13 Real-Life Stories That Belong on the Big Screen / Bright Side

Sometimes, curiosity drives us to do things we never thought we’d try. Whether it’s to prove something to others or simply out of a spontaneous moment, these choices can lead us into situations that feel straight out of a movie script. Those unexpected twists and turns remind us just how unpredictable and exciting real life can be.

• “There used to be this abandoned asylum in the woods by the park near the house where I grew up. The main building above ground had been torn down, but the basement was still there, and you could enter it through a small window that was just big enough to crawl through. The furniture and some medical stuff was all still down there. I was too afraid to go through the window, but my friend wasn’t.
  He was down there for about five minutes before he screamed and jumped out of the window. He said something was chasing him. We could hear it down there scurrying around, but none of us wanted to get close enough to the window to look with the flashlight. A few years later, a woman got attacked near there by a gaze of aggressive raccoons.” Redheadeddanger / Reddit

• “I came across a very old, very smashed up VW Bug (type of car) in a ravine in the woods. It had been there a long time, since it was half buried in the mud. I started poking around the site and found dozens of old school style lady’s stockings, many tied together and disintegrating, scattered around.
  I found old Kodak film developing canisters. I found a bag of cement completely hardened, among other things. Plus, a year before I had found a very old ice pick close to the site. I got the chills and became a bit concerned.
  I had posted about this on Reddit years ago, but the general consensus was that the chassis was missing, and it was just someone’s garbage dump. But I still wonder about it, so much of the Bug was scattered about and buried in mud. It was just so weird.” DyingLion / Reddit

• I once explored an abandoned mine and went pretty deep inside, climbing ladders and checking out old rooms. There were newspapers, clothes, and other things left behind. Suddenly, something spooked me. I turned quickly, hit my head on the rock, and knocked myself out.
  When I came to, it was freezing, pitch black, and my headlamp was broken. My backup didn’t work either, and even my flashlight was dead. I started to panic.
  Digging through my backpack, I found glow sticks my kids had slipped in for Halloween. I cracked one open, and the green light helped me figure out where I was. I found my way out, but since then, I’ve never gone into a mine alone. Years later, during a candlelight cave tour in Colorado, the fear hit me again when they blew out the candles.

• “When I was younger, my niece (we’re the same age) and I were out exploring an abandoned construction site at night, and didn’t notice the huge hole in the ground leading to what I imagine was going to be a tank or basement for one of the houses. She managed to jump over it, but I fell in and ended up with a rebar rod going through the front of my right shin.
  I was stuck down there for a while before she could grab my hand and help pull me out. We staggered home and packed the wound with tampons and peroxide for fear of getting in trouble. Of course our parents found out when I came down with a terrible infection and other injuries showed up (also permanently damaged my left shoulder smashing it on the way down).
  We were so lucky we hadn’t both fallen in, or gotten more seriously injured so far from home. Mind the caution tape, kids. It’s not worth the risk.” BeanSoupBoi / Reddit

• “There’s an abandoned hospital here that I explored a lot. I even spent the night in there a few times (it was incredibly intimidating from the outside, and not many people had the courage to go in back then). One night I went in with a couple friends, and we saw a sleeping bag on the ground that appeared to have a person in it.
  And one of the friends who had joined thought it would be a good idea to kick the sleeping bag and see if someone was in it. Sure, someone was in it. He jumped out of the sleeping bag, screaming at us, no words just screams, and chased us out of there.
  The second time, I was at an abandoned factory. Huge factory. I had also been there a few times previously. Made it inside. Started taking photos.
  And then my friend asked if I could hear someone running. We waited and listened for a minute, and the running kept getting louder and closer. So we got out before we found out who it was running. Or why they were running.” Unknown author / Reddit

• There was an old, abandoned factory in my hometown where kids dared each other to sneak in. One summer, my friend and I decided to explore. Inside, we found rusted machines and strange symbols on the walls. I stayed near the entrance, but my friend wandered off. Suddenly, I heard him yell and that he’d found something.
  I followed him to a trapdoor on the floor. “Let’s check it out,” he said. I hesitated, but we lifted it and found rickety stairs leading into darkness. As we descended, it got colder, and my flashlight barely lit the way.
  At the bottom, we found a small room covered in strange symbols, with an old wooden chair in the center. The silence was heavy. Suddenly, we heard a creak, like a door opening above us, followed by footsteps. We froze, and I pointed my flashlight at the stairs—but there was nothing there.

• “For about 10 years a man would call my home, ask for me, and then ask me if my feet were ticklish. This was 30 or so years ago – no caller ID or anything like that.
  I would engage him if my family was home. If I said my feet were ticklish, he’d ask me to ask the person sitting closest to me to tickle them. He always hung up before we could ask questions to figure him out.
  Sometimes he’d get me on a pay phone. Like, I’d be walking home from school and a pay phone would ring. It was always him. Still don’t know who it was.” myeggsarebig / Reddit

• “When I was a child, I fell asleep watching Nickelodeon. It was the show with the slime. Anyway, I was woken up because the host was grabbing the camera and shaking it saying ‘Wake up (insert my name)!’ ‘Wake up (insert my name)!’
  I sat there in shock that the host just came to the camera and looked dead at it and told me to wake up. Turns out the camera lady and I had the exact same name, but still, freaked me out.” Unknown author / Reddit

• “I’m too young to remember this, actually. But my mom always tells this story. Apparently, when I was younger, like barely able to speak, I was sitting on the floor playing with some toys nonchalantly with my mom when I just said ‘When I was in heaven, I met a woman who said you’d be the perfect mommy for me.’
  I apparently held the belief that I was in heaven before being born, and an angel looked at me and chose the mom I went to. My mom asked me to describe the woman, and I apparently described my mom’s great-grandmother perfectly. Down to the eye color. I had never met my great-great-grandmother, nor seen a picture of her.” Beans375 / Reddit

• “I was driving one night in a really foul mood and speeding. Like when I say speeding, I mean at least 25 over the limit. Anyway this car gets behind me and for some reason I can just tell it wasn’t a cop.
  It was a full tinted Chevy truck with weird lights on it (like comically large after market front headlights). Once it got behind me, I got a really eerie feeling I can’t explain. Like my body just knew something was wrong.
  Anyway I figured if it was a cop they would light me up for speeding but for some reason they just kept pace with me, also speeding themselves. So at this point I’m getting a little weirded out, so I turn off the freeway, and they follow me. I turn into a gas station and get out. Something just didn’t sit right with me. I knew something was up.
  As I’m getting out of my car, the truck rolls its windows down. And what I saw still haunts me to this day. It was a heavily disfigured guy, the only likes of which I can compare to that guy Rocky Dennis from the movie about the guy with a crazy disfigured head who falls for that girl who loves him for him and not the abomination that is his face. And he starts to motion me with his finger, like telling me to come closer.
  I don’t care if he was going to give me the winning lottery numbers, there was no way I was going to approach his car. I bolt inside the gas station, at this point my whole body is shaking. I try and tell the clerk what’s going on as they stare at me, as my story doesn’t make any sense. I go to look outside, and the truck is gone. I still have nightmares to this day.” Unknown author / Reddit

• “When I was around 16, my parents used to let me and my sister throw house parties. After the party was over, anyone who wanted to, was allowed to sleep over in the living room. Well one night after a party there’s 30 of us in the living room, chatting, shouting, laughing, generally being way too loud and annoying.
  Next to the living room, through a door, were the stairs. As we were all talking, EVERYONE hears someone coming down the stairs, clear as day, loud footsteps, coming down each step. 30 teens, all at the same time, stop talking, thinking we’re about to be told off for being too loud.
  So I got up and went to the door, ready to apologize and tell my parent, whichever one it was, that we’ll be quiet from now on. The second the footsteps reach the bottom of the stairs, I open the door, and there was nobody there. Not a soul. I turn around, mouth wide open, to look at the room filled with my friends behind me, and they are all white as a sheet. Some of the girls actually left after that.
  This happened about 10 years ago now, and I have NEVER been able to explain it. There was no time for someone to run back upstairs and no alternative exits they could have taken. 30 people, all experienced the same thing that night.” Arrowsmiith / Reddit

• “I was on my way home by train. It was late, around 11PM or so, when we got to the second to last station. I had to get out at the last station. So as people came in and out, I looked out of the window into the station.
  There was another train at the tracks opposite of where I was. A blurry figure stood in the window. I only could make out that he was pale and bald, and he held some red orb in his left hand. IDK why, but he looked masculine to me, so that’s why I reference to him as a ‘he/him’.
  I got uncomfortable as I kept feeling his stare on me. I didn’t see his eyes, but I felt him looking at me. I looked around in my train, looking out of the other window to the other side of the station, thinking it might be a reflection and that he was actually on that side, but there was no one there.
  I looked back as the train started moving again, and as we rode off, the man moved with us in the window of that opposite train, until it was out of view, and he completely disappeared. I have never felt so scared before and once I got out of the train I went home in record time. This happened years ago, but it’s still creepy to me. The feeling I felt was indescribable.” DanakAin / Reddit

• “After my dad passed away when I was little, I slept with my mom in a 3rd story apartment. Each night I would see the shadow of a hand in the window and get scared and bury my head between my mom’s back and the bed. This went on for a couple of weeks and I remember being terrified.
  I finally worked up the courage to look at the windowsill in the day. Nothing was there. I went outside and looked up at the window. Nothing was near it. I can not explain it. Just weird.” t-rex82 / Reddit

Reality can be just as terrifying as any horror movie. These 14 real-life stories prove that sometimes the scariest things aren’t made up.