Jacob Shelton

The witching hour, commonly thought to occur at 3 am, is the time of night when anything is possible. It’s believed that the veil between realities is thin at 3 am, and even if you disregard the superstition as dime-store hokum, you can probably still admit strange things happen late into the night.

Almost everyone has experienced something strange late at night, whether you’re startled awake or already up, but these 3 am encounters shared on Reddit are far beyond unexplained noises; they’re absolutely terrifying. Whether it’s a visit from beyond or a jarring earthly encounter, these stories will make you want to check your locks if you’re reading them before you go to bed.

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• 1

Someone In Their Basement Got A Phone Call

From Redditor /u/gil_beard:

I was starting to fall asleep on my couch some time after 2:30 am when I heard a cell phone go off in my basement. It was one of those old Nokia ringtones. I live alone.

I froze in place on couch and didn’t really know what to do. I wondered if I had just imagined it since I was in that half-awake/half-asleep state but I’m sure I heard it. The next day, I went down there with a flashlight and my handgun to scope it out. The only reason I ever have to go into my basement is to relight the furnace. There is a door down there that leads outside to the street, and I live right next to a highway.

The only thing I can think of is that someone snuck in through the door and left.

What do you think?

Is this unnerving?

• • 2

A Man Tried To Break In

From Redditor /u/FusRoDoodles:

My dog was going ballistic at our side door. I yelled for her to come to me, but she refused to leave it and kept barking, which was really unusual behavior for her. As I come down the steps, I see a big dude standing on the other side of the door, fiddling with the knob, and trying to get in. My heart stopped. I asked what he wanted, and he paused and looked at me surprised, as though he hadn’t realized I could see him (I wouldn’t have been able to if I hadn’t been on the steps). He said he was looking for somebody. I tried to sound hard and said I already called the cops. He called me a b*tch and turned and ran off into the night.

What scared me the most was he knew I was awake, and he knew the dog was in there, and he still tried to come in. That only tells me he had a plan for dealing with us, or was crazy enough to not care.

Is this unnerving?

• • 3

They Both Experienced The Same Hallucination

From Redditor /u/cloudynoir:

I fell asleep next to a guy. I woke up after an intense episode of sleep paralysis with a weird dream/hallucination of this demon girl crawling across me. The guy next to me looked peaceful, so I didn’t wake him. The next morning he described the EXACT same dream along with sleep paralysis. I never told him I had the same dream, too f*cking weird.

Is this unnerving?

• • 4

There Was An Old Woman In The Doorway

From Redditor /u/JarJarB:

When I was about five or six, I woke up and saw an old woman standing in the doorway of my bedroom. She didn’t say anything, just looked at me silently and stood there, but I was filled with the most horrible sense of dread I’ve ever felt in my life. I was absolutely terrified of this woman, and I hid under my covers and would peek out every few minutes to see if she was there. After what felt like hours (but was probably only like 15 minutes), she was gone when I looked. I ran into my parents’ room crying, and my dad searched my room and the rest of the house but didn’t find anyone. I slept with them for the rest of the night. I never did find a good explanation for what I saw, but a lot of other weird things happened in that house before we moved a few years later. Scariest thing I’ve ever seen to this day.

Is this unnerving?

• • 5

Someone Tried To Break Into Their Bedroom

From Redditor /u/Psych0BoyJack:

[This happened when I was] an eight-year-old kid sleeping peacefully. I don’t know why but I woke up. It was weird. No sounds, no movement, everyone was asleep, and it was silent. I wasn’t dreaming at all. I just woke up out of the blue. Suddenly, I heard footsteps outside my window and someone started knocking on the window (the window had wooden doors at that time). I turned the lights on. I was scared sh*tless. I stared at the window and out of nowhere, this motherf*cker started making ghost sounds going, “UUHHHHHH.” I let out the biggest “DAD!!!” ever, and my father just jumped out of bed, and I heard someone running.

My dad went outside with a baseball bat, no one was there. My neighborhood had some abandoned houses where junkies would usually stay.

I guess he was checking if someone was in the house because a few years later, we had two occasions where two guys tried to enter our house.

One was scared by a random street cleaner (bless him), and the other one got his a** kicked by my mother.

Is this unnerving?

• • 6

They Woke Up To People Burgling Their Home

From Redditor /u/BoneyT:

I woke up to the sounds of two people burgling my house. I jumped out of bed, grabbed my bat, and went to investigate. As soon as they heard me, they legged it. I then phoned the police, and as soon as I got off the phone, I went into shock, sitting on my bedroom floor in my boxers, clutching a bat in case they came back. They never did but that was three years ago now and still, to this day, if I hear even the slightest sound at night, I’m fully alert and waiting for it to happen again. The paranoia has stayed with me since that evening.

Is this unnerving?

• • 7

Inebriated People Tried To Break Into Their House

From Redditor /u/freddie_delfigalo:

I fell asleep and woke up to the door being bashed in and doorbell being smashed. In my sleepiness, I thought it was my sister forgetting her key after taking the dog out. I didn’t realize it was like 2 or 3 am. I got up when I thought nobody was getting up to let her in. I went down and opened the door.

This barely dressed girl fell in on top of me. I grabbed her and shoved her out the door, out of the porch, and into the arms of a guy standing in our front garden. I blinked and looked at them and the taxi still waiting outside. The girl was completely intoxicated, and the guy was so confused. I told him, “Wrong house,” and he proceeded to drag the girl over the low garden wall (we had a small gate and they didn’t seem to use it) and got into the taxi and left.

To this day, my dad always brings it up. He thinks they were scoping out the place to rob us and that was their cover to get someone to open the door.

Is this unnerving?

• • 8

They Woke Up To A Blinding Light

From Redditor /u/Nagsheadlocal:

At the time, I had a bedroom on the top floor of the house, with a skylight right above my bed. I loved that skylight, you could see the stars and the moon and the occasional meteor.

Anyway, one night around 3 am, I was awoken by the most hellish noise, and I could see through the window that the trees outside were dancing in wind. Suddenly, a blinding light came through the skylight and the whole room was filled with a bluish light.

I had no idea what was going on – end of the world? Jesus coming to get me? Then I realized the hellish noise was a helicopter, and the light was one of those searchlights they use. I know those are common in cities but I live in a rural area. The light clicked off, the helicopter flew away.

The next morning, I hear from a sheriff’s deputy that a man had broken into a house a mile or so away, had injured the homeowner, then had run off into the night, so they were searching the woods and nearby farms with the helicopter and light.

Is this unnerving?

• • 9

A Bloody Woman Showed Up At The Door

From Redditor /u/rivertiberius:

My family was all asleep at 3 am, when I awoke to scratching at the front door. I peaked through the window to find a beaten, bloody, young woman, sitting cross-legged on my front step, staring back at me.

It was my neighbor. Her left eye was swollen shut, and she had a laceration on her head. I opened the door and tried to get her to come inside. She was extremely drunk and hardly wearing anything on this winter, windy, rainy day. She was babbling and not making any sense.

I called 911, but when she realized I was calling for help, she screamed and climbed over my chain-link fence, flopping onto the ground. She ran down the street, flailing her arms, screaming.

I thought her boyfriend beat her up. They had known domestic issues. Come to find out, earlier that day, she got rip-roaring drunk, then tripped and hit her head on concrete. The laceration on her head actually had stitches in it already, which I couldn’t see in the dark. When she got home from the ER, she stole her roommate’s whiskey and pounded most the bottle. Then, she just went berserk.

Is this unnerving?

• • 10

A Random Woman Knew His Name And Age

From a former Redditor:

It was December 2010. My cousin, who lives in San Francisco, had invited my younger brother and me to go and visit. He had just recently gotten married, and he wanted us to meet his new wife. So we decide to go. He pays the tickets, we pack up, and by sundown, we’re all ready to leave the next morning. We fall asleep.

Suddenly, I wake up. My dad is sitting at the foot of my bed, shaking me awake, and calling my name. I’m thinking he’s about to ask if we were ready to go. No.

Apparently, a woman had knocked at the door that morning. She was wearing all black, and she looked, according to my father, very sketchy.

It was about 3 am when she knocked on the door and asked my father, “Does Tim live here?” (Tim will be my name for the remainder of the story.) So my dad just freaked out. “How does she know my son?” he wonders. He probes a bit further. “How old is he?”

She gives him what was my exact age at the time. My dad freaks out a bit more. None of us know who this woman is, and here she is, spouting off information about me. “Fine, then what’s his last name?” This apparently stumps her, and she takes out her phone to call someone. “Give me a moment,” she says, walking away from the door. My dad just eyes her skeptically from afar. Suddenly, she gets back into her car and drives away without another word. What the f*ck.

So my dad asked me if I knew who she was. I said I had no clue. He then began suspecting I had ordered some prostitute. I asked him why I would ever do a thing like that. I then suggested it was perhaps a prank from one of my friends. But I didn’t have any friends that would do something like that.

So here we have no idea who this woman is, or why she knew my name. Keep in mind, it is currently 4 am. Our flight leaves at 10 am. We wake my brother up (which was the dumbest mistake we ever made) and tell him the news. Somehow, he gets scared. He was already nervous about flying to begin with. Now we have this mystery woman chasing us? He declines to fly that morning. My blood boils, because I really wanted to go. I try, with every effort on my part, to try and convince my brother to still go. Then my dad chimes in and agrees that maybe we shouldn’t go. He was paranoid that the lady was keeping an eye on us.

I ask him, “How are we important? What would she need us for?”

My dad leaves for work, and now I’m stuck trying to re-convince my brother to go. I didn’t want to go without him.

I call up my cousin and tell him the news. He tries his best to convince my brother to go anyway. No luck.

So we end up not going. That Christmas, my family did nothing. All because someone was at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Is this unnerving?

• 11

They Had Complications From Surgery

From Redditor /u/Deztru:

I had my tonsils removed, and during the healing process, I woke up in the middle of the night, choking on my own blood.

Is this unnerving?

• • 12

They Heard A Deer’s Final Moments

From Redditor /u/Jay911:

I heard bloodcurdling shrieks from outside my house. Before I go further, I should mention that I live in a rural setting, and I could tell this was an animal, not a person. I don’t have any pets, and my neighbors keep theirs inside, so whatever it was was nature having its way. In the daylight, I could see deer tracks crossing my front lawn in the snow, with tracks from a big cat (i.e. cougar) coming from a different angle, intercepting it where there was a huge crescent of blood sprayed across the snow. From there, the cat tracks, drag marks, and a blood trail went into the woods.

Is this unnerving?

• • 13

The Elevator Opened When No One Else Was There

From Redditor /u/Crowing77:

I was working graveyard shift alone, as I’ve done many nights before. I didn’t get my break until very late in my shift because there had been an emergency. So I head out to the lobby where they have some more comfortable seats and start watching a little YouTube. I work 12 hour shifts, and it’s not uncommon for me to take a nap. I’m feeling a little sleepy. That is, right up until I hear the elevator from around the corner ding and listen to the doors open. Suddenly wide awake, I sit there in silence until the doors close again. Was it a glitch with the elevator?

There’s no one else that works in the building at these hours. Just about the time I start to relax, the elevator does it again. This time, I can hear a faint voice. I can’t see into the elevator from where I’m sitting, and I’m now straight-up hoping that security is messing with me because I don’t want to consider the alternatives. So I get up and walk over to the door.

The elevator call button was malfunctioning and security thought I was stuck, so they were sending it to multiple floors and trying to talk over the intercom.

Is this unnerving?

• • 14

There Was A Voice In The Hallway

From Redditor/u/Cptnwalrus:

When I was about 10 years old, my brother and I were home alone one night while my parents went out for a few hours. We’re both sitting in the living room, relaxing, when all of a sudden, we hear a barely audible voice from down the hall. We both just looked at each other and froze, making sure we both heard it, but we were too scared to check it out. A couple minutes of silence went by, then suddenly, we heard it again, only this time we heard it more clearly because we were paying more attention. It was a voice, but there was something weird about the way it sounded, and we couldn’t understand it, almost like it was speaking some kind of gibberish. My brother got up and stepped into the hallway. I reluctantly followed.

“Hello?” he called out after a moment of listening for movement. Nothing. We carefully walked further down the hallway to where we heard it and looked around. No signs of anyone. We looked around a bit more, and then started to walk back into the living room, when suddenly, we heard it again right behind us, making me jump. But we realized it didn’t sound like a person talking inside the house. It was almost like it was coming out of a walkie-talkie or something, like when there aren’t any low or high frequencies in a sound, just the staticy, distorted mids – and still, it was speaking in some weird language I couldn’t place. We looked at each other, now more puzzled than scared, but my kid brain started coming up with all sorts of creepy explanations. Maybe there is someone in the house, but they left their walkie-talkie out somewhere, and an accomplice was communicating with them from outside, asking if we were alone so they could come in and sack the place.

We kept looking around the area and were completely stumped as to what was producing the sound. It happened again, and we realized it was coming from directly above where we were standing. We looked up and saw the fire alarm with a small, flashing red light.

It was trying to tell us to change the battery, but the language was set to French.

Is this unnerving?

• • 15

Their Dog Was Barking Aggressively At The Bedroom Door

From Redditor /u/gorillaboy75:

I awoke to the sound of my sweet, sweet Golden Retriever barking furiously at the partially open bedroom door. Snarling, snapping, and barking. I was soooo scared that someone was in the house. I got out of bed and turned on the light. He was barking at a plastic bag I’d hung on the doorknob. I guess he saw the silhouette in the dark or something. I checked the whole house, and all was clear and normal. I sure do miss that goofy dog.

Is this unnerving?

• • 16

A Spider Landed On Their Face

From Redditor /u/lolnudel:

I was watching a movie on my smartphone because I couldn’t sleep, and then a spider landed on my face. I jumped out of my bed and turned the lights on. My heart was going crazy, and I was paranoid the whole night.

Is this unnerving?

People share their eyewitness and firsthand accounts of true creepy and wild stories that really happened to them.

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