3 Disturbing TRUE Scary Stories

This is a story I haven't thought about in a long time, and for good reason. My friends and I used to like exploring things. Growing up in New Jersey, there were enough abandoned places within driving distance to keep us entertained for hours. A lot of the stuff we did wasn't all that cool in hindsight. Just decaying buildings, empty warehouses, stuff like that. But every now and then, we'd stumble across something more interesting. One place that had been on our radar for a while was an abandoned middle school about a 30inut drive away. I won't say the name here for privacy reasons, but anyone familiar with North Jersey Urban Exploring probably knows exactly what I'm talking about. >> [music] >> We'd seen photos of the place online and figured it was finally time to check it out. It was late summer and we were getting bored of the usual activities which mostly consisted of playing basketball in my backyard and driving around aimlessly. I can't remember who brought up the idea, but it was a pretty spontaneous thing. There were four of us that night. It was me, Yuri, Frank, and Freddy. Frank and I were into graffiti, so we brought a few cans of black and white spray paint. Beyond that, the rest of my bag was filled with some Roman candles I had left over from Fourth of July. Our MO with these kinds of things was always the same. We'd mess around inside, get to the roof, shoot some fireworks off, then sprint down before any cops rolled up. This evening would be no different. Yuri was driving that night. He pulled onto a side street a few blocks from the school, and we got out. We made our way towards the school and were pleasantly surprised to see that the fence around the perimeter had been cut. We were prepared to jump, but I was glad we wouldn't have to. The school was huge, bigger than the pictures online had led us to believe. It would have taken forever to explore the whole thing, but that was a good thing as the four of us were prone to get bored very quickly. Frank led the way through the hole, followed by Yuri, then me, then Freddy. Freddy was the most fearless, so he volunteered to bring up the rear. We found a door that wasn't boarded up and stepped inside. Even with our flashlights, it was eerie. Picture your childhood school, only dead silent. Every hallway was stripped down to exposed wires and crumbling tile. Insulation was hanging from the ceiling, and there were bits of broken furniture everywhere. The entrance we found opened into a hallway, which we happily began walking through after clicking on our flashlights. We all had really powerful flashlights, which was something we were very proud of for whatever reason. When I say powerful, I mean it. Mine was 60 bucks and could illuminate an entire room with a beam strong enough to blind you for a few seconds if you mistakenly glanced at it. It was honestly a lot of money for a flashlight, but I thought it was worth it. The walls were coated in graffiti. Some of it good, some of it awful. Frank and I paused here and there to check out a few tags, but mostly we kept moving. I'll spare you most of the details about the building itself, but it was honestly really cool. Seeing all those seats and a stage that was literally falling apart was a dope sight. We made a quick loop through the basement, which was by far the most rundown part of the school. We didn't spend much time down there, partly because of the wear, but mostly because I could tell my friends were getting creeped out. One of the rooms had a massive pentagram painted on the floor, which wasn't exactly a comforting sight. Creepy, yeah, but it wasn't unusual. Anyone who's done urban exploring knows these pop up everywhere. We didn't linger. The four of us eventually made our way to the second floor. One of the classrooms had a completely untouched white wall, basically a blank canvas. Frank and I grinned and started throwing paint up while Yuri and Freddy said they were going to keep exploring and look for a way to the roof. They disappeared down one of the dark hallways while we stayed back tagging. Once we wrapped up our piece, Frank wanted to keep working on another section of the wall. [music] I wandered out of the room to check out some of the better artwork along the nearby corridors. After about 5 minutes of just standing and admiring the art, I heard Frank yell out from behind me. He sounded angry and asked if I was messing with him. I told him I don't know what he was talking about and he told me to quit the act, still angry. Before I could figure out what he meant, he said, "I know you took my bag." I swore I didn't do anything, that I had been standing in the hallway the entire time. He believed me and muttered something about how it must have been Freddy. To be fair, it was the type of thing Freddy had a tendency to do. We searched the room with our lights just to be safe, [music] but there was nothing. The bag was gone. We couldn't do much more tagging without the bag since it had all the unused paint in it. So, we just went to find the guys who we assumed were on the roof by then. We went as far up as the stairs would take us, but unfortunately, they didn't lead to the roof. We wandered the floor aimlessly, checking various rooms for a way to the roof. At one point, I walked into a small side room and froze. There on the wall was another pentagram like the one we had seen in the basement. Only this one was much more ominous. It was freshly painted, which I could tell because paint was still dripping down it. And in the corner of the room was Frank's bag just sitting there. Frank stepped into the room behind me and immediately noticed what I was looking at. Without skipping a beat, he grabbed his bag off the floor and said in a pretty loud voice, "What the hell is wrong with him?" I didn't respond. Even as a joke, it seemed like something that crossed the line a little too much, even for Freddy. We left the room and started walking down a random hallway in silence, just wanting to find our friends. Just then, we heard rapid footsteps thundering towards us. It was Freddy and Yuri who motioned for us to follow them. We didn't even have time to be pissed at Freddy. We just ran. Here's a good rule to live by. If someone tells you to run, you don't stand around and ask questions. That's just plain stupid. As we ran, Yuri tried to explain what was going on, but I couldn't really understand him over all the noise. All I gathered was that we were running from someone, most likely multiple people. The four of us tried to find our way back to the exit, but it was a literal maze in there, especially given the circumstances. Eventually, we stopped to catch our breath at a corner in what felt like a completely different wing of the building. We all agreed that if we just found a random stairwell and went down, we'd eventually find a way out. It didn't sound like there was anyone chasing us, so we decided to move slowly and just be as quiet as possible. After finding a stairwell, we went down a couple floors. Once we got to what we all agreed was the ground floor, we started walking through the hallway, thinking we were in the clear. But just then, this sharp hissing noise rang out from somewhere in front of us. A steady, sharp hissing. That's the best way I can describe it. It sounded like someone trying to imitate a cat. The four of us froze, hoping that whoever was down there didn't notice us. But as we were slowly and quietly retreating back the way we had come, a deep voice said something from beyond the darkness in front of us, he said, word for word, "I should have cut you when I had the chance." We didn't wait another second. We just ran. This time, I could actually hear several sets of footsteps behind us, which made things 10 times scarier than they had been before. They were yelling obscene things behind us. Stuff about how they were going to kill us and how they had all the exits covered. It was the scariest moment of my life. I thought we were going to have to run back upstairs and hide somewhere in the building. But somehow Yuri took a turn at the right moment and up ahead we saw the original door we'd come through. We kept running even after making it outside. Then through the fence and all the way back to Yuri's car. Yuri drove off and even though we all looked back at the school, there wasn't much we could make out on account of how dark it was. We weren't sticking around though. As we were driving away, Freddy told us their side of the story. He said that after they failed to find a way to the roof, they had gone down a floor to look for us. Apparently, Freddy started hearing weird metallic clinking coming from one of the rooms, which he assumed was us. He and Yuri walked inside and saw three cloaked figures sitting in a circle hunched over something on the floor. According to Freddy, it looked like they were playing some kind of game with glass marbles or stones. As soon as they noticed Freddy, they started scrambling off the floor to chase them. Yuri and Freddy ran back up to the fourth floor to try and lose the people chasing them, which is where they found us. There were so many things that didn't make sense, though. The most obvious question, at least the one I had, was why would they toy with us by taking Frank's bag if they really had hostile intentions. Freddy's theory was that whoever was in there thought we'd never be able to find our way out. So, they figured they toy with us first. Yuri thought that the room with the pentagram in it was where they were going to kill us or sacrifice us or some weird cult stuff, something like that. I was pretty convinced that they hadn't even been chasing us, that they had just gone downstairs to cut us off when we eventually found our way down there. Another thing, there must have been at least four people in there since one of them had been messing with us and Yuri and Freddy stumbled upon three more. It just didn't add up. I know it doesn't sound that scary when I break it down like this, but trust me, if you were there, you would have been terrified. We never went back there, but as far as I know, that building still exists. This happened a little over 5 years ago. I had just moved into my first home, which I currently no longer live in. At the time, I was coming off a long stretch in a cramped downtown apartment in Spokane. convenient location, sure, but I'd grown tired of the constant traffic noise, the crowded sidewalks, and the feeling that I could hear my neighbors breathing through the walls. I wasn't a kid anymore, and I was ready for something quieter. The place I ended up renting was a small one-story home on the outskirts of some rural town, tucked behind a stretch of pine trees with a narrow gravel driveway. There's really not much else to say about it because it wasn't much to begin with. just two small bedrooms, an outdated kitchen, and a cramped bathroom, but it was peaceful. The nearest neighbors were a little ways down the street. They were out of eyes and definitely out of earshot. Finding a job out there was the most frustrating thing, but I was eventually able to land one. Between the hours and the general exhaustion, I didn't have much of a routine. I mostly lived off takeout and kept to myself. no social life to speak of, which I didn't mind. This particular night happened in late October. I had just gotten home from work, maybe around 9:45 or so. It had been a long day, one of those mentally draining kinds of shifts where all you want is food and a quiet place to sit. I kicked off my boots, changed my clothes, and ordered Chinese from a spot I'd used a few times before. There weren't any delivery apps that serviced that area, so your options for food were pretty limited and depended purely on which places were willing to drive out to you. It was sometime just after 10:00 when the doorbell rang. I remember thinking, "Damn, that was fast." I walked to the front door and looked through the peepphole. There was a guy standing there wearing a hoodie and jeans with his hands in his pockets, but he didn't have any food with him. No bag, no receipt, nothing that even remotely screamed delivery driver. I should have caught on to what was happening sooner, but my brain was operating on low power, and I just wasn't thinking straight. Against my better judgment, I cracked the door slightly open, keeping the chain on. I asked him if he was here with the food. He paused for a couple of seconds, then nodded, saying something about wanting to doublech checkck the order first before grabbing it from his car. That's when I came to my senses. I told him flat out that if he didn't bring the food to the door, I was going to call the police. Instead of responding, he muttered something under his breath before turning and walking down the driveway. I watched him until he disappeared into the darkness the whole time thinking about whether or not I should say something. I decided against it, which I still think was the smart thing to do. Either way, though, my gut was churning at that point. I shut the door and locked it, then grabbed my phone and called the restaurant. The manager picked up and after I explained what happened, he told me the food hadn't even left yet. That was the moment it really clicked. Whoever had just been at my front door was some stranger with the intention of robbing the place or doing something even worse. God knows what. I called the non-emergency police line and reported what happened. The dispatcher advised me to stay alert and said they'd noted for patrol. It wasn't urgent enough for a response, but it was enough to get logged, which I figured was fair since nothing actually happened. And in all likelihood, the guy had probably just left. 20 minutes later, the actual delivery guy pulled up. I took the food and paid him, and that was that. Around 11:30, I was in the living room watching TV with the lights off when I heard a noise, a faint scraping sound coming from the back of the house. I muted the TV and froze, trying to be as quiet as possible. After a few agonizing seconds of silence, I heard the scraping sound again. It was coming from the back door. I was absolutely sure of it. I stared dead straight at the back of the door, and to my horror, the door knob slightly jiggled a few times. Someone was testing it. Without another thought, I quietly called 911 and told them what was happening. I grabbed a kitchen knife and locked myself in my room, still trying to be as quiet as possible. After a good 15 minutes, an officer finally announced himself at my front door, and I rushed to let him in. The police did a search of my property and the surrounding area. No one was in sight. Despite that, one of them pointed out something near the back door. Fresh [snorts] pry marks. It looked like someone had tried to wedge something under the lock. Probably a flathead or a pocket tool. I gave them my statement and connected it to what had happened earlier. They said patrols would be increased temporarily, but other than that, there was nothing they could do. As much as that answer dissatisfied me, I had no choice but to accept it and move on. I'd be lying if I said I slept soundly after that. But the next few nights passed without incident. I told myself there was no way that guy would return after getting the police called on him twice, and he didn't. But a few nights later, I woke up sometime after midnight to sirens. Police sirens. They weren't too close, but they were loud enough to rattle me awake. I got up and went to the window just in time to see three cruisers fly past my house with their sirens blaring. I was glad that it had nothing to do with me, but I was still curious nonetheless. I figured it was probably some unrelated domestic thing and just went back to bed. But not 20 minutes after I had fallen back asleep, I was woken up again. This time to knocking at my front door. I groggy got out of bed, walked over to the door and checked the peepphole. There were two uniformed officers standing on the porch. When I opened up, one of them asked if I recognized someone they just detained a few streets over. He held up his phone and showed me a photo. It was him. It was that guy from a few nights earlier, the one who had tried to break into my house. I emphatically confirmed it with audible shock in my voice. Apparently, he'd just been caught trying to break into someone else's house nearby. They had him in custody and figured there was a chance there was a tie to the call I had made earlier in the week. The officers told me I wouldn't have to worry about him anymore, and I thanked [music] them. That was the last I ever heard about it. They never followed up with me, and I never inquired. I was just happy to move on with my life and basically forget about the whole thing. I actually ended up moving out of that house shortly after that, mostly because I was going crazy, living in isolation. This happened just a few weeks ago, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. My name's Catherine and I'm a 24year-old law student about to start my second year at NYU. For anyone unfamiliar, first year is a nightmare. I don't think I slept more than 4 hours a night from September to May. So, when summer finally rolled around, I promised myself I'd enjoy it while I could. That meant going out a lot, especially on weekends. I was staying back home for the summer for a couple of reasons. It was easier on rent for one, and all my hometown friends were around as well. Plus, it gave me a nice sense of familiarity and return that you can only get from being at home. Most Saturdays, we ended up at the same handful of bars a couple towns over. There's one in particular that's always packed, and that's where I was with my friend Jackie the night everything went down. This is going to sound bad, but I have this habit of pretending to be kind of ditzy when I meet guys at bars. Nothing too over the top, just enough to let them assume things and assume things they do. I'm not sure if this has always been a dynamic surrounding nightife, but the guys at bars, at least the ones I interact with, seem to assume every girl they talk to is brain dead. I'm not a genius or anything, but I'm definitely not brain dead. And yet, somehow pretending to be dumb is kind of fun. I can't even really explain why I do it. I just think it's funny seeing how guys react. And I'll admit, there's something satisfying about flipping the script once I get bored of playing dumb. Jackie and I had just gotten our drinks, and we were scanning the crowd when these two guys slid into conversation with us. We later learned their names were Sebastian and Luke. They seemed pretty normal. Not immediately creepy, decent looking, confident, no readily apparent red flags either, which was always a good sign. Jackie seemed to click with Luke almost instantly, so I figured I'd stick it out and talk to Sebastian. He wasn't bad. Kind of charming, actually. We actually talked to them for a really long time, which was kind of shocking to me considering the vast majority of these bar encounters don't last more than 5 minutes. Jackie is not exactly what you'd consider a nice girl, so the fact that she wasn't closing herself off to conversation was saying something. At one point, she grabbed my arm and whispered that she needed the bathroom. As we were leaving, Sebastian asked if we wanted anything to drink. I told him we'd both have a rum and coke, which I opted for because it's a pretty standard drink that even a college bar bartender would have trouble screwing up. In the bathroom, Jackie admitted she was thinking of going home with Luke, preferably sooner rather than later. I was pretty shocked by the news, to be completely honest with you. I'm usually the one to make the poor spontaneous decisions, not her. I questioned why she was acting in such an uncharacteristic way, and she tried convincing me that Luke quote could be the one, which was obviously laughable, but I wasn't going to tell her that. Instead, I just shrugged. I wasn't particularly invested either way, but I figured if she was into it, I'd be a good friend and just go with the flow. As we were returning from the bathroom, I spotted the guys across the bar, they didn't seem to notice us. Interestingly, they weren't laughing or talking in the fun, relaxed way they had been before we left. Instead, they were just kind of standing there with blank faces. The closer I looked, the more it seemed like they were actually whispering, which was even stranger. For whatever reason, that little change in behavior gave me a really unsettling feeling that I couldn't shake. As soon as we got within a few feet of them, the energy shifted again. It was subtle, but I noticed. They both snapped right back into the casual bar vibe they had been sporting just a few minutes ago. Luke nudged two drinks toward us without saying much. I looked down. There were four drinks total, two Roman Cokes and two something else's. I couldn't really tell what the other drinks were, but based on the bright yellow color and the slushy looking liquid, one thing was for sure. They definitely didn't look like something most guys would order. I decided to take advantage of that. With as innocent a smile as I could muster, I pointed at the peculiar looking drinks and asked the guys what they were. Sebastian said they were pinina coladas, which was beyond random. I tilted my head and gave him a teasing look, trying not to make it too obvious that I thought something was up. In a playful voice, I said, "You know, I think these drinks might be too girly for you guys. I would hate for anyone to catch you sipping them." Before waiting for a response, I reached out and slid our rum and cokes across the table, replacing them with the frozen drinks. Then, I raised my glass and took a long, slow sip before giving Sebastian a little wink. Jackie caught on and grabbed the drink I pushed in front of her. She looked at me for a second, clearly confused, but she went with it. Sebastian stared at me for a long second with his eyes narrowed like he was sizing me up. Then he just left and said, "Touche." He started sipping the rum and coke and admittedly that put me at ease. Luke followed suit. We finished the drinks without incident. At that point, Jackie was being pretty obvious that she wouldn't mind leaving soon. Luke eventually took the hint, suggesting that we all go back to his place for a night cap. That's when I started feeling like everything was normal again. I didn't think it was likely that the guys would have invited us over if they suspected we knew something was up. We Ubered back to his apartment, which wasn't anything fancy, just a modest second floor unit in a small complex nearby. Inside, it was cleaner than I expected, but weirdly minimal. Like, there wasn't much furniture or decoration anywhere, almost like he had just moved in. Luke had some white claws in his fridge, so he kept the energy going by drinking those and playing some music on his TV. At first, everything seemed normal. There was no sign that anything was off whatsoever. In fact, it kind of seemed like the guys were starting to sober up, but that didn't last long. We couldn't have been there more than 20 minutes when things got strange again. The guys seemed to be getting progressively drunker really, really fast. They started slurring their words and laughing to themselves. And then just like that, the two of them fell asleep on the couch within minutes of each other. It was a pretty horrifying sight. My initial suspicion that they had messed with our drinks was proven right in front of our very eyes. Jackie was oblivious to what was going on, but I don't blame her. She was significantly drunker than I was. She rushed over to Luke and tried to slap him awake, but I pulled her back and told her to calm down. I asked her if she remembered me switching the drinks, then told her I thought it was because they might have done something to them. And it turned out I had been right. She looked at me with this shocked expression and then just said, "Oh my god." over and over and over again. The two of us just sat there for a few minutes trying to calm each other down and figure out what to do next. I wanted to just leave right then and there, get as far away from those guys as possible, but Jackie was determined to find some kind of incriminating evidence. We looked around a bit, but it's not like we're crime detectives. Plus, what exactly were we supposed to do? We weren't going to flip the place upside down looking for something we didn't even know was there. I told Jackie this and after a little persisting, I finally got her to leave it alone. We left not long after that. I think we were both still in shock. We never went to the police, not that night or the next morning. And at this point, we probably never will. I know that might sound irresponsible or even stupid, but we don't have any real evidence that they did anything sinister or illegal. There's also the possibility that they really had just gotten super drunk super fast, but I think it's unlikely, and so does Jackie. Either way, I don't think I've ever been closer to real danger. Why anyone would drug girls who are already willing to go home with them is a complete mystery to me. That makes me think they were planning something even worse, as if the situation wasn't already the kind that never has a happy ending. Also, and this is the part that confuses me and makes me doubt myself the most. Why the hell would they agree to let us go home with them if they knew they were hours away from passing out? I guess it's possible that they thought the drugs wouldn't affect them because of their bigger size, but I don't know. That might just be stupid. Also, why even bother taking the risk? I really can't begin to explain any of it. This is going to be something I think about regularly for a while. I know it's my own stupidity for letting someone else control my drink, but it's just crazy to think about what some people will do to get what they want.