True Scary Stories from Reddit That’ll Give You Chills

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm a twenty two year old female. I'm not sure
if this really counts as a creepy encounter, but it's
been on my mind all day and I can't shake
the feeling that something wasn't right. This happened to me
last night, literally less than twenty four hours ago, and
I still feel uneasy walking past my own front window.
I live in a small town in the north of UK.

(00:23):
It's that kind of place where everyone more or less
knows each other's faces, and after eight pm the streets
are basically dead. I got to a local shop just
before closing to grab milk. The air was very cold,
that damp chill that you get when fog starts rolling in. Anyways,
when I come to a stop, I noticed a man

(00:43):
standing by the cash machine. He wasn't using it, just
standing there with his hood up. I'm five to one,
and from what I can't remember, he was a lot
taller than me, I say, around six foot. I didn't
pay much attention to him and started walking home. A
few minutes later I realized he was walking behind me.

(01:06):
At first, he didn't feel like anything same direction, maybe
he lived nearby. But I crossed the road at the
roundabout and felt the hairs on my neck immediately go up.
As I turned back around and noticed he crossed too.
Something felt strange, like he was deliberately mirroring my steps.
I slowed down near a bus stop and pretended to

(01:28):
check my phone. I expected him to pass, but he didn't.
He slowed down as well, keeping the same distance between us,
no footsteps, overtaking, no change in pace. By the time
I turned onto my street, I could feel my heart
beat in my throat. I didn't want to make it
obvious that I was scared, so I kept walking as normal.

(01:51):
Both hands were shaking so badly I could barely unlock
my phone. My street is quite short, lined with terrors,
houses and street lights that I didn't reach all the
way to the end. My house is in one of
the darkest spots. When I reached my door, I just
wanted to get straight in. I didn't even look back.

(02:12):
The second the lock clicked, I slipped inside and went
straight to the window beside my door. He was standing
at the corner, not moving, just facing my direction. It
was like he was trying to see which house I
went into. I stood frozen behind the curtain. He didn't
take out a phone, didn't smoke, didn't even look around,

(02:35):
just stared. After maybe thirty seconds, he turned and walked off, slowly,
but back the way he came from. I didn't see
his face properly. The hood shaded in most of his face,
but I could see the lower half was clean shaven,
possibly like thirties early forties. I just remember his dark

(02:55):
coat and the sounds of his shoes echoing on the pavement.
Didn't call the police because I kept thinking maybe I
was overreacting. But all day to day I've been having
this feeling like someone who's been outside or is watching me.
Maybe it's paranoia, but I've never felt this kind of
fear before. I don't know what to do now. Has

(03:16):
anyone ever had something like this happened to them? What
did you do after? Should I inform the police? Update?
So it's probably nothing, but this morning I noticed fresh
footprints right outside my door, like someone had been standing
there facing it. I should mention it was raining on

(03:37):
and off all day yesterday, so this must have been recent.
I didn't hear anyone knock or anything. A few people
suggested getting a ring camera, so I've ordered one for
a bit of peace. Of mind. I was a young
guy in college driving back to campus from somewhere when

(03:58):
I ran out of gas. It was getting dark, maybe
around six or seven pm. When I realized the gas
ran out, I turned off the main street. Then, with
my car's remaining momentum, I glided until I stopped in
front of some random house. I sat in the car,
trying to think if anyone I knew with the car

(04:20):
had stayed on campus for winter break. No luck, so
I just accepted that I have to walk to the
nearest station, fil up the gas can in my trunk,
and come back. I grabbed the canster lean on in
the front of my car and look up the directions.
Just then a woman pulls into the driveway. She looks

(04:42):
about my age, wearing a fast food uniform. Since I'm
parked in front of her house, she notices me right away.
She comes over a little hesitant and asked me if
I need help. I tell her honestly that I ran
out of gas and that the nearest chevron is kind
of Her face suddenly goes pale. I figure maybe she's nervous,

(05:06):
it's late, I'm a stranger, but she looks generally scared.
I tell her it's fine. I just need the gas
can filled and don't need to go with her. I
even offer to pay, but she refuses. I wait there
for a while. She comes back, hands me the can
and stands there like she's deciding whether to say something.

(05:28):
Then she asked, do you want to hear something weird?
I say yeah, She says, today at work, I got
a prank call. The guy just kept asking me over
and over again, have you ever ran out of gas?
We both laughed awkwardly. I say thank you, and we
go our separate ways. So it gives me chills every

(05:49):
time I think about it. I worked briefly as a
psychtech a few years years ago. The clinic was a
nice place to work. Most of the staff were the
same age, early in their careers, and friends with each other.

(06:10):
I don't think any of us planned to stay there
super long. I think we were really just there because
we wanted to put on our resumes. To be honest,
I never loved the business model. The best way I
could describe it, it felt like a subscription service. The
place wasn't really helping people create individualized plans for how

(06:31):
to treat their issues. She just wanted to sign them
up for continued care forever two appointments per month bundle packages.
Everyone pretended that was fine. Jenny was one of the
nurses there. She was nice and we got along. One day,
Jenny and I left work a little early so we

(06:53):
could go to Marshalls and buy holiday decorations. I still
had a work call to make, but my manager said
I could do it later from home. We could make
work calls through an app. I didn't have a car
back then. Jenny drove us and she was gonna take
me home afterwards. We got to the store and picked
out little decorations. The checkout line was long. It was

(07:17):
going to take at least a half an hour. I
figured that was a good time to make the call.
I asked Jenny if I could take care of it
in the car while she waited in line. She said, okay,
and give me your keys. I had never made work
calls outside of work before, and I completely forgot that
I needed to write notes. I realized that while I

(07:39):
was already on the phone, so that put me in
an awkward situation. I said something like, hold on, just
give me a minute. I need to find a pen.
I probably shouldn't have done this, I opened the box
between the driver and patches her seat to see if
there is anything I could use to write my notes.
Jenny had some things I could eat using there. She

(08:01):
had a little notebook and some pens. I was going
to rudely use your notebook without permission and then explain
to her when she got back to the car. I
thought we would laugh it off together. Thinking back on this,
I would not even think about doing that today, I
overstepped my boundaries by opening the box and opening a
private notebook. I opened it and started flipping through to

(08:25):
find the first blank page. As I flipped I saw
each page had a name, an address, and some notes
next to it. The names looked familiar at first, but
I didn't think there were patients. That wouldn't have made
any sense since Jenny had no reason to keep a
notebook like that. But the more I flipped through, the

(08:45):
clearer it became. Yes, they were patients from our clinic.
Every single one had their addresses, also a description of
their house. It said things like blue house or the
house with a basketball hoop. My job just dropped. I
still can't think of any reason why someone would have

(09:07):
any of these notes. I put the notebook back, closed
the box, put my phone on speaker, and just finished
the call using the notes app on my phone. I
waited quietly until Jenny came back. I never told anyone
about this. I really can't think of any reason for
a nurse to keep that kind of notebook with her.

(09:36):
I'm a twenty three year old female. I was looking
to get a used stove online. I came across this
person that was selling what I was looking for, so
I went for it. We talked on the phone. Since
it was pretty heavy, I was going to have to
go to her place and try it. That sounds dumb,
I know. I went anyways, and she is waiting for

(09:59):
me in front of a huge apartment building in my
city that I usually drove by. She's probably in her
late thirties and seemed fine at first, a bit nervous,
but nothing out of the ordinary. The first thing I
noticed at her apartment was that it was almost empty.
I almost thought she was moving or something. We went

(10:20):
to the kitchen where the stove stood. I was glad
that there was actually a stove there. I was checking
if it worked when her phone rang and I could
hear a man's voice on the line. Then she said
this stoff belongs to her boyfriend, and he wanted me
to pay more for it. By that time, I was
just trying to get it over with. I felt really weird,

(10:42):
and I just wanted to get out as fast as possible.
I felt like I was suffocating. I guess she sensed that.
That's when she started visibly sweating and raising her voice,
trying to convince me that I needed to discuss it
with her boyfriend. I was worried that he might come.
I didn't want to be alone in the same room

(11:02):
with these two freaks. He seemed like he was taking
too much time to get there, and she grew restless.
I knew how to get out before he got there,
so I was like, I'll take it then. Let me
grab the money for my car, and she followed me.
I can't explain the atmosphere of this freaking apartment. I

(11:24):
could literally breathe. Once I stepped out of the doorway,
she was still walking behind me. I just outwalked her,
gone to my car, and drove away. I immediately blocked
that number. I'm a seventeen year old female. For a

(11:45):
little bit of context, I live in a fairly small
town with not a lot of people. At the time
that this story takes place, i'd been working at a
local burger king for about two months. I didn't have
a car or any way to get a ride, but
it was about a ten minute walk, which worked for me,
and due to the tight knit community, my dad didn't

(12:05):
think it was dangerous. I was still in school at
the time. I was only allowed to work until eleven PM,
and my typical schedule was usually three to eleven. One night,
I'm scheduled at three to eleven sucky shift, asshole customers,
all the usual. The night ends and I start walking

(12:27):
home on the same route I always walk. As I'm
about halfway through my walk, I noticed a guy walking
down the street in the opposite direction. It was dark,
and the only thing I could actually really see was
that he was actually there. He apparently didn't know that
I saw him, because the moment he saw me, he
stopped walking and crouched into a bush. The bush was

(12:52):
basically right in front of the root I usually take home,
But I'm not that stupid. At this point, I'm like, hell, no,
don't care what this guy is doing, but I want
no part of it. I start walking in the other
direction to take a different route, and all of a sudden,
this guy starts calling out to me, asking for help.
When I turn around, he was starting to run in

(13:13):
my direction. My heart was in my stomach. I'm certain
that I've never run that fast in my life. I
ran as fast as I can and eventually get to
my house. I get the door unlocked and slam it
shut as fast as I can. I'm pretty shaken by
this scenario, but really have no clue what he was

(13:33):
actually trying to do, so I brushed it off and
decided that I'd carry pepper spray in the future. A
few days later, a girl from my high school was
almost kidnapped by a man who was following her home.
From that day on, I never walked home again. For
anyone who thinks that it won't happen to you, you're wrong.

(13:56):
Always be safe, because it really could be you. When
I was younger, around seventh grade, I was at my
best friend's house. Her foster brother was watching us, and
he was a senior in high school. He chased me,

(14:19):
threw me into a wall. He then tussled me into
a chair. He used zip ties to tie my arms
and wrote me to the chair. He then put a
blindfold on me and a sock in my mouth and
locked me in the closet. Of all times, my dad
decided to pop in and I heard him calling my name.

(14:40):
My friend's brother then came in in a panic, cut
me loose and said if I ever told anyone, he
would kill my best friend. Thankfully, after that, her sister
adopted her and she moved out of there. He used
to always call me fat. I was like five to
ten pounds overweight. Seen him recently pop up on Facebook

(15:02):
and he looks all over four hundred pounds. He was
not a foster child. He was with his mom who
fostered children. I still have this memory pop up every
now and then. I wonder what he was going to do,
what his thinking was. This happened to me when I

(15:26):
was about fourteen. It was twenty twenty in the cold
winter of Canada. At the time. Confinement was mandatory. Every
two days. We would have in person classes at school.
The rest of the time classes were online. After one
of my online classes, I had to practice my acting

(15:46):
part for theater class. Since everyone was home, I didn't
want to bother anyone with my loud voice and crying scenes.
So I decided to go into the woods. You should
know that where I live out by the forest, I
don't really have any neighbors, and no one else walks
in the woods behind my house since it's private property.

(16:09):
I asked my sister if she wanted to come with me,
but when we stepped outside, she suddenly said she had
a weird feeling and didn't want to go anymore. She
ran back to the house instead. I took my dog,
a pug three years old at the time. It's important
to mention that my dog can't bark at all, and
he still can't to this day. He's very social and

(16:32):
cuddly kind of dog that would probably run off with
a stranger. I headed down my property and entered the woods,
walking along a familiar path. I know those woods like
the back of my hand. I've never got lost there.
As I was walking, I started recording my video to
myself to see what I needed to improve on my acting.

(16:56):
That's when I noticed someone behind me. I turned around
and sole a person. To this day, I still don't
know if it was a man or woman. They were
covered head to toe in dirty blankets and a few
old coats. They carried a large black plastic bag, like
the kind of used for restaurant trash, and held some

(17:17):
kind of sharp looking object I couldn't identify. Out of instinct,
I started walking faster when my dog wouldn't move. He froze,
staring at the person, and then, for the first time ever,
he started barking. That's when I knew something was really wrong.

(17:38):
I whistled for him, and he slowly started walking, looking
behind us. That's when the person started laughing. While laughing,
they said, I'm not scared of dogs. That sentence sent
a chill down my spine. Why would anyone say that.
I started walking faster, telling my dog to keep up.

(17:59):
Then I heard snow crunching. The person was walking faster too,
following us. This was it for me. I picked up
my dog and ran. I could hear the stranger running
after me. Then I had a dead end. Three thoughts
went through my mind. Go straight through the trees and
try to find another path. Jump off the snow cliff

(18:22):
in front of me. It's at least ten feet high,
turn back and run for my life. All this while
holding my dog. I didn't have time to think. I
heard this strangers footsteps getting closer, so I jumped off
the cliff with my dog in my arms. I sank
into the soft snow. The snow could be up to

(18:43):
three feet thick, and I didn't have a snowsuit on.
I was freezing. I swarming on my legs and hands.
I honestly thought I was gonna die, but my dog
started to dig me out. I grabbed him again and
ran towards another cliff ahead. When I looked back, I
saw the stranger one last time. They had a hand

(19:05):
on their forehead, scanning in the horizon looking for me.
They spotted me and started walking towards me again. I
ran as fast as I could, following the path I
knew would lead me to the street in front of
my house. I ran for minutes, holding my dog, legs frozen,
cold biting through me. When I finally got home, I

(19:28):
acted like nothing happened. I went straight to my room
and stared into space. I hope I never see that
person again.

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Episode Transcript

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True Scary Stories from Reddit That’ll Give You Chills

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