Welcome to a chilling journey through the eerie and unsettling encounters of everyday life. In this article, we delve into the depths of discomfort as we recount 20 instances where people found themselves confronted with the creepy and the disgusting. From spine-tingling encounters in the dead of night to stomach-churning moments in broad daylight, these tales serve as a reminder of the unpredictability and sometimes macabre nature of the world around us.
1. Expired Potato Salad Dressing
“We were having a barbecue party, and everyone brought a dish. My brother’s new girlfriend had prepared a homemade potato salad. It was a little too acidic but delicious. The next day, everyone who ate from it got sick.
Later in the day, I was cleaning and there was an awful stench coming from the kitchen’s trash. As I opened it, I found packets of potato salad dressing hidden at the bottom that smelled utterly foul. On closer inspection, they had expired many years. Needless to say, I was furious and grossed out.“
2. Metro Etiquette
“I saw a woman on the metro blowing her nose into her dreadlocks. Based on the crustiness and smell, it appeared to be a routine habit for her.“
3. Raw Chicken
“A well-dressed woman sitting next to me at the bus stop was eating raw chicken that she’d clearly just bought at the grocery store up the street. I’d seen her for months on and off, waiting at the same time as me, probably going to and from work. But there she was in the middle of a South Texas summer, eating raw chicken like she was starving to death while waiting for the bus in 105-degree weather.“
4. University Library Shenanigans
“University library. Some unwashed, smelly old bearded guy always came there to use their free Wi-Fi. The stupid laughing was tolerable; I had headphones. Piling up a mountain of tangerine peels was tolerable; I like tangerines. But one day, he started clipping his dirty fingernails, and one flew straight at me. I went straight to the staff and got him kicked out.“
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5. Park Nightmares
“I was sitting on the bench at a park when this homeless man approached me. He didn’t say a word, just threw a folded newspaper on my lap. Scared, I opened it to see what he wanted.
Inside the paper was a repulsive sight — a grotesque, slimy mass of unidentified goo. It reeked of rot and decay. Without a word, the man disappeared into the shadows. It felt like a nightmare, but I was surely wide awake when it happened.“
6. Sneezes In The Grocery Store
“When I was about 14, I was walking around the grocery store with my dad. I was on my phone and didn’t see him turn the corner into the other aisle. I looked up and saw he wasn’t there, instead, there was a mom and her toddler-aged daughter now in the aisle with me.
I looked up to find my dad for maybe 20 seconds. At that time, I watched the daughter say, «Mommy, I have to sneeze!», which prompted her mother to get on her hands and knees and allow her daughter to sneeze in her mouth. Then she got up, and they acted like nothing happened.“
7. Flossing
“Once on a midday regional train, the guy sitting next to me just pulled out a packet of floss and started flossing. Bits of food were visibly being flung from his teeth. He did that for like 10 minutes straight, then put away his floss. If that wasn’t bad enough, he then started to shove his fingers into his ears, clean them with his pinky finger, and wipe wax on his pants.“
8. Storing Money
“A homeless man arrived at our hospital with an abdominal abscess. We were trying to clean his wound and assess the damage, and when we reached inside, we were horrified to find that he had been hiding his money there. He nonchalantly stated that he kept his money tucked in there to protect it from being stolen.“
9. Babies in the Food Court
“I once saw a lady change her baby on a table in the food court of the mall. It was at Christmastime, so there were tons of people around. She just didn’t care. I also told the custodial staff, «Hey, some lady just changed her baby on that table,» and they didn’t do anything.“
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10. Subway
“Once, I was in the subway. A guy in front of me rushed towards me and picked something up from the floor right next to my foot. He put it in his mouth and started chewing on it. It was an old and stepped-on gum that was glued to the floor.“
11. Fast Food Joints
“I was waiting for my turn at a fast food joint, stomach rumbling with anticipation. Finally, I reached the counter and ordered my usual burger combo. As I waited, I noticed a foul smell wafting from the kitchen.
Ignoring it, I eagerly unwrapped my burger, only to find slimy tomatoes inside. Just as I was about to complain, a cockroach scurried out from under the bun. Horrified, I gagged and quickly pushed the meal away, losing my appetite entirely.“
12. Fissures
“Going home from school, I saw this lady wearing flip-flops on a rainy day. The thing is, she had these deep fissures at the bottom of her feet, and every time she took a step, you could see water flowing between the fissures.“
13. Psychic
“When my mom was in her 20s, she and a friend decided to go to a psychic, just for fun. The psychic told her friend that soon she would have more money than she ever imagined, but it would cost her everything. A month later, she nearly died in a gas explosion at her apartment. She was burned on more than 70% of her body, and received millions of dollars from the city because they knew about the gas leak and didn’t bother to fix it.” –lalaorange
14. Church
“A group of us were gathered in a second-floor classroom at church for a meeting. We were having an increasingly difficult time hearing each other because there were loud voices and raucous laughter from the classroom next door. Eventually, a guy from our group left to ask them to quiet down. He returned quickly, announcing that there was nobody next door. In fact, there was nobody in the entire church except for us. But we ALL heard the commotion. To this day, I have no idea who or what that was.“
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15. Man In Closet
“When I was in the ninth grade, I spent the night at one of my best friend’s houses. I knew she had a lot of family in the neighborhood, so seeing family in her house was normal. We went to sleep and it was just like any other night. When I woke the next morning, I saw something — or rather, someone — in her closet, which was directly in front of her bed. There was a man looking at me through her hanging clothes. He smiled.
I figured it was just another one of her family members — perhaps playing a prank — so I just laid down and fell back asleep. We woke up for breakfast and I told her and her dad about the man in the closet. He said no relatives had been over, and definitely not a man. Truthfully, they didn’t seem too concerned about it, but I can still to this day picture that man smiling at me. I didn’t do sleepovers again after that.“
16. Nurses
“I’m a nurse who regularly works night shifts. I’ve witnessed a lot of deaths over the years — some very peaceful, and some very painful. I’m one of those nurses who experiences a lot of paranormal activity, too. One night, as I was punching in a key code to enter a locked unit, I heard someone shout my name from behind me. I turned around, but no one was there. Another night, I heard someone shout ‘Nurse!’ very loudly. Like normal, I went from room to room to check on my patients, but everyone was sleeping soundly. Eventually, I became so tuned into the paranormal activity of that building that I could predict when a death would occur within one or two days.
If I saw a shadow figure or orb lights on the units, I knew someone was about to die. As a nurse, you become hyper-aware of the stages of death. But these shadows would appear to me right before a patient was going to die. Sometimes shadows would appear around a patient who didn’t seem particularly low or ill that day, and an unexpected death would occur. In the two years I worked there, I was never wrong.“
17. Dorm Ghosts
“When I was in college, I lived in an all-girls dorm. Like any school, there were ghost stories about how former students died on the property. Our dorm was said to be haunted by a young girl who had hanged herself in the ’60s. One night, I was lying in bed around midnight. Our dorm had a nighttime curfew with quiet hours starting at 9 p.m., so it was normally silent at this time of night. All of a sudden, I heard the clacking of high-heeled shoes walking down the hall. It was so loud and vivid, I thought to myself, ‘Who the heck is walking in heels this late on a school night?’ The footsteps got closer, and it sounded like someone walked directly outside my door. It was then that I realized that this sound would be impossible to hear, because the hallways were fully carpeted.
I jumped out of bed and opened my door to find nothing but darkness. I even walked up and down the hall, and there were no other doors open. It gave me chills. The next morning, I asked around. No one else heard it, but some had experienced similar things in the past. They all said it was just one of the ghosts.“
18. Snow Covered Roads
“When I was in my mid-’20s, my fiancé and I visited his family in Norway over Christmas. We were driving through the countryside, sightseeing on the snow-covered roads. We had spiked tires on the car, so it wasn’t slippery at all. All of a sudden, I had a really bad feeling that something terrible was about to happen, so I told him to slow down. He told me that he was already going well below the speed limit, but, overwhelmed, I yelled at him to JUST SLOW DOWN! He gave me an incredulous look but he did what I asked, just as we were heading down a hill into a curve.
As soon as we got around the corner, there was a very narrow bridge, and a car was just coming off of it. It was really narrow, due to the snow build-up on both sides. We clipped the other car and we both lost the outer mirrors on the driver’s side. If we had been going any faster, we would’ve hit them head-on. Needless to say, my fiancé turned white as a ghost, didn’t say another word the entire way home, and couldn’t even tell his parents what had happened when we got there. One good thing about it all is that he never hesitates to listen to me again when I get a bad feeling about something!“
19. Farm Ghosts
“My cousins and I were in our early to mid-teens, staying overnight at a relative’s farm in northern Europe. They set up mattresses for the kids in the loft of the barn, and the parents slept in the farmhouse. The only way up into the loft was a square hole in the floor, which had a ladder leading up to it. We were getting tired, so we turned the lights off and settled in quietly. Shortly afterward, I started hearing footsteps at the other end of the loft. I whispered, asking the others if they heard it, and they all did. It was around 2008 at the time, and only one of us had a cell phone — which, of course, was a flip phone. My cousin opened it, using the screen as a flashlight. The screen was small, though, so blue glow only reached about two feet ahead.
We heard the footsteps walking towards us, and right as they got to exactly where the light reached, my cousin stretched his arm further to shed light on it. Exactly as he did, the thing took two stumbling steps backwards, avoiding being seen. We all screamed, and our relatives ran to check on us from the farmhouse. Nothing left through that square hole down the ladder and no one saw anything when we turned the lights back on. I still have no idea what it was.“
20. Visions
“I was about 14 or 15 and I was staying after school to study in the library. After a while, I fell asleep at a desk and had a really strange dream. I dreamt that the librarian — who was an old, scary lady — was shaking me while screaming, ‘Save me, help me! I don’t want to go, save me!’ over and over. I woke up very confused, only to see the librarian having a heart attack. I rushed over and started doing CPR on her. A teacher passing by noticed and called an ambulance. On the way to the hospital, one of the paramedics told me if I hadn’t saved her, she would’ve been dead.“
As we conclude our exploration of these unsettling moments, one thing becomes abundantly clear: the world is filled with the strange, the eerie, and the downright creepy. Yet, amidst the discomfort, there’s a curious fascination that keeps us captivated. Perhaps it’s the thrill of the unknown or the reassurance that, no matter how bizarre, these encounters are but fleeting moments in the grand tapestry of life. Whatever the case, these stories will linger in our minds, serving as a reminder to always expect the unexpected.
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