13 Real Life Horror Stories That Will Keep You Up At Night

You won't sleep tonight or tomorrow night or the night after that. Just wave goodbye to your ability to sleep at all, really.

We asked the Buzzfeed Community for their most terrifying, real life horror stories. Just a heads up that if you're looking forward to ever sleeping again, go ahead and stop here...

1. The Kissing Lady

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When I was little, I told my parents about a woman I would see in the bathroom at my house who I called the “Kissing Lady.” My mom thought it was just something my dad made up and vice versa. Eventually, they thought to ask one another about the story of the Kissing Lady and just about pissed themselves when they figured out that neither of them had made it up. I don’t remember her very well, but I do remember that she had long, dark hair and wore long dresses. That bathroom still gives me the creeps.

Submitted by Sebastián Gaspar.

(Another user asked Sebastián in the comments: “Why did you call her the “Kissing Lady”? He replied: "My mom asked when I was younger, and I told her, as though it were obvious, 'because she blows me kisses…'")

2. My Brother Wants To Play

Antonis Liokouras / Getty Images

I really liked playing with Mega Bloks as a kid. I loved to build tall towers and then loved to smash them even more. One time, after tearing down one of my towers, I got bored and I went to ask my mom for permission to play outside. She said I could as soon as I went in and put away the blocks I left on the floor. I headed back towards my room, but when I got to the door, I looked in to see that my brother, who was a few years younger than me, was already picking up my blocks for me. He had turned the lights on, and was very focused on the task at hand. I went back and told my mom that my brother was taking care of it and she looked at me, then out the nearby open door for a moment before saying, “Your brother is outside playing.” I went back to my room and saw that nobody was there, the light was off, and the blocks were still scattered on the floor.

Submitted by Brenda Alejandra Dueñas.

3. He Came For A Visit

Thinkstock / Getty Images

I’ve suffered from sleep paralysis since I was 14 years old. If you’re not familiar, it’s a sensation of not being able to move (usually in bed) and being consciously aware of it. During one of my many episodes, I heard what sounded like someone entering my room, then felt them hugging me until my back began to hurt. I tried to get loose, but whatever was there got angry and growled at me. When I could finally move again, I had goosebumps all over my body and my back was in a lot of pain. I still have sleep paralysis, but I’ve never had a similar experience. I’ll never understand what it was that had a hold of me.

Submitted by Jesús Francisco León.

4. The Playful Dog

Chainatp / Getty Images

Last weekend, I woke up in the middle of the night because my dog had jumped up onto the bed and started licking my face and whimpering, sort of how he does when he’s begging for food or something along those lines. I asked him, “What do you want, boy?” But when I turned on my bedside lamp, my dog wasn’t there. I got up and found him sleeping peacefully in his bed in the kitchen.

Submitted by Adri Adri.

5. The Boy And The Train

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A couple weeks back, a few friends and our kids were walking down a familiar route that passed by some train tracks near my house. We narrowly avoided an accident with the train as it went by, but put the incident behind us pretty quickly. A few weeks later, I was walking in the same area sending voice memos to that same group of friends when the train went by. I listened back to the voice memo to make sure I was even audible in all the noise and clearly heard the voice of a boy shouting a warning the moment before the train’s whistle blew. There definitely was nobody on the street anywhere near me at the time.

Submitted by Araña Rdz.

6. The Baby Who Would Not Stop Crying

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After I gave birth to my third child, things were going well at first... until he turned three weeks old and began to vomit every time I fed him milk. I took him to the doctor who gave him medicine to control the problem.

That night, I was too worried to get any sleep. Around 2 a.m. I decided to take advantage of my insomnia and did some laundry. Suddenly, I heard the sound of children crying, but the baby was in his crib in the bedroom, and my other kids were all sound asleep in their rooms. I stayed in the hallway for a moment and began to hear a very different kind of crying coming from back the living room. It sounded like an older woman weeping, overcome with sadness and desperation. I was paralyzed with fear, but something inside told me to get my newborn to the hospital. So at 4 a.m., I took him to have a number of tests done, and we were told he’d need to go to another hospital for emergency stomach surgery. The doctor told me that if we had waited any longer, we probably would have lost our baby.

I’m still not sure what happened, but my mother insists it was a guardian angel warning me.

Submitted by Vanessa Chiquita Gutiérrez.

7. The Monk

Enolabrain / Getty Images

While I was living in China, I got into a very angry fight with the person I was dating at the time. I left the apartment we were sharing, and found my way to a temple at the very top of a nearby mountain. The view from the temple was incredibly beautiful, and I’d go there often just to clear my mind. I curled up on a very old wooden bench and cried until I fell asleep. My sleep was interrupted by the sound of someone approaching, and I felt as they sat down on the far end of the same bench I was sleeping on. I shot up, apologizing that I had fallen asleep, but there was nobody there with me. I told some of my Chinese friends about the situation, and they said nobody visits the temple for that very reason.

Submitted by Carm Sky Walker.

8. It Was 2:46 a.m.

Shelladave / Getty Images

I recently woke up in the middle of the night to a quite house. The dogs were asleep, and I couldn’t figure out what had startled me awake so suddenly. As I looked around the room, I saw what looked like a human silhouette standing by my bed. But instead of being totally black, it looked like it was made up of thousands of little black dots that moved and shifted. I blinked in confusion, thinking my eyes were the problem, but the shape continued to move around the room. A few moments later, I reached for my phone and by the time I had turned on the flashlight, the silhouette was gone. To this day, I have no idea what it was that visited me, but I do remember looking at my phone and seeing the time. It was 2:46 a.m..

Submitted by Macial Porraz.

9. The Crying Woman

Zoonar Rf / Getty Images

The house my grandparents live in isn’t very big… except for the patios. The one on the back of the house even had a little greenhouse in it where they grew their own plants and vegetables. Behind their house was a field of agave plants my grandfather tended, and at the back of the field was an old outhouse that just drained into the river at the very back of the property. One time, as my cousins and siblings and I were playing in the agave patch, I decided to use the outhouse. The door didn’t close all the way, so I had a couple of my cousins hold the door while I went to the bathroom. After a few moments, I heard a blood-curdling scream and the sound of all my cousins running away from the outhouse. I tried pushing the door open and running as well, but it was stuck shut, despite the fact that there was no latch or lock to keep it closed. The scream continued to pierce the air and I felt goosebumps crawl over my entire body. I pushed and banged on the door with no luck. I thought I was going to die in that outhouse.

When the door finally did swing open, I ran out and covered the distance between the agave field and back patio in seconds. Everyone was waiting for me, and they were all pale and crying. The scream had faded, but when we looked out over the agave patch, we saw a white shape like the silhouette of a woman floating over the river behind the outhouse, slowly following the flow of the river.

Our grandfather later told us that she was the Crying Lady, and that he had seen and heard her before. He warned us to never let her see us again, because if we ever faced her up close, we would die of fright. We never played in his agave fields ever again.

Submitted by Momo Gamo.

10. A Large, Rough Hand

Vranilo / Getty Images

When I was 16 years old, my family and I were sitting around the table finishing up dinner together. I decided to get up and go watch TV by myself. As I climbed the stairs, I felt a large, rough hand pull me by my ankle, causing me to slip and fall down the stairs. My father came running, responding to my cries and shouts, and after looking around the house, didn’t find anyone who could have grabbed me. I was shaken, and retreated to my room. I looked out my window, out towards the street in front of the house. There on the corner was a young woman in a white robe. She had long, curly hair, and didn’t appear to have any feet. Instead, she was just floating above the sidewalk. I screamed in terror and my sister ran into my room, saying that she had seen the floating woman as well. We both went to sleep crying. Twelve years later, I still run up the stairs in my house as fast as I can.

Submitted by JoviiZz Payan de Segoviano.

11. A Final Embrace

Johnnorth / Getty Images

I moved several times before I finally settled into a permanent place. One of the many houses I lived in had two floors, and I had the entire bottom floor to myself. One night, my dog started barking and ran into my bedroom. He was barking at the door, but refused to go near it. I got up, checked the door, but when I didn’t see anything, I went back to bed after quieting my dog down. Some time later, I woke up feeling uncomfortable and afraid for no apparent reason. I curled up into a ball on my side and tried to get back to sleep but was startled awake by the feeling of someone hugging me from behind. I couldn’t move or scream, so I just closed my eyes as tight as I could and ran through every prayer I could remember in my head until I fell asleep again. I never figured out who, or what, was hugging me that night.

Submitted by Kenya MIllán.

12. The Phantom Husband

Moeeyan / Getty Images

A few days after my cousin had a baby, her husband needed to leave to go on a business trip, so my sister and I said we’d stay with her to help take care of things and keep her company. One evening around 9 p.m. as we watched TV in an upstairs bedroom, we heard footsteps downstairs. Someone had opened the door to the kitchen, walked into the bathroom, and slammed the door behind them. Assuming my cousin’s husband had come home early, we went downstairs to greet him, but there was nobody in the house. We went back upstairs, but kept hearing someone moving around downstairs. We waited in terrified silence until her parents eventually stopped by. We never figured out who was in the house with us that night.

Submitted by Miguel Ángel Pérez.

13. A Terrifying Whistle

Vranilo / Getty Images

I was doing my homework in the kitchen early one morning when I heard a man out on the street shout. I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, but figured it must just be some drunk or crazy person shouting incoherently and ignored it. A while later, I started hearing a tune being whistled. I didn’t recognize the tune, but figured once again that it was coming from someone out on the street or a neighbor’s house, and I once again ignored it. Without really paying attention to it, I barely noticed that the whistling seemed to be getting closer and closer to my house. I did, however, notice when the whistling suddenly stopped and I heard the door to our front steps swing open. I heard the sound of heavy boots climbing the stairs to our building, but then there was nothing.

Everything was silent again, so I relaxed and got back to my homework. Then without warning, the tune resumed, and the whistling sounded like it was right beside my ear. I was too scared to move, and felt a heavy hand rest itself firmly on my arm as the whistling continued. When I finally snapped out of it, I yelled for my father who came running. We found the front door open, which was unusual because it was never open, and along the front stairs were animal tracks.

I’ve never heard that haunting tune again, but I can still feel that hand on my arm. Every time I turn my arm I feel like I’m going to see a hand gripping onto it, even though I know what happened to me couldn’t have been real.

Submitted by K Jacqueline Baez.

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