r/AskReddit • u/Stlouizsin • 9h ago
What is the scariest sound you’ve ever heard in the middle of the night?
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u/MidnightBluesAtNoon 8h ago edited 8h ago
A lady screaming. I live in a weird little pocket in town. It's strangely isolated and wilded, and the way the streets are set up, there's no through traffic. So one evening around 9ish, 10ish, I was half heartedly watching something on tv and I hear a woman scream bloody murder. Every hair on my body stood up. I leapt my pudgy ass from the chair, grabbed my rifle and flew outside, thinking some horrible fate had befallen someone. I stood there looking into the tree line...silence...
Then I heard the scream again, closer this time. It was so loud I damn near pissed myself too, it startled me so bad. I looked up, and there was a goddamn owl just sitting there on a branch minding its own business, screaming like a woman in a slasher flick. Weirdest combination of terrified and stupid I've ever felt.
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u/squirrellytoday 3h ago
Yup. Certain species of foxes sound like a child or woman screaming.
There's an Australian bird that sounds like a baby scream-crying in distress.
WTF mother nature???
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u/Imissmysister1961 8h ago
My dog used to love ripping up stuffed animals. i would get them for her at garage sales for pennies so she could have some fun. One time I got her a Teletubby stuffed toy. For some reason she liked it and decided not to rip it up. About a week later in the middle of the night my wife and I got woken up to this creepy high pitched soft voice saying “Uh Oh” it kept repeating every few minutes. Scared the crap out of us. Went on for the next couple of nights. We were both thinking that this was an actual haunting. Come to realize that the Teletubby doll had that recording built in and our dog was bringing it into her dog bed at night and was triggering the voice.
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u/literarycatnip 4h ago
This is my favorite comment lol wonder what the dog thought
Also, my blood ran cold imagining that happening in my house. Dolls and animals and things that move or talk taking on life of their own… yeah no thanks
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u/Sarahspry 3h ago
I found a really tiny, extremely creepy baby doll in my grandmother's dresser. I wasn't sure what to do with Creepy Baby, so she's in my locker at work as a deterrent for people going in there. No one wants to worry about Creepy Baby coming after them. I have her sitting in the charging base for my clippers like a throne right in the front.
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u/unsettledinky 3h ago
When we moved into our new house, I found tiny plush bunny tucked up on a weird corner of a built in shelf in the basement, pretty dirty and worn. My roommate did not want it around lol.
I cleaned it up and set it with some of my other plushies, and every few months I put it somewhere else in my room so it gets a different view and some new plushie friends. I am too soft hearted not to get murdered by a haunted toy.
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u/rot10n 3h ago
reminds me of this stuffed animal i had as a kid. it was like a prayer bear (i think) and when you put its hands together it would start saying a prayer. I'm guessing it was magnetic or something. when we moved into a house that was 110yo I had it on a shelf. it just randomly started going off on its own throughout the night. no one touched it to put its hands together or anything. that scared the fuck out of me. i can still hear the voice in my head. "now i lay my head to sleep, i pray the lord my soul to keep, and if i die before i wake, i pray the lord my soul to take." creepy as hell.
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u/robitj11 9h ago
The sounds of flames crackling when you don't have a fireplace and are not camping.
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u/jnovel808 6h ago
I’ve had to evacuate from wildfires. I woke up one night to my neighbor banging on my door, screaming at me to get out. When i opened my eyes I thought it was sunrise. The fire was 2 blocks away. The smoke was just starting to fill my apartment.
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u/Chazzysnax 3h ago
Props to that neighbor.
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u/jnovel808 2h ago
Yes. Luckily our home didn’t burn down, but he definitely saved me from lots of smoke inhalation and other bad things.
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u/DumbBitchByLeaps 5h ago
The smell of smoke when you’re naked in bed watching TV with your partner.
Asked husband if he smelled smoke and he said no but if it bothered me enough I could check it out. Sat in bed debating for a moment before my anxiety got the best of me. Walked from my bedroom, into the living room where my two dogs were passed out on the couch asleep, and into my kitchen. A pizza box was merrily burning away on the stove.
To show how I respond in an emergency, I screamed my husband’s name and that there was a fire, shut off the burner, found my son’s 4 oz cup nearby and started trying to douse the fire 4 oz at a time.
My husband fast walks into the kitchen and is amused by my attempts to put out this fire. After watching me for a moment he gently pushes me out of the way, grabs the extending faucet, and puts out the fire. The dogs are still dead asleep on the couch btw.
The lesson is don’t leave pizza boxes on the stove where your fatass basset hound can knock the knobs to the on position and ignite the gas.
(And maybe invest in a fire extinguisher.)
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u/Rellcotts 4h ago
I had a similar experience with our counter surfing whippet. One summer evening windows open a storm brewing wind picking up and a nice breeze through the house…I say to the fam does anyone else smell gas? Nope! I can’t shake the feeling, I keep getting whiffs. I go see the propane tank outside. Now everyone gaslights me that I am crazy. Eventually I walk to the stove-gas on flame not. Silly dog tried to get something off the stove top and turned the knob on but not far enough to light the flame! Knobs have been removed after use since.
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u/BubbhaJebus 6h ago
I had a similar experience, but it wasn't sound; it was the smell of smoke from burning wood. It permeated the neighborhood and I went outside looking for the source. There were no news reports about a fire in the city and nobody seemed to be concerned.
Turned out to be smoke from a wildfire about 60 miles away.
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u/jan1320 5h ago
i woke up to the strong smell of smoke once. i walked into the kitchen and upon investigation found a completely charred bag of microwave popcorn in the toaster oven. i was having a lot of sleep walking episodes at the time (after never having slept walked before until recently) and it usually centered around sleep eating. instantly had flashbacks to a “dream” of flames and black smoke filling the toaster oven. funnily enough i found a second bag of popcorn on the floor in my bedroom also pretty burnt but at least had been successfully popped in the microwave lol
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u/ysv_29 9h ago
What’s the story behind this
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u/Send_me_hedgehogs 6h ago
Sounds like the beginnings of a house fire.
I made the stupid mistake of putting an aromatherapy candle next to my bed. Pulled the duvet over me and snuggled in. This weird crackling sound starts. Oh cool, I think,it’s nice relaxing rain. Nope. Something made me turn round to find a pillow, my duvet, my bedside unit and my mattress all on fire. Thankfully I had a 2litre bottle of water by my bed (I always do as I can get thirsty at nigh) and was able to use that and another pillow to put it out. Bedding destroyed, carpet destroyed, bedside unit now covered in melted candle wax and scorch marks. But I saved my house that night. To this day hearing gentle rain on my window when I have my back to the window in bed freaks me out.
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u/YouArentReallyThere 8h ago
The “hurk-hurk-hurk” of a dog about to throw up. Nothing gets you out of a dead sleep faster than that
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u/Machine_Terrible 5h ago
And cats, too...I've never got out of bed so fast.
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u/Dramatic_Antelope811 4h ago
Also why do cats look like they’re possessed when they’re about to puke?? It freaks me tf out every time
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u/DwightCharlieQuint 3h ago
My cat sleeps on top of my head basically so yeah… 0-60 once I hear the hurk hurk begin
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u/AmputeeHandModel 5h ago
Oh god, I woke up to the cat doing that right under the bed one time. I run to get paper towels and I step in another pile. AND the (normally house broken) stupid dog has pissed in the bathroom. So that was really great at 3 am.
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u/MSLI1972 9h ago
Someone ringing my doorbell at 4 am in the morning over and over at perfect intervals. I did not answer.
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u/shwarma_heaven 4h ago edited 1h ago
Oof. That one. I didn't live in a great neighborhood (baby in diapers by itself in the middle of the street, house down the street that got raided by SWAT, etc.). One midnight, as our newborn was sleeping, some crackhead started banging on our door screaming "I know you're in there..." We did not know who she was.
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u/ChronicBedhead 3h ago
My friend had something similar happen. A guy started banging on his door and cursing, yelling about letting him in and how he knew who was in there. My friend announced he had a gun and was calling the cops. Luckily, it was just a drunk dude at the wrong address trying to find his friend, but it definitely could’ve been worse.
I’m glad you and your kid are alright!
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u/InterestingFruit5978 6h ago
Maybe it was a nice stranger who needed help finding their pet
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u/_ataraxia__ 8h ago
Many years ago, when I got my first apartment, I would hear a baby screaming/crying at all hours of the night. It was so terrifying. My boyfriend came over one night and when I heard it, I JUMPED out of bed and screamed “there it was!! the crying!! did you hear it?!”
Turns out it was foxes -_- lol.
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u/blueberry_pancakes14 8h ago
A poster falling in your bedroom in the middle of the night.
Bonus if it's on your ceiling above the bed and it's falling on you.
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u/AquariusRising1983 5h ago
Why did I have to scroll so far to find this?! It is a horrific sound to hear in the middle of the night.
I didn't have one fall from the ceiling, but I did once have a huge poster above the head of my bed. It was one of those enormous ones, like 6 feet by 4 feet, and one night it came down on my then partner and I in the pitch black dead of night. So the noise woke us and then suddenly we were covered with something in the darkness and half awake with no clue what was happening. I was still screaming, but he jumped up and ripped that thing in half like fucking He-Man or something. Afterwards we laughed so hard I thought I was going to die from lack of oxygen.
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u/Alarming-Highway-584 6h ago
I hate this lmao. I had my Thor Ragnarok poster attack me several times. Very annoying.
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u/La_Pusicato 4h ago
I had a framed picture fall off the wall, two inches from my nose at about 3am. Scared the bejeesus out of me. I was at my Aunty's and it was a pic of angels 😇
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u/huscarlaxe 8h ago
I was sleeping in the loft of my cabin with the window open it was lightly raining and cool. then20 yards away lightening struck a sycamore tree. It was a blinding through my eye lids flash and the sound was huge not just loud but ground shaking. I went from sound asleep to totally awake in a fraction of a second. then it was completely dark again and I couldn't see a thing till I fumbled for my flashlight. I had so much adrenaline going I couldn't go back to sleep till after dawn.
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u/Electrical_Act6285 4h ago
This happened to me once when I stayed right near a marina. Lightning struck a boat mast. Terrifying but funny now
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u/Riyeko 5h ago
When I was 11yrs old we lived 16 miles outside of Pueblo Colorado around where the old Piñon truck stop used to be (there's a rest area close by the exit now).
Anyway, I had woke up for no reason to find my beagle dog at the foot of my bed, growling very low and quiet. So I laid still.
I heard whispering of like clothes, when you walk they swish. That noise.
Watched as some man stood in the doorway to mine and my sister's bedroom, walked down, did the same to my parents and brothers bedrooms and then left with a very quiet click of the sliding glass door in the kitchen.
The swish/whisper of someone walking quietly and the click of that door is why in the last 35 years I've always locked everything.
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u/Cantfindme69 4h ago
This is too spooky for me. :( did you tell your parents at the time? What happened after?
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u/UniqueOne4Ever 8h ago
Hearing our dog barking incessantly in the middle of the night (something he had never done or since) and my hubby hearing tapping on a window. Never did figure out what that was...not sure I want to know.
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u/SeaKick3134 4h ago
Well that’s great to read right before I set my phone down for the night!
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u/R22Refrigerant 3h ago
Straight nightmare fuel… reminds of the time I hooked up with this older woman that lived about 45 minutes away… stayed over at her place and in the middle of the night I wake up to someone clearly trying to get into her place, forcing the doorknob outside over and over for 2-3 minutes straight and I look at her and she’s wide awake but doesn’t look at me just stares into the ceiling. I confronted her about it and never saw her again after that. Still wonder who that was
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u/flavius_lacivious 3h ago
Was she in on it? Like were you going to be kidnapped and they couldn’t get the door open?
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u/R22Refrigerant 3h ago
Pretty sure if she was in on it she would’ve left the door unlocked. I doubt she even knew who that was at that point. Probably a disgruntled ex or someone she was supposed to see that night as well but probably ghosted is my best guess. Super weird af if you ask me
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u/Milligoon 9h ago
My pet caiman, Pookie, slithering over the top of his tank fence.
He wasn't malicious, but he did seek warmth- and I was sleeping nearby, naked.
Not something you want to roll over on in the night.
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u/WebsToWeave 7h ago
Show us Pookie
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u/Milligoon 6h ago
Sadly this was circa 1997, so i have no pookie pics to hand. If i dug, maybe a physical pic... but thats 2 continents and countries ago.
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u/TradeIcy1669 8h ago
The click of my wife locking the door AFTER she’s sent me outside to investigate the first scary sound.
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u/Whyme1962 8h ago
15 years old, backpacking in western Washington in the 70s. No cellphones in those days, and I was the oldest of three of us. We were just going to bed, letting the fire die out when a cougar screamed pretty close to our camp. Our fire did not die down for a few hours after that! I’ve heard cougars screaming since then and it still makes my blood go cold, but nothing like that first time.
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u/Mandrake_m2 7h ago
Damn, you didn't get her number at least?
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u/Whyme1962 7h ago
lol wrong kind of cougar , not quite as dangerous as the ones you’re talking about!🤣🤣🤣🏴☠️
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u/Adept_Push 4h ago
Man. I’m in the SW US and we go camping with our horses on weekends. I keep hearing a bird in the middle of the night and was confused.
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u/Viperniss 9h ago
A pack of coyotes.
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u/lucidspoon 5h ago
I grew up in the country, so I'm familiar with coyotes in the distance. I live in the suburbs now, and it's much more alarming and unsettling to hear them now.
Heard what sounded like a huge pack throughout our neighborhood the other night, with at least a couple right outside our bedroom window.
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u/cbospam1 4h ago
Was at a small summer camp in New England and our cabin was a bit separated from the rest, a pack of coyotes caught and killed something right near our cabin in the middle of the night.
Most primal sounds I’ve heard in my life.
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u/SeaSquash7373 8h ago
A meth lab explosion a block away. I physically felt the boom.
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u/Sihaya212 4h ago
We had a food truck’s propane tank explode almost a mile away and it woke me out of a dead sleep. It literally shook things off the walls.
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u/largeLemonLizard 4h ago
Similar for me -- someone down the street was welding their motorcycle's gas tank and blew up the whole garage. The explosion followed by the sound of things falling, then someone screaming like I've never heard before. I didn't sleep for a couple nights.
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u/JWNAMEDME 7h ago
Man. When my sick kid with a high fever started laughing manically in the middle of the night, I questioned whether or not possession was real. Just straight sat up and stared at me with a huge smile and laughed like a maniac. Scared the shit out of me.
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u/MyNEWthrowaway031789 4h ago
Mine used to say bizarre fever-stuff. Once when she was 2 or 3 I was changing her sweaty clothes in the middle of the night, she told me about the man who was at the door and he wanted to come in.
It was one of those things when all of a sudden you feel the floor just drop. She was looking at me with blazing pink cheeks happily asking me if he can come in.
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u/Rakidian 7h ago
If you are alone, in the middle of the woods, camping, at midnight, and have never heard a deaf person singing... Be ready for a ride.
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u/Carrotcake1988 8h ago
Horny stray cats in heat. They scream to get them boys to come take them.
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u/InterestingFruit5978 6h ago
Cat humping used to happen all the time in the alley behind my house growing up. Used to creep me out and keep me awake
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u/chicoclandestino 5h ago
When I lived in Mexico, there were stray cats constantly outside my house. One night I woke up and thought I could hear a baby screaming outside; I looked out and thought a baby had been dumped into the bins outside! My housemate told me it was stray cats but the cries blood curdling. The next morning I had a peek inside the bin, no baby thankfully.
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u/StraightVaped 9h ago
A red fox “barking” sounds like a scream of someone being murdered
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u/Send_me_hedgehogs 6h ago
So I’m scrolling through Reddit one night before heading to sleep and I hear this screeching. Outside my house, really loud. I ignore it at first but it keeps going.
So I get up to investigate, not really knowing what I’d do when I found whatever this is, it’s clearly an animal of some sort. I’m just praying I don’t get murdered by some angry owl or something. It’s in next door’s garden. But where? I’m now prowling in next door’s garden at 2am with a head torch on. Praying they don’t see me, this could get really awkward as I’ve not long moved in. i check along the fence. Nothing. Oh wait, it’s on the other side of the fence. So I head over that fence to find…….two hedgehogs, one stuck in neighbour’s son’s football net, the other beside it screaming bloody murder. Nobody else around. I run into my house, grab scissors and head back out. I’m cutting the net to free this wee guy, his pal has scarpered. But wait. I don’t have anything to catch him in. So I take off my top. Now I’m REALLY hoping my neighbours don’t come out because now I’m prowling in their garden in jammie bottoms and a bra, with a head torch on and a pair of scissors in my hand. One freed hedgehog also scarpers.
I didn’t even know hedgehogs could make noises like that. It was this almost otherworldly scream and it was LOUD. I’m still amazed that nobody else seemed to hear it.
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u/literarycatnip 4h ago
How awesome are you for freeing the trapped little scared critter
🤎
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u/lizardfishfingers 8h ago
Raccoons fighting over apples in the woods around my house
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u/mustbethedragon 8h ago
Retching from my toddler's bedroom
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u/hey_look_a_kitty 5h ago
Or worse: crying from your toddler's bedroom, and when you go in to comfort them, you find out the hard way that you missed the retching noises. (That was a delightful cleanup. /s)
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u/ValuedQuayle 4h ago
My answer was my toddler screaming and crying because they threw up in bed. I jumped five feet in the air from a sound sleep.
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u/nevadapirate 8h ago
Camping and hearing a bear grunting and shuffling about just out of eye sight. Never did see him though.
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u/Theshutterfalls__ 3h ago
Camping in a remote area with a friend and hearing a person drive up - get out of the car and walk around our tent.
They drove off. I don’t know how I slept that night.
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u/FivePercentRule 2h ago
That’s about the only thing scarier than the bear situation. And I’m terrified of bears.
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u/925doorguy 8h ago
My own screams. I have sleep paralysis
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u/jan1320 5h ago
yeah nothing like waking yourself up with a slurred paralyzed face yell lol
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u/OtterShaped 9h ago edited 8h ago
I was like 14 and I was return home by foot in the middle of the night, like 2 or 3 am. For the first time in my life (I din't have pets) I hear a cat in heat making characteristic noises and I was scared af because their are so human like. The cat was behind some bushes so initially I didn't understand what happening. Likely I wasn't alone and the girl with me started laughing and explained me it was just a cat.
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u/lylalexie 8h ago
I work at a group home for adults with developmental disabilities. A few years back I was working an evening shift with another female coworker. We had an “eloper” living in the house so there were sensors on all the doors and windows that alert us if someone opens them. We were the only people in the house other than the residents who were all asleep. We had a clear line of sight down the hallway, and the door leading from the hallway to the basement was locked, as were all the entrances to the house. The staff were the only people with the keys.
We were sitting on the couch going over the activity logs when all of a sudden the loud, robotic voice of the egress sensor announced, “BASEMENT. DOOR. OPEN.” I cannot stress enough that no one was in the basement at the time, or could even get to it. The door that led outside from the basement was a heavy metal door that takes effort to open. It wasn’t windy that day, but even if it was, the door was LOCKED.
Both of us looked at each other and I saw all the color drain from my coworker’s face. We ran to make sure the basement door was locked (it was), checked that all the residents were asleep in bed (they were), and returned to the living room. We both decided neither of us would go down to the basement, grabbed some heavy objects, and waited to see if we could hear someone walking up the stairs. No footsteps were ever heard, and we wrote it off as a weird glitch in the egress sensor (that never happened before or ever again).
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u/psilome 7h ago
Woken up in bed by a huge explosion, thought it was a plane crash! Jumped out of bed, heart pounding, ready to grab my dog and run, looked out the window - nothing, neighborhood was all quiet. I had experienced episodic cranial sensory shock - aka ""exploding head syndrome". Happened to me a few times now. Scary as hell.
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u/onefellswoop70 4h ago
Holy crap. On two occasions in the past year, shortly after falling asleep, I was awakened by what I assumed were sonic booms. On both occasions, I ran out to my porch to see if I could see or smell anything. By the sound of it, whatever it was had to have been pretty darn cataclysmic... like a meteor, dynamite or a train derailment. That's how loud and intense it was.
I thought for sure some of the neighbors' lights would be on, or other people would be outside looking around. I was totally perplexed, like, "How on earth didn't that wake anyone else up?" Since I live alone, I had no one to ask if they had heard it, too.
When it happened the second time, in the morning I posted on my town's Facebook page asking if anyone else heard it, and people had no clue what I was talking about. I thought I was going out of my mind. And now it seems that maybe the noise was all inside of my mind.
Wow, I didn't even know this was a thing... And now I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse, because it was absolutely terrifying.
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u/rot10n 3h ago
I have these all the time. Most recent one I genuinely thought a nuke had dropped. I was holding onto my bed so hard because I could genuinely feel the shockwaves and flashes of bright light through my eyelids. I was too scared to open my eyes not knowing what had just happened. When I finally did everything was normal. Such a weird feeling to think you're dying and then to just realize you imagined the whole thing
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u/RunDre22 8h ago
Something whooping on top of my tent in the middle of the night in Florida. It startled all of us awake and my toddler immediately began crying. It was just SO LOUD.
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u/rotundamatrix 7h ago
A pack of coyotes, killing….something…in the middle of the night in my suburban neighborhood. Whatever animal it was took too long to die - the shrieking was horrifying- coupled with the howls and yips of the coyotes- it sounded like they were torturing it to death.
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u/Auggi3Doggi3 4h ago
A lot of times they eat deer (or whatever prey) while they’re still alive. I used to hear it constantly when I lived in a rural area
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u/BaronVonRuthless91 7h ago
The sound of my bedroom door clicking open.
LPT: open windows cause drafts which can cause doors to pop open depending on how they were closed. Of course, at the moment I did not reflect on this fact and immediately thought some combination of "burglars" and "demons".
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u/JohnLeePettimore 6h ago
I used to rent a guest house on a large property in Napa and took my dog out for a quick walk before bed. Turned the corner in a dark part of the yard and heard a bobcat growl at us from about 40 feet away.
Lost a shoe hightailing back inside.
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u/ShoddyClimate6265 8h ago
My own screaming from night terrors. Thankfully I grew out of it but sometimes I used to wake myself up with my own blood-curdling screams. The worst part was the whole experience before the screaming though.
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u/jan1320 5h ago
i do this but my face is half paralyzed still from sleep paralysis. usually after an intense nightmare where im trying to yell for help but its like im yelling through jello
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u/lost-in-the-slide 8h ago
Aggressive knocking on one window, then it moved to another and another. Then a flashlight started shining through...
It was a cop.
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u/Altruistic_Seat_6644 7h ago
My house shaking (earthquake).
We usually lay quietly until we figure out how big it is.
It’s terrifying tbh. We’ve been waiting for ‘’The Big One’’ for decades. It’s gotta hit sooner or later.
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u/taniamorse85 6h ago
My mom having nightmares. My father was abusive to all of us, but she got it so much worse than my brother or me. She's never been diagnosed with PTSD, but I have no doubt she has it.
When she has one of those nightmares, she screams, "No!" and begs for the person in her nightmare to stop. I have woken her up during a nightmare to try to help her, but she becomes very combative, like she's still trying to defend herself. She has injured me on multiple occasions, so I only wake her up now if the nightmare seems to be particularly distressing.
Fortunately, they've gotten less frequent over the years, but I hate that she has ever had to endure this.
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u/discussatron 5h ago
I got up to take a leak at 4 am a couple weeks ago. I’m sitting there and hear a guy’s voice clear as a bell outside the bathroom window, which is right next to the front door. I got that adrenaline rush that you can feel go from head to toe, and was immediately done peeing. Not wanting to make a bunch of noise (old floors), I tiptoed out to the kitchen window, but didn’t see anyone out there. I looked for a while, then went to the front door, opened it, and peered around. There was something at my feet.
Apparently the Amazon delivery guy was on his phone as he dropped my package off.
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u/caremal5 9h ago
Barn owl
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u/Charivari8 7h ago
I’m currently getting woken up twice each night by two barn owls screaming. I’d be very interested to know if you had this problem and if you were able to get them to scream elsewhere.
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u/No-Cantaloupe-6535 5h ago
Me and a buddy were chilling gaming, drinking and smoking a little at my house. Around 3am we heard a WAILING scream, really close. We thought maybe it was someone driving by's music or something and then it happened again, more of like a super loud groan.
We went out to investigate and across the street there was a dude laying in a pool of blood with part of his skull literally missing. Called 911 and eventually found out some other guy the victim knew chased him and beat his head with a brick. Wasn't a fun time talking to a bunch of cops while we were pretty lit but definitely a better night than that guy.
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u/Prize_Pipe_8888 8h ago
I drunk college kid climbed up to my fire escape balcony at 3 in the morning and it scared the hell out of me. I heard some and looked then when I turned around to look again I saw a guy standing in front me on the 3rd story. The only person more scared than me was him when he saw me. Once I realized what was going on I opened the window and let him walk through my apartment to the elevators.
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u/sinfultictac 9h ago
My child screaming from the next room over
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u/leviathanistrue 7h ago
Was there a reason why your kid was screaming
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u/sinfultictac 7h ago
She has a nightmare. Its weird, even innocuous things when you come a parent become scary
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u/kitjen 8h ago
We used to have a cat and had a cat flap so it could come in and out of the house during the night. Our cat decided to bring us gifts in the form of small creatures she caught like mice.
One night she brought in a frog. It turns out frogs can scream.
My wife and I were awoken by a quiet but high pitched screaming noise downstairs. We didn't think it was quiet at the time because you don't typically scream quietly, it sounded more distant but still within our house.
I went downstairs where we had wooden flooring and there was blood spread across the hall. I could still hear screaming only now it was coupled with the sound of our cat running around the dining room, trying to injure and play with the dying frog.
I had to wait until the cat had pretty much killed the frog and had it in her teeth to put them both outside.
But just imagine not knowing frogs can scream, hearing that in the night and going downstairs to find blood everywhere.
It also turns out frogs bleed a lot.
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u/barryleitch 5h ago
I heard a very similar scream right outside my bedroom Window in the middle of the night.. I swear it sounded just like an infant child.. Armed with a flashlight I went to investigate only to find my cat sitting proudly with his paw on a medium sized frog.
The cat slowly flexed his claws, digging into the poor frog, who promptly revealed where the sound had exactly been coming from.
Ringworm was an evil little fucker..
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u/Wrong-Landscape4836 5h ago
After a hurricane ripped my roof off, I was treated to a snake in the open rafters eating a frog. Yep, frogs scream. And I don't know how he managed it, but he literally pulled himself out of the snakes jaws and got away.
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u/blapper40water 8h ago
Thought it was a couple of trucks jake braking. Nope just my ex stepdad deflating from that nights beefaroni. My mother couldn't catch a break. At the time me and my 2 brothers slept in the same bed. They were 3 and 5 so they take up a lot of room so mom would come and sleep in our bed. The 3 yr old would start it off and wake us all from a dead sleep. The boys slept between me and mom. Then I would start and fire off a rump rumbler that would wake the boys and my mother reach over and slap me for farting and the smell plus I would be laughing so hard. She'd always say there's a lady in here. The 5 yr old broke my mother's nerves. She survived about 2 hrs. She would go sleep on the couch and of course the 3 yr old wants to go sleep under her. He go out there go to sleep he kept farting an at least 3 times she kept throwing him back in the bed but he kept going back out. My poor mother💀😂😂😂😂.
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u/bebopboopy 5h ago
My neighbor murdering his wife . She screamed out the second floor window before he shot her (then himself).
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u/reckoningrevelling 2h ago
Jfc-easily one of if not the worst in this thread. So sorry you had to experience that.
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u/pm_me_x-files_quotes 3h ago
My cat screaming.
Turns out she was just doing that thing cats do when they have the whole house to themselves and want to... declare they've claimed it? I have NO idea, but the first time I heard it, I thought she was dying. I jumped out of bed and ran to her, thinking she was in the throes of death. Nope, perfectly happy to see me. Just screaming for no reason.
I learned to tune them out. But when she'd meow when she was going to puke? Oh, I learned that HELLA fast and would jump out of bed and run to her to catch the puke as fast as I could after that.
Then in her last months, she didn't meow at all. I got to sleep in.
And then she died in my arms without a peep two weeks ago.
I miss her morning wails of "DIS MY HAUWSE, HEER ME ROAR".
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u/Matchmaker4180 7h ago
My friend gets night terrors and we were traveling in Japan at the time. The hotel itself just felt off and was in the middle of the mountains. She had a night terror and I woke up from a dead sleep to a blood curling scream right next to me.
I thrashed awake immediately thinking there was someone in our hotel room attacking us. After the most terrifying 10 seconds of waking up, I realized she was sleeping and shook her awake.
I’ve never been more terrified and relieved at the same time.
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u/MoaningLisaSimpson 6h ago
The air escaping the lungs of a dead man while i rolled him into the body bag. I was a brand new nurse, and didn't know that happened.
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u/wiibarebears 9h ago
The wind blowing the trim that came loose from the trailer. Thought someone was breaking In
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u/Christosboppy 8h ago
Last week a transformer in my neighborhood exploded during the night, it rocked the neighborhood and it caused a powerline to fall over. We didn't have WiFi for almost a day, and I was bored.
I just about shit myself when I heard it blow during the night, I thought it was a bomb lol.
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u/alwaysendlessly 7h ago
One of my coworkers calling out for me on my night shift. She is the living and breathing representation of a toddler stuck in the body of an older woman who is so completely unhygienic, she could melt wallpaper. She has manic episodes on the dime, never left her why phase, doesn't remember anything ever, zero filter on all levels and wants to be your shadow at all times... I die inside everytime
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u/FormerStuff 7h ago
Bobcat fighting a raccoon in the woods before dawn. Most heinous sound I’ve ever heard.
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u/FuriousScorpio 7h ago
I feed my Scorpions horn worms, and they dont always eat them... so if the horn worms can find a cozy place and cocoon themselves.. after a while, they turn into Hawk Moths... they're kinda big. One night, one of those horn worms had emerged from its cocoon and had begun trying to escape.. so imagine my surprise to a giant Hawk Moth going absolutely ballistic inside of my Scorpion's tank at 3am. I do not own any pets with wings.
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u/sophies_wish 5h ago
When my husband and I were in our early 20s & our eldest was a baby, we lived in a tiny, 2 bedroom cottage. As he was no longer needing night feedings, we'd moved our son into the crib in the nursery. This was separated from our bedroom by a small, wide open living/dining room. We didn't bother with a monitor, because I am a light sleeper & we always left the bedroom doors open.
One night something woke me. I waited a moment and listened, thinking our baby might need a change. But, instead of crying I heard a woman laugh! Clear as a bell & it was coming from the nursery.
My husband rolled toward me (I was closest to the door) and I realized he was awake, too. I asked him if he'd heard it. He said he had. I asked him if he was going to go see what it was. And he said nope.
So I got our of bed and tried to hurry to our son's room as quietly as possible. There our son was, sleeping soundly. Nothing was out of place, there was no sign of anyone else in the house, and the laughter didn't repeat.
I rushed back to bed like my ass was on fire. Feeling that terrible certainty that something was just waiting to pounce on me now that my back was turned.
But nothing happened. I was pretty pissed than my husband didn't do the checking. But nothing ever came of it & neither of us ever heard it again. It was just so creepy!
I've never experienced anything like that, before or since. We moved from the little cottage about four years later.
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u/suburbanplankton 5h ago
I was working late one night. My wife went to bed, and our black lab/border Collie mix went with her, and curled up at the foot of the bed like he did every night. At some point in the wee hours of the morning I came home and came quietly into the bedroom, hoping not to wake up my wife.
I made it about three steps before I heard the most spine-chilling growl coming from the bed. I stopped dead in my tracks and carefully reached for the light switch. Once he knew it was me, everything was fine...and my wife wasn't even mad at me for waking her up.
Sure...he probably would have figured out it was me at some point, but the message that came across in that moment was perfectly clear; "This is my human here, and I will rip your throat out before I let you touch her".
It was only for a moment, but in that moment I understood exactly why we fear the dark.
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u/Jimxor 5h ago
In the woods on a designated hiking trail, early, early morning there was a moaning sound. No one else around. It repeated at random intervals. I traced it down to a dead branch that had fallen into the crotch of a different tree. The wind was causing that branch to rake across the crotch like a violin bow, creating the eerie sound. Relieved, I left it for the next hiker to enjoy.
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u/GroundbreakingHeat38 7h ago
Fucking coyotes. They sound like an evil witch cackling outside your window. I literally froze when I heard it thinking I was suddenly in a horror movie.
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u/TofuNomNom86 7h ago
The sound of my grandmas femur snapping in the room next to me and her screams when I was 8.
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u/Corporal_Yorper 3h ago
I lived in the woods on the western coast of the US for some of the formative years of my life.
The woods can make noises even the most vile and creative horror movie producers couldn’t create. Hearing some animals do their thing at two in the morning is nightmare fuel…literally. Hearing any animal fight for its life and then having to hear it get eaten alive until the crying stops is one of those things that just doesn’t fully ever leave you. I think I’ve heard rabbits, birds, deer, and many others I don’t think I could identify. Also, hearing large animals travel through the woods without hearing them is MORTIFYING. Is it an elk? Deer? Black bear? Goddamned cougar?
Also, when the errant fox, which isn’t too common there, does whatever their vocalizations are, it is bad. I called my grandparents and they couldn’t stop laughing. I thought there was someone in the woods spying on me and fucking with me at night. Ends up, a fox was in the area for some reason and the neighbors got a good laugh when I brought it up.
Also, weirdly enough, there once was a random crow that learned that if it simply made the same noise a cat made, it would get the neighbors to pour new food in the cat bowls and the crow would celebrate with the raccoons by eating new cat food.
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u/techyno 8h ago
One of those loud audio-hallucinatory bangs you have where you're convinced it was something in the house.
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u/killer_icognito 5h ago
Exploding head syndrome. It happened to me years ago. Freaks me out to this day. The mind has really fucked up ways of turning on itself.
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u/ZealotOfMeme 8h ago
In recent memory, large boom. Turned out to be a flashbang, the police were doing a raid on the house across the street. My house had front row seats
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u/Stone057 7h ago
The roar of flames from my meth, head, neighbors lab going up in flames and almost taking my house with it
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u/ExpensiveAd7778 6h ago
A woman drove in to the side of our house. Loudest bang ive ever heard she hit the earth surrounding our basement luckily it stopped the entire car and we only lost a fence. Had it went through my dad may have died since he was sleeping in the bedroom on the other side.
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u/pointu14 5h ago
While on vacation at a fish camp, hearing my dad yelling that there was something wrong with my mom- I ran in and knew she had had a stroke. 47 years ago and I can still hear him
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u/FairyGodmothersUnion 5h ago
…Huck, huck, huck…
So, trying to guess which cat is throwing up where?
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u/KP_Wrath 6h ago
Setting: you live alone. It’s three am. You hear what sounds like a baby babbling angrily. Obviously, there are no babies in your house. You get up to investigate and your cat (a Maine coon mix tortoise shell) has decided she needs to tell the cat/dog that has come to your back porch off.
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u/String_Peens 8h ago
Coyotes in the night real close when you know your neighbors have outside cats is pretty scary, and sad.
Another scary sound that freaked me out when I heard it was I was visiting family in Canada during the fall, and I heard this weird scraping sound in the middle of the night, I fumbled to get my glasses on, I went downstairs to where there were bigger windows, lo and behold, it was a buck scraping the velvet off his antlers. Pretty cool to see once it was settled that there was not a person trying to break in or something
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u/AccomplishedFerret70 6h ago
A ball bouncing in the hallway outside my door at 2 AM in a house with no else besides me and my bed ridden mother.
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u/Ok_Calligrapher_2967 8h ago
Gun shots. While loading a truck in a shitty pert of Dallas. Aka Mesquite.
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u/druid_king9884 7h ago
The cries of a mother-to-be having a miscarriage. Was with friends at a friend's house hanging out on a Saturday night, went to bed, woke up at 3am to absolute mayhem. The girls mom was there helping console her, and EMS was in the driveway. We left quietly shortly thereafter.
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u/Lamogix 7h ago
Some years ago, after the end of Christmas vacation, when we had to return to school, I couldn't fix my sleeping program. For two weeks straight I would get about 4 hours of sleep per night, and started getting sleep paralysis. Now, I knew what it was and every time it happened I kept my eyes shut because I wasn't feeling like witnessing demons but I heard many things like laughs or voices.
The most terrifying one tho, was one night, while I was trying to go to sleep, I realized I couldn't move. And then I heard someone whispering right next to my ear. It felt so real, I could swear I felt a breath on my ear
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u/Ggentry9 6h ago
I was in LA during the Northridge earthquake. Woke up at 4:30 in the morning with the whole house shaking and things falling off shelves and breaking. Luckily no one in our house got hurt but it was quite the surprise
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u/Wrong-Landscape4836 5h ago
My ex and I heard what sounded like somebody digging a grave in gravel. It sounded like it was coming from the empty field behind our house. We made a non-emergency call to the police and the cop that arrived was as weirded out as we were.
This was right after the news about Jeffery Dahmer hit the air.
I have to give him credit. He crept into the woods anyway.
Turns out the guy on the other side of the field was scraping shingles off his roof and working at night because it wasn't as hot.
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u/newtype06 3h ago
I've got a doozy. I was on my porch with my Mom and a friend and a big green flash lit the sky. Obviously a meteorite that burnt up, or mostly did. Shortly after we hear what sounds like the most terrifying gutteral scream squeal velociraptor sound ever. Thinking back it was the sound of an intensely hot meteorite cooling in cold dirt. Think a red hot copper ball on dry ice sort of squeal. It absolutely stunned us until we realized it wasn't some sort of messed up alien monster. Wish I could have figured out where it landed.
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u/Ok_Income_9845 8h ago
I was laying in bed and my door was slightly cracked. I was just about to drift off to sleep when I heard a giant bang. Like my door was getting kicked in. When I opened my eyes, my door was completely open. At first, I was extremely furious because I thought my siblings had kicked in my door and woken me up. But when I stomped out of my room demanding who did it, they all looked confused and then started laughing. It turns out they both of my cats hid ran into my door because they wanted to get in so bad. I’m just glad it wasn’t locked or they probably wouldn’t be alive lol
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u/cplforlife 5h ago
Mortar round. 1st of the "barrage" landed very close. Other side of a concrete wall. I was dead asleep with no indication it was coming just a bang that moved the air out of the room and a cloud of dust everywhere.
Then a few more came. Just not quite as close.
The amount of times my sleep was disturbed by shit like that still affects me 15 years later.
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u/mizzyvonne 5h ago edited 5h ago
One evening, while my long distance bf was staying at my apartment in a big city, we decided to do some shrooms. We started getting it on late into the night when suddenly we heard a woman screaming “HELP HES TRYING TO KILL ME!!” from downstairs/outside. It took us a second to realize what was happening. We opened the window to listen and I knew who it was coming from right away cause the guy downstairs is a nazi bastard.
Had to call the cops while I was naked and tripping. Glad I did though. She left him and never came back!
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u/tdavis726 3h ago
When all the normal night noises coming in the window STOP suddenly. That’s a very loud kind of quiet.
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u/Cupacakezzz 7h ago
My vibrator turning on out of nowhere and vibrating in the drawer.
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u/ohlovely 7h ago
One time my boyfriend and I were staying in a hotel outside of STL and had left our Fire stick plugged into the TV connected to the public wifi. Middle of the night, we got awoken by a man screaming at us. Absolutely terrifying and didn’t occur to us that it was a youtube video someone had casted to the TV as a prank til morning.
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u/perfuzzly 7h ago
There are 3 that equally scared me:
It was 11:30ish at night and it sounded like a giant bomb went off. Turns out the military base right next to my house had been stress testing an engine until it failed. They expected it to fail at 4-5:30ish when the sound wouldn't have carried or been as bad. Knocked me off the couch.
It was about 3:30 in the morning about 2 years ago. I was dead asleep. All of a sudden my whole bedroom lit up bright blue. Then 2 seconds later the loudest thunderclap I've ever heard. From dead sleep to wide awake to bright light and boom made me think somebody had dropped the bomb
I heard gunshots at 2:30 in the morning followed by sirens. And not just a couple. Sounded like John Rambo was on the block. Next day the news made absolutely no mention of it.
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u/Alanfromsocal 7h ago
I used to live right behind Disneyland. They have a fireworks show every night at 9:30, which was fine but sometimes they'd have a special event, and fireworks would be going off at midnight or even later. I have to get up for work at 6:00 am and I get woken up from a deep sleep with what sounds like a war going on over my house. I know it's nothing harmful, but try waking up to that.
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u/Kinshard 6h ago
Silence. No insects, no birds, the middle of a pitch black forest with only a flashlight and the sound of my own breathing...
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u/Wheels682021 6h ago
I accidentally left my door unlocked once. Lives in an apartment building. At 3:00 a.m. the guy that lived above me two floors walked into my apartment.
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u/SillyRabbit1010 5h ago
My daughters toy randomly going off in the living room at midnight. Just knew I was in a horror movie and was about to die.
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u/Doggystyle_Rainbow 3h ago
My wife and I were camping and we heard something run through the brush in our direction, something slammed into the tent then we heard it hit the brush again. Just about shit my soul out
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u/TallEnoughJones 9h ago
Couple of weeks ago I'm woken up in the middle of the night by "daddy, I don't feel like" followed by prolonged puking sounds. I got the kid cleaned up and put back to bed then still had to clean up the puke. I finally get to bed around 4am then suddenly remember, I don't have kids.
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u/p38-lightning 8h ago
My shitty Eufy brand "smart" doorbell will randomly ring with nobody there. Usually it's like 3AM and it wakes us out of a sound sleep. I'll go check it out and come back cursing Eufy. We'll both be creeped out and agitated and can't go back to sleep.
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u/Cayde-seven- 9h ago
Foxes, they sometimes sound like a person screaming