

    turnipthemusic

    16. "I had a ring my mom gave me many years ago. I lost it a few years after she died. I looked everywhere."

    "I was so upset, I finally said, 'Please help me, Mom. I can't bear to lose this.' I had dumped out my jewelry box four times already, but I decided to open it one more time. The ring was sitting on top."

    ricemice93

    17. "When my beloved dog died a little over a year ago, she was on the East Coast with my boyfriend while I was on a trip to the West Coast."

    "The morning she passed, I learned the news from a terrible phone call before driving to the airport. I was absolutely hysterical and bawling the whole drive. I was 'talking' to my girl, telling her I was sorry and that I loved her. It was awful — the deepest despair I have ever felt. Then I saw the license plate of a car passing by. It said, 'ITS HB.' We called our dog H.B., short for Harley Bear. I’d like to think that something was sending me a message that she was still out there somewhere and could hear me."

    —[deleted]

    18. "My boyfriend and I went shopping at this small boutique in a strip mall. We went in, got our stuff, and left, which took about half an hour."

    "When we checked our watches, four hours had passed. To this day, neither of us can explain it. It was the middle of the day. We weren't drunk or high — just shopping at a very small store in a strip mall."

    ThatOneElizabeth

    19. "When my dad was around 9, he had a pet salamander that he found out by the lake. One night, his older sister (my aunt) had a dream that she ate the salamander."

    "When they woke up the next morning, the salamander was gone. They never found it or figured out what happened to it. We still wonder to this day if my aunt actually ate the salamander."

    ellie_c

    20. "Back in 2017, my uncle died VERY unexpectedly. At the end of that year, I was on a class trip to the UK, and we visited the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland."

    "Ireland was a place my uncle wanted to visit but never got the chance to, so my aunt sent me with a necklace that had some of his ashes. She asked if I could spread them while I was there, and I said of course. While walking around the cliffs of the Giant’s Causeway, I found the perfect area overlooking the sea. My friends made a barrier around me, and I quickly gave a couple of taps to the necklace and screwed the cap back on. We walked around this bend to continue our exploration, and I turned around to see a rainbow over the sea that hadn’t been there 10 seconds before. I know it might sound like a coincidence to some people, but I like to think it was my uncle."

    beatricea4f11862b7

    21. "One night, I dreamed that my grandparents were having an anniversary party, much like their 50th anniversary party I'd attended in my 20s. I saw my grandparents together but then thought, That can't be. Grandpa is dead, but not Grandma."

    "Then it clicked and I realized they were both dead. The next morning, my parents called to tell me my grandmother had died overnight. I simply said, 'I know. She told me.'"

    k44b3618ce

    22. "When I was in school, whenever someone died in one of my dreams, they wouldn't be at school the next day. Sometimes they were sick, or a few times they were just very late to the class I had with them, but it was freaky."

    "One time, I even texted a friend who lived in another state to ask if they'd gone to school that day because they had died in my dream. They had, in fact, not gone to school."

    mak :)

    23. "A few years ago, I lost a necklace and tore my house up looking for it. I finally gave up, and about six months later, I found it under my pillow one morning."

    "It was as if the Tooth Fairy had left it for me. I had washed the sheets many times since losing the necklace, and it was a heavy pendant, so it was not something that would easily go unnoticed in the wash. I still have no idea how it ended up there."

    AwkwardSpice

    24. "I've had sleep paralysis a few times, but one specific time I was able to open my eyes. I could stare at the ceiling, but I couldn't move my body."

    "I heard a voice say, 'Relax.' I was so freaked out after that. Of course, I lived alone too."

    rebekahi2

    25. "My ex died in 2015. It was the single worst thing that has ever happened to me. He had joked that if he ever died, he would haunt me for fun."

    "Two nights after he died, I heard a noise outside — a familiar noise. Every time he would try to stand up from of one of my patio chairs, his key ring would get stuck and his guitar-shaped beer opener would make this certain metallic clang. This was, without a doubt, what I had heard. My dogs both got up and started barking. I walked outside, and there was no one there."

    reggycupcake

    26. "When I was a teenager, I once stayed at my boyfriend's house because of a storm. There were only two bedrooms, so his parents made him sleep on the sofa, while I had his room."

    "Everyone went to bed. I remember his room was very cold. I was settling down when I heard creaking on the stairs outside the door. I giggled because I thought my boyfriend was coming to the room. I covered my head with the blanket and decided to give him a scare. I heard the doorknob turn and the door creak open, then I heard him walking across the floor toward the bed. I heard him breathing heavily right at the head of the bed. I whipped off the blanket and said, 'Boo!' Then I screamed because I was face-to-face with a dark mass with glowing eyes, NOT my boyfriend. Pandemonium ensued as my boyfriend ran up the stairs and his parents came out of their bedroom. I was hysterical. Everyone said I'd just had a nightmare and it was alright. I stayed downstairs all night, and no one got any sleep."

    diccadux

    27. "I have a habit of reading before bed. One night, I finished reading, set my book on the nightstand, and put my glasses on top as I always do."

    "The next morning, the glasses were gone. I knew I'd had them because my vision is too bad to read without them. At the time, I didn't have a backup pair, so the next day, my parents came and helped me look all over my apartment, but they were gone. So they took me to get a new pair. Months later, I went through the same nighttime routine, and when I woke up in the morning, both pairs of glasses were sitting on top of the book I'd been reading."

    sheltam264

    28. "I woke up one night having to pee, and I brought my phone to the bathroom. While walking down the hall and texting, I bumped into a girl in a white dress."

    "I didn't look up, said 'Sorry,' and kept going. It occurred to me moments later that I was home alone and not in my bustling high school. The next day, when my boyfriend came to pick me up for the movies, he asked why I'd been staring at him through the upstairs window and why I'd changed out of my white dress. But I don't even own a white dress."

    —[deleted]

    29. "I was home alone watching TV when I saw something moving in the master bedroom. I strained my eyes to see a man walking out of the closet to the other side of the room."

    "He stopped, looked at me, put his finger to his lips, then turned around. There was blood on his face, and the back of his head was missing. He vanished back into the closet. We moved when we found out that the mysterious small hole in the ceiling of our bedroom is from a previous tenant who shot himself in that exact spot."

    jlmcmorrough

    30. "I'm a mortician. My most disturbing experience was when I was preparing a child for a viewing, and I felt someone pull my hair."

    "A couple of minutes later, I heard a giggle, and the door slammed shut. All of my machines stopped, and it was dead quiet. After I was done and the body was dressed, I felt a tap on my shoulder and warmth around my middle, approximately where a child would stand if they were hugging you."

    briw454f2ac9e

    31. "When I was a kid, my family moved into an apartment where a murder had been committed before we lived there. Every night, my big sister would make me shut our bedroom window, and when I'd look outside, I'd see three faces staring back at me."

    "They had no hair, noses, or mouths. They would just stare but never did anything. Well, a few months back, my family was talking about that apartment, and I mentioned the faces. My sister turned to me, shocked — she said that she saw them too, and that's why she always asked me to close the window."

    angelicac46b5ea3a6

    32. "A few years ago, I was upstairs at my mom's house playing on the computer when I heard the front door open and my mom come in."

    "She yelled, 'Amber! I'm home,' and seemed to be struggling with some groceries. I ran downstairs to help her...but she wasn't there. Her car wasn't in the driveway, either."

    —Amber Rodriguez, Facebook

    33. "Two years ago, I was half asleep when I felt as if I was being pulled off my bed by my legs. Suddenly I shot straight up and started violently choking!"

    "It took me a few minutes to catch my breath, and it was so bad, my mom woke up to check on me. HERE'S THE SCARIEST PART: The next morning, my mom said she didn't remember my coughing fit, but she told me she had a dream that the DEVIL WAS TRYING TO PULL ME AWAY FROM HER. WTF."

    mawio

    34. "When I was a kid, I lived with just my mom. Every few nights after she went to bed and turned off all of the TVs, I'd hear a man and woman casually having a quiet conversation in our kitchen area."

    "I always had to concentrate really hard to make sure I was actually hearing something, because it was so faint, I couldn't make out words. This continued for years, and I thought my mom wouldn't believe me if I told her. After we moved out, I finally told her — she said she'd always experienced the same thing."

    laurab4e4ec5e44

    35. "A few years ago, I was visiting my brother and his family, who lived in a very old Victorian house. I was snuggling with my niece on a futon in the playroom when suddenly, in the middle of the night, the TV turned on, full blast, with a static screen."

    "My 3-year-old niece jumped out of bed and ran to the TV, shutting it off. When I asked her how she knew the TV would turn on, she shrugged, saying, 'They turn it on every night at this time,' and fell right back asleep."

    christinaelstong

    36. "My mom and I were working one day in the store we own when her cellphone rang. The caller ID said 'HOME,' with our number below it."

    "She looked at me calmly and asked, 'Who's at home?' My dad was at work. My sister was at college. My grandma, who used to live with my parents, had passed away about six months prior. But then I remembered — we didn't have a home phone, because after my grandma passed, my mom shut off the landline, since we all had cellphones. When we called the number back, it'd been disconnected."

    Kelly H.

    37. "My mom bought me my first iPhone right before she passed away. After we lost her, I'd sometimes randomly find Siri open with a small conversation on the screen."

    "This happened a handful of times. One day, I was scared because I was starting my new job and left my phone on the desk next to me. Siri was open, and the screen said, 'What you doing?' I burst into tears — 'What you doing?' was the phrase my mom and I used to greet each other on the phone."

    hawright43

    38. "In college, I lived in a notoriously haunted dorm. One night while my roommates were away, I was followed home from a party by a guy I'd rejected."

    "He was drunk and aggressive after I told him to leave, and he grabbed my wrists and threw me against my bed. But before anything happened, he was ripped off of me. There were two large blisters on his shoulders in the shape of handprints, as though someone had grabbed him and scalded him. He scrambled out quickly, and as I lay in bed crying, I sensed a very maternal presence rubbing my back. I was too distraught to care what it might have been."

    morgank4df643d6d

    39. "I had a neighbor who was a lovely old man. He would always work in his garden, and I'd walk past his house daily, so we spoke often. One day I saw him and said hello but got no response."

    "Not wanting to bother him, I carried on home. A few days later, I saw a removal van and people outside his home. I was told that the man had gone hiking a week ago, had a heart attack, and died. They'd just recovered his body. He had been dead for a week, but I had seen him just days earlier."

    mblackburn877

    40. "A few years ago, my boyfriend and I inexplicably awoke in a panic in the middle of the night. We looked at each other, and at that moment, the large framed photo hanging on the wall crashed to the ground."

    "I told him I'd been having a horrible nightmare where he was being stabbed to death. He freaked out, saying he was having the exact same dream, except I was being stabbed. Later on, we both heard my mom yelling downstairs. She sounded scared and kept calling my name. This was particularly scary because we lived in California, and my mom lived in England. Nobody was inside the house but us. He refused to sleep at my house ever again."

    penelopet4feb88822

    41. "When my son was a few months old, I was trying to record his laugh on my phone. I used to bounce him on my knee and say numbers before each bounce."

    "When I played the recording back, you hear my son laughing as I count, 'One, two, three...,' and after I said 'three,' you could hear a man's voice clearly say 'four.' There was no one else in the house and the TV wasn't on. When I played it for my friend, she got goosebumps."

    staceyjw

    42. "I was sleeping alone in a room I shared with my 6-year-old sister, but she wasn't home. She had a toy McDonald's cash register with a drive-thru radio that would play a recording if you pressed a button."

    "I was dozing off when I heard, 'Welcome to McDonald's, can I take your order?' from inside our closet. I investigated, took it out of the toy box, and turned it off before setting it on a shelf where it wouldn't be disturbed. About 20 minutes later, I was falling asleep and heard a voice whisper, 'I would like Chicken McNuggets, please.' You bet I bolted out of there."

    cameronr4f31174f8

    43. "I used to share a paper route with my brothers, and we'd deliver to a lady named Margie. Since she was old and lived alone, one of us would take the paper inside and check on her."

    "One day, I went in and she was asleep on the bed, so I put the paper on the table and left. The next day, she was asleep again; hadn't opened the paper from the day before. The following day, I went in and Margie was awake. She said she was very happy and gave me a hug. But the next morning, there were cars outside her house. Apparently, Margie had died in her bed three or four days before — I had spoken to and hugged her about 24 hours earlier, when she was already dead."

    —Sejl Ó Longáin, Facebook

    44. "My great-grandmother's great-grandmother was the eldest of eight children, and her bed was the deathbed of her father."

    "At night, she would feel something grab at her legs, but when she'd look, there would be nothing there. Just yesterday, I was reading in that same bed and I felt a yank on my right foot — I was home alone."

    awkwardlollipop

    45. "I have MAJOR issues with driving at night, especially on long roads surrounded by forests, because my aunt used to tell me a Swedish urban myth about 'screech mayas.'"

    "They’re the spirits of abused women who come out of the woods and jump in front of cars to make the drivers swerve and kill themselves."

    —[deleted]

    46. "'Duendes' are dwarfs from Latino folklore that cause mischief. My grandma’s brother-in-law supposedly had a duende traveling with him."

    "When you befriend a duende, they bring good luck. Whenever he gambled, he would win. However, he did something to upset the duende, and it made him sick (duendes bring misfortune if you upset them). The doctors weren’t able to find a cause and he passed away, but a faith healer identified it as a duende’s curse."

    athenaa44a06d389

    47. "My great-grandmother was very religious. On the first anniversary of her death, my relatives went to her home to mourn her."

    "That night, my dad’s uncle slept in the hallway, since there were so many people staying over, and he woke up suddenly to my great-grandma’s voice calling his name. He felt someone grab his leg and pull him toward the stairs. He started screaming, and my relatives came out in the hall, but they didn’t see anything."

    athenaa44a06d389

    48. "When my dad was 4 years old, he went walking with his father outside."

    "He stopped all of a sudden and said, 'I just saw Grandma. She was waving goodbye!' Two minutes later, they got a call that my grandfather's mom had passed away."

    celloOH

    49. "My parents are from the Dominican Republic, so stories of voodoo are common."

    "One day, my father was walking home from school, and he heard shuffling coming from a nearby farm. When he turned to look, there was a man walking in the field with blood dripping from his mouth and a dead look in his eyes. Later, my father found out from the newspaper that the man had been reported missing for two weeks, and the coroner had confirmed his death FOUR DAYS EARLIER. My father still swears to this day that dark magic had a part in it."

    alinasierra715

    50. "My aunt told us that her husband used to wake up in the middle of the night because he'd hear footsteps or chains dragging on the floor."

    "One night, he was fully awake and someone started choking him. He tried to fight them off, but there was nothing there. The next day, he had bruises on his throat."

    cierrarana

    51. "My mom swears UP AND DOWN that she woke up in the middle of the night and her first thought was, We need to call to check on my father-in-law. When she turned over to wake my dad up, there was my grandpa."

    "He was just standing over my dad, looking at him while he slept. My mom screamed and he disappeared. Within a few minutes, my parents got a phone call from my grandma letting them know that my grandpa had JUST passed."

    mblagrandeur

    52. "My mom worked as a firefighter her entire life. While we were relaxing at home on one of her nights off, she went into cardiac arrest."

    "The second her heart stopped beating, the toaster in the kitchen caught on fire. It was unplugged, turned off, and nothing was in it. She ended up being okay, but no one could tell us how or why that happened."

    Jordan28Cooper

    53. "My grandfather was a jeweler and specialized in watches and clocks. When he died, all of the timepieces in his house stopped at the hour of his death."

    avcmurray

    54. "When my dad was a teenager, his bedroom was outside in a shed because, you know, teenage boys."

    "One night, he woke up and looked out the window into the main house, and he saw his grandmother, who'd been dead for years, in the kitchen window. He freaked out and ran inside to see if it was really her. When he got into the kitchen, he looked out the window to see that his shed was in flames. It had somehow caught fire and completely burned down."

    —[deleted]

    55. "My grandma had an uncle who 'went to hell.' He was having open heart surgery and flatlined for a few minutes."

    "He said he had an out-of-body experience and was falling down a long, dark tunnel. It was unbearably hot. He said that he knew he was going to hell. He eventually landed, but a voice told him it wasn't his time. He was pulled up through a white tunnel and thrown back in his body."

    MollyStroup

    56. "My cousin's family lives in this literal mansion, but it was cheap. At first they thought they just got lucky, but they realized something must have happened there because the house deed changed hands quickly several times in a row."

    "Since they moved in, they’ve found a human handprint made of out ash on their wall, their daughter was found talking to her closet, and they'll randomly hear loud screaming. They called a priest and he did an exorcism, but he said that their basement is 'dangerous' and to 'keep the door locked at all times' if they want to be safe."

    annal4c879671f

    57. "My dad grew up on a farm that had cattle, and one morning, they went out and found that a cow had been killed."

    "They couldn’t find any animal tracks in the dirt, and it looked as if it had been methodically cut open. This happened a few more times over the next couple of years. They had investigators come out to look at the cows, but no one was ever able to determine who or what was killing them."

    kelseyb4318e050e

    58. "Not long after my grandpa died, my aunt was at her friends' house, and they decided to mess with a Ouija board."

    "They made contact with my grandpa, and according to my aunt and her friends, there was a knock at a window, and when all three of them looked, they saw my grandpa in his deputy uniform waving from outside the window."

    kellytubbie

    59. "When I was 10 years old, we lived in Bell Gardens, California. My sister would always run to my parents' room at night, crying, saying that she heard a man talking."

    "The house was older and had a crawl space under it. One night, we were all woken up by the sound of my dad screaming. He saw the man. The next day, a priest came to our house. It didn't help. The following weekend, my dad and his brothers went into the crawl space. They found a body wrapped in army blankets. They called the police, and we were not allowed back in our home for a week. We moved out of that house the following year."

    ivanc44bae15b1

    60. "My family has a spirit that has been a part of the lives of women in my family since my great-grandma. The spirit steals stuff."

    "Not anything particularly important, but things you want in the moment. If anyone in the family is missing anything, we just say, 'Okay, Sam. Give it back, please.' Whatever it is that you're looking for will be in the next place you look."

    sabrak2

    61. "This isn’t supernatural, just creepy to think about, and obviously passed down for generations: My great-great-grandmother bought a ticket for the Titanic but didn’t end up going because she got sick."

    "Without that illness, there’s a good chance she would have died and I never would’ve been born."

    lucy55555

    62. "The house that my grandparents lived in during the 1950s was haunted. The spirit was called the Grey Lady."

    "My dad remembers her tickling him when he was 4 years old. I went back to that house in 2013 and asked the owner if the Grey Lady was still there. He looked at me, terrified, and asked, 'How do you know about that?!'"

    lmichellel

    63. "I cannot stress enough that this is a TRUE story, because it sounds unbelievable: My great-great-aunt was murdered by her husband. He was a sausage-maker."

    "He dissolved her body in a vat of lye. The investigating detective found her wedding ring in the bottom of the vat. The newspapers spread a rumor that he turned her into sausage, and sales dropped across the county for years."

    almab4bf2bcf6e

    64. "My mom is the youngest of five, raised in a Catholic household. Two of her sisters, my aunts, found a Ouija board."

    "They were playing around with it, asking harmless questions. Eventually, they asked the board who among them would be the first to die (which is a HUGE no-no), and the planchette said it would be their dad, my grandfather. Shortly after, he was killed in an accident. It was VERY unexpected."

    —Anonymous

    65. "When my great-grandma was little, she had an imaginary friend who she said looked exactly like her."

    "She told everyone that her name was Emily. Turns out...she had an identical twin who died when they were 2 days old whose name was Emily."

    brookelynnc

    66. "Our scary story wasn't passed down for generations; nor is it paranormal...just freaky. It happened to my grandparents. They lived in Tallahassee, Florida, at the time."

    "My grandma was working as a waiter, and one night she noticed that a man had been following her around. Well, he ended up following her all the way back to their house. She ran inside, terrified, and my grandpa went outside with his shotgun. The guy freaked out and took off. A week later, they said they saw him on the news, and that's when they realized the guy my grandpa had threatened with his shotgun was TED BUNDY."

    ditzydreamer

    67. "On my great-great-great-grandma's sixth birthday, she woke up in the middle of the night and went into the kitchen to get some water."

    "Behind her, she heard a floorboard creak. She turned around and saw something run into the pantry. She finally shared that story recently, and we have heard from EVERY woman in the family after that (including my mom), saying that they saw the exact same thing on their sixth birthdays. It's blurry in my head, but I do remember going into the kitchen to get water in the middle of the night on my sixth birthday. And recently, the morning of my daughter's sixth birthday, she told everybody that she had a 'friend' hiding in the kitchen."

    jaeljamw

    Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.

    This post contains content from Hannah Dobrogosz, Anna Kopsky, and Allie Hayes. It was compiled by Laura Frustaci.