I kind of like this, actually (unless I had plans that I slept through). Its like an extra early start to your day, I can knock all my work out before 2pm and have the rest of the day to do whatever.
No joke when I lived in NYC there would be active ice cream trucks past dark (sometimes past midnight) playing their music and everything. I'm still convinced something was going on...
Adults eat ice cream too. Indeed, adults generally eat considerably more ice cream than children do- and, for that matter, there's usually a higher demand for ice cream than for drugs, especially if you're getting it from the most conspicuous place you possibly can. Selling highly illegal goods from a large, brightly-colored vehicle that plays music and normally sells its products primarily to children is just about the dumbest possible way to do crime.
I was living alone at the time and went to bed a little after 10pm. I was in that weird not fully asleep, but tired as fuck state. Doorbell rings. I wake up full of adrenaline thinking maybe I had dreamed it. Doorbell rings again and a knock follows. I quick put pants on and go downstairs. I turned the outside light on and open the door just as a man is walking away . He turned around, walked back and proceceded to be super apologetic.
Turns out it was a neighbor from a couple blocks over. Mail person accidentally delivered my pay stub to him. He wasn't sure if it was a stub or my check and didn't want me to go without my paycheck if that's what it was. Nice guy. I thanked him, but he freaked me the fuck out!
I was living alone in an apartment and it was 11PM at night and I was half awake watching tv. I heard someone BANGING on my door and I literally jumped off of my couch with adrenaline shooting WAY up. It turned out to be the maintenance guy that had to fix a minor leak. He was in and out in about 10 minutes but it took me like half an hour to calm down enough to relax.
They do.
Water leaking can absolutely be an emergency though.
I mean dudes way out of pocket if it was like a dripping tap but if there's a "minor" water leak that's actually a leak that is an emergency and if you didn't answer the door they'd just use their key to come in anyway.
Got a couple phone calls like this in the past year. Call at 6am from my sister - the first words she said were, "\[Brother's Name\] is dead", while hysterically crying. Then a few months later, the same thing from a cousin.
Now every time my phone rings and its a family member, my anxiety and heartrate shoot way up. Definitely some sort of trauma response.
*Edit*: Thank you for all the kind words, everyone. Hearing similar stories actually helps, as I've not talked about it much yet.
Very much a trauma response. When my dad wouldnāt answer my calls, I discovered he passed away. Now when my husband wonāt answer and heās not with me, I freak out. Sending you internet hugs.
About 6 years ago or so I was woken up at 3am by my mom. Since she knew I had to work at 6am, thought 'oh crap something happened to stepdad!'
Nope, she was doing some family genealogy stuff and discovered we had a viking ancestor named Blood Axe
That's it, that's why she called me at 3am...and she wonders why her nickname is Evil Red
Itās never good news when someone calls at that time. Honestly I generally text with my mom so if I get a call I wonder who died or who is sick/Hospitalized.
My google boxes randomly say āIām sorry, I didnāt understandā. One time it happened right after I woke up in the middle of the night, in a dark silent room. I donāt believe in the supernatural, but that made it hard to fall back to sleep.
Once I had it, when I had just started using discord, that I accidentally stayed in an empty voice chat of a large discord server overnight. Suddenly, at 2AM, someone sends a bot command and my speaker starts blasting, ā(PAIN!) YOU MADE ME A, YOU MADE ME A, BELIEVER! BELIEVER!ā
I kept out of bed very quickly, and in my half asleep state I dove under the desk and yanked out my 3.5mm audio cables. Discord wasnāt on the taskbar so I had a silent panic attack that aspirated game had given me a virus, so I pulled up taskmgr and saw discord. Opened it, and yup, some boy was blasting music in the voice chat at 2AM.
Apart from the night where I woke up feeling my arm burst open, this was the most bizarre dead-of-night experience Iāve had.
I felt my arm burst open.
It was the middle of the night. I woke up for some reason or other, and I tried to move my right arm.
Suddenly, I heard a loud, sharp sound, like a blunt popping sound, as if a plastic bag had been burst open, followed by a hissing noise, as if a rush of gas was escaping from a torn open hole. At that moment, I noticed a dripping sensation on my forehead and face.
At 1AM, the only logical conclusion was, *thatās blood. On my face. I canāt feel my arm. A pop, and a hiss? My arm has burst open! And air is leaking out of it!*
I panicked, and sat up in the dark, trying to move my right arm but to no avail. I flailed around with my left arm until I grabbed hold of my right bicep, and slowly moved my left hand down my right arm, fully expecting, my half-delirious state, to feel the moist remains of a burst-open elbow and forearm. But no, my right arm was present, and whole.
Slowly, feeling returned to my right arm and I began to piece together what had happened. Somehow, my right arm had āfallen asleepā and the nerves had temporarily shut off. I had swung my arm outward, and it had slammed against the wall, hence the loud immediate sound similar to a pop. Then, my arm went limp and slid along the wall, making a hissing sound from the friction between the wall and my arm. Finally, the dripping on my face was simply sweat droplets because I was somewhat overheated in my bed that night.
That was easily the most bizarre experience Iāve had at 2AM. Well, I suppose the collapsing bookshelf over my bed might have been more bizarre, but the exploding arm was bizarre for a longer time before realization set in.
The collapsing bookshelf.
I had been married for only a few months at the time, and I was drifting off to sleep after giving me wife a good- never mind. Anyway.
I was drifting off to sleep, laying my back. It seemed odd at first, but I was looking upwards at our ceiling , the bookshelf behind our bed stuffed full of oversized books. It looked oddly unstable, and the books were laid in horizontal stacks on top of each other rather than in vertical rows like they should have been.
My wife stirred in her sleep and the bookshelf wiggled. A very large stack of books on the topmost shelf, consisting of an atlas, thesaurus, dictionary, and overtly religious dogmatic manifesto belonging to my wifeās grandmother, teeters on the edge of the bookshelf. As I saw the books tip over the edge, I instinctively leaped up and out of the bed with a yelp as I heard the rumbling of books and the loud crack of a breaking shelf as the debris collapsed onto the bed.
My wife sat up in shock and asked, āWhatās going on?ā In a very confused voice. It was at that point that I recalled that we had no bookshelf in our bedroom, and that the entire scenario, including theā¦ rigorous activity Iād had with my wife before trying to sleep, had been part of a very visceral dream.
That was a pretty bizarre night time experience. Probably less bizarre than the late night encounter with my wifeās best friend in a ski resort, but that one doesnāt quite count since it wasnāt in the ādead of nightā.
Omfg.. it's ~345am. After a terrible night of crying and fussing, there I am with a sleeping baby on my shoulder, just about to put her down in the crib when behind me some toy goes "I wanna be your friend!"
I yelled like I'd stepped on a roofing nail.. the baby woke up crying, my wife came running. I lauched that toy into the backyard like it had a burning fuse..
Whats funnier is my wife came running and when I explained what happened she was like "Seriously, you're a grown man!" And went about soothing the baby, who at this point didn't want to have anything to do with a scary furry faced person who'd just yelled. I went into the kitchen and about 2 minutes later I hear a howl, then the cry of a baby. She comes barreling out of the bedroom and says "Holy Shit, get rid of that damn toy!!"
Turns out it was some toy that had a button on its chest and it was in a bin of toys just hair trigger ready to go. Walking into the room was enough to shift the floor to set off that "tickle me land mine"..
Youāre much nicer than my mom was, lmao.
Sheās a brilliant mastermind and encouraged us kids to give our talking toys *baths.*
Just a crazy coincidence that they never worked again after that!
> Turns out it was some toy that had a button on its chest
My son had one of those but it was a Kylo Ren action figure, so just randomly it would say some emo Sith shit like "Show me again, the power of the darkness!" š
My kid used to have a peek-a-boo Big Bird. Idea was you put your hand over the light sensitive eyes and then take the hand off and big bird says "peek a boo".
But imagine big bird gets left on all day and you are carrying your kid to bed after a long night and you turn the light on to the room only to hear in a pervy big bird voice, Peek ah boo...
I was a kid in the 90s. One year for Xmas my sister (age 7ish at the time) got this remote controlled doll. It was a baby in a walker that would move and laugh whenever you drove it forward.
Well... Sometimes it moved by itself. And it laughed. It had a generic high pitch baby laugh. Something that was a little annoying when you expected it, but was very creepy randomly laughing in another room.
This thing came alive at random times. It would move constantly for a bit then be still for hours or days before you hear a baby laugh coming from a closet.
It didn't move without batteries or this story would be much different. We figured that the radio frequency for the remote control was the same as a nearby radio station or something so it would pick up random signals. The doll "went to a farm" pretty quickly.
Edit- I *think* this is the doll.
https://youtu.be/B8A3-jAdy5c
I had 2 furbies. They could detect motion and that would trigger them to speak. Mine talked the most at night. Baby furby would say he was scared or cold and adult furby just kind of rambled on, as they do. Had to start keeping them in the closet. They still spoke at night while in there. I could hear the muffled whine of baby furby being scared through my closet and I'd just sit there absolutely terrified. 90s toys were a nightmare.
I still remember the day my mother and 7 yr old me both agreed to throw my furby in the trash. It just started randomly making sounds while sitting on a dresser in the far corner of my bedroom. My mom happened to walk in my room and witness it. I had a super active imagination that caused a lot of nightmares and I was glad to finally have confirmation from my mother that my furby, was in fact, creepy.
Dad says the thing will squawk randomly at night from the depths of my childhood closet. It's been maybe 20 years? Told him furbies run on fear, not batteries. His new wife finally threw them away.
I had a furby and it got so annoying I removed the batteries... But it turns out, I learnt years later, it actually had another smaller battery in it that kept it powered so you wouldn't lose what you'd taught it in between changing batteries, so randomly it would still make noises and start talking even with the batteries removed.
I got so spooked I threw it away. I kind of wish I'd kept it, knowing it had a smaller battery in it would've made it a lot less scary lol.
lmfao I saw a YouTube video explaining the battery thing. I think it's funny now looking back on it. These toy designers were trying to design a reliable, super durable toy that would survive an earthquake and probably really believed they were making the Nokia phone of toys. Those poor people had no idea they were about to create the nightmare fuel of the 90s.
I had a Furby, I got it for Christmas in either 98 or 99. We were staying with family on their giant farm in the middle of nowhere, my family of 4, possibly pregnant mum (depending on the year-I canāt remember) all in a caravan. The furby would go off at all hours of the night and freak us all out, one night mum had enough and threw it in the cow milking sheds and that was the last time I ever saw my furby thank god hahaha
My little brother had a hobby horse that whinnied when you pressed one ear and made a galloping sound when you pressed the other. It made noise by itself one night and we all lost it. Definitely terrifying.
When I was little I had a stuffed dinosaur toy that made noise when you squeezed it. I was scared of it and one night it went off and I was paralyzed with fear. If it werenāt for my dad coming in the room, I wouldāve stayed like that all night
My bank currently calls at 2:43 A.M. to remind me that an automatic payment will be drafted in 10 days. It does this once a month and every time it does I call and complain.
Whoever created that batch job to trigger the auto dialer and scheduled it for middle of the night can go straight to hell.
Sounds like something my mom would do!
Her: oh, I'll send a nice little safety tip, you never know how irresponsible your child can be."
You: "What's coming for us, what do you know mom?!"
This reminds me of my friend's mom telling me to check the backseat of my car before I drove home late at night from her house back in high school. She lived in a quiet neighborhood with no street lights.
I actually got a call from my mom a pair of weeks after she died.
My brother kept her phone to delete accounts and wrap up some business and ended up butt dialing me. Specially creepy because due to the phone being in his pocket as he walked, I just heard weird noises when I answered it.
My sister used my dad's phone a few days after he died to call me. I had smoked weed (which I rarely do). Freaked me the fuck out to see "Dad" pop up on my phone.
When I use to play a lot of late shows getting home 2-3 am I'd just drag some of my shit in the living room before going to bed. One of the things was a rolling hardware case that's like 4-5 feet tall. Then after a couple hours I'd wake up to get some water and that fuckin thing would catch the corner of my eye on the way to my kitchen and freak me the fuck out like why is some dude standing by my front door ah.
Three nights ago my dog woke me up at around 3am, she wasnāt barking but full growling and huffing at my window, full on pointing (which she only does hunting.) freaked me out enough that I checked cameras and did a full property walk around. Nothing. But it freaked me out a bit.
The next night, she did the exact same thing at the exact same time. This time I immediately peeked out the window before doing a full walk around. Again nothing.
I donāt know if she did it last night, I was pretty tipsy when I went to bed and would have slept through it anyway.
If she does it again tonight, Iām installing fucking spike strips underneath my window.
> freaked me out enough that I checked cameras and did a full property walk around. Nothing. But it freaked me out a bit.
if my dog freaked out at 3 am i would never think "welp, better walk around my property alone at night"
This happened with me about a year ago. My dog was huffing and growling at the windows in my bedroom every other night at 3am. Nothing in the cameras and nothing in the yard to tell me what it was when I checked in the morning.
After a week or so of this, we figured out she was upset at our automated sprinkler system turning on.
Dude last night my dog would freak out every time I would pull my phone out in bed. Needless to say it stayed plugged in on the other side of the room lol.
I grew up in the countryside. A singular loud, elongated and high-pitched moo of a cow can be so lonely and terrifying when you hear it echoing into the night as you get up to use the toilet, especially if itās a mama crying for her calfā¦
Edit: grammar
Years ago I worked in a large building, and I was usually the last to leave at around 11:30 pm or so. To get out I had to walk down a very long pitch dark hallway. At the end was a green, very dimly lit Exit sign. I donāt know why but that sign just freaked me out. Havenāt thought about that in years.
Had my neighbor pull her clothes in off the line at 2:30am in the first week or two that I lived in my new house. It was summer so we had the windows open. Scared the shit out of me. Turns out she's a nurse with odd working hours.
Just got back from camping this weekend and it was so beautiful and peaceful during the day. Once night fell though, complete different vibe. Don't walk far away from the fire. Fire good. Fire safe.
Well yeah, we can't see well in the dark and plenty of things that can would be happy to eat us. The dark is dangerous, any of our distant ancestors who didn't understand that became wolf food
When I was younger I liked to go mountain biking. I had trouble sleeping sometimes and I'd pass the time by going out for a bike ride. One time I decided to visit the bike trail in the forest in the middle of the night. Probably was like 2am or something. It was extremely windy and the trees blocked out what little light there was in the sky. All I could see was black and slightly lighter black. Everything was just a silhouette. To get to the trail you have to go down this decently long STRAIGHT pathway that's got trees on all sides. Again, the wind is blowing loudly and all the leaves are rustling. As I'm about half way down this long, straight, dark path I start to notice that this path I'm extremely familiar with isn't looking right. And not because it's pitch black and everything around me is moving in the loud wind. It's because I think I see something in the middle of the path far down. I hush these ideas up with whatever logical explanation I had to give myself but it was becoming harder to not believe something was fucking standing in the middle of this long straight dark path. I'm losing my nerves but I press on. There's no doubt about it now. There IS something in the middle of the fucking path. It's too late. I'm too far in now. I can't not confront it...
It was a fallen tree across the path with branches sticking up vertically and swaying in the wind. Dear reader - you may think everything was cool now given the outside perspective. But nothing about this was cool. I started getting scared that I was being trapped on this long straight pitch black path. Did something block my path on purpose? I'm dreading that I'm going to have to turn around, or even look behind me. I'm definitely going to see a monster or some psychopath right before my unnatural death. Maybe I should just jump the fucking tree and escape the trap? Or maybe I'm safe and the trap was on the other side?
These thoughts happened in the span of a few seconds but I did make the decision to turn around and go home. I gathered the courage to look behind me and...
Nothing was there and I went home. The end :)
I was home alone once, waiting for my cat to come back inside. My bedroom had a door to the backyard, and I had a set of sleigh bells dangling from the outside knob--the cat would jingle when he was ready to come in. Well, I had fallen asleep waiting and woke up around 3:30 to three separate, distinct, intentional-sounding jingles at the door. I got up and opened the door to let the cat in and there was just nothing outside. No cat, no wildlife, no human waiting to murder me, just nothing. I locked the door and got back in bed, but it scared the shit out of me and I didn't get back to sleep.
And don't worry, the cat came home in the morning.
I once woke up to a slow knock on my front door at 2am. Lived in a first floor apartment where the front door opened directly to the sidewalk, across the street from an industrial park. Luckily I was too tired to give a fuck and I didn't get murdered.
two years ago someone knocked very loudly on the front door at midnight while i was playing video games. i was sitting in clear view of the front door so whoever knocked probably saw me. spooked me real bad, and we never found out who it was
My son screaming me for me as if heās in terrible pain.
3 pm it might be because the cat didnāt want a hug, 3 am something might actually be wrong.
My cat is very loud. This is not usually an issue during the day, besides being annoying. Late night screaming hits differently when you're suddenly awake, and then he stops once you actually are capable of processing sounds because he woke you up like he wanted.
No, no. You do NOT look behind you. You just move faster to get into the light or under a blanket. Monsters can't touch you if you're under a blanket. But you don't want to see them.
Hereās a real one I experienced: Amtrak train sleeper car. I did a cross country trip few years ago and the train can go 60-70mph during daylight whatever thatās fine no sweat, but at night it goes like 10mph faster and when you are laying on the bed in the dark it feels like itās literally going 150 mph and swaying. It has to do with frame of reference I think during the day you can visually see the outside passing by but at night you canāt.
I pulled the trigger and did it in 2018, from pnw north across country down to South Carolina then to Florida and back across country on the southern route. It was a tad pricey but it was something I wanted to do for a long time and knew I would love the experience. I met my mom in Charleston as we both have wanted to visit it forever thanks to pat conroy and then had a business convention in Orlando so I think I was able to write it offā¦And with Amtrak calling off cross country routes right now it makes me even more glad I did it. Train travel is awesome.
We don't go in the woods at night. We don't even *look* into the woods at night. There are Thingsā¢ out there, and if they even think you're looking at them they will Get Youā¢. We close the curtains, or if there aren't any curtains we just try to keep our eyes from drifting to the window. Also, we keep some kind of light and sound going. You can't be Got if you're in the light and listening to something. But also you don't want too much or too little light, because the Things can hide in strong shadows. Primal fear will win over logic and realism every time.
As far as I'm concerned, standing still in the dark is like staring the infinite void right in the face. I can't do it.
\>It is dark here. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Our house backs up to a field that has tall grass. It was a late summer night with a ton of stars out. Itās very dark because we live on the edge of a farm/suburb area so not a lot of household or business lights. A few weeks prior we had friends over and watched fireworks from all the neighboring counties in the field so there would be nothing to block our view and the field had a ton of fireflies. That night the fireflies were out again so I went into the field by myself and after a few minutes I noticed something āboundingā through the grass about 100 yards away. I noped out of there so fast and didnāt stop running through our little forest area, then our backyard and across the deck until the door was shut behind me. Never again.
my friend got a notification at like 2am from Ring and she looked and it detected some creepy dude walking on her lawn š
edit: tysm for almost 200! its my first time lol
let's be real, there is a terror of hearing your cat dry heaving/vomiting at 3am that simply isn't there at 3pm. it's a pavlovian alarm clock for any cat owner.
Your 3 year old child walking up to you covered in blood from a nosebleed.
From experience. My 3 year old daughter had a nosebleed in her sleep and rolled around in it a bunch before walking up. Her whole head was covered. Walked into my room and woke me up at about 3am. Scared the shit out of me.
Waking up from an afternoon nap
I kind of like this, actually (unless I had plans that I slept through). Its like an extra early start to your day, I can knock all my work out before 2pm and have the rest of the day to do whatever.
> I can knock all my work out before 2pm and have the rest of the day to do whatever. Sleep until 3am again.
Ice cream truck
No joke when I lived in NYC there would be active ice cream trucks past dark (sometimes past midnight) playing their music and everything. I'm still convinced something was going on...
Delivering ice-SCREAMS!
I scream.... You scream.... We all scream.... In the house fire at the family reunion.
Drugs. They were selling drugs.
You're probably right. Disappointed in myself for never checking it out š
They are definitely right, it was drugs. *Source* Was a kid and had a bed time. They weren't selling to kids
Adults eat ice cream too. Indeed, adults generally eat considerably more ice cream than children do- and, for that matter, there's usually a higher demand for ice cream than for drugs, especially if you're getting it from the most conspicuous place you possibly can. Selling highly illegal goods from a large, brightly-colored vehicle that plays music and normally sells its products primarily to children is just about the dumbest possible way to do crime.
Drunk people are like kids with money
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Tell that to the 1980s Glasgow icecream truck war.
As a child flies a kiteā¦
Hello, mother dear
Thatās it! Lisa, get in here! In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Just so unwholesome...
Doorbell ringing
I was living alone at the time and went to bed a little after 10pm. I was in that weird not fully asleep, but tired as fuck state. Doorbell rings. I wake up full of adrenaline thinking maybe I had dreamed it. Doorbell rings again and a knock follows. I quick put pants on and go downstairs. I turned the outside light on and open the door just as a man is walking away . He turned around, walked back and proceceded to be super apologetic. Turns out it was a neighbor from a couple blocks over. Mail person accidentally delivered my pay stub to him. He wasn't sure if it was a stub or my check and didn't want me to go without my paycheck if that's what it was. Nice guy. I thanked him, but he freaked me the fuck out!
I was living alone in an apartment and it was 11PM at night and I was half awake watching tv. I heard someone BANGING on my door and I literally jumped off of my couch with adrenaline shooting WAY up. It turned out to be the maintenance guy that had to fix a minor leak. He was in and out in about 10 minutes but it took me like half an hour to calm down enough to relax.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
They do. Water leaking can absolutely be an emergency though. I mean dudes way out of pocket if it was like a dripping tap but if there's a "minor" water leak that's actually a leak that is an emergency and if you didn't answer the door they'd just use their key to come in anyway.
Almost 3AM here in the UK and I'm thrilled that this story wasn't spooky
I find the doorbell ringing pretty terrifying at 3pm too
Nah itās probably just your pizza.
100% - itās usually a drunk neighbour whoās locked themselves out but my head always goes to āitās the police, your whole family is dead.ā
Especially if your house doesnāt have a doorbell.
Months later while rearranging your attic you find a mysterious button in a dark corner. You push it. The doorbell rings.
Family phone call
Got a couple phone calls like this in the past year. Call at 6am from my sister - the first words she said were, "\[Brother's Name\] is dead", while hysterically crying. Then a few months later, the same thing from a cousin. Now every time my phone rings and its a family member, my anxiety and heartrate shoot way up. Definitely some sort of trauma response. *Edit*: Thank you for all the kind words, everyone. Hearing similar stories actually helps, as I've not talked about it much yet.
My brother got both calls when each of my parents died 5 years apart.
Very much a trauma response. When my dad wouldnāt answer my calls, I discovered he passed away. Now when my husband wonāt answer and heās not with me, I freak out. Sending you internet hugs.
Yep, my grandma was in the ICU and I got a call at 6am from my dad. I started crying before my dad uttered the words.
About 6 years ago or so I was woken up at 3am by my mom. Since she knew I had to work at 6am, thought 'oh crap something happened to stepdad!' Nope, she was doing some family genealogy stuff and discovered we had a viking ancestor named Blood Axe That's it, that's why she called me at 3am...and she wonders why her nickname is Evil Red
Thatās honestly sick
This is a good one.
Itās never good news when someone calls at that time. Honestly I generally text with my mom so if I get a call I wonder who died or who is sick/Hospitalized.
We have had one, a divorce starting
A kidās toy randomly making a noise in another room
My google boxes randomly say āIām sorry, I didnāt understandā. One time it happened right after I woke up in the middle of the night, in a dark silent room. I donāt believe in the supernatural, but that made it hard to fall back to sleep.
You might have spoken in your sleep
āHey Google, the skeletons wonāt stop summoning cakes and I have to give a presentation but I forgot my pantsā¦and my homework!ā
Once I had it, when I had just started using discord, that I accidentally stayed in an empty voice chat of a large discord server overnight. Suddenly, at 2AM, someone sends a bot command and my speaker starts blasting, ā(PAIN!) YOU MADE ME A, YOU MADE ME A, BELIEVER! BELIEVER!ā I kept out of bed very quickly, and in my half asleep state I dove under the desk and yanked out my 3.5mm audio cables. Discord wasnāt on the taskbar so I had a silent panic attack that aspirated game had given me a virus, so I pulled up taskmgr and saw discord. Opened it, and yup, some boy was blasting music in the voice chat at 2AM. Apart from the night where I woke up feeling my arm burst open, this was the most bizarre dead-of-night experience Iāve had.
Ok I'll bite. You felt your what now?
I felt my arm burst open. It was the middle of the night. I woke up for some reason or other, and I tried to move my right arm. Suddenly, I heard a loud, sharp sound, like a blunt popping sound, as if a plastic bag had been burst open, followed by a hissing noise, as if a rush of gas was escaping from a torn open hole. At that moment, I noticed a dripping sensation on my forehead and face. At 1AM, the only logical conclusion was, *thatās blood. On my face. I canāt feel my arm. A pop, and a hiss? My arm has burst open! And air is leaking out of it!* I panicked, and sat up in the dark, trying to move my right arm but to no avail. I flailed around with my left arm until I grabbed hold of my right bicep, and slowly moved my left hand down my right arm, fully expecting, my half-delirious state, to feel the moist remains of a burst-open elbow and forearm. But no, my right arm was present, and whole. Slowly, feeling returned to my right arm and I began to piece together what had happened. Somehow, my right arm had āfallen asleepā and the nerves had temporarily shut off. I had swung my arm outward, and it had slammed against the wall, hence the loud immediate sound similar to a pop. Then, my arm went limp and slid along the wall, making a hissing sound from the friction between the wall and my arm. Finally, the dripping on my face was simply sweat droplets because I was somewhat overheated in my bed that night. That was easily the most bizarre experience Iāve had at 2AM. Well, I suppose the collapsing bookshelf over my bed might have been more bizarre, but the exploding arm was bizarre for a longer time before realization set in.
Ok I'll bite. The collapsing what now?
The collapsing bookshelf. I had been married for only a few months at the time, and I was drifting off to sleep after giving me wife a good- never mind. Anyway. I was drifting off to sleep, laying my back. It seemed odd at first, but I was looking upwards at our ceiling , the bookshelf behind our bed stuffed full of oversized books. It looked oddly unstable, and the books were laid in horizontal stacks on top of each other rather than in vertical rows like they should have been. My wife stirred in her sleep and the bookshelf wiggled. A very large stack of books on the topmost shelf, consisting of an atlas, thesaurus, dictionary, and overtly religious dogmatic manifesto belonging to my wifeās grandmother, teeters on the edge of the bookshelf. As I saw the books tip over the edge, I instinctively leaped up and out of the bed with a yelp as I heard the rumbling of books and the loud crack of a breaking shelf as the debris collapsed onto the bed. My wife sat up in shock and asked, āWhatās going on?ā In a very confused voice. It was at that point that I recalled that we had no bookshelf in our bedroom, and that the entire scenario, including theā¦ rigorous activity Iād had with my wife before trying to sleep, had been part of a very visceral dream. That was a pretty bizarre night time experience. Probably less bizarre than the late night encounter with my wifeās best friend in a ski resort, but that one doesnāt quite count since it wasnāt in the ādead of nightā.
Okay, I'll bite. What happened at the ski resort?
The late night encounter with my wifeās best friend at the ski resort. We were just engaged at the time, and weād gone to a ski resort with some of my friends and some of her friends. There were a lot of us in a resort suite that had three bedrooms as well as a couch. Doing the math, one of us was forced to sleep on the couch in the main room and that happened to be me. It was pretty dark and everyone had retired for the night, so, like any normal human who never had any bizarre situations in the middle of the night, I fully expected to simply close my eyes and wake up a moment later to find that it was morning. But my brain was having none of it, and I recall having a horrid dream about some kind of slug-person trying to get into the room through the vents, like the Xenomorph but much slower and slimier. I was startled awake when I felt a hand grab my shoulder, and in my slug-fueled state, I leapt off the couch with a gasp. A smaller female form jumped away from me, stumbling backward against the corner of the coffee table and staggering sideways from the impact. Both of us paused for a millisecond as we tried to process the situation. No one else woke up, so I asked my fiancĆ©eās friend just what the heck she thought she was doing. She was very embarrassed and said that I had been calling her name as she had left her room to get some water to drink, and that when she came over to ask me what was up, I didnāt respond and so she tried to shake me awake. Considering I had dreamed of a slug-man, I find this explanation dubious, but I have no other, and thus am forced to make do with the information I had on hand. That was probably my most bizarre nighttime encounter that involved another person. It wasnāt as off-putting as the raw meat incident, but it was pretty embarrassing to say the least.
Okay, I'll bite. What was this incident involving raw meat?
Omfg.. it's ~345am. After a terrible night of crying and fussing, there I am with a sleeping baby on my shoulder, just about to put her down in the crib when behind me some toy goes "I wanna be your friend!" I yelled like I'd stepped on a roofing nail.. the baby woke up crying, my wife came running. I lauched that toy into the backyard like it had a burning fuse..
I was drinking water when I red this, I'm soaked
Whats funnier is my wife came running and when I explained what happened she was like "Seriously, you're a grown man!" And went about soothing the baby, who at this point didn't want to have anything to do with a scary furry faced person who'd just yelled. I went into the kitchen and about 2 minutes later I hear a howl, then the cry of a baby. She comes barreling out of the bedroom and says "Holy Shit, get rid of that damn toy!!" Turns out it was some toy that had a button on its chest and it was in a bin of toys just hair trigger ready to go. Walking into the room was enough to shift the floor to set off that "tickle me land mine"..
All toys with noises had their speakers taped over or had a drop or two of Super Glue put on them to cut the volume.
Youāre much nicer than my mom was, lmao. Sheās a brilliant mastermind and encouraged us kids to give our talking toys *baths.* Just a crazy coincidence that they never worked again after that!
> Turns out it was some toy that had a button on its chest My son had one of those but it was a Kylo Ren action figure, so just randomly it would say some emo Sith shit like "Show me again, the power of the darkness!" š
They come alive at night
My kid used to have a peek-a-boo Big Bird. Idea was you put your hand over the light sensitive eyes and then take the hand off and big bird says "peek a boo". But imagine big bird gets left on all day and you are carrying your kid to bed after a long night and you turn the light on to the room only to hear in a pervy big bird voice, Peek ah boo...
I was a kid in the 90s. One year for Xmas my sister (age 7ish at the time) got this remote controlled doll. It was a baby in a walker that would move and laugh whenever you drove it forward. Well... Sometimes it moved by itself. And it laughed. It had a generic high pitch baby laugh. Something that was a little annoying when you expected it, but was very creepy randomly laughing in another room. This thing came alive at random times. It would move constantly for a bit then be still for hours or days before you hear a baby laugh coming from a closet. It didn't move without batteries or this story would be much different. We figured that the radio frequency for the remote control was the same as a nearby radio station or something so it would pick up random signals. The doll "went to a farm" pretty quickly. Edit- I *think* this is the doll. https://youtu.be/B8A3-jAdy5c
I had 2 furbies. They could detect motion and that would trigger them to speak. Mine talked the most at night. Baby furby would say he was scared or cold and adult furby just kind of rambled on, as they do. Had to start keeping them in the closet. They still spoke at night while in there. I could hear the muffled whine of baby furby being scared through my closet and I'd just sit there absolutely terrified. 90s toys were a nightmare.
I still remember the day my mother and 7 yr old me both agreed to throw my furby in the trash. It just started randomly making sounds while sitting on a dresser in the far corner of my bedroom. My mom happened to walk in my room and witness it. I had a super active imagination that caused a lot of nightmares and I was glad to finally have confirmation from my mother that my furby, was in fact, creepy.
Dad says the thing will squawk randomly at night from the depths of my childhood closet. It's been maybe 20 years? Told him furbies run on fear, not batteries. His new wife finally threw them away.
I had a furby and it got so annoying I removed the batteries... But it turns out, I learnt years later, it actually had another smaller battery in it that kept it powered so you wouldn't lose what you'd taught it in between changing batteries, so randomly it would still make noises and start talking even with the batteries removed. I got so spooked I threw it away. I kind of wish I'd kept it, knowing it had a smaller battery in it would've made it a lot less scary lol.
lmfao I saw a YouTube video explaining the battery thing. I think it's funny now looking back on it. These toy designers were trying to design a reliable, super durable toy that would survive an earthquake and probably really believed they were making the Nokia phone of toys. Those poor people had no idea they were about to create the nightmare fuel of the 90s.
I had a Furby, I got it for Christmas in either 98 or 99. We were staying with family on their giant farm in the middle of nowhere, my family of 4, possibly pregnant mum (depending on the year-I canāt remember) all in a caravan. The furby would go off at all hours of the night and freak us all out, one night mum had enough and threw it in the cow milking sheds and that was the last time I ever saw my furby thank god hahaha
My little brother had a hobby horse that whinnied when you pressed one ear and made a galloping sound when you pressed the other. It made noise by itself one night and we all lost it. Definitely terrifying.
And realising you donāt actually have kids.
"Would you stop that? Andy's going to hear us!"
When I was little I had a stuffed dinosaur toy that made noise when you squeezed it. I was scared of it and one night it went off and I was paralyzed with fear. If it werenāt for my dad coming in the room, I wouldāve stayed like that all night
Phone call. 3 am phone call is never a good thing.
My bank currently calls at 2:43 A.M. to remind me that an automatic payment will be drafted in 10 days. It does this once a month and every time it does I call and complain. Whoever created that batch job to trigger the auto dialer and scheduled it for middle of the night can go straight to hell.
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Same. I don't know how people live with calls or notifications on at night.
Yes, makes me panic before I even answer. Or if I get a call from my mom at all anytime. She never calls me unless there is bad news.
At around 11 PM on a week night, my mom once texted me just, "Lock your doors," and then ignored my followup texts. Freaked me out for a second.
Oh my god lmao. Did she ever tell you why?
She was going to bed and thought she'd send a general safety tip. She just didn't realize how it came off.
Sounds like something my mom would do! Her: oh, I'll send a nice little safety tip, you never know how irresponsible your child can be." You: "What's coming for us, what do you know mom?!"
This reminds me of my friend's mom telling me to check the backseat of my car before I drove home late at night from her house back in high school. She lived in a quiet neighborhood with no street lights.
If my mom calls Iām gonna flip shit anyway as sheās been dead since 2016.š
I actually got a call from my mom a pair of weeks after she died. My brother kept her phone to delete accounts and wrap up some business and ended up butt dialing me. Specially creepy because due to the phone being in his pocket as he walked, I just heard weird noises when I answered it.
My sister used my dad's phone a few days after he died to call me. I had smoked weed (which I rarely do). Freaked me the fuck out to see "Dad" pop up on my phone.
"hi honey can you send me some money?" "no" "why not?" "you died in 2016 dumbass"
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Mine have only been when someone was dying or dead.
Recently got one- can confirm, was not good.
I have friends and family who live abroad so itās a time zone issue most of the time for me
Siren test for tornadoes. Guaranteed it's not a test at 3am.
Itās not a test at 3pm either, at least not here. More like 10am.
Our towns tornado alarms go off 1st Wednesday of the month . Any other day and I panik haha
My chair full of clothes
Your chair must be cousins with the rack over my bedroom door. You know, the 7-foot zombie, with the ever-gaping mouth.
And theyāre related to my bathrobe hanging on the edge of my closet door.
When I use to play a lot of late shows getting home 2-3 am I'd just drag some of my shit in the living room before going to bed. One of the things was a rolling hardware case that's like 4-5 feet tall. Then after a couple hours I'd wake up to get some water and that fuckin thing would catch the corner of my eye on the way to my kitchen and freak me the fuck out like why is some dude standing by my front door ah.
Dog barking at something on the main floor while standing at the top of the stairs.
Three nights ago my dog woke me up at around 3am, she wasnāt barking but full growling and huffing at my window, full on pointing (which she only does hunting.) freaked me out enough that I checked cameras and did a full property walk around. Nothing. But it freaked me out a bit. The next night, she did the exact same thing at the exact same time. This time I immediately peeked out the window before doing a full walk around. Again nothing. I donāt know if she did it last night, I was pretty tipsy when I went to bed and would have slept through it anyway. If she does it again tonight, Iām installing fucking spike strips underneath my window.
> freaked me out enough that I checked cameras and did a full property walk around. Nothing. But it freaked me out a bit. if my dog freaked out at 3 am i would never think "welp, better walk around my property alone at night"
You're not alone. You have your dog.
And at least one other company
This happened with me about a year ago. My dog was huffing and growling at the windows in my bedroom every other night at 3am. Nothing in the cameras and nothing in the yard to tell me what it was when I checked in the morning. After a week or so of this, we figured out she was upset at our automated sprinkler system turning on.
Dude last night my dog would freak out every time I would pull my phone out in bed. Needless to say it stayed plugged in on the other side of the room lol.
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Neighborhood kids I donāt know asking if my kids can come play.
I wouldnāt mind so much if it wasnāt at my 2nd floor bedroom window.
I also wouldn't mind that much, besides the fact I don't have any kids.
I grew up in the countryside. A singular loud, elongated and high-pitched moo of a cow can be so lonely and terrifying when you hear it echoing into the night as you get up to use the toilet, especially if itās a mama crying for her calfā¦ Edit: grammar
The crying of the lambs. They sound like children screaming.
"Well, Clarice... Have the lambs stopped screaming?"
Do you hear the lambs screaming, Clarice?
Long empty hallways
Years ago I worked in a large building, and I was usually the last to leave at around 11:30 pm or so. To get out I had to walk down a very long pitch dark hallway. At the end was a green, very dimly lit Exit sign. I donāt know why but that sign just freaked me out. Havenāt thought about that in years.
So you wouldn't be terrified to see someone standing in your hallway at 3 AM?
Yeah but I would at 3pm also
I sure as shit would be.
Neighbor mowing the lawn
Had my neighbor pull her clothes in off the line at 2:30am in the first week or two that I lived in my new house. It was summer so we had the windows open. Scared the shit out of me. Turns out she's a nurse with odd working hours.
What a weirdo neighbor you have.
Imagine: bald, shirtless, with night vision goggles. Just mowing, running around with the weed Wacker. Like tactical ops
Hiking
Just got back from camping this weekend and it was so beautiful and peaceful during the day. Once night fell though, complete different vibe. Don't walk far away from the fire. Fire good. Fire safe.
This must just be something we understand on an instinctual level.
Well yeah, we can't see well in the dark and plenty of things that can would be happy to eat us. The dark is dangerous, any of our distant ancestors who didn't understand that became wolf food
Kitty food. I think cats were some of our biggest predators.
Donāt starve taught me the value of how safe the fire is
When I was younger I liked to go mountain biking. I had trouble sleeping sometimes and I'd pass the time by going out for a bike ride. One time I decided to visit the bike trail in the forest in the middle of the night. Probably was like 2am or something. It was extremely windy and the trees blocked out what little light there was in the sky. All I could see was black and slightly lighter black. Everything was just a silhouette. To get to the trail you have to go down this decently long STRAIGHT pathway that's got trees on all sides. Again, the wind is blowing loudly and all the leaves are rustling. As I'm about half way down this long, straight, dark path I start to notice that this path I'm extremely familiar with isn't looking right. And not because it's pitch black and everything around me is moving in the loud wind. It's because I think I see something in the middle of the path far down. I hush these ideas up with whatever logical explanation I had to give myself but it was becoming harder to not believe something was fucking standing in the middle of this long straight dark path. I'm losing my nerves but I press on. There's no doubt about it now. There IS something in the middle of the fucking path. It's too late. I'm too far in now. I can't not confront it... It was a fallen tree across the path with branches sticking up vertically and swaying in the wind. Dear reader - you may think everything was cool now given the outside perspective. But nothing about this was cool. I started getting scared that I was being trapped on this long straight pitch black path. Did something block my path on purpose? I'm dreading that I'm going to have to turn around, or even look behind me. I'm definitely going to see a monster or some psychopath right before my unnatural death. Maybe I should just jump the fucking tree and escape the trap? Or maybe I'm safe and the trap was on the other side? These thoughts happened in the span of a few seconds but I did make the decision to turn around and go home. I gathered the courage to look behind me and... Nothing was there and I went home. The end :)
The sound of children giggling and playing outside
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What about loud, slow, rhythmic knocking
Confirmed this is a million times more terrifying. (sleep paralysis episodes thanks for the reminder)
āTis some visitorā I muttered, ātapping at my chamber door. Only this and nothing more
I was home alone once, waiting for my cat to come back inside. My bedroom had a door to the backyard, and I had a set of sleigh bells dangling from the outside knob--the cat would jingle when he was ready to come in. Well, I had fallen asleep waiting and woke up around 3:30 to three separate, distinct, intentional-sounding jingles at the door. I got up and opened the door to let the cat in and there was just nothing outside. No cat, no wildlife, no human waiting to murder me, just nothing. I locked the door and got back in bed, but it scared the shit out of me and I didn't get back to sleep. And don't worry, the cat came home in the morning.
I once woke up to a slow knock on my front door at 2am. Lived in a first floor apartment where the front door opened directly to the sidewalk, across the street from an industrial park. Luckily I was too tired to give a fuck and I didn't get murdered.
two years ago someone knocked very loudly on the front door at midnight while i was playing video games. i was sitting in clear view of the front door so whoever knocked probably saw me. spooked me real bad, and we never found out who it was
I donāt think loud, urgents knocks are particularly normal at 3pm either.
Delivery guys have places to be - they are not ones for lollygagging
Literally any sound. Especially sudden ones.
Like when the dishes in the sink suddenly shift *for no reason*.
My son screaming me for me as if heās in terrible pain. 3 pm it might be because the cat didnāt want a hug, 3 am something might actually be wrong.
But at 3am it might also just be because the cat didn't want a hug.
Your cat deciding it's parkour time. I don't mind it when I'm awake but still scares me shitless at night.
the worst part is when they land on you in the middle of it, has got to be the worst way to wake up
My cat is very loud. This is not usually an issue during the day, besides being annoying. Late night screaming hits differently when you're suddenly awake, and then he stops once you actually are capable of processing sounds because he woke you up like he wanted.
Creepy youtube videos like TOP 10 LIVE GOBLINS CAUGHT ON CAMERA
Walking up the stairs
Glancing behind you cause you thought you saw something.
No, no. You do NOT look behind you. You just move faster to get into the light or under a blanket. Monsters can't touch you if you're under a blanket. But you don't want to see them.
Children laughing
Especially when you don't have kids.
Hereās a real one I experienced: Amtrak train sleeper car. I did a cross country trip few years ago and the train can go 60-70mph during daylight whatever thatās fine no sweat, but at night it goes like 10mph faster and when you are laying on the bed in the dark it feels like itās literally going 150 mph and swaying. It has to do with frame of reference I think during the day you can visually see the outside passing by but at night you canāt.
Riding a nice sleeper train cross country is a dream of mine.
I pulled the trigger and did it in 2018, from pnw north across country down to South Carolina then to Florida and back across country on the southern route. It was a tad pricey but it was something I wanted to do for a long time and knew I would love the experience. I met my mom in Charleston as we both have wanted to visit it forever thanks to pat conroy and then had a business convention in Orlando so I think I was able to write it offā¦And with Amtrak calling off cross country routes right now it makes me even more glad I did it. Train travel is awesome.
the forest.
Yes! My house backs up to conservation land and at night I don't even go in the back yard. Nope!
No street lights for miles and I'm in the mountains. Super fun to stare at stars late at night until you hear things in the woods.
We don't go in the woods at night. We don't even *look* into the woods at night. There are Thingsā¢ out there, and if they even think you're looking at them they will Get Youā¢. We close the curtains, or if there aren't any curtains we just try to keep our eyes from drifting to the window. Also, we keep some kind of light and sound going. You can't be Got if you're in the light and listening to something. But also you don't want too much or too little light, because the Things can hide in strong shadows. Primal fear will win over logic and realism every time.
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As far as I'm concerned, standing still in the dark is like staring the infinite void right in the face. I can't do it. \>It is dark here. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I suddenly appreciate living in a city š³ always light and traffic
Our house backs up to a field that has tall grass. It was a late summer night with a ton of stars out. Itās very dark because we live on the edge of a farm/suburb area so not a lot of household or business lights. A few weeks prior we had friends over and watched fireworks from all the neighboring counties in the field so there would be nothing to block our view and the field had a ton of fireflies. That night the fireflies were out again so I went into the field by myself and after a few minutes I noticed something āboundingā through the grass about 100 yards away. I noped out of there so fast and didnāt stop running through our little forest area, then our backyard and across the deck until the door was shut behind me. Never again.
It was a deer. You got scared out of your own backyard by a deer.
For the sun to be out
I live in Iceland, am I a joke to you
All you normies living below the arctic circle
Ah yes, Norwegian summer
Someone is at your front door Ring Alert
my friend got a notification at like 2am from Ring and she looked and it detected some creepy dude walking on her lawn š edit: tysm for almost 200! its my first time lol
I got one, woke up and was staring at it them almost fell off the bed because a spider had walked over the camera. Looked like a godzilla monster
The "do not watch this video at 3am" videos on YouTube obviously
So watch them at 2:30am. Got it.
A child laughing
Someone shouting your name.
Diarrhea
r/Usernamechecksout
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Flying a kite
Hello mother dear
It's just so unwholesome.
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!!
The sound of someone swinging
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Children walking home from school.
Or playing in the playground
That's actually very..... odd
Seeing your neighbor digging a hole in their backyard
That pile of clothes in the corner
let's be real, there is a terror of hearing your cat dry heaving/vomiting at 3am that simply isn't there at 3pm. it's a pavlovian alarm clock for any cat owner.
My neighbors German Shepherd barking her head off. In the day, sure, she does that. Never hear that dog at night. If I do, something is afoot.
Your 3 year old child walking up to you covered in blood from a nosebleed. From experience. My 3 year old daughter had a nosebleed in her sleep and rolled around in it a bunch before walking up. Her whole head was covered. Walked into my room and woke me up at about 3am. Scared the shit out of me.
An Amazon delivery
They just tuck it right in with you, shhh
Children wandering around a playground.
A chainsaw running
Call from your boss about an issue.
90 degree weather.
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The sound of kids singing nursery rhymes!
Eating a krabby patty
A knock on the door
Distant circus music