Your creepy stories

[E.D.G.E. (PainterRex)]

I just remembered something that happened to me. I live in an adobe, santa-fe-styled house, and it has a metal skeleton which, coupled with its other components, makes it a rather noisy house when the wind picks up. Sometimes I like to stay up long after my parents go to bed. And one night, and a few nights afterwards, I started to here an odd noise. I had no idea where exactly it was coming from and, knowing myself, had to find the source of the noise (Likely in order to stop it). I walked around the house as quietly as possible to get a lock on the sound and it became louder and louder, a bit like a scritchy scratchy and scuttling about. I came to a wall and put my ear against it, hearing something rather large crawling around in the wall. So the next day, I told my parents of something in the wall. They believed me and stood still until they could hear the noise as well. We had been laying traps near the walls and cabinets for nearly a month thinking the source of the noise was a mouse, each time it snapped nothing was caught. Now, a day or so ago we finally caught the thing, or what's left of it... we checked the snapped trap and found a dead rattlesnake laying half in/half out of the cabinet of our storage room. It had a rectangular projection sticking through its throat. Which suggests it swallowed the trap, which would logically lead to the conclusion that the mouse got caught and attracted the snake. That is as creepy as it gets around here.

[Newt]

I was once wading through a beaver swamp in Alabama looking for treefrogs. It was a muggy summer night. I climbed up onto a small hummock or mound to get closer to a green treefrog I could hear calling from some willow branches. I had found the frog and was trying to photograph it when I heard the distinctive "yerp" call of a hatchling alligator coming from beneath my feet. It was only then that I realized I was, in fact, standing on a gator nest, and that with the little ones pipping, the mother would soon be there to help them get out. You better believe my heart was in my throat all the way out of that swamp - I was expecting my legs to be torn off any minute.

I've et horse sashimi (lean, red, and tasty!) and would gladly eat dog if it was offered to me, but I would never kill someone else's pet. It's a horrible thing to do.

[SpittersForEver]

This didn't happen to me but to me dad...

It was 1973 and he was rowing with his school in the River Thames, quite simply he saw a dead body floating around in the water.

[Tyto_Theropod]

I'm not going to rant to you about my views on the best/worst treatment of animals, because I always find that here on the bet it's some of the best firelighters for an all-out Flame War. So instead I'll get to the point of what this thread was supposed to be about in the first place: creepy stories!

First off, I love creepy stories. I used to listen to readings of peoples' true scary stories on Youtube, but I stopped as some of them weren't enjoyably creepy as much as genuinely traumatising, and you could never predict which you were going to get when you clicked the thumbnail. That still hasn't put me off the milder ones, though!

Also, I'd like to say that I tend to keep an open mind on the supernatural. In my early teens I went through a phase where I'd basically believe anything you told me, regularly thought I saw ghosts and was into new age stuff like crystal healing (we all do something crazy when we're that age, right? XD) but I'm well past that now and I look at things in a much more objective, scientific way. I don't know if ghosts exist, but that's not saying I deny them completely. I am, however, very interested in legends and folklore, even if I do take the allegedly 'real' ones with a pinch of salt!

Anyway, this is besides the point. Here's the creepiest story I have that is remotely 'supernatural' and that I am pretty sure was not entirely my imagination. I'd like to apologise for the inevitable wordy text wall ahead: as someone who writes fiction as a hobby, 'short and snappy' isn't really my way of recounting an anecdote. Also, I know that this is going to sound like the kind of story people make up to get attention, but you're just going to have to take my word that it was true, because it was.

When I had this experience I was seventeen, by which point I'd ditched the new age stuff in favour of my lifelong interest in science, and, much as I am today, I took a lot of convincing before I'd acknowledge that something couldn't be explained by entirely rational means. It was getting to that time when I'd have to choose a degree for university, and as I wasn't sure if I wanted to do biology or just general earth sciences, I did a geology course that my local Uni's open programme was doing to find out.

(Irrelevant spoilers: I didn't like it, which is why I'm doing biology now. It basically involved standing around in the cold, the rain, and the other assorted Scottish weather while our tutor said something to the effect of: "This is a rock. This is another, slightly different rock. I will now proceed to bash a cliff face for another hour trying to find what I want to show you while you all get soaked.")

Anyway, it was a freezing day just before Halloween (cliched, I know...) and our group was being taken up into the hills to look at a sandstone formation. It's essentially a load of big, exposed boulders, looking rather incongruous in the middle of a typical heathery Scottish field full of sheep. While our tutor was showing us the strata and talking about how the layers of sediment had been deposited, I started getting this really creepy feeling. This is going to sound really generic, but I did honestly feel as if we were being watched and weren't at all welcome. It got to the point where I couldn't concentrate on what she was saying and was actually beginning to be genuinely scared, even though my rational mind was busy telling me that there was nothing to be scared of. We weren't in any danger of getting lost or stranded up there, as it was a clear, sunny day and the hillside we were on was only a gentle slope and not at all hard to negotiate, and the only other animals were the sheep. In spite of this, my gut was telling me to leave as soon as possible.

Towards the end of the trip, which was approximately half an hour after you'd lost all feeling in your toes, some of the group found a carved handprint on the side of the stone that faced into the valley. It had been painted red, so it was very obvious against the yellow sandstone. I later found out that this had been done by some local artists, but it definitely heightened the creepiness factor of what happened next.

A few metres away from the hand print, but tucked round a corner and nestled in a crevice as if it was actively hiding from us, there was cave carved into the rock. It definitely wasn't natural, as it was a perfect arch with quite raw edges, and some visible chisel marks. The only kind of door was a rusty iron gate, but it was unlocked and of course someone had the bright idea of going inside. As soon as I saw that cave and heard someone say that, I wanted to leave more than ever, but the majority of the group had decided to head up the hillside, and the way I was feeling, I didn't fancy being left on my own outside either, so I went in with the three or four others I was with.

The cave wasn't very big: it was about the size of two of your average toilet cubicles. It was really dank, with green mould and water running down the walls in places, and it smelt horrible. It was really dark too, and the stone inside was a dark colour, which was weird because outside it was a sort of pale gold. I'm actually pretty sure it had been painted black inside, but I couldn't swear to that. I think there was a bit of graffiti too, but not very much. Anyway, the creepiest thing about this was that there was a sort of shelf or platform, or possibly even an alcove at the back of the cave, and on/in it there was this huge ram's skull. It wasn't like a sheep had gone and died in there, because there wasn't any more of the skeleton, and it was arranged to face out, like it was staring at us.

Needless to say, at that point I noped right out of there, and I was halfway down the hill and being given some very weird looks by the sheep by the time the main part of the group caught up with me and asked me what was wrong! We went back to the car park laughing about it and making jokes about Halloween, but I still felt spooked.

I later did an internet search on the rock formation, and the only thing I was able to find out about the cave was that it had likely been a shepherd's bothy in the past. Although part of me thinks that someone just put the skull there for a prank or something, my family and I often wonder if it had something to do with modern-day occult groups. Whatever, it really freaked me out, to the point where I have to very deliberately look in the other direction when we're driving past the formation (which you can see from the road). I can't even look at the pictures I took from the trip, so I just buried them in their own file on my PC and I never open it. I actually got a highly watered-down version of the chills I got just writing this whole thing, even though that was quite a long time ago now.

TL;DR: Found a very scary cave on a geology field trip.

Anyway, that's my best creepy story, for what it's worth. I hope I don't sound too corny, lol.

[PumperKrickel]

deleted

[PaleoMatt]

Hey Silvanusaurus, the name "The Nag's Head" really rings a bell and I swear I've been there before but I'll have to look it up.

[Arul]

Now is sunday, and tomorrow is monday.

[Silvanusaurus]

TL;DR: Found a very scary cave on a geology field trip.

Anyway, that's my best creepy story, for what it's worth. I hope I don't sound too corny, lol.

That's a very intriguing tale! There are a number of caves here around about Shropshire that are in fact now used by 'Neo-Pagans' as sacred spaces for ceremonies and things, they often seem to use horned effigies and overtly gothic imagery... There is quite a large one in a forest near my home that is believed to have been an ancient Roman mine, that I found quite a few years ago, and it had alcoves carved into the walls with little tea-light candles and things in, though no skulls. From the feeling you described though, it sounds as if the one you entered may have been home to something more sinister, a 'genius loci' perhaps. I am also very rational in my consideration of the supernatural, but I've experienced some things that make me wonder now and then, if there isn't some truth in the old myths of such things.

[Tyto_Theropod]

Now is sunday, and tomorrow is monday.

SCARIEST. STORY. EVER.

[Arul]

Now is sunday, and tomorrow is monday.

SCARIEST. STORY. EVER.

Everybody have mondayphobia 

[Rathalosaurus]

Those all are terrifying!!

[Derek.McManus]

Hello all some wonderfully creepy tales so far here's my contributions which all took place around Limavady, Co Londonderry in Northern Ireland...

In the 70's so called devil worship was trendy, some local beauty spots namely the Roe Valley Country Park and Binevenagh mountain, occasionally you could hear drumming at night if you where in the area at night!

When I was 18 a friend and I went for a few drinks one weekend and as he lived in the country he cut through the woods to go home, he claimed to see a ghost but on investigation in daylight it was a plastic bag in a tree!

One night when at work ( on the site of a WW2 airfield) I dozed off and woke to see a black figure looking at me, I closed my eyes and when I opened them he was gone! Hallucination or the ghost of an airman? Other people reported a certain room as being cold and eriee and the guy who worked in the warehouse was convinced that a similar ghost visited him regularly standing in the corner watching.

My daughter Maddie and her step father saw an unidentified creature cross the road in front of them one night on the way back from town with pizza, she described it as dark with leathery skin moving in an undulating fashion and about the size of a sheep!

A friends daughter always asked for a biscuit to take to bed for her friend...one night when her parents checked on her they discovered her feeding the biscuit to a large rat!

Hope you liked these tales which are all true to the best of my knowledge.

[Jose S.M.]

When I was like 20 I was left alone in my house for a week,I live and a very rural place, behind my house is a coffe plantation, and we have only a small wire fence around our lot and metallic gate in the frontyard around the garage. We had chickens on one side  and they had the habit of going to sleep in the trees so I had to put them inside there "house" (I don't know  the correct word XD).
One they I went to get the chickens late at night, then I saw my neighbor's big Labrador dog who was very friendly, he came with me where the chickens were and I was actually happy to have him with me. I was catching one chicken and I heard a noise, the the plants in the coffe plantation behind my house started to move violently and the dog whimpered and took off running, so I did the same, ran to the house, closed the front gate and the doors and went to my bedroom.
Whatever that was seemed large, larger than a dog for sure, and it scared the labrador, so I don't think it was any local animal, the biggest carnivorous animal around here are coyotes.

[paleoferroequine]

The 2016 U.S. presidential election!