People Are Confessing The Creepiest, Most Unsettling Experiences They've Had In Broad Daylight, And I'm Now Convinced Of The Multiverse

Note: This post contains mentions of violence and animal cruelty.

We're supposed to be safe in daylight — at least, that's what a lot of us, myself included, are conditioned to believe. So when you do encounter something creepy during the day, it can feel extra unsettling.

A24 / Via giphy.com

That's why, when people shared the creepiest or most unexplained things they've witnessed in broad daylight, I couldn't help but get goosebumps. Check out their stories for yourself — let me know if you make it to the end without feeling your skin crawl:

1."As I was walking through the grocery store one day, I looked down an aisle, and clear as day, my great uncle was at the end. He looked straight at me and waved. I walked by the aisle before my brain registered what happened: My great uncle died 22 years ago. I took a step backward, and he was gone."

Grocery store aisle

2."My brother was house hunting once, and his girlfriend and I were with him. At one apartment, his girlfriend and I were in the living room while he was in the kitchen with the real estate agent. Suddenly, I imagined blood spraying up across the wall and onto the celling. I shuddered and thought, Damn that was a weird thought. Then, my brother's girlfriend grabbed my arm and said, 'You saw it too right? The blood?' I just nodded at her. She ran into the kitchen and literally dragged my brother out of that place."

florence pugh in "midsommar"
A24

3."I used to live on a farm, and one morning, there was a full horse leg on our driveway. Like, still had part of the hip attached and was fresh. We sprinted down to our horse paddock to find all our horses completely fine. We disposed of the leg and never got an explanation."

Horse laying down in a field

4."Back in the '80s, my mom and my aunt were on a road trip to get to a wedding. They were in the middle of nowhere in Texas and really had to use the restroom. An unexpected gas station appeared, so they pulled into it. My mom told me that it looked like a Texaco gas station from the '50s — the cars were really old, the employees were dressed in old uniforms, and everyone there just stared at my mom and aunt without saying a word. My mom and my aunt took turns taking watch for each other while using the outside bathroom because they were so freaked out. As my aunt was in the bathroom, a man started walking toward my mom while pointing at her. My mom screamed, my aunt hurried out, and they hopped back in the car. They sped out and passed under an overpass, and saw the clouds whizz by them. Then, everything was normal. They passed the same gas station on the way home a few days later. It was boarded up, and it looked like it had been abandoned for years."

old time gas station footage

5."My high school girlfriend and her family all talked about this ghost in their house and always said that it sounded like a man wearing boots walking down the hallway. We were all very close, so one day when they weren't home, I just walked in and went to my girlfriend's room and laid on her bed while I waited for them to get back. Then, a man in boots walked slowly right down the hall, right outside the door of the room where I was laying. I did the next logical thing: Climbed out of her bedroom window."

old photo of a ghost-like figure on stairs

6."Not me, but my dad. He was outside at the far end of the yard and saw me standing on the stairs, whistling for him to come back to the house. When he got back inside he asked what was up and why I changed my shirt. I hadn't been outside, didn't hear any whistling, and was wearing the same black shirt I'd been wearing all day, not the white shirt he saw 'me' wearing when he saw me outside a few minutes earlier."

u/Go_Ask_Alyss

7."I was at work dragging a box backward, looking through my legs to see where I was going. I stopped suddenly because I saw I was about to back into a guy standing behind me because I could see his legs. I stood up and turned around. The shop was empty."

man carrying box

8."I once lived in the basement apartment of an old building. One time, I was just chilling and suddenly heard a loud clang from the bathroom — a large bolt type thing, like a piece of metal larger than a bottle cap, had somehow 'flown' off whatever piece of plumbing it had been screwed into. It was so loud and landed in the middle of the floor. It couldn’t have just fallen off. Another time, a handwritten phone number appeared on the wall, but it was visible under the paint. It was near where I’d hung up a poster, so I would’ve absolutely noticed it if it had been there earlier. And the strangest thing was when I came back home one afternoon and hung up my pleather jacket in the closet. About a week later, I grabbed it to wear it again, but it had been all torn up over both shoulders, as if someone had clawed it repeatedly. I had no pets."

woman looking into mirror

9."I was a manager at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center for three years. My office was on the main floor of an 1872 carriage house with lots of history. I mostly hung at the front desk next to the gift shop. This particular day, we had no visitors come in because of rain and sleet. A bit before 5 p.m. I sent the two guides to close up the Stowe house and I was alone. Suddenly, I heard stomping above me in the guide break room. Someone big was stomping around and moving heavy things. At first, I assumed someone broke in. But that didn’t make sense. I could see the main staircase from my desk, and the door to the other one was always locked. I called up to the guide break room where the noise was coming from since it was a two-way phone speaker. The room should have been empty, but I could very clearly hear someone up there. And they sounded angry or upset. I heard them stop at the desk, panting and moving papers frantically. I radioed security."

The hardwood floors of an old building

10."I was in middle school, and it was the late '90s. I stayed home from school because I wasn't feeling well and at one point in the day decided to take a shower. My childhood home was a split level and when you are in the bathroom in the top level, you can hear all the conversations in the kitchen. I was taking a shower, and started hearing multiple cabinets opening and shutting in the kitchen for several minutes. I figured one of my parents or siblings had come home on their lunch break, so I come out of the shower and yell, 'Hi!' down the stairs. No answer. I got dressed, went downstairs, but there was no one there. I called my parents, and neither of them had come home. I ask my siblings later that night. None of them were home either."

jessica chastain in "it chapter two"

"To this day, I still get creeped out thinking about it." —mochabean

Warner Bros. Pictures

11."In college, I lived on the 11th floor in an apartment with no balcony and it was about 4:30 in the afternoon. I was walking through the hall and saw a man walk into my apartment about 10 seconds before I walked in. I was living with three roommates at the time, so I just figured they were having guests over, no biggie. I habitually bolted the door behind me, even though it locked automatically on the outside. I put my stuff on the couch and went towards the back bedroom to say hi to whoever came over. Only my roommates were there, and they had no idea who I was talking about."

A man in a suit with a rolling suitcase entering a room

12."An older woman I went to church with had many stories about growing up in what she called a haunted house in the country. She told me her and her family would hear weird noises when they were home alone, and how things ending up in different parts of the house. But one story really stood out to me. Her and her siblings all moved away, though after their parents passed, decided to return to their hometown. They went to see their old house, but couldn't find the road leading to it. They asked some people about it in town who looked at them funny and said, 'There's never been a house out there.' They managed to get to the spot where their house was, but nothing was there. No foundation, no driveway, absolutely nothing."

vecna house in "stranger things 4"

13."When I was about 8 years old, my family and I were hiking somewhere in Austria when we came across the ruins of a medieval castle on a hilltop. A sign said that there was a cafe near the ruins, so we went up. The cafe was deserted. All the tables and chairs were toppled, and next to the building stood a brand new big Mercedes with a lot of bullet holes in the trunk and the rear window. The car was heavily armored. the rear window was so thick that the bullets hadn't even penetrated it. We turned around on the spot and got out of there as fast as we could."

"Once we were back at the hotel, my dad reported it to the police but they dismissed it. We never knew what came of it." —u/ronin668

14."I work in property management. I had a showing at a newly built home about five years ago. I arrived early to get the place ready. I was alone. I turned on all the lights and continued doing so upstairs. I passed by the staircase while I was doing my final checks and saw a figure in all black, standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking right up at me. I shot my head over to get a full look because it scared the crap out of me, though nothing was there. But I remember it clearly, and know what I saw."

shadow figure at bottom of staircase

"To this day, I hate going to show that house." —mochabean

Carlos. E. Serrano / Getty Images

15."I was crossing at a busy intersection and saw my perfect double walk towards me. We basically locked eyes until we passed each other — a total mind-fuck. Even more disturbing: Instead of stopping and chatting and being amused by the entire biological coincidence, my immediate subconscious reaction was a massive rising internal rage that someone, somehow had ‘stolen my face.' Very, very weird."

Identical men in suits walking down a subway tunnel

16."I was driving home on an interstate highway with a buddy and without taking any exits or turning, we were suddenly on a rural highway that paralleled the interstate...but about five miles away. We were not on drugs. We could not explain it. It took us an extra hour to get home than it usually did. This was a trip we'd made a few times together and several times separately. We quietly agreed not to discuss it."

rural highway

17."I was walking down the street on my way to the store when a large dog jumped through a glass window from the second story of a house and landed on the front lawn. I tried knocking on the door and got no answer from them, or any of their neighbors, so I called animal control and stayed with the the dog who other then a few scratches was okay. Once animal control arrived, they called the police to investigate because even the animal control lady had no clue what would cause a dog to do that."

snarling dog

18."A few years ago, I was smoking a cigarette in front of my apartment on the front steps in the middle of the day, around noon or so. I got up to head back, but for a few fleeting seconds while I was looking at the building, it looked totally unfamiliar. I knew I lived there. I knew it was my home. I knew I had just stepped outside only five minutes previously...but my brain was giving me some kind of indication that I had never seen this place before and that there was danger inherent. I violently wagged my head back and forth — like an aggressive 'no' gesture — and was immediately back to normal."

building in "it chapter two"

19."When I was a teenager, I saw an old man who looked about 70 years old open up a sewer grate, and just hop in."

A sewer grate

20."My dad, brother, and I went to a movie theater one day in Florida. It was around 4 p.m. so it was getting darker but still light out. We went up to the front where you buy tickets and when we looked around, there was absolutely no one in the movie theater at all. No employees, no other guests. We simply walked in, looking all around to try to find anyone we could to purchase a movie ticket, but could find no one else. All the movies in each of the theaters we checked were running but with no one else inside. So we just sat down and watched a movie, then left without seeing anyone else the whole time. It was very surreal."

Popcorn spilling from a cup on the floor of an empty movie theater

21."I once had a dream I was walking solo down a dirt path that felt familiar, even though I had never been down that path before. As I walked toward a wooded area, the feeling of familiarity changed and the path ended at an abandoned cemetery. I was drawn in towards a specific grave. There was an old stone bench next to a sunken grave. The headstone had an angel on top with one wing, and a pine needle dangling from it by a cobweb. It drifted in the breeze. Then I woke up. I immediately felt like the dream was calling me back. The jolt from waking up was so startling I decided to write the dream down. Years later, I was looking at houses with my girlfriend. At one showing, the realtor called and said she was running late. Behind the house, we noticed a path past the overgrown grass going into some woods. We decided to walk it to kill time. As we were walking and I was enjoying the sun on my face, I was hit with an intense feeling of deja vu: I knew this place."

Broken angel statue

22."One time I was staying at a motel, and I was about to smoke in the room like an idiot (there was no smoking allowed inside and fee penalties for doing so). Suddenly, the night stand drawer popped open. Only the bible was inside. I spent a few good minutes trying to replicate the drawer opening — I banged it, shook it, but nothing. I ended up just going to bed, which probably saved me some trouble."

cheap motel room

23."My father and I are window cleaners. We were working a vacant home from the 'Roaring 20s' era — giant chandelier, wrap around spiral staircase, checkerboard flooring with fancy carved golden trim. I could write paragraphs on this home. It was big, bold, and beautiful. My father was upstairs cleaning the main bedroom windows and listening to music through a speaker. It was a track from the '70s. I was coming upstairs and the sun outside hit the chandelier, momentarily blinding me. It was like a flash bang, and I was stunned for a second. When I recovered, there was no more music and the whole house felt different. It was almost the same, but it felt like there was one small thing that I could't identify that had changed. I asked my dad if he was listening to music, and he told me 'No, but that's a great idea,' and started playing music from his phone. It was the same song I heard when coming up the stairs, but from the beginning."

Entryway of a grand house with a chandelier and polished floors

24."I was walking past a church one day when I was about 15 years old and standing in front of one of the graves was a cowboy dressed head to toe in pure white. He looked straight out of a movie. His hat, shirt, waistcoat, trousers and boots were all so white, like an incredibly clean white as if he’d only just put them on. He was white, had short brown hair, stubble and was an average-looking guy. I kept staring at him, blinked, and then he was just gone."

night vision footage of investigating haunted western town

25."When I was a teenager, I was at a friend's house when his parents and family were not home. At around 5 p.m., I was outside on his back porch tying my shoes before going back into his house. It was like a 20-second action. But when I walked inside, his entire family was back home, sitting at the kitchen table, eating dinner. They were staring at me freaked out, asking why I'd just walked into their house. I asked for the time and they told me it was 6:30 p.m. — I'd lost an entire hour doing a 20-second action. To this day I still have no clue what happened or where the time went."

u/ionlywanttheneck

26."My mom and I were about to leave our house in the car. The car was in our drive, which is just off the road, and sometimes we'd have to wait for pedestrians to go past before we can leave. My mom got in the car and started the engine and just before I got in, I looked to my right and saw a young girl riding a bike on the pavement. I told my mom to wait until she had gone past, but the girl stopped and said to me, 'I’m just waiting for my mom.' I looked back down the road and saw a woman walking towards us, so I got into the car thinking the girl and the woman would eventually go past and we could drive away. We waited, and I checked in my side mirror expecting to see them eventually go past. But they didn’t. I got out of the car again and looked up and down the road — there was nobody there. They'd both vanished."

car headed towards driveway

27."When I was a little girl, I was playing in my room one morning with my sister. I looked out my window and saw a man staring in at us. I told my sister to leave my room and ran to get my father. He didn't believe me and thought I was imagining things. I had an awful hard time sleeping that night. Throughout my childhood, I'd hear what sounded like footsteps outside at night, or my parents' car doors opening long after they had went to sleep. Several years later, I looked at our house on Google Maps. I always assumed we lived by ourselves in the woods, far from anyone else. It turns out there was a small house that looked like it was being lived in only a few hundred yards in the woods from us."

Creepy path of a forest

28."It was in the winter like 10 years ago or more. We went out to the near hillside to have some fun with our sleds. There were tons of people because it's a really popular spot, so we chose a more isolated part of the hillside. I slid down, then headed all the way back up. As I was pulling my sled behind me, I saw this darkish, centipede-like creature about 20 meters ahead of me, and it was the size of my forearm. It lifted its front part where its head was, took a look around, then quickly retreated into a ditch and disappeared."

"To this day, I haven't told anyone about it because it felt very real to me, but it's so random that I might have just been imagining it. It feels too specific. I was like 14 years old at the time and completely sober." —u/EchoPrivate

29."When I was 15 years old, my family and I camped in the Grand Canyon during the summer. We went to a ranger lecture around 6 p.m. so it was still pretty light when we were walking back. We went off the trail as a shortcut and came across a light ahead. As we drew closer, there was a man sitting at an office-sized desk with a lantern, in the middle of the woods. I remember he had long sideburns and was dressed like a man from the 1800s. The man never made a peep or looked up or acknowledged us. My dad backed us down towards the trail and we went on our way. I don't believe in ghosts or spirits but have no explanation for what I saw."

lantern on a tree stump

30."A tooth just materialized on my kitchen counter one day. Asked around all my family and nobody lost any teeth, no kids lost any teeth, I never lost any teeth, no clue where this tooth came from, it just appeared on afternoon."

u/Ultimator4

31."I was with my cousin and his friends. We were walking behind his house. There was nothing around, except a dirt road about 500 feet back once used by an electrical company. We walked past that dirt road, deeper into the woods than we'd ever gone. There wasn't a soul in sight. Then, we came across a small cabin. We got close. We thought it was empty until we heard chanting coming from inside. The youngest of us was so scared, he started crying. Then, two grown men came out of the cabin, dressed in black with white make-up on their face. They were very angry. I remember seeing a glow of a fire coming from inside the cabin. They started running towards us and we booked it. They chased us all the way back to my cousin's house. We ran inside and locked the door. Seconds later, we heard banging on the front door. My aunt, the only other person home, saw us panicking. We begged her not to answer. My aunt kept the chain lock on, but opened the door."

abandoned cottage

32."I was about 7 or 8 years old at the time. I was with my Mom who was house sitting for my aunt. We were waiting for my stepdad to pick us up. I heard a car door close outside, so I ran to the large viewing window by the front door. I called my mom over saying he was here to pick us up. She thought it was a bit early, so she came to look. He was wearing a purple shirt with a green collar, and a black hat. We both saw him walking to the garage area from the driveway, instead of walking to the front door. Strange. He never came inside so we looked outside and his car wasn't there. My stepdad is a very tall man at 6'7, so it's hard to mistake for someone. She called his cell phone and his work — no answer. After 15 minutes, she called his parents' house. He was over there helping them with their computer. But his parents' house was on the other side of town, at least an hour away. There was no way he could've made it over there in 15 minutes."

boy looking out window

33."It was our end-of-8th-grade field trip, and we were on a campground owned by a church. We were free to explore the land. There was a small river with a wide pebble beach and there were lizards running over the pebbles to different areas of brush growing on the beach. I liked trying to catch lizards, so I started chasing them. With my hands extended almost touching the lizard, I followed one until it crawled across something that wasn’t pebbles or branches — it was short fur. I recoiled in an instant, and stepped back. The lizard had crawled onto a goat carcass that was half-buried in the sand. There was a pentagram carved into its forehead, and its eyes were milky white."

"There were a lot of partially burned sticks nearby, but weirdly the goat carcass hadn’t started to stink yet. It was probably some teenagers messing around, trying to summon satan or whatever, but it was an incredible moment of shock. I only realized what was happening when my hands were inches away from the dead carcass." —u/momunist

34."One time after class, I got home really tired at around 5 p.m. and decided to take a nap. That's when I had my one and only sleep paralysis experience, in broad daylight — I figured hallucinations during the day would be less intense. It wasn't. I heard lots of loud voices, heavy steps, things falling, and even felt something touching my body under the blanket. It was terrifying."

u/killme_dospuntostres

35."I closed my bathroom door. Somehow, the locking bolt jumped and locked the damn door from the inside. I had to borrow a ladder and climb in through the window. When I looked at the door, it was fully locked."

u/Melodic-Document-112 

36."I was dozing off in my bed, then heard an explosion. I pulled the blanket over my head to minimize any fire and shards of glass falling on me. I thought I was going to die. A few seconds later, I looked around and everything was fine. I checked around the house and out the window — nothing."

mannequin in window

37."I was about 11 or 12 years old and walking to my friends house a few blocks away, when randomly a dime hit me right in between my eyes so hard that it bruised. There were no tall buildings around. No car drove past and, to my knowledge, there were no planes above. It was probably the weirdest thing that’s happened to me."

steven yuen in "nope"

38."My mother-in law-sadly died three years ago. About six months after she passed, my husband and I walked up the stairs and saw her outside her room. She just stood there, then walked into her room. I turned to my husband and said, 'Did you see that?' only to find he was crying. We went into her room — of course, there was no one there. But to this day, we both say we saw her."

woman stares out window in "insidious"

39."It was the first weekend away with my then-girlfriend after dating for three months. She said we could share a single room and I went into overdrive to make it as romantic as possible. I booked a small high-end hotel in the country, organized a picnic, wine tasting, the whole lot. I'd never been there, I'd only heard of it because it was well known as a fancy place. When we got there though, I already knew the place. I knew where our cottage was before being shown, how it was laid out, even the complicated path to get to it. There wasn't the excitement of seeing a place for the first time, it was almost a remembering feeling. I put it down to nerves. But the next day at the wine tasting, the clerk at the cellar store, which was a few kilometers away said, 'Welcome back. You must have enjoyed your bottle of cherry liqueur from last time.' But I know that was our first time in there."

tasting wine

40."In the '80s, my dad was in the Peace Corps and lived in Sierra Leone for three years. He had a motorbike and would ride around the roads when he had free time. One day, he was riding a dirt road that snakes around a small hillside past some construction works. About half a mile after the roadwork, he sees a man on the side of this dirt road on the hillside, just laughing his butt off. And he was blue. Not like painted blue, but blue. At first my dad rode on, thinking nothing of it. And then it sunk in...that he saw a blue dude sitting on the side of a dirt road, laughing wildly. He turned around and rode back to where he saw the blue dude and there was no one there."

blue creepy man

What's a creepy or unexplained counter that happened to you in broad daylight? Let me know in the comments, if you dare.

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