3 Very Disturbing TRUE Scary Stories

Full transcript with timestamps

0:08 Before we get into today's stories, I want to take a moment to thank today's sponsor, Zach. A lot of the stories I cover start with something small, like a feeling you brush off or a detail you tell yourself isn't important. And honestly, that's not too different from how a lot of us treat our own health, like a weird pain or just the mental stress of knowing you probably should see a doctor, but putting it off anyway. I caught myself doing the same thing, telling myself I'd deal with it tomorrow. That's when I use Zachdoc, and it actually made the whole process painless. Zakdoc is a free website that lets you search for in-et network doctors, compare them by specialty, see real appointment availability, and book instantly. In many cases, you can get in within just a couple of days. You can read verified patient reviews, check out doctor profiles, and choose someone you're genuinely comfortable with with

0:54 no awkward phone calls. What I loved was being able to find a doctor who had next day availability and reviews that specifically mentioned listening and taking patients seriously. That matters because walking into an appointment already feel stressful enough. So, if you've been avoiding a doctor's visit or just want an easier way to find someone you actually trust, head over to zdock.com/mrnightmare and see what's available in your area. It only takes a few clicks. I went camping alone last winter with my dog Rosco and it's something I'll never do again. I had taken a few days off work and wanted to get away from people.

1:34 I loaded my truck with my gear and drove up a long narrow trail that cut deep into a state forest. The road was barely maintained, covered in packed snow and ice, and there were no other cars anywhere. After driving for almost an hour, I parked at a small poleoff that looked like it hadn't been used in a long time. From there, I hiked another 20 minutes with my pack and Rosco until I reached a small clearing surrounded by thick trees. The snow was deep and untouched. There were no footprints or signs of anyone else being around recently. That was what I wanted.

2:09 I set my pack down, cleared a spot for a tent, and let Rosco wander around while I worked. He stayed close, sniffing the snow in the trees and just jumping around playing. I pitched the tent, staked it down hard because the ground was frozen, and laid out my sleeping pad and winter-rated sleeping bag inside. I knew it was going to be a cold night, well below freezing, so I layered properly. Thermal base layers, thick socks, a fleece, and a heavy jacket stayed on even after camp was set. Once the tent was ready, I gathered dead wood and built a small fire pit. I started a fire and let it burn down until I had a steady flame. I cooked dinner over it, just a simple meal, and sat on a log eating while Rosco lay near the fire.

2:56 The woods were quiet in that deep winter way where sound feels almost non-existent. I learned a long time ago from my dad that snow actually absorbs sound. After I ate, Rosco suddenly stood up and started barking toward the trees. It didn't concern me at first. Deer were everywhere out there, and he had barked at them before. I told him to relax, and he did after a minute, sitting back down. I checked the time and decided I'd stay up a bit longer by the fire before turning in. I always carried a handgun when camping in remote places, and it was holstered at my side like it always was. I felt fine at that point.

3:36 About 20 minutes later, Rosco started barking again, louder this time. Then I heard it, too. Footsteps moving through the snow somewhere out in the woods. I stood up and listened. The steps stopped, then started again. Rosco went from barking to growling, then suddenly went silent. He stood staring straight ahead toward the trees. That was when I felt uneasy. I followed his gaze and saw a shape at the edge of the treeine. Someone was standing there, half hidden in the darkness, just barely lit by the fire. I called out saying that he scared me and telling Rosco it was okay. The figure didn't move at first. Then he stepped forward slightly enough for me to see that it was a man. He asked what I was doing out there that deep in the woods. His tone wasn't friendly. I told him I was just getting out into nature with my dog. He didn't respond right away. He just stood there watching me. I could feel the situation turning wrong.

4:44 I told him calmly that I was armed. The man slightly laughed and said something about me threatening him instead of inviting him to join me and asked where my hospitality was. Then he turned and walked back into the darkness, his footsteps fading into the woods. I stood there for a long time after that, staring at the trees. Rosco stayed close to me. I didn't like any of it, but eventually I told myself he was gone. I put out the fire carefully, throwing snow on it and stirring the ashes until there was nothing left that could glow. I didn't want light drawing attention. I crawled into my tent and sealed it up.

5:24 Inside, I did everything I could to stay warm. I laid my sleeping pad down to keep the cold ground from draining heat from my body. I stayed fully dressed, pulled on a knit hat, and cinched my sleeping bag tight around my shoulders. I kept a hand warmer near my core and another near my feet. Rosco curled up next to me, his body heat helping more than anything. I lay there listening to the woods, or rather the extreme silence. After a while, Rosco started growling again. Then I heard what he was growling at. Footsteps in the snow. They stopped and Rosco quieted, but his ears were still perked up. Then the footsteps started again, closer this time and slower than before. They came right up to the tent and stopped. Rosco began howling loudly. I whispered for him to stop, terrified of drawing attention.

6:20 When he did stop, he went back to growling. Whoever it was just stood outside the tent. I could hear subtle movement like the shift of weight in the snow. I had my gun in my hand now, but I didn't want to make threats. I didn't want to be forced to follow through with the threats. I have never actually shot anyone, and I don't think I have it in me to kill someone, even in self-defense. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I cocked the gun and said clearly that I had a gun and that whoever was there needed to leave now. But realistically, who else could it have been besides that creepy guy from before? There was silence for a few seconds. Then I heard footsteps again, moving away from the tent. Slowly at first, then faster before disappearing into the woods. I didn't unzip the tent to look out. I stayed frozen for hours. Rosco stayed alert the entire time, which was the only reason I even felt remotely

7:16 comfortable eventually nodding off. I certainly wouldn't have if I were alone. I barely slept, drifting off only in short bursts. When the sky finally began to lighten, I packed up as fast as I could at the crack of dawn. We hiked back to my truck and drove away. I never went back to that part of the woods again, and I never will. Creeps like that guy really make life scary sometimes and remind you that you can never really let your guard down.

7:54 July 4th weekend in 2025. I drove from Melbourne, Florida to Charleston, South Carolina to visit a good friend named Mark I hadn't seen in years. He was there on an internship for his law program and staying in a house in the city. I was visiting for the weekend and spending the night downstairs on a couch by some windows. After a smooth drive, I arrived in Charleston and we played some pickle ball before nightfall. When the night settled in, I went back downstairs to the couch by the windows that faced another apartment building and a small labyrinth of alleyways with an abandoned house across the street.

8:31 The next day, after playing more pickle ball in the morning and hanging out, we went to the main Charleston Market. We walked through it and eventually came out near the docks by the water. That's when we saw him. A man in a wedding suit was shambling down the road near the water. He wore a crisp bow tie and clean dress shoes, and his suit looked freshly pressed. He had long black curly hair and a tan complexion. The market behind us was loud and busy. Yet, this man moved alone across the street with a slow, detached movement. He didn't notice us and seemed to be in his own world. If we crossed the street, we would have walked straight into him.

9:13 Instinctively, I wanted to avoid him. I grabbed Mark by the arm and told him we were not crossing. We walked to the right, deeper into the city, and picked up our pace. He was moving slowly, so we created distance easily. I told Mark it was strange and that the guy didn't look homeless. His clothes were too clean, too crisp. Something about him felt wrong. Mark agreed. We kept walking for a while. A few streets later on another busy stretch of Charleston, we looked toward a shop and saw him again. That same man with the same shambling movement. He was far down the street, diagonal to us, moving at the same slow pace. Somehow, he caught up to us, even though there was no clear way he could have reached that spot without us seeing him. I pointed him out to Mark and we both stared. It made no sense. He was in a completely different part of the city, but moving exactly the same way. We pushed it aside and kept

10:14 exploring Charleston. The next day was July 4th, and that night, we watched the fireworks on an island about 20 minutes from the city. By then, we had mostly forgotten about the man in the suit. We assumed he was just some strange person wandering around, but something about him set off alarm bells. It felt out of place, wrong. That night, we decided to go on a ghost tour, which we had already planned before the trip. It was my last night in Charleston on July 5th, and the city was packed. It was a busy Saturday night with crowds everywhere, lights pouring from restaurants, and that historical atmosphere Charleston has after sunset.

10:54 We finished the ghost tour and walked through the main area of the city filled with restaurants and nightife. The street was crowded and a particular wave of people was moving toward us and quite fast. As this group approached, both Mark and I noticed something at the exact same moment. It was him, the same man in the same wedding suit with the same bow tie and the same black curly hair shambling in the middle of the crowd as if he had been placed there. He stood out instantly. His movement was completely different from everyone else.

11:27 He didn't blend in. No one around him noticed him. Two people were walking right beside him and he brushed between them without either of them reacting. He kept the same slow unsettling pace while the entire crowd moved normally around him. He glanced at us for a brief second and then continued forward. It was as if he was tied to the movement of the crowd without truly being part of it. Mark and I looked at each other in shock. It made no sense. He didn't belong there. And something in both of us recognized that immediately. We watched him move down the street until the crowd thinned out.

12:04 When it did, we saw him clearly, still shambling, still moving at that same unnatural pace, disappearing into a darker side street until he turned a corner. We were quiet, not panicking, but deeply unsettled. The same man in the same suit appearing multiple times in different parts of the city, always shambling, always out of place. Both of us knew something was wrong. Later that night, we returned to the house. Mark went upstairs to his room and I went downstairs to sleep. I shut the blinds and tried to settle in.

12:39 At some point in the middle of the night, I woke up to a tap on the window. I froze. After a few moments, I forced myself to look. I lifted the blind slightly and looked down the alley. At the far end, I saw the back of a man turning the corner. It was him again. He moved out of sight, but right before he disappeared, he looked back toward the window. I told Mark the next morning. I explained what I saw, and even he admitted that the entire experience was disturbing. He doesn't believe in anything paranormal, and he's extremely logical and grounded, but even he was shaken. As for me, I'm more spiritually sensitive and this experience stayed with me. And I also know it's with Mark months later. We'll never forget that weekend. The man in the suit felt real and unreal at the same time. Something about all that was off.

13:36 I drove home to Florida on July 6th, and the image of him turning that corner has stayed with me ever since. I never thought I would be the kind of person who double checkcks door locks or memorizes the sounds of my own floorboards, but that changed after one week last winter. I live alone in a small house I bought a few years ago, and my routine has been boring and predictable. I work from home, order groceries, go to the gym late at night, and I don't talk to my neighbors much at all. That routine is why it took me longer than it should have to realize something was wrong.

14:20 It started with a noise I heard around 2:30 in the morning on a Tuesday. I was half asleep on the couch with the TV still on low when I heard what sounded like a soft thump near the back of the house. It wasn't loud enough to scare me and my first thought was that something had fallen in the kitchen or maybe the house had shifted. We all hear sounds like that in the house or apartment once in a while, right? I muted the TV so I could listen. Nothing else happened. I checked the back door, made sure it was locked, and went to bed.

14:53 The next morning, I noticed the back door felt different when I opened it. The dead bolt still worked, but the handle felt loose, like it had been twisted too hard. I made a mental note to fix it later. That night, I went to the gym around 11 p.m. like I usually do. Side note, I like an empty gym. And I got back around midnight to 12:30. As I pulled into my driveway, I noticed my porch light was off, yet I always leave it on. I stood there in my car for a few seconds trying to remember if I had turned it off earlier. Then I convinced myself I probably did. Inside, everything looked normal. I walked through every room just doing an innocent little analysis before going to bed, something I had never done before.

15:38 On Thursday morning, I woke up to my alarm and noticed my phone was at 12% battery. I always charge it overnight and I clearly remembered plugging it in. The cable was still connected to my phone, but the charger was no longer connected to the outlet. Weird. I told myself I must have knocked it loose in my sleep. But that explanation didn't really make sense because my phone was still on the nightstand, not in bed with me. At that moment, my only explanation was I picked up my phone in the middle of the night, accidentally yanked it off the outlet without realizing, and set it back down. I started paying closer attention after that. That night, I stayed up later than usual, sitting in the dark with the TV off, just listening.

16:22 Around 3:00 in the morning, I heard slow thumps coming from the back of the house. "Footsteps?" I asked myself. "Nah, it can't be." I held my breath, but the thumps seemingly stopped. After a while, I convinced myself the thumps came from outside. I'm in the suburbs. There's of course other people around, even at night. The next day, I found muddy shoe prints on the floor near the back door. The thing is, though, the footprints weren't clear. Like, I couldn't distinctly make out patterns of the bottoms of the shoes, which made it look like someone tried to wipe them off before walking around. My stomach literally skipped a beat.

17:01 I stood there staring at them, trying to understand how they got there. I hadn't had anyone over. I hadn't gone outside in muddy shoes. I checked the back door again, and this time I noticed faint scratch marks around the lock, like someone had used something thin to pry at it. I called the locksmith and told him I thought my lock was failing. I didn't say anything about the footprints. He replaced the lock that afternoon and told me everything should be fine. That night, I pushed a chair under the back door handle and slept with my bedroom door locked, something I never did before then.

17:37 I woke up just before 4 in the morning to the sound of something tapping lightly on my bedroom door. It wasn't a knock. It sounded like someone testing the door with their fingertips. I stayed completely still, staring at the door, my eyes burning because I refused to blink. The tapping stopped after a minute and then I heard soft footsteps moving away. I didn't sleep after that. In the morning, the chair was still under the back door, but the back door itself was unlocked. The new lock wasn't damaged. It had just been turned. And that's when reality truly set in. I wasn't just imagining these things like I thought I was because I was tired. Someone had been inside my house while I was asleep and knew how to unlock the door from the inside. I called the police and tried to explain without sounding insane. They checked the house, looked around the yard, and told me there was no sign of forced entry, but like, yeah, that was

18:33 kind of obvious given that I changed the lock. They suggested I might have unlocked the door myself without remembering. I knew that wasn't true, but there was nothing they could do either way. That night, I stayed awake with all the lights on and a kitchen knife on the table in front of me. Around 2:00 in the morning, I heard something from down in the basement. The basement door, which was just outside of the kitchen, was cracked open. I felt an overwhelming sense of dread wash over me. I stared down the hallway to the cracked open basement door. I walked over to it, peeked down through just what the crack in the door would allow me to see, and I swear it was not my imagination. I saw either at the bottom of the stairs or maybe one of the bottommost steps the outline of someone standing there.

19:21 I don't know if they were looking up or not. When I realized what I was looking at, I slammed the door shut and sprinted out to my car. I sat in my car as I once again called 911. After police showed up a second time, they entered while I waited in one of their cars. They brought him out of the house in handcuffs a few minutes later. He was barefoot and wearing dark clothes that looked like they had been slept in. He didn't look at me once. I just don't think that he noticed me in the back of the car. They put him in the back of the other car and shut the door. I stayed outside while more officers went back in and I refused to look at the guy in the back of the car. I was actually shaking even as I talked to the officers. I was stuttering in shock. It took longer than I expected for them to finish the rest of their search. When one of the officers finally came out, he asked how long I had lived there. I told him a few

20:15 years. He nodded and wrote something down. He asked what time I usually went to the gym and which nights. I told him. He looked back at the house and told me they found food wrappers and bottled water behind the furnace in the basement along with a phone charger plugged into an outlet down there. He said it looked like someone had been sleeping on the concrete using old insulation as padding. The man hadn't spoken a word to the officers. The main officer I was talking to told me the likely charges the man would be facing, but that ultimately it would be up to the district attorney. Eventually, they told me I could go back inside.

20:52 It was days later that I was going through my camera roll to send my friend something when I found a very, very disturbing picture. At first, I had to process how a picture like this could be taken. It was a picture of me in my bed sleeping, taken at 3:11 a.m. It was the same night that I woke up in the morning to my phone being unplugged from the wall outlet. The nightmare became real all over again. I contacted the unit listed on the incident report, and they asked me to come in to digitally transfer the photo for supplemental evidence. I was told that with this photo, he'd likely be facing additional charges such as stalking or even being registered as a sex offender for life. All good things to hear. It doesn't save me, however, from the trauma I'll forever have to live with thinking back to this I'll never be able to go down into a basement alone at night again in my life.

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The episode runs 22 min; the transcript is about 3,853 words in 29 timestamped sections.

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