Creepy experiences can happen anywhere, but it's the ones that happened when you're isolated from any form of civilization that seem the most unsettling. These chilling stories from people who experienced them while secluded from the rest of the world are more than proof of that.
A True Halloween Fright.
“It was Halloween and I had about 3-4 kids show up as my house is about a mile from a subdivision. Later I’m in the basement and it’s about 11. All the lights upstairs are shut off because I’m going to bed. I hear a knock at the side door. I go upstairs and flipped on the light and there’s a person in one of those “old man” masks that have the crazy hair just standing there. He is just looking at the house. He then sprints to the back. I hear loud banging on the windows. I rush over and the person is just staring. Then he runs away and I don’t hear anything for 5 minutes. Then I start hearing the knob to the main door being forcefully jiggled. I ran upstairs to the crawl space and dialed 911. She wants me to stay on the line but I’m afraid if the guy got in he would know where I was because of my voice. I hang up and I can hear the knob being slammed like he had a hammer. Then I hear the side door being kicked super hard. Next I hear a window smash. I’m listening to hear footsteps. Nothing. The actual amount of time I spent up there was around 16 minutes. I swear it was an hour. An officer showed up and pounded on the door. I ran downstairs and told him everything. He kept saying a ‘friend’ was probably just trying to scare me. I had no friends in there. They looked around the house and wrote down some s–t but nothing really happened. I still can’t sleep without all the lights on and a .45 on my dresser.”
A New “Friend?”
“The creepiest dive of my life. Two buddies of mine and I were on a night dive. It was about 1am and we’re a good 100ft deep, the pitchest black you could imagine. Sometimes we’d get in a circle, turn off our lights, then stir up the water and watch the bio-luminescence float around us like floating stars in a black watery space. Only this one time when the water glows it revealed a fourth person sitting in our circle. We’d seen no one else prepping a dive at the dock. He was also alone which was odd considering the dangerous conditions of a night dive in those waters, and he had no fins or gloves. I don’t know how he swam so well without fins or didn’t get hypothermia without boots or gloves. We wore drysuits because it was so cold but this dude was in a wet suit with exposed skin. We’re too f–king scared to move and the guy just smiles and waves, then swims away. Whenever you think you’re alone and someone just shows up, it’s weird as f–k. 100ft under water at night is terrifying.”
First Impressions Makes A Big Difference.
“I worked as a security guard at a hydroelectric dam in a fairly isolated location. About a month after I was hired, one of the guys at the dam told me that most security guards out there quit after a few days because they got so creeped out being alone at the dam at night, and he was glad I was sticking it out. In truth, it could be creepy. Sometimes I’d hear weird noises in the woods, or catch a flash of a shadow while I was inside the dam. It takes a lot to scare me, though, and I knew I was either hearing critters in the woods or my mind was playing tricks on me. One night, however, something happened that scared the living hell out of me. It was a little after 11 p.m. and I was sitting in the guard house reading a book. Suddenly, I heard a tap at the door. I thought it was a bug; it was so faint and I knew there weren’t any contractors at the dam. Then the tap came again, more insistent this time. I grabbed my flashlight and opened the door. There was no one there. Then I let the door slip from my hand and shut behind me. To my left, previously concealed by the door, was a huge man, at least 400 pounds. His sweatshirt was smeared with fresh blood. My blood ran cold. I was so scared I couldn’t speak. As it turns out, he was a local fisherman and he was wondering why the power company hadn’t started back-pumping into the lake yet, because they usually started a little before 11 and that was what always drew in the big striped bass. He was smeared with blood because he’d already caught and gutted a couple and wiped his hands on his shirt. I am thankful to this day that I was unarmed security, because if I’d had a gun, I would have either shot him or accidentally shot myself while trying to shoot him.”
Pranks On You.
“Fifteen years ago I went camping with two school friends in bushland that backed onto my dad’s property. He gave me a heads up that he might creep up to our campsite that night and scare the guys I was with. We hiked from the house for about four hours through very dense bush, where we found a clearing and decided to set up our camp. That night I was woken up by one of my buddies at about 1am who said he swears he saw torchlight on the tent wall. ‘Excellent’ I thought. We sat in silence for a few minutes before the light came back. This was great! I really hammed it up, making up stories about murders in the area and escaped prisoners. The light from the torch fixed on our tent, then switched off. We could hear leaves and sticks moving around outside and my buddies were on the verge of tears. Then we started hearing whispering outside. Dad had brought some friends in on the prank? Dedicated. The torch light came back on and pressed right up to the tent wall, and a hand began tapping across the top while the whispering continued. My Dad had brought some friends in on the prank AND convinced them to walk four hours through dense scrub in the middle of the night just to shine a torch on our tent? I started to panic. Then it just stopped completely, about an hour after it began. We sat in total silence and at dawn packed up and got the fuck out. We got back to the house and Dad was there, he apologized and said he’d planned to come out and see us last night but fell asleep at his girlfriends house.”
A Trance Like Experience.
“I grew up in the arctic. It was an extremely normal occurrence to see all sorts of strange lights move across the sky. Sometimes I would drive a snowmobile a few kilometers out of town and just lay down looking up at the majesty of it all. One particular night I settled in to a good spot to look up and be introspective. And then I started noticing a clicking noise. The source of the sound isn’t coming from anywhere around me laterally. It was coming from up. So I look up determined to ascertain the origin of this strange noise. I see what I always see: stars, northern lights, a satellite crossing the sky, but then I notice something strange. There were three rather strong points of light. They were getting brighter. I kept staring in morbid fascination as they grew stronger. All the while the clicking noise is getting louder and more pronounced. Then it all stops. So I jump back on the snowmobile thinking maybe I’m going crazy. The machine takes a little longer than usual to start up but soon I’m heading back to town. I pull up to my house. Lights are all off. Strange. It wasn’t that late when I left. My parents are teachers and are usually up late marking papers. I go to set my alarm for the next day. All of the sudden everything makes sense. It was almost 11:00pm when I left, and now it was creeping up on 6:00am. I stood, staring at clicking lights for almost 7 hours.”
Realizing Your Fears Are True.
“I was out in the wilderness of Utah, after 2 weeks of driving and backpacking around the country alone. One day I found an awesome elk antler and put it on my shoulders about a mile into the days hike. As anyone who has poorly packed a pack will attest, just slapping 15 lbs on the top of your pack is a bad idea. About halfway through my planned death-march my hip was getting sore and I blew through my water. Luckily I found a few puddles in a dryish river bed and made camp. Then it struck me that there may be good water upstream. So up I went and found a little spring filled with deliciously cold refreshing water. I drank on my hands and knees before realizing I didn’t bring my water bottles. So I hike the half mile back to the camp and grabbed them. This is where it gets weird. On my trip back up I kept feeling really vulnerable and uncomfortable. I kept looking for something following me. I can only describe my emotion as pure terror. I kept telling myself that it was just paranoia and I’m fine but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. I finally got to the water and filled up my bottle, constantly looking over my shoulder. The feeling of unease was still with me when I headed back down the gulch. There I came upon a fresh mountain lion print placed directly between two that I made on the way up. It’s one thing to think that your fears are unfounded paranoia, it’s much much worse to know they are true.”
An Unexpected Knock.
“I live on a compound by myself (I know it sounds Waco-ey, but it’s really my tiny home, work shop, and a couple of other buildings for food/equipment storage and a guest room). One bad snowstorm knocked my area OOC, so I decided to hunker in for the long haul. Three days in, I get woken up to a knock at the door. I get up to answer it and halfway there, I realize the only way this guy could knock on my door is if he broke the lock. So I grab my shotgun and ask him through the door who he is and what he wants. Guy says nothing and keeps banging. I go out the back door and sneak around front and I see a man who is on the ground, covered in blood, and shouting (albeit quietly) for help. Turns out he was driving and crashed and dragged himself 5 miles down the road until he came to my place. By then he realized that I forgot to lock the bottom part of the gate and weaseled in. Luckily he survived.”
Trust Your Gut.
“This happened to myself and a close friend. We went on a camping trip and hiked about 5 miles near a small lake and set up camp. This was not a heavily trafficked area, and we did not expect to run into anyone. That night we saw a flashlight moving on the other side of the lake. This was unusual, however we did not think too much of it. But this flashlight kept moving around the lake getting closer to our campsite. Once it was clear they were heading our way we moved off into the woods nearby to see who wandered up. I took a small axe with me, and he had a .22 rifle. We weren’t expecting trouble, and we certainly didn’t want to make any, but we figured we might as well cover our bases. Finally the flashlight comes near the light of our fire and it is one man. The scary part was he was carrying a pump action shotgun. He walked around the campsite a few times, and then proceeded to enter our tent. After rummaging around for a minute or so, he came out and started yelling, ‘I know you’re out there, why don’t you come and say hello?.’ My friend and I remained motionless. That is when the man proceeded to fire his shotgun into the woods. After what felt like hours, he grabbed my friends backpack and a few articles of clothing we had drying off near the fire and threw them in to burn. Thankfully the man moved off from where he had come after a little while. We waited until his flashlight was on the other side of the lake, grabbed everything we could fit in my pack and took off.”
A Strange Visitor.
“I was on an Outward Bound trip in the Rockies. In case you guys aren’t hip to the Outward Bound course, there is a Solo during the trip, which is pretty much you’re on your own for a set amount of time. So one day we stop to do ours. Mind you this is a 9 day hike from the closest base camp. I woke up on the 2nd day of the Solo and looked out of my tarp and saw a guy about 20 feet away in a red hoodie with the hood draw strings fully pulled (so his face was entirely covered.) I figured this was one of the instructors, because they go around sometime on the second day to check on us, so I waved at him. He then took off. The next day when we are all back I asked which of the instructors had the red hoodie. Turns out neither of them did.”
A Knock With No Source.
“I was a dockhand for a boat-rental club. I bought myself a sail boat and lived on it at the docks for about a year while I worked for the boat club. I would often get toasted on 101 proof peppermint schnapps and go joy-sailing late at night. One night my main sail tears and my atomic 4 engine breaks down. I drop anchor and bed-down to wait until morning for one of my co-workers to tow me in. I’m about a mile offshore in about 60ft of open water when I hear a rhythmic thudding on my hull beneath me. There was nothing in my head that I could figure could make that noise besides someone diving under by boat and literally beating on it. I went topside with my flash light to investigate and couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It was a calm night with nearly no wind or waves at this point. It came from mid-ship so it couldn’t be the motor being weird or something, and I checked my bilges for any anomalies and couldn’t find any. It left me pretty shaken up because I just couldn’t figure what could make that sound as loudly, and as precisely as it was. I could FEEL the bumps hitting against the fiberglass hull. I eventually got back to sleep and made it back to the docks next morning. Needless to say that was the last time I went out alone at night.”
