People who live in remote areas know that sometimes too much quiet can make your mind race. However, some experiences stick with people long after they occur because of the degree of creepiness. On Reddit, plenty of people who live in rural areas share their scary stories for the rest of us to freak out over.
We know that often strange people linger around woods, parks, and other desolate areas. And we have all heard plenty of the kind of creepy stories that backpackers experience. However, the stories listed below are more than a little unpleasant to read because the people who suffered them weren’t just out and about anywhere – they were at their homes.
Imagine living in the woods, and looking up from your bathtub to see a face looking back at you. Or imagine finding someone in your home wearing a pillowcase over their face. The terrifying real-life stories below are the stuff of nightmares.
They Caught A Stranger Taking Creepy Selfies In Their Home
My husband worked nights so I’d be alone on a huge acreage. One night I go into the kitchen to make tea and I look outside to see the moon and there is a face on the other side of the window. I scream and it wakes up my aging husky who starts to howl. Dude bolts. I call the cops and wait forever locked in my pantry.
Next day my husband and I ride on horseback our whole property. We find a small make shift cabin on the northwest corner. We find stuff stolen from our laundry line and canned stuff from our kitchen. He had pinned up selfies in the cabin he had taken while in our bed and sitting at our daughter’s child-sized dinner table.
A Smiling Face In The Window 20 Feet Above Ground
When we first moved in here, I kept thinking I’d hear someone walking in the house while I was alone (it’s a flood zone, so the house is on stilts and you can hear footsteps when anyone walks across the floor). Of course, this is Texas so I’d just grab my handgun and go see if someone had come in (also, my mother in law has a key and when she drops in and leaves things for the family she sometimes won’t relock the door).
I kept feeling like I was going to walk into a room and someone would be there. Just feeling oddly watched all day for a few days. My husband didn’t think anything of it and one night he jumped out of bed, grabbed his handgun, and started going through the house slamming all the doors wide open. He said he heard banging in the kitchen like someone was going through the pantry. He was adamant he had heard someone. Nothing, doors still locked.
My niece got home from her grandmother’s house and a few nights later asked if she could sleep on a cot in our room. She’s a teenager, not a small kid, so I asked her what was wrong. She didn’t want to tell us because we “wouldn’t believe her.” Just that she didn’t want to be alone. She said she heard banging in the kitchen and when she heard that or felt like someone was in the house she would see a man in the window of her room so she basically noped out and came to us.
We let her stay, and the next day we were all a little uneasy. My husband, a notorious nonbeliever in the paranormal, came in looking shaken and said he had closed her door after bringing her laundry into the room and a man had been smiling at him in the window. The windows on the house are almost 20′ in the air because of the stilts the house sits on.
A Hooded Stranger Appeared In The House
From immajusthrowthisaway:
I grew up in the middle of the woods in Louisiana. Our closest neighbor was 20 miles away. Our house was on a hill, and at the bottom was the creek that went through the woods for miles and miles. My grandfather would always tell us there were people living in the woods, crazy, inbred folks, on some “The Hills Have Eyes sh*t”, but I always assumed he was just trying to creep us out.
So one night when I was like eight-years-old, I sat in the living room watching Pearl Harbor. My father comes into the living room and tells me not to move, that he heard footsteps and the back door slam shut on his way to the bathroom. He thinks someone was in the house, and that he scared them off when he walked down the hallway to the bathroom. So he leaves the house, leaving the front door wide open which scared the sh*t outta me.
I pause the movie, and just listen to silence for a couple minutes. And, of course, the guy is still inside. I’m staring out of the doorway to the living room, and see the top of a head peek around the corner. A head with a white sheet over it, cut and tied at the neck. I’m paralyzed, and even if I wanted to run there’d be nowhere to go but towards this creepy ass dude. He just stares at me for what feels like forever before he leaves towards the back of he house. The backdoor slams again. I just sit there and start crying, until my father comes back inside.
My dad tells me that as he rounded the corner to the back of the house, he caught the guy leaving out the back door. The guy sees my dad, and books it down the hill. Then there’s a gunshot. According to father, my grandfather had been sitting on his porch next door, and saw the guy walking toward our house, so he grabbed his gun, got back outside in time to see the guy running down the hill, and shot the dude in the leg. The guy fell, then got back up again before my grandfather could take another shot, and disappeared into the woods.
By the time the cops show up, he is gone. They search but can’t find the guy. They do find a rundown sort of shack a mile or so into the woods, filled with nothing but pots and pans, so that was weird.
The Peeping Creep From Nowhere Came Looking For Something
From Redditor u/pedazzle:
When I lived way out in the middle of nowhere, Australia, Nothing but desert outside, nearest neighbours were about 10km away. Our place was at the end of a long dirt road with only our house no others, so no one came down there unless they were there specifically to visit us.
I was taking a bath one night, look up and see a man’s face staring at me through the window. Freaked the f*ck out, got out of the bath, robe on, etc., and told SO who said I probably imagined it, especially since that window was so high up no one could reach it from outside (house on stumps).
I made him go look out there and yeh, someone had gone to our shed, which was a good 500metres away from the house, got some wooden pallets, stacked them up and peeped through my window. If it were a random peeper in an easier accessible location like a suburb, it probably would have weirded me out a little but then got over it, but the amount of work this guy had to go to makes me remember him to this day. And wonder how the hell he got out there with no car, did he just live on our property or nearby in the bush somewhere?
She Woke To Find A Man Watching Her From The Woods
From Redditor u/bhsgrad2015:
When I was younger, about five, me and my family lived in a big house that was in the woods. My bedroom was on the first floor, with a window about 15 ft wide and six ft tall. Huge window. It was so oddly large that we could never find curtains or blinds for it, so I just had a bare window, which was fine because like I said, we were in the middle of the woods.
I woke up in the middle of the night with that feeling of being watched, and I saw a man wearing all black, standing at my window, watching me. I screamed, and when I screamed he ran off into the woods.
An Irish Stalker Followed This Child For Miles
From Redditor u/itsmekathy:
When I was young, my grandmother lived in a very rural part of Ireland and my brother and I were sent to visit her for a couple of weeks every summer. Frequently my grandmother would send us out to do little jobs for her – bring bread or jam to neighbours, or to collect turf for the fire.
One summer’s day she gave me a loaf of bread and sent me to a house about three or four miles away. The laneway to the house was narrow and lined by thick hedges and as I was walking, I became aware of a man within in the hedges who was watching me and walking the laneway with me. I was extremely frightened and ran the rest of the way. I think the woman of the house knew that something had frightened me when I arrived – she made me tea and sandwiches with my grandmother’s bread and let me stay and play with her dogs until her eldest son got back so he could drive me back to my grandmother’s house. Thanks, Mrs. Staunton!
I still don’t know who it was that was watching and following me or how long they had been doing so before I noticed
Someone Started Scratching A Trailer In The Middle Of Nowhere
From Redditor u/0veru5edMemez:
My dad owns a plot of land in south-central Illinois. It consists of crop fields and woods. My dad’s nephew, call him T, and his wife, B, live in a trailer next to an auction barn they own.
One night, B was home alone. They’re porch faces the road, and they have a street light by their circle drive (on their ground, not the road). B saw a silhouette walk across the porch, his shadow visible on the door window. She later heard scratching on the screen of a window. She had enough. She grabbed T’s handgun and opened the door.
There was no car in the circle drive other than her own. She screamed something like, “I got a gun and I’m not afraid to kill you mother**cker!” The scratching stopped.
It Sounded Like A Pig’s Squeal Right Next To Them
From Redditor u/jimbob6886:
My grandparents house is right outside of town – a neighborhood is on one side but on all the other sides everyone has an acre or two they’re sitting on (including my grandparents). So, isolated-ish.
A friend and I were smoking cigarettes in the large enclosed porch one night when no one was home, and in the complete silence we heard a really loud pig squeal like, right next to us. It sounded like it was in the enclosed area with us, it was so loud. Sure, people have horses and chickens around. I didn’t think any neighbors owned pigs though. It also didn’t quite sound like a pig, more like a man making a pig noise (I can’t emphasize this enough, it was one of the weirdest sounds I’ve ever heard).
The scariest thing was how displaced the sound was, I mean even if their next door neighbor had a pig, it would have been far enough away to be a lot quieter. We bolted inside and locked the door immediately.
They Heard A Blood-Curdling Scream Over And Over
From Redditor u/JesusLice:
My SO and I lived in a small cabin up in the Appalachian mountains on an isolated 40 acre plot. It was our first week in the cabin. Sometime in the middle of night we heard a bloodcurdling scream right outside of our window.
Not just once, but over and over again, for about a minute.
They Found A Little Girl’s Possessions Literally In The Middle Of Nowhere
From Redditor u/bluekc:
When I was about 13 and exploring the woods, I found a pillowcase with a jewelry box, a bunch of cheap kids jewelry, a couple key chains, a school idea for a girl in fourth grade, and a couple other little girl things. I didn’t think much of it at the moment but I couple of days later I went back to get it and it was gone. I still wish I could remember the girl’s name or even the school she went to because I have a feeling something horrible happened.
I grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, 10 miles outside of a “town” that doesn’t even have a stop light just so you guys have a picture of how rural it was. The scariest sound I’ve ever heard is a mountain lion’s scream. You can never get used to that sound.
A Scorched Tree Was Gone The Next Day
From Redditor u/MrCurtisLoew:
So I live in a very heavily wooded area. This is a place where the closest town is seven miles away and its only got about 100 people in it. So my family and the few neighbors we have are very secluded.
Anyway, when I was about 12-ish, I was sitting on my front porch eating mac n’ cheese because it was a nice day out. While I’m eating I notice something sorta strange in the woods in front of our house. I had sat on my front porch so many times that I was used to how the view looked so I immediately noticed that the view looked different. Probably about 150 ft in front of our house was a giant black mass. At first I thought it may be a black bear as they are fairly common here. Being the adventurous kid I was I went to investigate.
As I got close to it I could see that it was actually a giant burnt black stump, rootwad and all. It had been totally scorched so the entire thing was pitch black and it was massive; it easily weighed 200 pounds. This was strange as we hadn’t cut down any trees lately and we certainly hadn’t burned any stumps. I showed my mom and she was equally as confused but just kinda brushed it off.
After school the next day I went to check on it again with my dogs but when I got to the spot it was gone. A giant, 200-pound stump had just vanished and there were no drag marks or anything.
The Scent Of Cologne Was Like Being Followed
From Redditor u/kelce:
I used to live in the middle of nowhere. We had one neighbor whose house we couldn’t even see through the trees and hills. On the other side of us, up another hill there was a dirt road that basically went nowhere. At the beginning of the dirt road there was this old abandoned church which made it automatically creepy.
Anyway, berries used to grow down this dirt road so we’d go pick them. On the way back one day we got an extremely strong scent of cologne. A quick scan didn’t show anyone but every time the wind blew we got another whiff. Still don’t know where the scent was coming from but it creeped me out big time. You don’t think about how no one could hear you scream until you’re forced to.
This Manic Neighbor Showed Up With A Shotgun
From Redditor u/4theloveoffiber:
I live out in the country – there are maybe five houses on my long dirt road. Last week my neighbor ask if he could come over to talk to us about something. He didn’t knock, just walked right in and had a loaded gun with him. He started talking a mile-a-minute about a war coming to our road, knowing people who are 300-years-old, vampires walking out of woods, being able to see the matrix code, etc.
He had a hospital bracelet on his wrist, turns out he decided to go off his medication and was in a manic-depressive state.
Random Barbed Wire In The Woods Caused Injuries
From Redditor u/pumpmar:
As a kid we had free range of the woods behind my friend’s house. It was out pretty much in the middle of nowhere and we could go out there for hours and never see another soul.
One time one of the younger kids was ran straight into barbed wire and got his whole front cut up because he hadn’t been wearing a shirt. It was really weird because this was just in the middle of the woods, so why was there barbed wire hung at the height a seven-year-old could run into?
He Stumbled Upon A Crazy Man In Italy
From Redditor u/CaptainNemo95:
I live by the Adriatic Coast of Italy. One summer night of 2013 I was with some friends on the beach, having a party, when at around 1:00 AM I climbed the rocks to find a place to p*ss. There was a full moon and I could see very clearly.
I walked away from the beach until I saw a small cove, a small sandy bay, invisible from the inland but easily reachable from the rocks. I thought it was the best spot to relieve my bladder and went there. As I neared, I distinctly saw that there was a man, a fat, very big man in his 50s, sitting in the sand doing absolutely nothing, his head tucked in his arms.
I should have known better, but I moved closer and asked if he needed anything, thinking he might have been feeling unwell. He raised this bull-like head and started screaming madly to get away from him lest he killed me by “cracking your head on the rocks.”
I scrambled and ran like crazy back to my friends. I turned backwards and I was relieved to find that he wasn’t following me. We called the police, who came and discovered that he was a mentally ill person who hadn’t taken his medications and his family had declared missing in the afternoon. They managed to reassure him without resorting to violence and escorted him back to his abitation. It was the only time that I really feared for my life…