11 People Reveal Stories That Get Creepier With Every Word

Sometimes, reality is just as bizarre as any story. The short tales you’re about to read begin with everyday moments — a noise behind the wall, a strange coincidence, a glitch that doesn’t add up. But as they unfold, something feels wrong. None of these stories are fabricated or impossible; they’re all based on events that could actually happen. And with every page, they grow more unsettling.

• I live with my mother. One night, I couldn’t fall asleep. Around 2 a.m., I heard footsteps coming from my mother’s room, then the fridge door opening, followed by the sound of something sizzling in a frying pan. I didn’t think much of it and eventually drifted off.
  In the morning, I woke up to my mother coming home from her night shift. She immediately scolded me for leaving a dirty frying pan on the stove — only she hadn’t been home all night.

• I saw someone at the train station who looked exactly like me — clothes, hair, even shoes. We made eye contact, and he gave a small smile. I told my roommate later. He reminded me we’d donated a bunch of my old clothes to a shelter two weeks earlier. Probably just someone wearing my old stuff.
• At 2 a.m., I jolted awake to 16 missed calls from my daughter and a chilling text that read, “Mom, help me!” She lives alone and is eight months pregnant. My heart dropped. I jumped in the car and raced to her apartment.
  When she opened the door, she looked confused. “Mom? I was asleep. I didn’t call you.” Still shaken, I pulled out my phone to show her — and that’s when we both froze. Along with the missed calls, there was a message that read: “My baby’s fever isn’t coming down. What should I do?” It was followed by a photo of a crying baby.
  I checked the number. It wasn’t hers. I didn’t recognize it at all. I called the number back. A young woman answered, her voice shaking with panic. Through tears, she explained that she was a new mom trying to reach her own mother. Her baby had suddenly become very ill in the middle of the night, and in her distress, she had dialed the wrong number — mine.
  Somehow, her desperate message landed on my phone. I stayed on the line with her, talked her through a few things she could try, and reassured her while she waited for the doctor. Eventually, she started to calm down.
  The entire experience felt unreal — like the universe had crossed some wires on purpose. With my own daughter just weeks away from giving birth, it hit especially close to home.
  I never heard from that woman again, but I think about her often. I truly hope she and her baby are safe and well.

• I was adopted from South America to the US when I was a toddler and have no memory of my birth parents. I had an older friend/mentor I met in college, whom I knew as Mike.
  When I learned that my birth mother had passed away, I received a few of her belongings, including pictures. Who was in these pictures? Mike. He was my birth father.
  © aaareed / Reddit
• There was a girl who was head over heels for me, but I didn’t want anything to do with her. After school, I didn’t think about her, but one year, when I went back home for the summer, I found out she had moved to my family’s building, to the apartment across from ours (my building has two apartments per floor).
  I had never told her where I lived before this. I decided to be cordial and talk to her family and all, welcome the neighbors and whatnot, and I found out from her mom that the girl had suggested they move there.
  Now, I can’t tell either way if it was deliberate or pure chance, but let’s just say we live in a big city, and the odds of that being a coincidence were low. © Kenhamef / Reddit
• I picked up my usual meds from the pharmacy on Friday. Saturday morning, I took one and immediately felt dizzy and nauseous. I checked the label — my name was on it, but the pills looked different. I looked them up online. They were for a heart condition I didn’t have. I called the pharmacy, and after a long hold, the pharmacist got serious fast. He told me to go to the ER and bring the bottle.
  At the hospital, they told me if I’d taken one more, my heart rate could’ve dropped dangerously. Turned out, my meds had been switched with someone else’s by mistake. They offered me a gift card. I switched pharmacies.

• My dad was a fireman, so there were many nights that my brother and I stayed alone with my mom. One night, my mom woke up because she heard banging and shuffling downstairs, so she called the cops and waited in the locked bedroom with us.
  The police arrived, entered the house, and it turns out, my brother’s RC car was on and picking up radio signals or something. It had been banging into the kitchen cabinets and knocked papers off a table. © PuttPuttStuff / Reddit
• I had a dream of my husband and me having three children. It was sweet and happy until they started slowly disappearing, Thanos style. I remember waking up and feeling “off.”
  The next week, we found out I was pregnant with triplets. One of them I miscarried, the second one became suddenly unviable, and the third had to be removed because it was far undersized and a danger to my life. It was the creepiest experience of my life.
  © prznmike / Reddit
• My hallway light would flicker every night at 3 a.m. I thought maybe a wiring issue, but it was only that light. I replaced the bulb... Still happened. I started to really freak out.
  Finally realized it coincided with the upstairs neighbor using the microwave. Old buildings. Shared circuits. That was it.
• I went to sleep Tuesday and woke up Thursday — nothing in my apartment was touched. No memory of Wednesday, no messages, no signs I got up. Turns out, I had a mild fever and slept almost 30 hours straight. The skipped day was real — I just slept through it.

• My aunt was visiting us and getting ready to leave. She kissed everyone goodbye and called my 4-year-old brother over for a hug. But instead of hugging her, he said, “Don’t go — you won’t get home anyway.” She laughed, thinking he was just being silly, and left.
  About half an hour later, she came back pale and visibly shaken. “The whole street is blocked off,” she said. “There was a fire. Everyone was evacuated. They’re not letting anyone near the building.”
  The adults were stunned. They kept asking my brother what he meant earlier, but he didn’t say another word.

Some childhood memories are warm and sweet. Others aren’t. Sometimes kids experience moments that stay with them — strange things they can’t explain, even as adults. Here are some of the creepiest childhood stories people still can’t make sense of.