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30 Times People Realized Reddit Wasn’t For The Faint Of Heart
Reddit is like a magician's hat – you never know what you're going to find in it. It's reported that Reddit has an average of 91.2 million daily users. With so many people visiting every day, it's more than just the Internet's town square – it's a place where history can be made.
With its many nooks and crannies, Reddit almost has a mythology of its own. Bored Panda decided to explore the many stories people have shared on the platform throughout the years. But this time, we're focusing on the bizarre and creepy stories that veteran Redditors remember to this day as the most unsettling.
Buckle up, Pandas, because some of these are seriously disturbing and scary. And if you fall down the rabbit hole and decide to research them even more, good luck – you're most probably losing a few hours out of your day.
Click here & follow us for more lists, facts, and stories.
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#1
I can’t find it anywhere. But does anyone remember something where there was a girl by herself at home. She was talking to her friend on the phone while laying on her bed. She then dropped her phone and when she was picking it up, she saw a reflection of a face underneath the bed. She proceeded to talk to her friend and calmly say she was going to have a shower and hung up the call. She ran into the bathroom, locked the door and jumped out of the a window. She called the cops, later they arrived and arrested a man who was standing right outside that door holding a knife.
This really freaks me out to this day, there was an article on it too.
Here's the story:
I am 22 and this incident happened a year and a half ago. I had just moved into my first apartment and was in the process of moving in. The door that led into my apartment locks itself automatically when closed. So, I was going to the entrance of the apartment complex to get my mail while talking on the phone with my boyfriend. I returned to my apartment and sat on the bed while opening the mail while using the phone, I dropped the phone on the floor and it landed under the bed so I had to lie on the floor and stretch for it. I saw something that caught my eye, there was someone under my bed... My eyes widened and I choked the urge to scream. The person under my bed was lying still with his back towards me and his head to his chest, so I couldn't see his face. And he didn't see me, trying to be rational while so many thoughts rushed through my head, I picked up the phone, said "Sorry I dropped my phone, I'm just gonna take a shower and call you back."
The bathroom is right by my bed so I hastily walked in, quietly locked the door, turned the shower on, jumped out my window (my apartment is on the first floor) and called the police. They told me to wait nearby, but to go to across the street and see if anyone comes out the door to the apartment complex. This was during summer and it was still light out, I placed myself across the street, hiding behind a car while watching my open bathroom window and the entry door. I called my boyfriend and he came to me just before the police. I gave them my keys and they went inside. Only moments later two cops came out holding a thin and tired looking man. His eyes looked crazy, but he didn't try to get away. The policeman that had stood beside me and comforted me while the police searched through my house (I was a mess, shivering and crying) told me that the man stood outside my bathroom door with one of my kitchen knives waiting for me to come out.
This man had somehow crept in my entry door while I was getting my mail and hid under the bed.The man that was trying to hurt me turned out to be a homeless person and was placed in a mental hospital. My boyfriend moved in with me the very next day.
Thanks for reading! I just wanted to share my story so that others might know what to do if a situation like this occurs! The police told me that what I did was truly amazing and rational, if I had screamed, this could've ended really badly for me.
Edit: thank you all for your kind words, I never expected this kind of response!
RELATED:
#2
Somebody came posting to LegalAdvice, claiming that “she” had been r***d and wanted to know what to do from there.
Except they hadn’t bothered making an alt account, so posters there quickly sussed out from their post history that he was an incel, and he was *actually* looking for advice on how to get away with it. That and another post where one of them fantasized about maiming his roommate were the final straws for Reddit to finally ban their original sub.
#3
For me it's the post from the guy who didn't hear his wife being attacked and r***d downstairs because his gaming headset was noise canceling. Eventually he does hear something and goes to investigate. The r*pist was still on top of her until OP shot him.
I wear bone conductive headsets, usually with one pushed up a bit so that my ears are fully exposed so that I can still hear my wife if she ever needed me.
#4
The creepiest thing I've seen is a screenshot where an incel argued that they should have the right to r**e a three-year-old. Then bemoan the fact they are outcasts.
#5
This was fairly recently (I think within the past 2. 5 months). A woman posted on r/LegalAdvice that her husband had used the constraints attached to their bed to tie her down for some fun, started making love to her, and then went to answer the door when someone knocked. Long story short, he watched as a bunch of his friends took turns g**g-r*ping his wife, while telling her how much he loved her for "letting" him do this (he had her gagged with a sock before going to answer the door, so she couldn't respond - or scream).
She received a lot of great advice on what steps to take (she was posting while locked in the bathroom after all the friends left). Her last update on the original post was that the police had come and arrested the husband and were taking her to the hospital.
I think about her almost every day, hoping she's ok, and that she's safely away from that creep of a husband. I can't find the post now, and I'm guessing it was removed on the advice of her lawyer. I also haven't seen any update. There's a part of me, though, that hopes it was taken down because it was all a lie, and there wasn't really a husband who would do something so atrocious to his wife, all while pretending he loved her.
#6
A few years ago, someone in r/Gaming "doxxed" me and made a subreddit about me that included pictures of me from when I was a kid, where I lived, various social media pages (Facebook, Twitter, etc), and some other stuff. The admins removed it and banned the person who made it within an hour or two of when I reported it, but it was still up for about 12 hours for anyone to see.
#7
That guy who crawled into a tiny tunnel in a cave and died upside down when he got stuck. So disturbing to imagine knowing that your last day on earth was spent upside down, nearly losing consciousness with you and your very upset family contemplating how bad you f****d up. Haunted me for days.
#8
A Redditor woke up in the middle of the night to a man in a strange mask looking into the camera on his door. He was supposedly there for several hours and came back to check on the house.
I forgot to add. The dude came back like 10 times..
#9
Carl H teaches programming.
Redditor dedicates a huge amount of time creating and maintaining a subreddit to teach people programming. He's articulate, super nice, positive.
Only he wasn't. He was a piece of s**t who was r*ping his kid with his partner on the regular. He k*lled himself in prison.
I hope his kid is doing okay.
#10
This story on r/LetsNotMeet - OP and her husband would hook the dog to a lead in the backyard to use the bathroom if it was late or their didn't have time to take him for a walk. She was home alone, late, and put the dog out. After a bit she heard a scratch at the door, the dog's usual signal that he was ready to come in -- except she looked through the peephole and there was a man out there, who had cut the lead and was pretending to be the dog by scratching at the door. I've read a lot of creepy s**t on reddit, but this one REALLY stuck with me.
Here's the story:
Before I start here’s a bit of context to my story. My husband and I lived in a small two floor house with two main entrances, one along the front and the other on the side of the house, which opens up into the laundry room. When we’re too busy or it’s too late to walk our dog, we hook his collar onto a long line that’s attached to one of the pipes on the corner of our house, so he can use the bathroom. We used to do this from the door in our laundry room, but we’d noticed the large step from the door to the ground had been taking a toll on his hips. As a result, we started letting him out through the front door instead, since the porch is much closer to the ground.
This particular night, I was home alone with my dog and it was around midnight when I decided to let him outside one last time before going to bed. I hook him up to his line, close the door and lock it, before heading into the kitchen to put away the dishes. This was pretty routine, even if he used the bathroom quickly he liked to walk around along the front and side of the house for a few minutes before coming back inside. As I’m putting away the dishes I hear a scratch on the door (how my dog signals he wants to come inside), so I head over to let him back in.
Since I’ve watched way too many scary movies, I always look through the door’s peephole before opening the door. Out of habit I look to check that my dog is in front of the door. Instead I see a man staring very intently at the door handle.
I freeze with my hand on the door handle. I don’t know how much time went by, but then I heard another scratch, this one louder than the last. This kind of wakes me up from my initial shock and I run to grab my cellphone. I call my husband to tell him what’s happening. He was very confused, I probably wasn’t explaining the situation very well, but says that he’s heading home.
This is when I realize my dog is still outside with this person. I head back to the front door, trying to make as little noise as possible, to check whether the stranger is still there. Just like before, he’s standing there, head bowed looking at the door k**b. I tiptoe over to the laundry room, and slowly open the door as quietly as possible. I can’t see my dog anywhere and the side of my house is covered in gravel, I knew I couldn’t step outside without making a lot of noise.
With my heart still pounding in my chest, I go to the front door to keep an eye on the stranger and to get a better look at him. I considered calling the police but I didn’t feel they would take me seriously, since all this man was doing was standing in front of my house. I tried taking a picture of him with my cellphone but my camera was only able to take pictures of the peephole and not the images behind the glass.
All of the sudden, the man looks up directly at me. I swear he knew I was there. He glares at me, then opens his mouth to show this taunting malicious grin. He stood there that way for a few seconds. With that, he turns around and starts to walk down the street.
I stay in the same place, almost expecting him to rush back and start pounding on the door. Luckily, my husband got back after a few minutes. Long story short, he convinced me to call the police and we went out looking for our dog. It turns out this man had cut the end of the line connected to the pipe, and our dog decided this was a good time for him to explore my neighbors backyard, which was where we found him. It’s been three years since this happened, we’ve since moved to a new house (unrelated reasons), and the police weren’t able to come up with any suspects. Ever since then, we take our dog on very long walks before the sun goes down.
#11
I had a run-in with a guy who didn’t like my nerdy white guy self-deprecating joke. He insisted that I stop “bad mouthing my own race” because “what hurts one of us, hurts all of us”. I kept the jokes rolling in. I was having a blast.
An hour later, he messaged me the name of my city, my wife’s name, her work address, her morning routine, and he threatened to run her over with his car.
I’m now much more careful about my information online.
#12
For me it's usually the real life, every day seeming people who do awful things but are so far out of touch with reality that they think they're normal.
One being that dude who literally stalked that IGN reporter woman. He made constant posts in like legaladvice or something asking if he could sue her to unblock him. When people (rightly) brought up that he was a nutbar and belonged in jail or counseling, he repeatedly defended himself by saying they were in love and if she could just meet him she would see, etc. Like all the classic stalker reasoning. He absolutely refused to see anyone else's logic and was clearly mentally ill but not willing or able to see how badly he needed help, and this poor woman was caught in the middle of it for no real reason other than he saw some articles she had written.
The other one was the legaladvice post from the dude who basically trapped and assaulted a girl in his home and was asking how he could get out of the charges she was pressing against him. Only, he told the story the way a sociopath trying to get sympathy would, but the glimmers of what really happened were easily recognizable in the post. She came in, he locked the door and she was nervously on her phone. He made a move, she said no, he took her phone away. He then made a move again and eventually she relented. Then he went to take a shower and when he got back he found that she had bolted out the door and gone to police and he couldn't figure out why. And in his words, "It was a dating ad so why would she respond to a dating ad and come to my house if she didn't mean it?" (Classic no = yes defense.)
There are some nasty people on this website. If it's an obvious throwaway or whatever it's easy to justify some of them as trolls. It's the ones who you can tell are actual deluded people that are willingly breaking the law but think they're right that are really scary, because it's entirely possible that person is your coworker, or a friend of a friend, etc.
#13
Not sure if this was from Reddit, but it's a story that always got me. The girl tells how she was walking home one day and when she gets home she sees her mom coming out of the front door and her mom looks past her and says, "Who the h**l are you?" And the narrator says how she turned around and saw a man turning away and walking back down the street. Her mom had come home sick from work and if she hadn't been there then who knew what would have happened. That always gets me.
#14
Wasn’t on here (Reddit), but I was looking for reaction meme images for twitter and people told me /b/ (or however you say it) on 4chan had good threads for memes and I went on and found some funny threads but then, I scrolled down and stopped at one thread that scared the ever living s**t out of me. The OP had posted a photo of ME, just a selfie of me, and asked people to tell him what they’d do to me. Seeing the replies of some f****d up s**t scared me for life. I still remember what they said and the photo he used. It was anonymous so idk who it was and I still don’t know. But what I do know is that he never stopped uploading different photos of me, and when I tried to investigate, each photo would have my name and a number next to it. The highest number I saw said “(114)”. This m**********r had 114+ saved photos of me to share on 4chan. Haven’t had anyone tell me about seeing me on there lately so I think it’s stopped but it still creeps me out.
#15
A few years ago a contractor posted about how he killed a house full of people by accident by causing a carbon monoxide leak in their home while working on the hvac system. He wasn’t caught.
#16
I’ve posted it in another askreddit before so I’ll just copy and paste it.
There was one girl in r/letsnotmeet who said she worked at a bar I think (In Australia) and one customer really liked her and was creepy and after a while was kicked out by whatever the guards are called. She said after that when she went out to leave her shift, the guy somehow figured out her car and sat on it. She got the guard I think and the guy was taken away. This stuff goes on for a few nights or weeks (can’t remember, it was a few months ago). She then one time left to go to work and she forgot something so she headed back home and he was standing in the hallway like “hello honey” and yeah. Cops were called and apparently he’d been living in her crawl spaces for weeks or months. She said she then moved states after that.
I’m also Australian and got freaked out reading it because that stuff rarely happens here or isn’t covered often.
The story:
A life changing moment that will sit with me forever
Long
So all ended a couple of months ago and I only now feel comfortable sharing it. For background I'm a 24 year old woman living in Australia and work at an establishment that caters for an adult audience.
One night as my shift is coming to a close one of the patrons asks to buy me a drink which I accept because, employer policy. I talk him up to a couple of expensive drinks for the two of us have a quick conversation and make my excuses about my shift being over but he should come back to see me soon. I feel his gaze u********g me in his mind as he licks the splash of his drink from his upper lip.
He stands up and with this creepy grin asks to walk me to my car. Now I'm no idiot, I know never to put myself in that position and politely decline and tell him I might see him next time. I walk out passed our biggest bouncer and the guy doesn't follow me. Great, nothing extraordinary just standard par for the course in my profession. But sadly this isn't where our story ends, oh no, for this creep it's only just the beginning.
I'm off for a week after that night but when I come back into work I'm told a patron has been coming in every night for the last week asking for me. Says he wants to buy me another drink. Naively I think "oh great, a bigger pay this week" and get set for my shift. The night rolls on and who should roll in but our man of the hour, and he asks for me right.
So I saunter over and he buys me a drink. The whole time I'm sitting there with him he just has this creepy grin on his face, not like a sexual u********g creep grin, that's just normal. No, this was the kind of grin where he knows something you don't and is very pleased with himself about that fact. So we're talking and I'm getting him ordering himself drinks and trying to up sell him where I can. About half an hour goes by and I make my excuses to leave so I can try to spread the tips around.
But this guy isn't having it. He won't let me leave, and the more I insist the angrier he gets. He's practically hissy at me by the time I give a look to one of the bouncers who promptly comes over and defuses the situation, giving me an opportunity to walk away.
Phew, crisis adverted. WRONG! Bouncer doesn't throw him out, just gives me a buffer so this guy starts following me around the place, even attempting to walk into an employee only area which is where another bouncer finally notices and kicks him out. I finish my shift and walk over to my car. There he is, I s**t you not, sitting on the bonnet of my car. How he knew it was my car I will never know. He wants me to give him a ride and tells me how "[attractive]" I look. He's spewing greasy slime ball creep lines at this point and I'm not interested.
I try to give him a hint nicely and decline to give him a ride, but again he just turns mean and grabs me by my arm insisting I give him a ride. I tell him to f off and jam my key in his shoulder as hard as I can. He lets go and I push him with all of my might so he falls down. I jump in my car, lock the door and shove that key in the ignition. He's back up and banging on the window angrily to let him in. And I mean hard, so hard I think his hands or my window might break. I gun the accelerator and I'm out of there.
When I get 5 minutes down the road and am sure I'm not being followed I pull over to the side of the road and call back to work. I tell them what's happened and alert them that the other girls need to be careful leaving tonight. As I hang up the phone I break into tears. Now, this isn't my first rodeo I've been grabbed before and the sad truth is I probably will be again. But you never get used to it, you know?
I eventually compose myself, pull back onto the road and head home. I cry myself to sleep. Next morning word has gotten around and owner calls me to make sure I'm ok. I assure him I am but he insists I take some time off in case this creep comes back. He wants to put some distance between us, makes sense. A week goes by, then two, he's coming in every night asking about me and being told I quit and don't work there anymore. A lie to get him to stop coming in, you know. But he just keeps coming in and asking, clearly not buying it and then suddenly 2 and a half weeks in he stops.
Great I am really needing money at this point so I'm happy to be able to go back to work the following week. Time goes on and everything seems to go back to normal, same old chancers but the good kind that lead to higher pay cheques. Abusive guy doesn't come back in, I'm happy.
I start being forgetful though, I think I leave a door closed when I leave the house but it's open when I get back. Lights on or off, food left out. Things ending up in different places than I remember putting them sometimes moments before. I'm losing it but it's probably just the stress of everything that's gone down. One of my close friends who works with me reassures me that it's normal after being grabbed like that and it will pass.
This keeps up for a month until one day I head out to work, get 15 minutes down the road and realise I forgot some clothes I'll need that night at work. I head back home only to find the lights in my front room on and the tv visible as on from the outside. I really am losing it, good thing I came back I guess.
I head inside grab my stuff, make sure to turn the tv off and the light out and head to the door. Suddenly I freeze. There standing blocking the door is the creep that grabbed me. I'm stunned, jaw dropped on the floor. Then after what seems like a lifetime of standing in silence staring at each other, him smiling that f'ing smile, I scream "WHAT THE F***!". I'm screaming for him to get out and ask him what he's doing here, how he knows where I live, all in one jumbled mouthful of confusion.
He just stands there with that smile on his face while I'm loudly freaking out but stupidly not moving. I start gasping for air in a mixture of panic attack and bewilderment, then he decides to speak in my wake. The words ooze out of him and leave me chilled. "Welcome home honey, you're back early".
A switch goes off in my head, I throw everything I have on me at him and sprint to the back door, I'm outski. I leg it faster than I have in my life screaming [darn] m****r as I go. No one helps, stupid apathic society. I hide in some bushes around the corner, tears running down my face, gasping for air. I check my pocket and my keys are still there, no phone though I threw that at stalker creep along with everything else. I sneak back to my house, jump in my car and nope the f out. I head to work, tell them what's happened and call the cops. Cops head to my house and send others to my work. Stalker guy is gone when they turn up, they search the house and turns out he's been living in my crawl space. I'm paranoid that's what all those doors and lights and misplaced things was about.
I pack up whatever I can fit in my car while cops are still there (that they'll let me take) and I drive. Haven't been back since. I moved states, new everything. So creepy stalker guy, let's not ever meet again.
Edit: Quick update. I took my car in to get checked by a mechanic as some commenters suggested. Nothing was found. I have been in touch with the police and they are reporting that while they have his photo from security footage they haven't been able to track him down as yet. That means he's still out there somewhere and I still have no idea how he tracked me. I probably won't update again but I just wanted to thank everyone for their support, it means a lot.
#17
I’m going to post this in hopes someone remembers and can reference the post I’m referring to. This is one of the scariest things I’ve read and seen on Reddit and I hope the OP is okay. Have not seen Reddit updates but if I remember correctly, it was a front page post.
There was a woman who lived at home in an apartment building and would get random knocks on her door. There would be banging and screaming while she was inside alone. I think her husband was a doctor and had odd hours and this only happened when he was away. She was able to take a really poor quality photo of him out her window, and you can see him facing and looking into her apartment. Redditors were suggesting he was doing this to essentially t*****e her, and warned that it might escalate to something much more dangerous. Obviously he was stalking her because he knew when she’d be alone.
Ever since I read her post, I have been terrified to answer the door. I think about her constantly and really hope she okay. If anyone remembers this post, please share.
#18
Found an account that had been posting pictures of underage girls ripped off of Instagram. Every single girl he posted was in my h**h school.
#19
I believe it was a post from watchpeopledie. It was a gif from a security cam of a mom and her son going up an escalator. As they were getting to the top the escalator started coming apart and collapsing. So as this is happening the mother throws her son to safety on the platform above but then falls into the gears of the escalator. As she is swallowed up and crushed by the gears her son watched disappear and die.
That one f****d me up for a while.
#20
That's easy:
Your garden variety delusional cubicle neighbor's journal about his imagined life with me
#22
The one that sticks out in my mind is of the guy who was housesitting for his parents. I could have some of the details wrong, but he was basically uploading videos to snapchat or something of the like. At one point he heard a noise, so he got up to check it out. He was going through the house with his camera on, and while he didn't notice it, people who watched the video pointed out that there was a guy hiding in the shadows. No one got hurt, but it was pretty d**n creepy and I still think about it sometimes.
#23
Probably when someone PM'd me a picture of the house I lived in when I was 4. That one kinda f****d me up for a while.
#24
I think it was on reddit, but this woman was diagnosed with a disease and her posts showed her slow descent into madness. Chilling stuff.
#26
There are two particular stories on /r/letsnotmeet that were particularly frightening. One was of a woman who went out to check her mail, and when she got back in a man was hiding under bed with a knife. I think she ended up going into the bathroom and calling the police. Another was a woman who stopped to get gas at a gas station. A group of guys eyed her up and when she drove off, they began to follow her in their vehicle. Ultimately she drove to her brothers house who was military or ex military I think, who greeted them by firing several rounds into the air when they arrived at his house. I can't find the links to either story but they were both particularly harrowing reads.
#27
Probs this guy who got a cell phone snuck in at a mental health ward who was trying to convince people that he was given milk "from the future" or some s**t like he posted links to blurry pictures he sneakily took in their mess hall with the date of the milk as if it was super insane stuff when it was an average expiration date. Felt super bad for them cause they felt like the government was controlling their mind or some s**t.
#28
All the r**e, stalking, and other posts on here are bad. But the one that always turns my stomach is the guy who had a body part amputated for a legitimate medical reason, and then took the appendage home and made tacos out of it.
#29
For some reason I used to sort comments by “new” in popular threads and I came across a comment that just felt a little off. So I went to see the poster’s other comments and it was clearly written by a person suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. They were convinced that John Stewart (this was years ago) was going to come save them from the institution that they were staying in. Stephen Colbert was also involved in the plot to save them. I even found a few photos they had posted of themselves. I don’t know how else to describe it but the writing style was just so off-putting and sad.
#30
Many years ago, I’d say I was around 9 or 10, I was on the computer watching old YouTubers messing around on Reddit. I didn’t know what Reddit was, and being the rebellious child I was I ignored all warnings saying to get parental consent before going on the site if under the age of 13. I was just scrolling, don’t even think I was on a thread, can’t remember what I was looking for - probably conspiracy theories or something like that. And then I saw a post which said it had just been uploaded - as in a matter of seconds or minutes ago. I started reading it, and it scared the s**t out of me. The post said something along the lines of: ‘You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. All you need to know about me is last night, I m******d someone.’ The post went on to tell details about the user taking an ice pick and m*******g someone, and that he’d hidden the body where he knew no one would find it. He then said: ‘And I know that this post will be removed within minutes of me posting, but if you are reading it, just look in the news tomorrow and search for any m****r focusing on a victim stabbed with an ice pick.’
It was a very calm, maturely written post, which made me even more scared as it didn’t scream ‘kid pulling a sick joke’ I remember being genuinely scared, and refreshed the page. The post was indeed gone - and I frantically searched on the forums for any trace of it but it really had been deleted. Looking back, it was probably a Creepy Pasta post that had been copy and pasted to scare little kids like me, but the fact it really had been deleted like he had said in the post had me thinking I was going to be stabbed with an ice pick for months.
Edit: To everyone asking if the post is possibly about the 2012 Luka Magnotta m****r, the truth is I have no idea. All I can tell you is that 2012 is indeed around the time I read the post - 7 years ago I was exactly 10 years old. I wish I remembered more about the post, but I do have a terrible fear the poster did actually say he was Canadian... Thanks Reddit, never sleeping again!
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