People Share Terrifying Experiences At Night, Stories Are Pure Nightmare Fuel

Reddit users are sharing stories that might keep you up at night.

There are few things that get the heart racing like some legit nightmare fuel, and that’s exactly what we’ve found today on the popular site.

While a lot of what we cover from Reddit is fun and wild, this time we’re going a bit darker. Get ready for a ride.

Reddit users share scary nighttime experiences.

A thread titled “What is the most terrifying event you have ever experienced throughout the night?” is gaining significant attention, and the stories might make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

Read them below, and let me know your thoughts at David.Hookstead@outkick.com: 

• One night, I woke to what sounded like whispers in my room, only to discover my phone had started playing a podcast on its own.
• When I was in graduate school, I was sitting on the couch in my apartment late at night, doing some reading. Suddenly I hear, “You have reached your destination.” I about jumped through the ceiling! The apartment had been dead quiet, I was alone, and was focused on what I was doing. Turns out, the Tom Tom GPS I hadn’t used in months decided to turn itself on and talk to me.
• I was camping in a trailer with a bear roaming around outside. It wasn’t a hard shell. Most of it was fabric, so if that bear wanted in, it was getting its way.
• Woke up to my husband having a stroke. He is always a restless sleeper, but it slowly sank in that this was unusual, his whole right side was paralysed and he couldn’t speak. We live in a country with regular power outages which at that time meant my phone signal was also down. Took a few hours to get hold of people (ambulance service also useless). He was already recovering by the time we got him to the hospital. He totally recovered from the stroke, but his hospital tests showed he was very close to suddenly dying from incredibly wonky blood vessels to his heart. Three weeks later he had a quadruple bypass and more than a year later he’s now doing great.
• Tried to go back to sleep after a nightmare, but my brain decided to replay it in a never-ending loop.
• Had regular sleepovers at a friend’s house on Friday nights in early high school. A bunch of us hung out in the livingroom, ate pizza, and watched horror movies when we got home from the football game. One night, I was exhausted, fell asleep in the livingroom, then got up and went up to her room to go to bed. Still half asleep, I ended up facedown on her bed in the pitch dark. I shifted trying to get comfortable, just about to be fully asleep again, when something directly beneath me started shaking and screaming. I’ve never been so scared in my life. It was as if the wind had been knocked out of me and I couldn’t even scream but I was WIIIDE awake. It was a Tickle-Me-Elmo.
• This wasn’t necessarily terrifying, more confusing. I woke up in the middle of the night to my heater turned on. There was nothing on the floor or around it that could have fallen and switched it on, and I don’t even remotely remember waking up and turning it on. It wasn’t on when I went to sleep, but I woke up sweating at around 2 in the morning and it was on.
• We had someone play a prank on us in an airbnb. The owner of the airbnb recognized my friends name as her friend (exactly the same first and last name). The airbnb owners’ friend was like the cool David Goggins, Andrew Tate type guy that wasn’t afraid of anything, so they wanted to scare him. They hid 3 speakers in the house and started playing screeching door sounds through them. It was around 9pm and already dark inside. Me and my friend immediately scared sh*itless called the airbnb owners and they recognized that we weren’t their friend. They came over, brought us free food & drinks and the stay was on them. Scary but funny.
• Definitely the night I heard a loud crash and then footsteps coming from the basement. I was home alone, and my mind raced through every possible scary scenario. Turned out it was just a raccoon, but I didn’t get any sleep that night.
• One of the most terrifying events I’ve experienced at night happened during a severe storm. I was alone in a cabin in the woods when the power suddenly went out, leaving me in total darkness. The howling wind and relentless rain were bad enough, but then I started hearing distinct footsteps outside, crunching through the gravel around the house. I knew no one else was supposed to be there. The footsteps stopped right by the door, and my heart was racing. After what felt like an eternity, I gathered the courage to peek through a window—but no one was there. To this day, I don’t know if it was a person or just the wind playing tricks on my mind.
• Just the standard sleep paralysis combined with a nightmare. When you don’t fully wake up and your brain “inserts” terrible things into your perception of reality. And you.can’t.move!
• Sleep paralysis might be more scary than any nightmare. Every time you can’t move or speak no matter how hard you try. Your heart beats faster and faster and you try to scream because it feels like there’s something coming up behind you
• One night when living alone I woke up to three loud, methodical knocks on my bedroom door. The first one woke me up, and I was wide awake for the second two. The front door to this apartment was down a flight of stairs on the opposite end from my bedroom, so while I would have heard knocking on the door it wouldn’t have been that loud. Someone was in my apartment. I grabbed my phone and punched in 911, then waited with my thumb over the green dial button. Half an hour later, and there hadn’t been any further noises. I eventually got up and locked my bedroom door. When the sun came up I finally ventured out into the apartment fully expecting to discover I had been robbed, but nothing had been disturbed and my doors and windows were all locked. I still have no idea what it was, but it was one of the scariest moments I’ve experienced.

Like I said, nothing gets the blood pumping like a few good spooky situations, even if most turn out to be harmless.

I have a handful of insane stories that went down during the night. None are more interesting than what is known as the Mississippi Miracle, but as I’ve said before, there will come a time when that story is told. Today is not that day, and it’s probably not coming in the near future.

One I can share is the night my two-way radios picked up someone screaming bloody murder over them. I used to keep them on my dresser when I was a little kid, and would occasionally forget to turn them off. One night, I woke up to legit *SCREAMING* coming over the radio. It sounded like someone was dying.

Then, the radio went completely silent. I remember my hands shaking so bad I could barely hold the thing. I tried to get anyone to respond, but there was nobody out there. To this day, I have no idea what was the source of the noise, but it chilled me to the bone. One of the scarier moments I’ve ever had at night.

Reddit users share terrifying nighttime experiences. (Credit: Getty Images)

Do you have a terrifying experience at night? I want to hear about it at David.Hookstead@outkick.com.