People Who Experienced Terrifying Moments As A Child Are Finally Revealing What They Saw, And It's Beyond Creepy

Children experience creepy sh*t. Whether it's seeing something paranormal that isn't there or barely escaping an adult that's trying to harm them, things are a lot scarier when you're young and vulnerable. I was reminded of this when I wrote about people's most haunting childhood memories and y'all shared even more of your terrifying stories.

BANDAI NAMCO / Via giphy.com

1."When I was a kid, I was afraid of the dark because scary faces would appear in my room at night. The black air would start to get stuff in it that looked like TV static, and faintly glowing heads would come out of it like a Magic Eye image. Sometimes the faces would start to look clear and colorized. I was told it was just my imagination."

"As a teenager, I'd been taking nighttime medicine in the kitchen that I'd taken as a kid to help me go to sleep. I eventually discovered I'd been taking a 'home remedy' my grandparents used to knock me out at bedtime, and it had been making me hallucinate! I have no clear memory of exactly how long that went on." —matthewschonmorgan

2."When I was 12 years old, I was in my friend's den, and we were using ICQ to chat with strangers, as we did back then. I felt an overwhelming sense of coldness and an energy that basically forced me to turn my head right...there was a man staring at me. He wasn't threatening, but he had an eerily happy grin. I calmly described him to my friend, and she yelled for her mom. It was her long deceased uncle that I never even knew existed. His urn was in that room."

3."I can’t remember the year, but think I was around 9 years old. Our living room had Venetian blinds, and I would occasionally peek through one of them into our front yard, for no reason other than to look outside. One time, something or someone popped up in front of me as I peeked out. It had a white head and an open black mouth, kind of like The Scream painting. I don’t believe in paranormal nonsense at all, but I just remember running over to my dad and sitting on his lap. My heart was thumping, and I was terrified."

4."Once I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a silhouette of a person hovering around the edge of my bed. I pinched myself and rubbed my eyes to make sure I was fully awake — still there. So, I just pulled the covers over my head and went back to sleep. And countless times I’ve heard people rummaging about in the kitchen at night when my parents were sleeping or not home. My dog even once started barking at someone when we were alone, clearly looking at something and watching it move. Then I heard a window open. They were all shut and locked when I checked."

5."I was almost kidnapped as a child. One day when I was 8 years old, I was playing in our backyard. As I was walking to our side door in the backyard, an old man around 60 years old appeared on the other side of our fence. He started walking 'alongside' me, with the fence in between us, whispering, 'Little girl, come here. I want to show you something. Don't be scared. Come here.' As he said this, he started to walk around toward the front yard, where our gate was — our gate couldn't lock. I ran inside, locked the side door, closed the curtains, and ran upstairs to tell my dad."

6."When I was about 13 years old, I was sleeping on the couch in our old house. We lived in a shady neighborhood. I usually slept on the couch because it was summer in Texas — the house didn’t have central AC, and it was cooler in the living room. I woke up that time to a man standing over me. He had shorts on, but no shirt. I screamed at him to leave and unlocked the front door and he left. As he left, he spoke in another language that I understood enough to know he was asking about my mother. I locked the door, wondering how he’d gotten in, and woke up my mom. Then, we went around to check the other doors and windows and found the man again back in a spare bedroom crouched behind a small piece of furniture! That room had an exterior door that turned out to have been unlocked."

7."When I was about 6 years old, I was walking home from my friend’s house after dark. She lived right around the corner from us, so it wasn’t very far. Our yard was pretty big, and as I was hurrying across it because I was late to dinner, I saw this black mist. In it was a man with a hat on. I ran faster than I ever ran in my life. I swear I heard the mist man laughing. I told my parents, and my dad went out to look but never saw anything."

8."When I was a little younger, I was by myself one day after school, and the phone rang. The caller was a man who asked if my mom was home. I lied and said she was in the bathroom because that's what she always told me to say. He said, 'You're lying. You're there alone. And I'm coming over.' I hung up and called my mom at work in hysterics. She had her friend come stay with me until she got home."

"It was terrifying. I still remember the exact sound of this voice and how confident and sinister it was." —kerryb46b2b6074

9."Once when I was about 15 years old, my mom had gone into a store while I waited in the car. It was dark, and our dog was with me. I saw a man walking toward the car and immediately locked the doors. He started knocking on the window, until eventually he tried opening the door, then came to my side to try to open it. My dog was barking wildly. I started honking the horn, and the man took off."

10."When I was about 4 years old, I woke up in the middle of the night to my sister screaming. She had a nightmare about a demon attacking her in her bed. I went into my parents' room while my mom was in there trying to calm her down. Her room was across from theirs, and I looked over to it and saw a floating white figure above her bed. I told my sister she didn’t need to worry, because there was an angel in her bedroom."

11."When my father was a kid back in the '60s, he was rowing on the river with a couple of friends in a small boat. They noticed the bottom of a Wellington boot floating about. It was common for trash to come floating down since it was the end of the river and they did a lot of building ships in that area. They rowed closer to the boot take a look. It was attached to a leg, and a whole dead man."

"He doesn't talk much about it, but it's clear he remembers it vividly when it gets mentioned, even 50 years later." —vegard

12."It was Halloween night. I was about 8 years old. Trick-or-treating was done, and my friend and I were trading candies, when we heard a noise at the end of the driveway. Our parents were hanging out in the garage, so the two of us walked down to see what it was. My driveway went downhill a bit, and around the corner, there was a smoke and mist. Suddenly, what looked like a creepy version of Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz appeared. He was laughing and looked super scary. We ran as fast as possible and told our parents. They went down there, and there wasn’t a soul on the street."

"To this day we both remember it and know what we saw." —ohia_lehua

13."Late November 1980, my brother and I were in high school. At 9 p.m. I headed to the kitchen and looked out the window, when something red caught my eye in the night sky. I looked up and then called my brother and mom to check it out. We walked out into the backyard to get a closer look: It was round and had six panels that lit up one at a time in slow sequence, like the turn signal on a classic Mustang. There was no visible moon, and there was no sound at all as it appeared to hover over our house. We couldn't gauge a size, but it was at least 20 feet across and 75 feet up in the air. Or it could have been higher and larger, in the pitch black night. We watched it for 15 minutes and then went inside. Ten minutes later, it was gone."

14."When I was about 9 years old, we had two robberies on my street. We lived in a pretty good neighborhood, and there were many valuable things inside the homes. I was home alone one day, when someone kept knocking on the lower-level windows and doors. I saw a man with some sort of mask through the window. He tried getting in a few extra ways, but he accidentally set off the alarm, which silently called the police who came quickly."

"I was traumatized for quite a while, and my parents had me go to therapy until I was 14. To this day, I’m still very cautious. I have my own children, and no matter their age, I'm very careful when they're left alone." —peach79294822

15."I was at home alone in high school, and my parents had gone out for dinner with some friends. The only others in the house were the cats, who were with me, and the dog who was sleeping in the living room. I was working on homework and didn't have any music or TV on or anything. Around 9 p.m. I distinctly heard the garage door open, the sound of people getting out of a car, coming in the laundry room door, and getting greeted by the dog. I was surprised — my parents usually stayed out later with their friends, so I went out to see why they were home so early. When I got out there, no one was there. The dog was still asleep on her bed, and the lights in the living room were off. I checked the garage and there was no car, no lights on, no sign of anyone having come home at all."

16."When I was 5 years old, I was in the middle of trying to fall asleep for my nap. I picked my head up to look out the window and saw a man standing on the corner of the sidewalk, straight-up holding an automatic rifle and pointing it around at the houses like he was looking for targets. I thought it was scary, but didn’t really feel the urgency to tell my parents right away — I was young. I eventually fell asleep, and told them what I saw later that day. They swore I had just had a scary dream and that our neighbor would never do that. A couple of years went by, and guess what? That same neighbor was arrested for making pipe bombs in his garage."

What are some creepy memories from your own childhood that you just remembered because of this post? Let me know in the comments.

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