The Pee That Saved The Whole Neighborhood, And 23 Other Eerie, Strange Experiences That People Couldn't Forget If They Tried
WARNING: This article contains mentions of murder, miscarriages, injury, and death. Please proceed with caution.
Every month, I ask BuzzFeed readers just like you to share the creepiest, most bone-chilling things they've ever experienced. I've read it all: glitches in the matrix, paranormal encounters, run-ins with serial killers, and even premonitions that came true. We got hundreds of creepy story submissions, but I narrowed it down to these 24 tales that gave me full body goosebumps. Let's get into it:
1."Two weeks after I gave birth to twins, I woke up one morning on my bed, even though I know I had fallen asleep that night on the couch. I walked to the lounge and saw everything was clean. The lounge was cleaned, my children’s toys were all put away, and the kitchen was spotless. I saw my 3-year-old sitting on the couch, eating breakfast and watching Cocomelon. She turned around and looked surprised to see that I was up. She started telling me about last night, when she came to me when I was asleep on the couch because she had a nightmare, but ‘Emma’ told her not to disturb me. She told me that ‘Emma’ brought me to my bed, because ‘sleeping on the couch wasn’t good for me, in my condition.'"
"I usually make breakfast for my 3-year-old, but she told me that 'Emma' had already made it for her. I thought that she was just joking and playing with me, but when I told her that I was going to feed the twins, she told me that 'Emma' did that, too. I just ignored what she said and took her to school. On the way there, she asked me, ‘Mummy, why does Emma have such gray hair?’ She also started nagging me and telling me that she wants to sit in the front seat in the car, and that Emma must sit in the back. Later, when my husband returned home from work, I told him about what Jordan (my 3-year-old) was telling me this morning. Turns out that his late grandmother’s name was Emma."
—Anonymous
2."When our firstborn was an infant, he had reflux and hardly slept, so I napped when he did. One snowy morning while we were napping in my bed, my husband was out taking care of the cattle, and I dreamed he was driving an old tractor sideways across a hill. The tractor rolled, and my husband was crushed underneath it from the waist down. He was lying there in the freezing mud, unable to feel much of anything and thinking that wasn't such a bad way to die. When he came in later that morning, his coveralls were completely caked with mud. When I asked what happened, he said, 'I rolled the 806 on a hill.' I burst into tears and told him about my dream. He said the tractor had actually stopped on its side, but as it went over, he'd been frantically trying to figure out which way to jump so he didn't get crushed if it kept going. Twenty-five years later, I still get shaky thinking about it."
—Anonymous
3."While in college, I worked at a clothing store on a popular upscale street in Boston. On this particular day, something would not allow me to leave my dorm to go to work. I cannot explain what was preventing me from leaving, but it was almost as if a barrier was placed across the threshold of the door and I could not leave my building. To shake this feeling off, I took a shower. While in the shower, I heard two very loud bangs. This was the sound of the Boston Marathon bombing, which occurred one block away from my job. I likely would have been in the exact location of the first bomb at that exact time if I'd continued on with my commute. Because of the citywide lockdown, my coworkers were stuck inside the building until about 6 a.m. the next morning. This was the only time I have ever no-call, no-showed to a job, and I think it may have saved my life."
"This happened one other time. I was at a party at a function hall with some friends. Since it was winter, we stashed our coats in a corner of the hall to avoid having to hold them. Suddenly, I had the urge to gather our belongings and stand near the door. Though my friends were clearly annoyed by my request, they obliged. Not five minutes after we got near the door, a shooting broke out, and we were the first to exit. Aside from injuries from the shooting, many people were trampled trying to rush through the small exit door. My friends and I were not, and were some of the few who were able to escape the chaos unscathed that day."
—Anonymous
4."I lived in our city’s historic downtown area for a good number of years. The location was the site of a major Civil War battle. In both buildings I lived in (on the same street), I experienced a lot of weird phenomena. One time, my friend and I went down to the basement of one of the buildings to do a load of laundry. The lights were on a timer (horrifyingly so) so when you turned the knob all the way over, you’d have light for 30 minutes. No matter how long I was going to be down there, I always turned the knob all the way. So, we were down there folding laundry when suddenly we heard something weird, like a shuffling sound, coming from the corner of the basement that was in darkness. Then, suddenly, the lights went out, and we were plunged into complete and total darkness."
"My friend said, 'Did you turn the knob to 30 minutes?!' As I was telling her I did, we heard the noise again, but this time closer. We grabbed all of the laundry as fast as we could and flew up the stairs. As we did, we could feel something behind us. As soon as we ran through the door, it slammed behind us, as if someone had pulled it closed. Needless to say, I did my laundry elsewhere after that and never went down there again."
—Anonymous
5."My aunt and uncle are convinced their house is haunted, but I didn’t believe them until recently. They said that the ghost seemed more playful than malicious and would mess with technology (ie: phone alarms going off that weren’t set, TV turning on and off/volume changing, dishwasher beeping before the cycle was over, etc.). I was extremely dubious and chalked it up to their overactive imaginations. One day, I was home alone at their house watching their new puppy while my uncle went out to go get stuff for said puppy and my aunt was at work. There was a bad storm going on outside (like, trees falling down all over town bad), and so my very important job was to sit on the couch and cuddle the puppy. All of a sudden, he stopped shaking and began barking and growling toward the kitchen, which was completely empty."
"I just thought he was being a puppy, so I didn’t think much of it. He continued, and then the fridge started beeping really loudly, like the sound when you leave the door open. Except it was much louder and sharper for whatever reason. So, holding the puppy, I walked over to the kitchen to check the fridge, which was closed all the way. I couldn’t figure out why it was beeping, until it suddenly stopped. A few seconds later, a massive tree fell down through the roof into the living room, right onto the couch where the puppy and I were sitting. The puppy and I most likely would’ve died if it weren’t for the refrigerator beeping randomly. I’m not saying it was a ghost, but I’m not saying it wasn’t either."
—Anonymous
6."Fate is something that I have always believed in and, for our family, fate saved my brother's life. I was born in 1977; my eight siblings were all much older than me — like, just graduated or getting ready to graduate high school and on in age. One of my older brothers, who had recently graduated high school, was offered this construction job near Chicago, which was roughly six hours away from home. We had family in Chicago, and this was the late '70s, so this wasn't a big deal or out of the ordinary. My big brother ended up hurting himself pretty badly right before he was supposed to head off to this new job, and so he was unable to go. After speaking with his close buddy about this job opportunity, he called and let the contractor know that he had been hurt, but one of his really close friends was interested in taking the job, if that would be OK. The contractor agreed, no problem, so off my brother's friend went, in his place."
"After a brief call stating he made it to the Chicago area, weeks went by, and everyone started to realize that no one had heard from my brother's friend at all since then. Now, keep in mind that it wasn’t as easy back then for different police stations to communicate, let alone the right people within the police stations. Also, the friend was 18 at the time, so he was considered an adult. Well, eventually we would come to find out that the job my brother was supposed to have taken was with the serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who in fact had killed my brother’s really close friend. An injury that stopped my brother from taking a job was actually our saving grace and the reason why we still have him today. Especially now at my age and knowing how important family is, I am so thankful for fate stepping in with that injury, because, selfishly, it means I still have my big brother."
—Anonymous
7."In college, I lived in a haunted dorm. It'd been built in the 1850s and housed women and children originally. The building right next to it was built in, like, 1740, and the two had been connected by a bridge on the third floor at one time. We experienced plenty of benign activity all the time, but a few incidents were creepier than others. I lived with three roommates in a large room that had very tall ceilings, 12 ft. at least. There were some metal pipes sticking out just below the ceiling above the door. When we moved in, I used a ladder to put an old cast iron street sign up on the pipes, because college. It was set very safe and sturdy, in a way that it couldn’t fall down without someone physically climbing a ladder and taking it down. Anyway, one morning we all woke up, and the street sign was on the floor directly beneath the pipes. Our room door had been locked all night, and the three of us had slept in the room without waking up."
"If someone had broken in with a ladder (from a utility closet on another floor of the dorm), we would have known. If the cast iron sign had fallen some 12 feet onto the linoleum floor, we definitely would have heard such a loud crash. The sign wasn’t even tipped on its side, it was sitting perfectly upright. We think it might have been the ghost of a mischievous kid who liked to prank us, but that was absolutely the creepiest and most impressive spooky prank that year."
—Anonymous
8."I was eight and a half months pregnant when we moved into a brand new house. The first night we were there, something woke me up in the middle of the night — maybe our dog, I thought — and so I went downstairs to get some water. We didn’t have any window coverings yet, and the kitchen was nearly all glass windows. I flipped on the kitchen lights, pet the dog, and eventually went back to sleep upstairs. The next morning I looked out the kitchen window and realized that someone had broken into our garage, which was right outside our kitchen, and thoroughly ransacked it."
"They had cut the power to the construction flood lights, which I later realized had been off when I was downstairs. They emptied out thousands of dollars worth of things we had temporarily unloaded into the garage while trying to move into the house. It’s almost certain that was what had woken me up, and likely had been crouched outside, just feet away, in the dark while I was getting water, half dressed, lit up, and very pregnant."
—Anonymous
9."I was just 3 years old and, in the middle of the night, I called out to my parents across the hall to come and take me to the bathroom, as it was so dark. My mother yelled back that it was OK and that I was a big girl so I could go by myself, but that she would stay awake until I got back in bed. So, I did. As I stepped on the floor, my feet got very hot, and I told my mom something was wrong. She told me to use the bathroom and go back to sleep, and that there couldn’t be anything wrong with the floor."
"I started crying because the floor was so hot, and my dad came to get me. He felt the heat on his feet and told my mom there must be a fire in the cellar. Turns out the hot water tank was overheating. He took us outside and called the gas company. They came and evacuated us and the surrounding neighbors, telling us the tank was about to explode at any moment. They told my dad if I hadn’t gotten out of bed that night, a good part of the neighborhood would've been gone in a gas explosion. The tank would have been like a torpedo."
—Anonymous
10."Before we got together, my ex-husband and his first wife were driving across the Navajo Reservation on a dirt road in Arizona. They saw four lights moving parallel to each other horizontally in the sky, not far above the horizon. They got out to take a photograph, and the next thing they knew, they were back in their car and driving. They had no memory of getting back in the car or starting the engine to drive. The photograph still exists — I've seen it. I also saw an indentation in my ex's leg about the diameter of a pencil and about 1/4th of an inch deep. He said his ex-wife has one, too, but refuses to talk about it. When I taped a neodymium magnet over it for a week, the hole was more shallow, but nothing had completely surfaced. It's creepy."
—Anonymous
11."I worked in an art museum after college. It was a beautiful, old building, but the library section was in a bit of disrepair. Instead of trying to maintain the space and books, administrators decided to use the library for staff offices with open work spaces for about eight of us. The library was divided into three connected but distinct rooms. My desk was nearest the front door that exited to the rest of the museum. Several times when I worked late there, I would hear staplers stapling, file cabinets opening, and papers shuffling from the back-most room. I would check, but all my colleagues were gone. After this happened a few times, it got to the point that I tried to not be there at night alone."
"I didn’t say anything to my colleagues because I sounded paranoid. One day I had to work late, and the night security man walked in and casually said, 'We all hate this area. Cold chills, all the time. Totally haunted.' I later told my officemates what he said, and everyone sighed in relief to finally talk about it. We started to compare notes — all of us had seen or heard something unexplainable there for months. It made me sad to think a ghost was doing paperwork for all eternity, but it was also super creepy."
—Anonymous
12."I'm used to having strange premonitions that seem to always happen the way I dream or daydream about them. When I was 17, I kept having the same dream throughout the year about my parents being murdered on Christmas. No one believed me, and they told me it was just a bad dream. Then, on Thanksgiving day, my aunt had the same exact dream. Every detail matched. My grandparents told us we shouldn't stay home for Christmas, but my dad insisted. Unfortunately, everything played out just how I had dreamed it."
—Anonymous
13."I was living in an old studio apartment in Paris that was very small and had a mezzanine for a sleeping area. I lived with my ex, who was not a nice person, and my cat. To add a bit of context, I’m very familiar with the paranormal. Several odd occurrences happened there, but the one that gives me chills to this day involved a shadow man. A few weeks prior, my ex started to complain about a strong smell 'like a dead body or dead animal' in the apartment. He was a nurse in geriatrics, so he had dealt with death before. Strangely, though, he said it only happened when I wasn’t there. I thought he was being dramatic at first, but after a few odd events, I believed him."
"One night around 3 a.m., I woke up very suddenly. The air felt very dense and heavy, and I immediately knew something was not right. My cat ran down the mezzanine's ladder and started growling and meowing in an absolutely terrifying way. It was pretty obvious that she'd seen something. I ran down the ladder, stepping over my ex and not understanding how I or the cat didn’t wake him up. He was dead asleep — nothing could wake him up. As I went to grab my cat, the faint light coming from the building's inner courtyard revealed a very tall shadow man on the wall that my cat was facing.
It had a threatening demeanor and small red eyes. It was starting to move slowly toward me. All this happened very quickly, but I grabbed my cat and did a few rituals and prayers. After a couple of minutes, the air was clear, and something just lifted, it’s hard to explain. The room felt normal again. I knew it was gone.
The day after, my ex told me about a horrible nightmare he had of a demon chasing him and slaughtering him. I told him what had happened, and we both believed they were linked. It might not seem super extreme, but I’m still traumatized by this experience — it gives me chills every time I think about it. I hope to never experience something like that again."
—Anonymous
14."When I was a teenager in the late '90s, one of my friends lived a few miles down a dirt road in a house that was built in the '70s. The whole area was built on land that was previously a tuberculosis sanitarium and still had some TB huts in ruins dotting the properties, his included. He would talk regularly about their house being haunted, and strange occurrences they experienced — mostly noises or things being moved."
"One night when his parents went out of town, we were sitting in his crawl space/deep storage area with some other friends, which was completely underground with no windows. The lights flickered off, and a light orb lazily floated around for multiple minutes. We all saw it and commented, but just continued watching this unnatural light with no explanation float around. It was disconcerting but not scary, per se. That was, until later, when we got outside, and his three (usually goofy, familiar, and friendly) dogs growled at us, raising their hackles and baring their teeth at us like we were something very terrifying to them. I went home, and my (small, friendly) terrier reacted the same way to me — growling and barking in terror. I took a shower, burned sage, and said some blessings, and it all passed, but it still gives me chills to wonder what the dogs saw when we came out of that crawlspace."
—Anonymous
15."Have you ever heard a pack of coyotes up close? I will tell you it is the sound of hell and one of my creepiest experiences. I lived in the country as a kid, and the first time I ever experienced hearing them up close was at about 2 a.m. when I was abruptly woken up by a large pack right outside my window. They were shrieking and growling and howling. It was deafening and disorienting. I actually thought I had died and was being taken to hell. It took me a while to reorient myself and figure out that it had been a pack of coyotes after all. I did think it was a little weird though that nobody else in my family woke up even though all the bedrooms were right next to each other."
If you, like me, have never heard what a pack of coyotes sounds like before, you can listen below:
16."My mom was pregnant with triplets, and I was 4 at the time and drawing stick figures with circle bellies full of stick figure babies. She went to a prenatal appointment and was told two were fine but one no longer had a heartbeat. She hadn’t told anyone yet, but when she got home, 4-year-old me said, 'Mommy, one of the babies is bloody.'"
17."I’m retired now, but for many years, I worked as an educational assistant. The teacher I worked with was a larger woman. Her daughter had had success with gastric bypass surgery, so the teacher I worked with decided she would have the surgery, too. I had a dream after she had her surgery that she had passed away. I was so upset that I called the hospital and demanded that I speak with her. The nurse told me that she was sleeping, but I said that I must speak with her. They finally gave in and let me talk to her. I told her I was sorry about waking her up, but that I wanted to wish her a speedy recovery. I didn’t tell her anything about my dream, but wished her well and that I would see her again soon. The dream was on a Friday night, and then I spoke with her on Saturday. Sunday afternoon I got a call from her granddaughter who told me that her grandmother was gone. I stupidly asked where she had gone, and she told me that her grandmother had passed away Saturday night."
—Anonymous
18."My high school sweetheart, Logan, passed away when I was 19. I was living in a new town shortly after and thought I saw his best friend, Ryan, walking in the parking lot of a shopping center near my house. I found Ryan on Facebook and found out he was stationed in the same town, although he had not been anywhere near my house. We started hanging out regularly, became very close for a time, then he was deployed. He was a huge part of my grieving process. Years later, I had a dream that Ryan was laying in a bed, and I knew he was dead. Logan was standing next to him, telling me, 'It’s alright, he’s with me now, l’ll take care of him.' When I woke up the next day, I got a text from an old friend that told me Ryan had passed away the night before."
"A few years after this, I went to visit Logan’s grave. I was told Ryan was in the same cemetery, and I wanted to find him to pay my respects. While I was visiting Logan’s grave, I got this sudden urge to start walking. I walked directly to Ryan’s memorial as if I was being led to it. As strange as it is, I find comfort in knowing that they are together in whatever afterlife is out there."
—Anonymous
19."I’ve had numerous weird precognitive moments over my lifetime, but this is one of the more recent ones. My sister-in-law (Crystal) is adopted, and she reconnected with her birth mother a few years ago and discovered that she has a younger half brother. Her brother and his wife had recently had a baby girl, and I swear on my life that my sis-in-law told me the baby’s name was Riley. Fast-forward a couple months when we traveled to Florida for my brother and sis-in-law's wedding. The night of the rehearsal dinner, I met all of her family members, including the baby. When I greeted the baby, she was being held by Crystal’s bio grandmother. I leaned down and said, ‘Hi Riley!’ but the grandmother corrected me that the baby’s name was Chandler. I was confused and a little embarrassed and wondered where the hell I got Riley from. Fast-forward another two years, and Crystal sends me a picture of her half brother’s new baby boy that was just born. His name? Riley."
—Anonymous
20."When I was in college, my mother went to Switzerland to take a cruise down the Rhône River. In Basel, she boarded a train going west. In my dream, I saw a sign that said 'Basel' and a big train wreck. I saw my mother looking at it from a train window and heard her say, 'Thank God that wasn’t our train.' The next day I heard the news that there had been a big train wreck in Basel, with fatalities. That train had been going east."
—Anonymous
21."I was only seven months postpartum with my first baby when one of my best friends/coworkers had an extremely vivid dream that I had taken a pregnancy test at work and found out I was pregnant again. The date in the dream, November 4th (about three weeks later), the color of my sweatshirt was gray, and she shared specific details about what was happening in her work day. When November 4th came, we realized I was wearing a gray sweatshirt, and the events from the dream had already happened in her work day. I was nowhere near ready to have a second child, and after taking a pregnancy test right then, it was positive! I was more in shock that she predicted this than finding out I was actually pregnant!"
—Anonymous
22."When I was a senior in high school, I dreamed that I went to the home of a high school teacher to borrow a prom dress from one of her daughters, who was around my age. When I got there, the teacher and her daughters were very sad and teary and barely spoke. When I woke up the next morning, I told my mother about the dream. Then I went to school, where I learned that the high school teacher’s husband had a heart attack and drove off the road on the way to work that morning, passing away."
—Anonymous
23."On several occasions, I’ve had dreams that have eerily come true. Here's one of those stories. When I was in eighth grade, I had a huge crush on a guy at school named Bobby. One night I had a dream that I was at school, standing at the salad/condiment table putting toppings on my salad. My favorite teacher (who knew I liked Bobby) came up to me and said, 'Hey, did you hear about Bobby?' I didn't, and he went on to say, 'Well, last night he was on his way home and was in a bad car accident. He’s okay, but I thought you’d want to know.' The next day I was at school, standing at the same table in my dream, putting condiments on my salad. My favorite teacher walked up to me and said, 'Hey, did you hear about Bobby? Last night he was on his way home and was in a bad car accident. He’s okay, but I thought you’d want to know.' Absolutely freaked me out."
—Anonymous
24.And finally, "I grew up in a part of the United States that has lakes everywhere. It was a given that you would be swimming in one, or boating on one, at some time in your life if you lived there. Because of this, during my childhood, I was required to attend a swimming/boating safety class. Included in the class were postmortem photographs of people who had been killed after being run over by the blades of outboard motors. The images were horrific. Not too long after the class, I started having a 'voice' (more like a very clear impression of a voice) pop into my head from time to time that would say, 'What would you do if...' followed by the thought that I was in the water somewhere and a boat with an outboard motor was headed right for me. From the beginning, my reply was that I would dive down as deep as I could to get to safety and let the boat pass over me."
"Fast-forward about 20 years, with periodic episodes of the 'What would you do if...' scenarios popping into my head. I was part of a volunteer medical group on a large sailing ship out in the Pacific Ocean. We would travel from one island community to another, working alongside the local head assistant while holding clinics. The ship often had to anchor outside the reef, and we would be transported ashore by a large aluminum boat nicknamed 'the Hammerhead' that was propelled by a big outboard motor. When the motor ran near or at full power, the bow of the Hammerhead would rise up out of the water such that neither the person operating it nor the passengers could see what was in front of the boat for quite a ways.
One afternoon, the medical team had some time off, and three of us decided to swim beside the ship. The Hammerhead had been taken ashore by one of the crew, and there was no reason for us to expect it to be coming back anytime soon. My two colleagues stayed close to the ship's boarding steps while I swam out further. I was in good swimming shape and could hold my breath underwater for quite a while. All of a sudden, we looked up and saw the Hammerhead coming toward the ship at a fast pace with the bow up in the air. I knew I did not have enough time to swim back to the ship, nor did I have enough time to swim away to avoid being run over. I also knew there was no way anyone on board the boat could see me. So, I did what I pictured myself doing all those times over the years when the voice came into my head. I quickly dove down under the water several feet and looked up just in time to see the boat, and those large outboard motor blades, pass on the surface right over where I had been swimming. I stayed under the water for a little bit longer, then popped to the surface and swam back to the ship. I never said a word to anyone, and have never told this story to anybody but my husband. And the 'voice?' I have never heard it again."
—Anonymous
If you enjoyed these stories, you can read a ton more like them here.
Now, dear reader, it's your turn. Do you have a creepy real-life experience like these? If so, tell us about them in the comments below or via this completely anonymous form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
