The scene is my living room; warm and friendly during the day, it becomes a scary cavern of darkness once the sun goes down. I shut off the lights and walk to my bedroom door, feeling the panic rise inside of me with every step. By the time I get to the staircase (waiting for the sound of a monster barreling down the stairs to snatch me up before I can even scream), I’m flat out running, my heart in my throat, desperately holding back a wail of fear.

I open my bedroom door and walk into the warm light spilling forth from my two bedside lamps. My dogs look up at me as I hurriedly shut the door, locking the darkness and all the mysteries it holds on the other side. My breathing calms. I laugh at myself.

at 12 years old, with two friends – exploring old army bunkers in San Francisco…dark bunkers, and we have no flashlight. We talk about all the homeless people and druggies who probably hang out there as we see the graffiti on the walls and smell what we think is probably urine. Slowly we walk down the dark cave, none of us ballsy enough to admit that we’re scared shitless…and yet we all have chills. Suddenly we see the burning end of a cigarette and we all scream bloody murder and haul ass out of the bunker yelling at the top of our lungs while people outside are wondering what the hell is going on. We flop onto a nearby hill to catch our breath, feeling safe under the blue sky and the sunlight…then we turn and see…a couple in their sixties, one walking with a cane, and one smoking a cigarette, calmly walking down the path away from the bunker.
Whatta bunch of pansies! hehe

My roomate has somehow gotten it into her mind that there is “a man” in our basement. In order to see down there you have to walk into the darkness to find the light switch. She won’t go down there unless I’m already down there and everytime she needs something, I have to go get it. Once, she needed something from the deep freezer and I couldn’t go because of an injury. She causiously creeped down the stairs to the basement…when she got half-way down, I yelled, “Tell ‘the man’ I said hi!” She darted back up the steps and called me, “an ass!” Heh, I’d do it again too.

I was blow drying my hair and I thought I heard someone in the house. But when I’m blow drying my hair I ALWAYS think someone is in the house, so I decided to ignore it for once and keep’a drying. Next thing you know, out of the corner of my eye, I see someone standing at the top of the steps….it was my mom. I cried for about 15 minutes because it had scared me so badly. My Biggest Fear is someone breaking into my house…
I felt so dumb.

I grew up in Houston. It’s a subtropical climate and roaches are everywhere, no matter how clean your house is, no matter how diligent you are about eliminating them. I once stepped out of the shower, dried myself off with a towel, and looked down to see a big fat cockroach stuck on his back to my wet stomach, all eight legs franticlly scrabbling in the empty air, trying to esacpe. Apparently he had been resting in the towel before I disturbed him by using it to dry myself.

My boyfriend and I were hiking in Glacier and saw a mama grizzly and her two baby cubs about 100 yards away. We watched them leave and continue hiking. We got to the base of the trail and he went off to take a piss. I was sitting and looking out at Iceberg Lake and closed my eyes to soak it all in. I heard a rustling noise and figured he was back but when I opened my eyes I was staring straight at the mama grizzly and her cubs ten yards away. Seriously. I screamed and clapped my hands and cried and shook and finally they wandered off just as my boyfriend came back. Then I broke into a full blown panic attack. I cried the whole 8 miles back. At this point families started coming toward us (we were the first ones out there that morning) and asked all excited if we saw bears and I just cried and said yes. For weeks after, I would open my eyes and see the bears. I really thought I was going to die. A few months later, we found out that they closed the trail off due to bear problems. I have never been so scared in my life and, even though it was three and a half years ago, can still see the mama bear’s eyes as she stared me down.

A number of years ago, after college, I spent a year in Italy. Not being able to be with my family, I went up north at Christmas time, near Trento, to spend the holidays with a family friend, one who had been instrumental in convincing my parents to allow me to take a year’s vacation. He and his family took me all over the Alto Adige region sightseeing. One trip was up to the top of some insanely high Alp in a gondola.

Halfway up, the gondola had ‘mechanical problems’ with the cable, and we were left dangling there, buffeted by the wind, for almost one hour, which was plenty of time to contemplate the thing busting loose and crashing into the mountains very, very far below us. So that was fun.

Fortunately, the family friend was a priest, so I guess that bought us some good karma or something, and finally we got moving again. Whew.

I lived in Hong Kong in a house in the country. My roommate was away, this was the first week in the new place. The county is dark, I know no one, don’t yet speak the language and by most locals standards, I’m rich.

The bedrooms were upstairs. I was sick and had a pretty high fever. I woke up during the night and heard people talking and music playing downstairs. I lay there for what seemed hours debating what to do. Maybe it was coming from the neighbors house? I finally creep into the hallway and hear it was my CD playing. Who breaks in and plays your CDs? Maybe they think no one is home. I’m sweating, shaking and barely able to breathe.

I creep back in the bedroom and lock the door. I debate calling 911. I finally decide better off silly than dead so I call. They were there in seconds. Nothing. But my CD player was playing.

Sometime later I realise what happened. HK has no set TV schedule or season. American shows they buy like Law and Order come on odd times like midnight. I taped them. Somehow in the move the system turned on the CD player instead of taping the TV at midnight.

(sole = soul. I hate my own typos.)

I was 10 and the Munich Olympics hostage siege was all over television — fuzzy images of the hostage takers on the Olympic village balcony with their machine guns. I was in my bedroom, which was above the kitchen, and I was supposed to be sleeping while my parents hosted a party. My bedroom also had a door that led to a balcony which sat atop our garage. I could hear random thumping somewhere near my bedroom. I began to panic, thinking (don’t ask why, I was a skittish kid) that the hostage takers had come to my small midwest town to kill us. Or, maybe it was the hostage takers’ friends. I lay there freaking out, slowly crept to the top of the stairs and realized it was the coffee percolator in the kitchen making the thumping sound.

I was in my teens and a big fan of Stephen King novels. (Should I stop there?) I was at home alone, reading, when off to the side I heard the oddest noise: Shhhhk-thunk. Not wanting to let the serial killer (because it’s ALWAYS a serial killer) know I’d heard him, I ignored it. The sound grew closer, never speeding up, slowing down, or becoming any easier to identify.

Shhhhk-thunk.

Shhhhk-thunk.

Shhhhk-thunk.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. Convinced I was about to look over my shoulder and directly into the face of my impending death (for the serial killer who had shhhhk-thunked his way into my parents’ home), I look behind me.

There, on the floor, my brother’s box turtle was calmly making his way from the living room to a dark corner in the den. Shhhhk: The sound of a turtle’s tiny legs pulling him forward. Thunk: The turtle’s shell banging briefly on the floor as it prepared to take another step.

Do you suppose medical insurance forms include a selection for “death by well-meaning box turtle”? :)

Jesus Linda, you are an incredible writer! I felt like I was there.

Refresh and read, refresh and read….that’s what I’ve been doing since I finished my first comment.
I think you inspire a lot of people to write, because each one of your readers’ comments are even enjoyable to read. :)

I was 10 – we were diving in The FL Keys, and my little brother & I would snorkel above the adults if we weren’t actually down with them. So My Dad and two Uncles were diving, and I decided to snorkel above. I put on the BC, my mask, snorkel, and fins…and for some reason, decided to just jump off the side of the boat, not roll backwards like you usually do. I hit the water, and as I surfaced at the top, I started hearing this strange, gurgling sound…..and then felt something tightening around my chest.

So I just KNOW I’m being attacked by a shark!!!

After I start screaming and flailing hysterically in the water, my Dad’s cousin (who was the adult staying on the boat with us) jumped in & hauled me out, and we realized what had happened……

When I jumped in, I had apparently accidentally triggered the BC to inflate!!!!!!

Waking up on my own in the middle of the night and believing that a man was peering round the doorway, his long arm hanging down the side of the door, waiting to move, waiting to pounce. Then realising that it was my dressing gown, hanging weirdly on the hook on the door.

I was 12 at our Six Flags theme park. It is about 9 at night and pitch black outside and my family and I have just waited in a loud and rambunctious line for two hours to ride the brand new Batman roller coaster.

The ride starts off, the adrenaline is pumping, and just as we reach the peak of the first drop off, the ride COMPLETELY STOPS.

The Batman ride has no bottom to it – your butt is on a seat, but your feet are dangling. Within minutes everyone on the ride starts panicking and talking to each other and some people are crying. We all quickly fall apart as we overlook the entier theme park with our legs dangling.

A worker actually climbs the stairs on the side of the coaster, all the way to the top, to tell us that they are “working on the ride and hope to have us down as soon as possible”. However, since there is no bottom to the ride, they can’t just evacuate us.

After he leaves, all of the riders start discussing what they think is broken on the ride, and my 12 year old mind starts hearing scary words like “hydraulics” and “brake lines”.

This is about when I began chanting “I’m going to die…I’m going to die…” over and over again. At this point, I don’t even want them to fix the ride for fear that they won’t fix it correctly and I’ll die while the ride is moving. I start praying for firemen and their ladder trucks and all I want is to put my STUPID FEET ON SOLID GROUND!

About 30 minutes later, from start to finish (although I swear it felt like DAYS), the ride starts up again. I don’t remember one millisecond of enjoyment of that ride…just closing my eyes as tight as I could and begging God that if he’d just let me live to go to the eight grade – and see again that cute boy who sat next to me in World History – I would always be good and honest and help others and never talk back to my mother again.

Finally, the ride is through and we all jump off and starting hugging each other and tearing up with thankfulness that we are back on solid ground. One of the riders turns to thank the theme park worker for fixing the ride so that we could finish safely, and the worker says…

“Oh, actually, we just stopped the ride so that the police officers could get up here and arrest two of the riders for defacing property while they were in line.”

All of the workers, and the officers, started laughing hysterically.

And two of the teenagers that we were so bonded with after our “near-death” experience were hauled off to the police station.

So embarrassing!

These stories are amazing, thanks for the major time-suck Linda ;)

I am having a hard time settling on a story to tell, I seem to have several terrifying experiences which sort of sucks ass.

Here is my earliest. I was around 3-4 years old. My grandmother was visiting and had brought this gigantic suitcase that I could easily fit in and close creating a nice haven. Flash to my mother throwing a drunken dinner party. The adults are laughing and talking in the dining room, I am keeping myself busy in the living room with the suitcase and at least 10 of my stuffed animals. I zip myself in and am unable to unzip it. It’s very dark and pungent with the smell of my grandmother, Norell and cigarettes. I holler over and over for help. No one hears me. I start to scream and punch the inside of the suitcase. No one hears me. I lay still and listen, I hear the adults laughing and begin to think they are laughing at me. I am crying hysterically at this point. What feels like hours, pass. At some point I just lay there quietly crying. Finally I hear and feel the zipper being tugged at, and then the sounds of adult panic. Finally the zipper un-snags and the top flies open, the space filling with my grandmothers terrified face. I am scooped up and safe in her arms. I recall her trying to calm me down with a glass of Tang, then tucking me into bed with the promise of throwing that stupid old suitcase away. Then from the comfort of my bed through the closed door of my bedroom, the horrible scolding my grandmother gave my mother for being drunk and neglectful.

Growing up, we lived way out in the country, down a winding dirt road. Since both my parents worked, my sister and I would ride the bus home from school, then spend the next few hours at home by ourselves until our parents got off work. One evening, I think I was 12, my sister 9, we heard my dad’s truck pull up in the drive, so we decided we were going to play a little prank. We flipped off every single light in the house, the tv, etc, and ran into their bedroom and hid behind the bed. The door from our carport into the kitchen was very squeaky and loud, so we clearly heard dad come into the house. And then…nothing. He stood in absolute silence in the kitchen for nearly 5 minutes until my sister and I both freaked the hell out and started screaming at the top of our lungs. Obviously, he knew exactly what we were trying to pull and decided to turn it around on us. I have never in my life been more thankful to hear my dad’s laughter coming from the kitchen.

One more: same house out in the country, my sister and I around the same ages as above. We got home from church one night and dad asked if we had fed and watered our rabbits for the day. As usual, we hadn’t, so we set off for the rabbit cages. The cages were actually very close to the house, but were fenced off in such a manner that you had to walk away from the house for a bit to get to the gate, then back towards the house to the cages. So it’s dark, my sister and I are fumbling around at the cage with the watering bottles and what not, when we hear it…the distinct howl of a coyote. Both our eyes get bigger, but neither of us say anything. Kinda like, if we don’t acknowledge it, it didn’t happen. Then we hear it again, closer. Me, in frantic whispers, “DID YOU HEAR THAT”. Sister, equally scared shitless, “YES WHAT DO WE DO?!” Suddenly out of the darkness something comes tearing towards us, howling and yipping and making a ruckus. To this day I have no idea how my sister and I made it back into the house so quickly. Of course when mom heard us screaming, she ran to the door, and swears she saw both of us scramble over the hood of her old station wagon to get to the door. The ferocious, howling beast we heard? My older brother, now doubled over in laughter in the backyard. When he heard dad send us outside to feed the rabbits (in the pitch dark), he knew it was an opportunity too good to pass up. Needless to say, he got in heaps of trouble, but it’s still one of my mom’s favorite stories from our childhood.

Last year on vacation in California we went to Moaning Cavern.
My son and I chose to rappell 165 feet into the cave while my husband and family members walked down and watched us.
I listened to the instructions, had my harness and helmet and safety gloves on and lowered myself over the rail to start down. I let out rope and turned the corner and backed into this teeny tiny crevasse just like they said I would and then came out into the cavern INTO NOTHINGNESS. I HAD TO RAPPELL DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING CAVERN THAT’S BIG ENOUGH TO FIT THE STATUE OF LIBERTY UPSIDE DOWN (that’s right, I’m yelling).
I don’t always envision things well and well, I just thought I’d be going down the SIDE of the cavern. Besides, I wanted to know his Mom wasn’t afraid of anything!
As I’m letting the rope out (a little faster than intended so I could get the hell down), my husband calls out “it’s awful quiet up there Nancy” because he knew since I wasn’t hooting and hollering I must be scared shitless.
I have a paragliding story from Mexico from the year before — same story, different sport and location!

Back in the stoner days of the mid-90’s, my sister and I were at a gas station on the way to a friend’s house. I was pumping gas and since this was before the days of paying at the pump with credit/debit cards, I went inside to pay. When I came back out, my sister was not in the car.
I freaked.
I started walking around the place, looking for her. I was stoned, sure, but I KNEW she’d been in the car when I’d gone into the store!
She came out to find me peering nervously into the tinted window of this creepy-looking van, as I was sure she was in the process of being kidnapped. She walked up behind me and said, “What are you doing?” and I nearly lost it. I asked her where she had gone and she said, “To the bathroom.” This gas station’s bathroom was on the side of the store, so you didn’t have to enter the store to go in.
She still laughs at me.
And it’s been a very long time since I’ve smoked any pot.

The main one I remember, is from when I was 15. I was staying at my friend’s house in Melbourne, Australia (I’m from Auckland, NZ). I had one of their bedrooms, and they were sharing one, as they were sisters. One morning, like a Sunday, their cat was sleeping on my bed. It was about 9am and I had slept in. And then I heard a huge thumping noise running down the hall and apparently throwing itself at stuff. I had no idea what it was, but all I could assume was that it was a crazy who had hacked up my friends and was storming through the house, searching for more victims. This was the only logical conclusion I could come to, given the fact that nobody else was making any noise, or seeming concerned about the noise.

I stared at the cat, who didn’t look particularly frightened. Later, I found out it was just their dog running up and down the hall, excited to be up. Duh.

Another time was a spider…I assume you have daddy long legs in the States? I’m not scared of them, but one fell from the ceiling onto my FACE once. I cried.

I’ve also had many bad experiences with cockroaches, including finding one on my big toe, stepping on them, etc…

The worst one was this. I was in the bathroom, and there is no delicate way to put this, I was putting in a tampon. I looked down for a second, and there was a large cockroach, on the SKIRT PART OF MY DRESS. I flailed in fear, screaming and laughing because there really was no good way to deal with this. I think in the end it fell off but I ripped my clothes off anyway.

I am shivering and laughing and TOTALLY loving these comments. I only have one to add:
I, too, had just moved into my very own apartment. It was one of those “go in the main door and up the stairs to your apartment” kind of deals that was dark and worn out and built right square in the middle of a terribly vacant lot with bad lighting. The super didn’t like me having lights on when I was out so the apartment was always pitch pitch dark when I came home at night. Suffice it to say I always hated coming home at night.
Well the day had been a long one, I was exhausted. It was my first real job in the city and I was bleary-eyed with city life, busrides, demanding bosses and irrational customers. As always, because I’m a paranoid nut-job, I unlocked my door and looked both ways before walking in – regardless of the pitch dark or the stupid 70’s carpet with the mottled tans and taupes to trick my eyes into seeing things that weren’t there.
I looked to my right, and to my left, and that’s when my blood froze! There on my left I saw someone about my size standing in the middle of the main room in the pitch dark… just standing there.
Just… still… standing… there…
Moments later – I reached the 8-billion miles (two feet) in front of me to the light switch, the better to greet my murderer, only to reveal the unmended pair of tan pants I had casually tossed onto the back of the sofa that morning (I wanted to remember to fix ’em when I got home but forgot that I had put them there.)
My blood ran cold for hours and I slept with the lights on and a radio on all night for about three days in a row that week. Stupid tan pants on a dark-colored sofa.

Just been reading the rest of the (awesome) comments, and I remembered one more!

When I was 16 I was chatting online to some kids in Australia who I had met online. They went to send me a photo of themselves…I opened it, and the whole screen was filled with a horrible photo that I assume came from somewhere like rotten.com of a rotten face. I almost killed them. I don’t think my blood has run cold quite like that since. They thought it was pretty funny. We’re still online friends though, strangely, and talk on the phone from time to time!

Oh and my scariest experience lately…about a month ago I was sitting right where I am now. It was about 4am, and I was up because I hadn’t been able to sleep. I had been up the past two nights at that time, also. I should also mention that I still live at home. Suddenly there came a HUGE banging noise from upstairs, about 5 massive bangs. Our floors creak, so I would have assumed it was someone running through the house upstairs if it wasn’t my Mum’s room. We freaked the hell out, and searched all the (inside) things that could have made such a noise, but to no avail. Then I recalled hearing an extremely quiet car come down the end of our street (we live in a dead end) about 15 minutes earlier, which I had noticed simply because of HOW quiet it was.

Just while I was discussing this, I heard the same car return. I genuinely thought it was a coincidence, but Mum watched the car anyway. It came down the wrong end of our street, stopped so it was looking at our house, and then I flashed the lights just in case. It left. I wanted to call the police (although I still thought it was a coincidence and that a meteor had struck our house or something) but Mum didn’t.

Next morning, someone had thrown some eggs and a rock at our house. I know that sounds like a kid thing to do, but it really wasn’t like that. It was very calculated, that car, and very quiet. We assume they were planning to break in, and wanted to check, thinking no one was home ’cause the light had been on all night for 3 nights in a row.

So we became obssessed…cars KEEP coming back. Every night. Doing the same thing, without the throwing. Just driving down the wrong end of the street, leaving, for about a week. We called the cops the first couple of times, but they always got there 2 minutes too late, so we stopped bothering. Now, a guy gets out of the car and walks up our neighbours driveway. At first we were so suspicious, but now we think that he may be delivering a newspaper. It would make sense that he is driving down the wrong way if that were the case, ’cause the letterboxes would be closer to his door. Which still doesn’t explain the rock throwing. Are they connected? Was it a different group of people, and just coincidence that they drive their cars down the street the same way at around the same time? Also I should mention that my car (and our neighbours car) had been broken into DOWN OUR DRIVEWAYS 3 days earlier.

Our neighbour found one egg next to his van last week, but I’m not gonna call the cops again until I actually see someone THROW SOMETHING…hoping to catch them someday so I can find out their story :)

I was 14 and spending the summer at my elderly grandparents house which was haunted by a little girl – my mom and several of my aunts and uncles all had stories of seeing her while they were growing up there. Whether these stories were true or just made up to scare us kids I don’t know, but I believed them.

About a week or so into the summer I woke one morning and felt a weight on my stomach. Keeping my eyes closed I very slowly moved my left hand under the sheets towards my stomach to feel what it was. It was a hand – a cold clammy hand!

Simultaneously I opened my eyes, sat straight up and grabbed the thing and flung it as far away from me as I could.

Which wasn’t very far as it was attached to me. I had slept weird and my right arm had fallen asleep and was numb while my right hand resting on my stomach.

When I was about eleven years old, my aunt and uncle took my brother, cousins and I to the local zoo. They had a new exhibit with Komodo Dragons that year. Prior to going, I had seen a documentary on television about them and they scared the hell out of me. Still, I was curious to see one. Anyway, my cousin and I saw a sign pointing in the direction of the new exhibit and we ran ahead excitedly to see the dragons. Right near the entrance to the exhibit was a little wooded clearing, and as I ran up to it, I thought I saw the shrubs shaking, but figured it had to be someone standing in there. Well, the second I got to the clearing, I froze in complete terror. I had come face to face with a Komodo Dragon as tall as myself and it looked mad and hungry. It was a statue, of course, but it looked so real and I was so frightened, that my eyes began playing tricks on me and I swore I saw its tongue flicking in and out of its mouth, as well as its tail moving. The zoo had rigged the bushes to shake, as if the statue were doing it, and a hidden speaker played recordings of komodo dragon sounds, such as growls. I gasped and stood as still as if I were cemented to the ground. My chest hurt and felt like it would explode, because I was holding my breath. All I could think was, “How did it get out of its cage?” After a few seconds, my cousin caught up to me and asked, “What’s wrong? Why’d you stop?” I didn’t move or answer. I just stared into the creature’s hungry eyes. She followed my gaze, saw the statue and screamed. She took off running back toward my aunt and uncle and brother. I thought the monster would tear after her to eat her, but it didn’t move, so I figured I would try my luck and escape, too. I ran so fast, my heels practically smacked my ass. I screamed all the way down the ramp, waving my arms in the air, shouting, “It’s escaped! RUN! It got out of its cage!!!” People everywhere were turning their heads, frightened. My brother hid behind my aunt and my cousin was also screaming and on the verge of tears. Boy, did we feel dumb when we realized it was only a statue. My aunt laughed her head off and posed with it for a picture, while my cousin and I stood as far away from it as possible.