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35 Horrifying Things People Have Woken Up To That Still Haunt Them
Humans, unlike, say, our furry friends, struggle to see in the dark. We also have pretty active and imaginative brains. This combination ensures that when we hear something we can’t see, particularly during a vulnerable moment (like when you’re in your pajamas), our brains immediately jump to wild and terrifying conclusions.
We’ve gathered stories from people who were dramatically awoken by something scary in the night. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote the spookiest ones and be sure to share your thoughts in the comments down below.
Discover more in 43 Horrifying Things People Have Woken Up To That Still Haunt Them
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#1
When I was 18 I was in a house fire. Since then I've been terrified of fire. This story takes place roughly a year later when I was 19 and had just moved into my own apartment. As an incomplete quadriplegic, this was a huge deal. It was around 2 am and I'm asleep. I suddenly wake up to my dog howling and the fire alarm blaring.
I am terrified. I'm also only wearing underwear. I throw on a shirt, get into my chair as quickly as possible, and head to the exit. I'm in the 8th floor with no way down. I'd taken so long getting in to my chair there's no one around. I just started sobbing uncontrollably. I feel a tap and see my two male neighbors standing over me. They ask if they can help and I stammer yes. Without hesitation one picks me up out of my chair and the other grabs my dogs collar (I forgot her least in my panic). They carried me down 8 flights of steps and held me outside in the ~50-60 degree cold until they somehow found a chair for me. They also got a blanket from somewhere to cover me up with. They consoled me calmed my dog. After we were allowed back in one went upstairs and brought my chair back down. They walked me to my door and told me to come to them if I ever needed anything. They moved shortly after but that experience is one that will always stick with me.
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#2
I lived w/ my oldest sister & her two daughters. Her youngest (3 years old) was a sleepwalker. She was tiny, white-blonde & liked to wear a white nightgown that was too big for her.
Yeah, wake up to the sound of thumb-sucking right next to my head, roll over & see the world's shortest ghost.
#3
A kid banging on our door at 3 AM who had just escaped from their drunk parent beating them. That scream...
#4
Woke up to the feeling of something on my face, tried to brush it off and in my half asleep state thought it was attacking me. Cue absolute freak out because something is crawling all over me and i cant get it off, just for me to find out it was my own hand that had gone numb while i was asleep.
#5
My family owns a house on the mountains of Jordan with the neighbors being only family. Anyways the first time I ever visited (2-3 years ago) I left the door open for the breeze that there is. Anyways, I woke up to a wolf next to me. The wolf fell asleep within a couple feet of me. It turns out my uncle had domesticated the wolf and no one bothered to tell me that it sleeps next to my house.
#6
We have a window AC unit basically right above our bed. One night, ice must have gotten built up inside, and it fell onto the fan that blows the air out. I remember hearing a loud bang and then being sprayed in the face by liquid. My first thought was that someone broke in and shot my wife and I got covered in blood. [Freaking] terrifying.
Edit: The liquid was cold, and that should have been an instant giveaway that it wasn’t blood, but I was in such a panic and confused from just being woken up that the temperature didn’t register right away.
#7
Housemate coming home drunk after midnight from a Halloween party dressed as Jason from Friday 13th, walked into my room by mistake in his full Voorhees costume and just stood in the middle of the room looking around trying to work out where he was.
Woke me up as my door opened and I was frozen terrified for a good 30 seconds. Bought a lock for my door the following week.
#8
Husband running into the bedroom, choking.
Something about the way his footsteps were pounding in woke me up instantly. He swallowed one of those "easy swallow" tylenols, ironically enough and it caught in his throat. I asked if he was OK and he violently shook his head no.
So I went from asleep to Heimlich in about 2 seconds - a really terrible way to be woken up, especially since he said the last time it happened (he has a constricted esophagus from stomach acid scarring so he's prone to choking while eating), his ex-wife had been unable to do it and he had passed out. You expect some big heroic adrenaline wave to come sweeping over you and empower you to magically save your spouse, but I was just terrified and swearing. I also thought I did it incorrectly, because it wasn't a neat little ptooey like in the movies - He bent over, violently throwing up. (Do I still do it? DO I STOP? WHAT DO I DO) but he was coughing and could speak - told me to call 911. The 911 op reassured me that if he was coughing, he was getting air, and to encourage him to keep coughing. Then she let me off the line which in my state of hysteria, I took to mean that NO ONE WAS COMING. The paramedics and firemen showed up and filled my kitchen while I stupidly stood there in half a nightie with a blankie wrapped around me, and they took him off in an ambulance. The capsule apparently melted on the way to the ER, but I'll never forget the horrible sound it made, rattling with WRONGNESS in his throat as he would grab and pinch at his neck.
#10
Eight year old son at the foot of my bed, vomiting blood.
He was ok. It was a rare complication following having his tonsils out (and he actually managed to do it twice, which never happens). I'm a firefighter and have seen some [stuff]... but goodness gracious I don't think my eyes have ever gone so wide. It took a couple of serious deep breaths to collect myself to give him a hug, dial an ambulance and start treatment.
#12
I used to live a few minutes away from Buncefield oil storage facility, it was the fifth largest oil depot in the UK. On the morning of 11th December 2005 it exploded! The explosion threw me out of my bed, and the doors of our house burst open. I looked outside my bedroom window and the sky was engulfed by a giant fire ball! 11 year old me genuinely thought it was the end of the world...
#13
Exploding head syndrome...
"alternately termed episodic cranial sensory shock, is a benign condition in which a person experiences unreal noises that are loud and short, like a **[explosion]** or a **gunshot**, when falling asleep or waking up. These noises are often jarring and frightening for the person. **Neither the cause nor the mechanism is known.** Though harmless in and of themselves, episodes have been known to create distress or impairment in the lives of individuals."
It happens to me once or twice a year. It keeps things interesting.
#15
During a break at college I stayed at my house with one of my roommates (she lived upstairs, I downstairs). I woke up in the middle of the night to what I thought at first was a dream of a man peering through my window. Then he began to slide open the window, which snapped me out of my dream state. I didn't know what to do, but when he started crawling through I jumped up, pushed him out and screamed/ran upstairs. It was so scary knowing all the houses next to me were empty and he could have done anything he wanted if I didn't wake up.
#16
Someone slamming on the door of the apartment across the hall screaming “your apartment is on fire.”
It sounded like it was on mine. Woke up and immediately started choking on smoke. The fire alarm then went off.
Everything ended up being okay (someone flicked a cigarette b**t off their balcony, it landed on the one a few floors beneath it and set their patio furniture on fire, hence why someone saw it before the alarm went off). It was just so disorienting and terrifying to wake up to the pounding on the door, the screaming, and the smoke.
#17
Falling down the stairs. I was 12 and I was sleepwalking. I woke up as I was falling from the first step and proceeded to tumble down 18 stairs. All I got was a bruise.
#18
My almost 4 year old standing at my bedside staring right at me. Once my eyes were open she said “I brought the monsters in here” then went back to bed. Thanks kid, I had you so they’d go in your room.
#19
I once woke up to see a helicopter crashing through my ceiling. I dove from my bed face first into my bedroom door to get away. It was the ceiling fan.
#20
I woke up to my mom panicking and locking my door and asking me to call the cops. it was around 3am and someone was trying to choke her and possibly do worse. she said that she heard someone open her bedroom door and lay on the corner of the bed. she called my name out multiple names thinking it was me, but then someone tried choking her and cutting her with something.
she managed to kick them off and ran downstairs into my room to protect me. once the police came, they did a search outside our home and found nothing. they asked if anyone else lived with us, and we said the only other person that lived with us was a man who rented the downstairs basement, but he was never a problematic person. this man went to church every sunday and kept to himself-honestly he was barely there half the time because he was always working. they decided to speak with him anyways and they found him in his room bleeding heavily because he had accidentally cut himself when my mom kicked him off.
yeah, that was scary. after that event, i had horrible sleep paralysis for several nights. i kept dreaming that a black shadow would crawl into bed right next to me and strangle me.
#21
My daughter had a Ring Around the Rosie doll when she was little. You put the doll's hands together and it would sing the song. Anyway, she left it out outside one night apparently and the dew in the grass shorted it out. I woke up in the middle of the night to this faint Ring Around the Rosie song playing over and over.
It was creepy and we didn't have an outdoor light in the back yard so I had to go by myself with a flashlight and search the yard for this creepy doll.
#22
The clear and obvious sounds of an animal in the bedroom. We had no pets. I'm in the UK so my sleepy brain at first thought it was a rat, or several rats fighting for their lives. After some minor panicking it turned out to be a pigeon trapped behind the boarded up fireplace. Slept on the sofa that night.
#23
My heart racing so fast, I couldn't breathe. I was in the middle of a supraventricular tachycardia episode. My BPM was 210.
Had to go to the ER. I was absolutely terrified I was going to have a heart attack that night. Scary stuff.
#24
Woke up in the middle of the night to what I thought was my blanket all crammed up between me and the wall. It was uncomfortable so I went to move it but instead of a blanket I touched human skin.
Of course I immediately freak out and am now wide awake wondering what to do as I lay in the dark with this...thing laying next to me.
So I gather up my courage, reach over and grab it and yank it up so I can see what it is. It was storming and lightning flashed very dramatically at the same moment while I realize I'm holding my own arm.
I guess I'd been sleeping on my arm and it went so numb that I couldn't even tell I was touching it. Haven't laughed that hard in a while.
#26
After the tornado in Joplin, Missouri in 2011, we were left without power for several days. Our home was only slightly damaged, so we were able to stay there. My daughter had just turned 11 at the time and was sleeping on a pallet next to our bed because she didn't want to sleep in her room by herself with no electricity. She had been in a bathroom of her aunts house during the tornado and that bathroom was literally(and I mean literally how it's meant to be used) the only place in the house left "standing". Anyway, this was two night later. The three of us and our three dogs were all asleep in the room and I woke up to my daughter screaming that the house was on fire. Sure enough flames were coming from the master bathroom. Small flames, but flames. I got up and ran to the garage to get our fire extinguisher, but it was pitch black with no power. I had to go back in, get my phone and go back out to find it. By this time my wife and daughter had gathered up our two french bulldogs and gone outside but we couldn't find the pit bull puppy my daughter had gotten from us for her birthday. We couldn't find the cat either. So I went back into the bathroom but the flames were too much already for our fire extinguisher so I decided it wasn't worth it to die of smoke inhalation so I bailed. We called 911 about six times but emergency personnel was so spread thin with the tornado that it took about 20 minutes for anyone to get there. We sat in the road and watched our house burn. Total loss. My daughter was in the heart of the Joplin tornado and two days later watched her house burn.
TL;DR Woke up at 2AM to flames from our master bathroom. Watched house burn.
Edit: Thanks for the kind words everyone. Unfortunately the puppy and the cat both were lost in the fire due to smoke inhalation. The cat was found whole, but the dog surely passed before she felt any pain. And my family has had better luck since then. We had good insurance, so we were able to get back on our feet pretty quickly.
Edit 2: We had a candle burning in the bathroom for light. We think the cat pushed open the door and there were towels hanging on the backside. Insurance deemed it a negligent fire, which it was. But they still paid in full. They dropped us like a bad habit right afterward though.
#27
I stepped out of my bathroom to find my entire house lit up, 2 EMT's and a sheriffs deputy in my living room.
They proceeded to try to tell me to come sit down, stay calm, relax and let them help me.
I was like "[WTH] is going on, why are you in my house?"
Apparently I had suffered a grand mal seizure in my sleep, never having this happen before, My wife called 911.
I must have come out of the seizure, got up walked into the bathroom and had no idea it even happened. While I was in the bathroom, they arrived, came in and my wife had turned all the lights on and I was oblivious to everything.
Weirdest feeling ever...would not do again.
#28
Part of my ceiling collapsed on me.
We knew there were leaks from the roof and were in the process of fixing those ourselves without really looking into any of the structural damage. After that, we hired professionals.
#29
Someone standing in the bedroom doorway.
He flipped on the light then flipped it off.
I woke my husband up and this guy walked out of the apartment. My husband ran out after him in his underwear, I went to the kitchen and got a knife and ran after my husband.
Turns out, the woman who lived there before us had broken up with her boyfriend and moved without telling him or getting back his key. I guess he came back to see her...at 3 in the morning.
#30
I awoke once to a strange, high pitched trilling sound and bright lights beaming through my window. For a second I seriously thought I was about to be abducted by aliens. Then I realized it was a toad doing its mating call in the front yard and car parked on the street with the headlights on.
#32
Somebody trying to break in.
I was living alone at the time in a little studio flat in the city centre. It was about 3am and I was woken up by some crashing sounds in the hallway, and then somebody started kicking hard at my bedroom door. Fortunately my door at the time was a pretty hefty fire door with a good strong lock, so I had enough time to call the police before he did any damage to it. I was living pretty close to the police station so they turned up fast, with dogs, and caught him still inside the building.
As it turned out the guy was absolutely wasted and looking for somewhere to sleep, and from the outside my place still looked like the empty nightclub it used to be before it was converted into flats. So my guess is he thought it would be empty, rather than actually attempting to rob/attack anyone living there. I was still very shaken up by it at the time.
#33
I had music box on a shelf, around midnight it started playing all own after not being touched for more than 5 years. It's why i believe i hold the record for fastest land animal.
#34
A loud BANG downstairs and then my dog zooming to the front door and snarling. By the time I had grabbed my gun and got downstairs whoever it was was already peeling out of the driveway. I guess they assumed the house we had just moved into was still unoccupied and got the scare of their lives. Looks like they were trying to kick the door down to gain access.
My good boy got some steak the next day as a reward.
#35
Daughter had this Minnie Mouse baby doll that crawled on all fours when you touched a button on its back. Wife and I woke up at 2 am to the sound of the dolls creepy laugh. Went out to the living room and the doll was walking straight into the corner. Each time it stopped it would just start right over again. The button wasn't broken or anything, so i'm not sure what happened. Donated it.
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