[Stories] What is the scariest real story that you got? (bring on reddit because I wanna be reading these all night.)

Not sure if this would scare anyone else, but it terrified me at the time, and remembering it still kinda freaks me out...

Backstory: (skippable) From when I was 8yrs old to 15yrs old, my family lived in an old farmhouse built in the mid 1800's, that was built & lived in by several generations of the same family, and several members of first few generations had died there. One of the last members of their family to have lived there still lived next door, and was 80-something years old - awesome lady, told really great stories about her time in the farmhouse & it's history, always brought cookies when she came to visit, just generally a really sweet old lady, and how we found out most of the place's history.

Anyhow, my parents bought the place after it'd sat empty for decades with the intention of restoring the place. As with any old place, it gave off a slightly creepy vibe, things creaked in the night, the wiring was ancient and dodgy as hell, etc. Doors in empty parts of the house would slam (probably wind), lights wouldn't always turn on or off no matter how many times dad fixed the switches and swore they were wired correctly. Some times you'd flip a switch an odd number of times and the light would turn on when the switch was in the off position (no clue). Shadows would play tricks on your eyes and you'd swear something was moving in an empty room... I've got dozens of little creepy stories from while I lived there, but there are two that actually caused me to nope the fuck out of the house and refuse to go back inside for a few days.

First story: Upstairs had 3 rooms - stairs came up in the middle, my room was on one side of the center room, my brother's room was on the other, and the center room had the TV, a couch, a desk and couple chairs all crammed in. One night I couldn't sleep and was up late watching TV - little bro had gone to bed, lights off, and left his door open. For some reason, I kept getting the weirdest feeling from his room and kept getting distracted from whatever I was watching and glancing over into his room, which for some reason seemed like it was darker than it should've been, given that I had the lights on in both the center room and my bedroom. Finally, something moved out of the corner of my eye, so I looked over again to see what I can only describe as a black oval shadow float out of his room. It was about 3' high and floating about a foot off the ground, and seemed to both suck light in and glow faintly red around the edges at the same time (not a very good description, I know... it's hard to explain). Anyhow, this thing floats from bro's door, across the center room, through my legs where I had them kicked up on the tv stand, and disappears at my bedroom door. Where the thing touched my legs, it felt like they were on fire from the inside out - some of the worst searing pain I can remember, and I've had broken bones. The whole time, I was so terrified that I froze and couldn't will myself to move outside of uncontrollably shaking in terror. A few minutes after it disappeared, the terror wore off and my GTFO sense kicked in - I freaked out, tried to run/hobble downstairs as quick as I could, the whole time screaming for mom & dad at the top of my lungs, and after they calmed me down, I insisted on sleeping out in the newly built garage, since it didn't feel as creepy. There were a couple other times I saw shadows move in front of a light while I was staring directly at them, but this was definitely the worst experience.

Second story: One Sunday evening about dusk, we were getting ready to go out for the usual Sunday dinner, everyone's done getting ready, and we're ready to walk out to the car. Mom tells me to run upstairs and turn off the lights before we leave, so while they're grabbing keys, etc in the kitchen, I run up the stairs, turn off my bedroom light, then bro's bedroom light, then the center room light. The exact moment the center room light clicks off, I hear a whoosh thump and see something fly off the shelf next to the TV about 3-5' away. Since my hand was still on the switch, I immediately flipped it back on just in time to see a snow globe that normally sat on the shelf bounce off the couch, and hit the floor with enough momentum to come rolling back towards me. I screamed and made it down ~15 steps in two jumps, ran past parents & bro who were still in the kitchen and very startled / confused, and outside. Pretty sure I insisted on camping outside in the yard for the rest of the week, and didn't sleep well for a month after that.

Happy to share some of the other weird shit if anyone is curious or has any questions. (I don't think any are quite as dramatic as those two incidents though)

/r/AskReddit Thread