- Horror cinema and literature
are both more popular now than ever,
but there's one thing that these stories
truly cannot tap into: the reality of frightening moments
shared by anonymous users online.
This anonymity and first-person perspective
gives these accounts a more tangible dread
than those concocted by Hollywood, leaving us to question
what really lurks out there in the dark.
Many such experiences have been shared on forums
including Reddit and should not be read
by the faint-hearted.
(keyboard clicks)
(eerie music)
(machine whirs and buzzes)
Here are the 10 scariest posts on internet forums.
Number 10 are unexpected files.
4chan as a reputation for exploring the darker side of life
and the internet.
Through the anonymous posts which appear there,
people often share links to the weird, the bizarre,
and the outright frightening.
One such post revolved around a 4chan user
who discovered unexpected files on his computer.
Those files seemed unusual and were corrupted,
so the user shared them on 4chan
and asked for the opinion of others.
Over time, 4chan users realized
that the files were hiding images.
When unscrambled and put together,
the images showed a terrifying face.
They also contained messages such as I am God.
The original user then began to receive
strange anonymous text messages
which requested that he send the face
to an unknown recipient.
In return, he received a binary code,
and when this was decoded,
it contained the chilling message, We All Die.
Number nine is The Dog.
Reddit contains more forums than anywhere else online.
Among the harmless images
and posts which are stored there, you will find subreddits
where people post their truly frightening experiences.
One such post is the stuff of nightmares.
One night, a Redditor was finishing off
some housework late at night
and was too busy to take her dog for a full walk.
For that reason, she let the dog out into the back yard
and closed the door.
While finishing the dishes,
the woman heard her dog after a while
scratching at the back door, as he usually did,
wanting to come back into the house.
Something felt strange about that night,
and so the Redittor looked through the peephole
in the back door before opening it.
What she saw was terrifying.
A man was scratching at the door,
pretending to be the dog, so that she would let him inside.
Number eight is The Biggest Fan.
Forums are often places
where individuals with shared interests
can post and give their opinions.
In some instances, these forums are sanctuaries
for hardcore fandoms.
One such forum attracted many users
to post about their favorite TV show,
Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
This show was extremely popular in the late 1990s
and early 2000s and still has a large fanbase to this day.
At first glance, this forum appeared
like any other place for fans,
thousands of posts being made,
discussing various elements of the show.
On closer scrutiny, however,
these posts took on a sinister character.
The forum contained over 40,000 posts
describing the current habits of cast members.
What made this so creepy
was that only one person had made those posts.
This fan would even reply to herself over and over again
and continued posting every day for over six years.
Number seven is TripAdvisor.
TripAdvisor is a website used to rate
and review various locations, holiday spots,
and places of interest.
Users share their experiences and leave suggestions
as to why someone would either visit somewhere
or avoid it altogether.
In one forum post on TripAdvisor,
a forum user from Australia was asking for help.
He had began receiving strange private messages
from another TripAdvisor user.
He had never encountered this person before.
They went by the handle IveGotSoreFeet
as though they were someone who had walked the earth
for the longest time.
This user began sending creepy and threatening messages.
They ended up going through every post, every comment,
and every sentence that the original poster had ever made
on the website.
All they would continually ask was why do you think this
over and over again, and no one knows why.
Number six are The Survivalists.
SurvivalistBoards.com is a forum for those interested
in heading out into the wild
and surviving against the elements.
Users there usually share survival tips,
but in one infamous forum thread,
they shared the creepier things
that they had encountered there.
Some of the users agreed
that they had experienced similar things.
Many of them had felt moments of real tension
while camping at night,
as though being watched from the trees.
Several of these experienced survival experts
were so spooked that they had abandoned their equipment
and refused to return.
Some suggested that these sensations
were brought on by either a predator
or by a person hiding nearby.
Others encountered strange noises
which rushed across a trail at night.
One thing that they did all agree on
is that the forests of the world
contain things of which we have no understanding.
Number five is The Archivist.
Catfishing is a term given to those
who make fake social media profiles.
They take pictures of real people,
build a fake bio, and then lure others in
with private messages and posts
pretending to be someone that they're not.
Sometimes this is done out of loneliness,
but in other cases, it may be done to lure in
a specific person.
Take one forum post on Flickr, for example.
A user there discovered
that images from her Facebook page
had been uploaded to a different, random Flickr account,
complete with sordid descriptions and twisted fantasies
best not described for the squeamish among you.
Some have suggested that the very purpose of those posts
was to goad the user, but others claim it was done
with a more sinister motive.
Each photograph had been tagged with information
showing that the fake profiler
knew where the woman in the photos lived.
Number four is Alexa is Alive.
Amazon's range of Alexa devices
allows owners to ask questions,
control households smart appliances, and play music.
The name Alexa has been given
to the artificial intelligence
used to power these devices, which are always on,
always listening, and always connected to the internet.
In one forum post on Amazon's own forums,
it became clear quickly that something spooky
was going on with one device.
A user on the forums reported that, at night,
they would wake up and find that Alexa
was randomly playing strange, creepy music,
even though no one was around to request this.
No one knows how the device was triggered,
and in fact, some believe that these devices
are somehow controlling themselves at times.
Which leads to the question:
Has Amazon inadvertently created something conscious
that enjoys the creepier side of life?
Number three is The Creepy Gamer.
RPG enthusiasts get an unfair reputation at times
for being creepy.
Most people who enjoy these games are like anyone else,
just wanting to have some fun.
However, every now and then,
a rotten apple spoils the barrel
and an RPG gamer shows their truly frightening side.
On the RPG.net forums, a poster outlined
her ex-husband's unnerving relationship with a popular RPG.
Over the course of seven years,
roleplaying consumed her husband.
He began as someone enthusiastic about it,
but over time, it became the central pillar of his life.
At a Christmas dinner with family,
the gamer began talking about a wizard character
that he had created whose magic was solely created
to inflict harm on the young.
Over time, he withdrew completely
from any other aspect of his life
and their marriage was slowly eroded by his dark alter ego.
Number two is The Mirror.
On Tapa forums, there is a thread
where people share their scary real-life stories.
Many of them are worth reading,
but one stands out as the strangest and most frightening.
In this post, a user describes how his wife bought
an old art deco makeup vanity table.
As is the style with these pieces of furniture,
it came with a large, oval mirror
which had an ominous feel to it.
One day, the husband was painting the vanity table black
so that it would match the rest of the bedroom furniture,
though they hadn't decided where it should go.
The husband shouted to his wife in the other room,
"Where are we going to put this thing?"
But before the wife could answer,
the husband had pulled out a drawer
and flipped it over to paint the underside.
In black ink, the words put me in the middle jack
were scrawled on the wood.
The husband's name was Jack.
And number one is Carried Away.
One user on Reddit asked the question:
What was your creepy explained experience as a child?
The poster received hundreds of replies,
but one answer remains the creepiest.
In it, the anonymous user described
how she had been put to bed one night
when she was very young.
When she woke up fully, she found herself downstairs.
This confused her parents, as the father was at work
and the mother was sound asleep,
so there was no one awake in the house at the time
who could have moved her downstairs onto the sofa.
Furthermore, a safety gate at the top of the stairs
would've been difficult to unlock for such a young child.
When the girl's parents asked her how she did it,
she didn't know, but she did have a dream
about a tall man lifting her from her bed
and carrying her downstairs.
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