Lawdy! I have to agree about those huge grasshoppers! I do live in Louisiana and every summer those HUGE black and yellow grasshoppers freak me out! They are the size of hummingbirds - they have to be! I swear you can see teeth. They look absolutely menacing.

I'm getting the creepy chills right now as I think about them.

The Country Home Family Dinning Room. It was a huge space - just the table held dinners for 50 (can you imagine? ;)) - and through centuries and generations it was filled with storage furniture (in dark tones, huge solid blocks of doors holding God Knows what (well, I do too - sugar, and other pantry supplies and tableware) and the walls covered with pictures of family members long gone. In all those serious expressions people had when they took a picture per year if even that. It didn't help that it was situated at the end of the house and above the wine cellar. Parties were ok but going there alone to pick something someone asked it was plain torture and my preparation for athletics ;)

Now I need a hug. Why did you ask? One never really outgrows children pains and scares LOL

Our Craftsman styled house, though small, had a butler's pantry between the kitchen and the dining room. There were swinging doors between the two rooms. It was dark and unused. It was just creepy. It was also where access to the attic was which had a ladder that would come down. The latch wasn't very secure and if we got a good wind, it would get in the attic and the access would creak open. Sometimes it would open and if you were passing through as the ladder was coming down by itself or find the ladder down, it could get a scream out of me. As much as I loved that house there was also a trap door in the closet of MY bedroom that led to the crawlspace under the house. I would always place boxes of books on top of it just to make sure no one could sneak up through there.

Basement stairs in my childhood home. I always felt like there was someone following me up the stairs out of the dark basement, but I was too scared to turn around and look!

My dad (for some reason?) had a taxidermied shark sitting under the billiards table upstairs at our house for years when I was a kid. The entire upstairs portion of the house is a game room and I’m the youngest in the family by far so I was often there alone. Nothing scared me while I was up there, even the shark...but omg the stairs on the way down to the living room at nighttime were terrifying to me! I imagined that there was a ghost/vampire version of the shark (can you imagine a vampire with all those teeth) that would swim through the air and chase me down the stairs to the safety of my room.

We lived in an upper flat in an old house so we had to go down many stairs in a dark hallway to get to the basement to do the laundry in a dark musty room with one bulb having over the wash tubs. My brother and I would wash clothes down there with an old wringer washer. When we would go back upstairs, my brother would rush ahead of me and turn out the lights as he went up just to taunt his younger sister (me). I used to have nightmares of rushing up dark stairs from a dark basement looking back to see if someone was chasing me.

So scared of behind the bathroom curtain. I wouldn't go in the bathroom by myself because my brothers told me "bloody Mary" lived there.

I'm 52 and leery of the basement and still have to sleep with the closet door closed. Oh, and still have to sleep with the covers around my neck. I blame Dark Shadows, Twilight Zone and Night Gallery. I also watch a lot of ghost/paranormal stuff on cable..... :( My Mom and Aunts used to dabble in the Quija Board. My Aunts had weird incidents later in life, my Mom, not. Knock on wood.......

I'm 52 and leery of the basement and still have to sleep with the closet door closed. Oh, and still have to sleep with the covers around my neck. I blame Dark Shadows, Twilight Zone and Night Gallery. I also watch a lot of ghost/paranormal stuff on cable..... :( My Mom and Aunts used to dabble in the Quija Board. My Aunts had weird incidents later in life, my Mom, not. Knock on wood.......

We had a backstairs that was in the older part of the house. Normally everyone used the front stairs. The back stairs had a window, was well lit, but just creepy. My cousins and I would dare each other to run up them. Later in life my mother related to me that a hired man back in Great Great Grandmother's time hung himself over those stairs...……

When I was a child (in the 40's) we had a sofa (called it a davano) that opened up into a bed. You had to lift the seat and then the top would fold down with the seat into a flat bed. Handy for guests. However, when you lifted the seat, it was hollow underneath and it reminded me of a coffin. I had nightmares that the sofa opened up and a scary voice said "come, come". I thought it would swallow me up like a coffin. Later, as an adult I had "old house" dreams where the 2nd and 3rd floors had a hallway running around the open middle and you could see over the banister all the way down to the first floor. The hallways opened into various rooms (bedrooms and a library) and some of them were haunted or had witches or demons hiding in them, so you had to avoid those rooms. Good thing I don't have those dreams anymore.

One corner of the Crawlspace. Particularly under the stairs. My brother had one time hid a Gremlin doll under the stairs with reflective tape on the eyes, so when i used the flashlight it would shine bright red and scare the heck out of me.

It was the basement. Our house had a center hall with a door to the basement stairs. It was bedtime and my parents were already in bed. I passed through the hall on my way to my bedroom and notice the basement light shinning under the crack at the bottom of the door. I told my father the light is on in the basement. He said turn it off. I opened the door and started down the stairs and got about half way down when I remembered my father had put in a two-way light0-switch at the top of the stairs the week before so we did not have to go down the stairs into the basement to the turn the light on/off. I went back up, turned the light off and closed the door and hooked the latch at the top of the door. The latch at the top was to prevent my little brother from opening the door and falling down the steps. I went to my room got in bed and immediately heard a loud banging noise which was the basement door being pulled hard and slamming at the bottom because the latch held it tight at the top. My father grabbed 2 guns, opened and yelled for the intruder to show himself. Of course the intruder had already left via the basement door to the outside. I was 15 years old but slept at the foot of my parents full-sized bed that night. We lived in a rural area surround by farms owned by grandparents, aunts and uncles. Nothing like this ever happened. The next day my father and uncles tracked the footprints across a field and to the main road. The foot prints were size 12 or bigger per my father. That was 52 years ago and to this day I cannot go into a basement alone.

Definitely the basement!! First because of the oil furnace, that made a weird noises and had a little flame that would reflect on the cement floor (I imagined it was a little hell with small people living in it...). Second was that stuffed howl with glass eyes which would follow you around... brrrr...

There was an airshaft in our city house that had a window above my bed. In order to get cool air in summer my parents insisted on that window being open. I was certain that someone (thing) would come down from the roof and get me - especially after listening to "Lights Out" or the FBI drama when the announcer would give a description of "a criminal" who was at large!

SCARY: The dark space between the roller blind and window frame in my bedroom at night. I thought a monster was out there, peeking at me. The dumb part is, I thought it was MOTHRA, from the eponymous film. Of all the movies that might have struck fear into my heart, it’s kind of embarrassing to think it was one about a mutated moth. Can anyone think of an insect less threatening than a moth?

For me it was the basement. My dad finished it off when I was about 9 or so, but I was convinced that there was at least one vampire down there. I was almost over it, playing down there one night, when I looked up and saw glowing eyes looking in at me from the window well. It turned out to be a muskrat that had fallen into the window well; Dad left him a piece of 2X4, and he was able to get out that way.

Elizabeth Ann, have you ever seen a hummingbird moth? I had one buzz around my head. Ugh!

My parents’ bedroom. It was located at the end of a long corridor. I was scared to go there at night because the corridor was very dark.

When I was about 9 or 10 years old, my family and I were watching a special on Alfred Hitchcock and they played the shower scene from Psycho...I have never closed my eyes in the shower since. Learned to wash my hair without the need to close my eyes!

I knew what lived under my bed, and I too took a running leap every night to avoid getting grabbed. My mother asked me once what I thought was under there and I lied and said it was an alligator. If I had told on it it would've come out. I've still never told anyone and never will. I still don't let a hand or foot hang over the edge of the bed at night, do you?

the basement stairs. always dark at the bottom.

@rljoy - :-) aww - keeping us all in suspense - lol! I have a friend who said the same thing - won't hang his hand over the side of the bed - I always wondered what I would do if I had that phobia: sadly, I have a circulation problem that requires about 15 to 20 minutes of 'hanging over the edge' most nights - nothing has ever grabbed my hands yet. :-)

Dark hallway when all the doors are (I mean WERE) shut.

Down in the basement over by the sump pump. No explanations needed :/ (well, I always thought I could fall into that small dark hole that looked like it could go on forever).

We were 5 people in a house with 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a living and a kitchen. There was no basement, no garage. There was no privacy, let alone any place scary!! 25' X 40' = 1000 square feet. And, we weren't allowed to watch too much TV, it signed off at 11pm.

A Native Floridian, so we didn't have basements. The closet was always so spooky at night. Especially the one at my grandparent's house. My brother and I stayed in the front bedroom that had twin beds. One of the beds was near a window and the small closet. We were not allowed to have a nightlight and my imagination went wild. They were always putting me back in bed because I would sneak across the floor to the bedroom door and quietly watch TV across the living room. Fear of the dark and the closet.

My bedroom window...after watching an episode of the Twilight Zone

My bedroom window...after watching an episode of the Twilight Zone!

We lived on the top floor of a house that had been turned into a duplex and from the kitchen was an old door with a skeleton key to open it. It was an old wooden staircase with a metal chair on a metal track with a rope pully system put in place to help a disabled person get up and down the stairs. Of course as an adult I think it was pretty cool they rigged this up before the handy electric stair chairs we have now. But as a kid that think freaked me out along with the story that an old lady died in that stairwell and her ghost still used it. So everytime I heard any creak in that house I freaked out! Luckily we only lived there a few months ... maybe it freaked my mom out too.

The long dark hallway at night. My room was at the very end and there was a french door to the outside back patio right before you got to my room. I couldn't look out it because I was afraid I would see someone staring back. Yet in the daytime, it was the greatest, my brother and I would run and slide in our socks on the hardwood floors because it was long enough to get a great start!

For me it was the old pump room in the basement. The houses where I grew up used to have pumps for their water. When city water came in, the pumps were never used, but of course that area was still there. We used to use the room which had a door on it to store vegtables. I hated when my Mom would ask me to get something from that room. It took me forever just to get up the courage to open the door to that dark and creepy room.

For me, it was the old pump room in our basement. We used to have pumps to get our water and when the city water came in, the pumps were never used again, but of course the room was still there. We used to store our vegetables from the garden in this small room which had a door. I hated when my mom would ask me to get something from this small dark creepy area. It took me forever just to open the door!!

Ha, at first I wasn't going to answer this, but just decided to. This is from recently, but I want to share. We live near the Civil War battlefields of west Cobb county, near Kennesaw Mountain. Out hiking one day up a wooded trail at the battlefield with my son -- it was a bright, sunny day -- I kept hearing these yells from the woods. We appeared to be the only ones around on this school vacation day, but voices sometimes carrry, so I kept expecting people to come out of the woods. At some point I was videoing my son and I asked him if he heard the yells and he answers yes. Later on (months later) I was watching this video and you can clearly hear the voice of a young boy, NOT my son, answer before him after I ask my question. The boy's voice on the video says, "Them soldiers is dead." And another, quite deep man's voice says, "Hear?" You can also make out, throughout the video, the sounds of what my husband says is similar to artillary fire. Husband is a Marine. I know there was no artillary fire on that quiet afternoon. What do you guys think? I believe there was someone there.

I was seven years old and my grandparents were visiting and keeping me and my three younger siblings while my parents were out of town. One night, Grandma told me to get my brother's pj's out of the dryer, so I went downstairs to the basement. It was large and unfinished, but did have walls roughed in, divided into several rooms. The washer and dryer were right by the back door (it was a walk out, built into a hill.) Normally, I wasn't afraid of the basement, but this time something was different. Once I got down there, I felt like I wasn't alone, like I was being watched. I felt my stomach tighten as I hastily found the pjs, turned the dryer back on and raced upstairs. Grandma laughed at me being spooked. A few minutes later, we settled down in the living room to watch tv. Suddenly, there was a slamming noise from the basement. Now, Grandpa was fussing at Grandma for being scared, as he went down to check things out. When he finally came back upstairs, he said the back door was open and the wind must have blown it wide open on its hinges. I KNEW THAT DOOR WAS CLOSED when I was down there! Grandma told me there was nothing to be afraid of, but the next day, I overheard the grownups talking. A man in the neighborhood, known for heavy drinking and criminal behavior, had been caught a couple of doors down and was being taken in for questioning by the police. I had nightmares and was afraid to go alone in the basement until we moved away from there.

We had relatives in Florida and I'd heard stories of the creatures they'd find in their bathrooms, ie, snakes that came up the toilet bowl from God-Knows-Where. From then on, I was horrified of toilets & would always check that nothing was in there before alighting on the seat, constantly jumping up to reaffirm that status during my visit. Thankfully, I grew out of that irrational fear.

However, not long after passing the Horror Of The Toilets, I encountered something that absolutely terrified me. About age 14 or 15, and filled with teenage angst, I was laying in my bed one night wide awake, quite alone in my room, when 'someone' sat on the end of my bed. I could very distinctly feel that section of the mattress sink down as though a significant weight was on it and even heard the accompanying squeak of the bed springs. I knew whatever it was, it most definitely was not human, not a living one at any rate. I was so freaked out that I pulled the covers over my head and with my eyes clenched tightly, prayed it would go away, determined to stay safely under my comforter even if it meant suffocating to death. Within moments, it obliged, and I both heard and felt the mattress lift up- this 'someone' had been sitting so close to my feet that I could feel something against the side of my right foot. How I didn't pee myself, I do not know. Afterwards, reflecting on it, I realized it was not an unfriendly 'someone', and I remember having the distinct feeling it was an older male. I have often wondered if it was my grandfather on my dad's side, who died of cancer before I was born. I get the feeling he knew I was an emotional trainwreck and was just checking up on me, to let me know he was watching out for me. Nevertheless, for some time, my bedroom was a very scary place.

Ibarmstring3378, I'll send you a dollar if you'll post that video to youtube. Yikes!!

This is a kick reading all these... Sorry if some are very serious, I get that! I was so afraid of the closet in my room growing up. I had the flu once and I woke up watching men filing out of the closet. They just single filed out of there and vanished. Scared me bad!! I called for mom and she said I was just having hallucinations from the flu and fever. I still do not know really why but it stayed with me. thats for sure. Still close my closet door before I go to bed.

Ha, I would not know how to post to YouTube. But since then I have become VERY interested in the military history of my area! Am learning a whole lot. I guess battlefields are big for these things (and my whole community was one). Guess I just stumbled onto something.

Ibarmstrong3378 Wow that is really something. I do believe things like that happen. Please get someone to post it for you or show you how. It would be a hit on YouTube.

ibarm - my children often say, "How did you even do that?" when I try things on the computer but I did manage to post a video on Youtube - so it is pretty easy. Set up an account (quick) and load your video like an attachment onto an email from what i remember. Then post the link to the video here. Bada bing!

The hallway leading to my bedroom. I had to go to bed at the same time Drag Net came on the television. The hallway had no lights. And that dum-dee-dum-dum theme at the beginning of the show scared me every time. I think that's why today, I like the theme from Law and Order so much. It's a similar sound.

Jackiepr, I once hallucinated (I guess) when I was sick with flu and a really high fever over 104... it’s just that I didn’t see it... but I woke up, still with eyes closed, but I started panicking because it FELT like all the skin and muscle was gone from one of my arms from the elbow down. I just KNEW that if I opened my eyes to look that I was just going to see a skeleton arm. I was terrified, almost in tears... it felt like many minutes passed before I finally worked up the courage to open my eyes and look at my arm. What a wave of relief that passed over me when I saw that my arm looked completely normal still! I had truly been convinced that it had all melted off down to the bone. Only thing I can think is that my arm had fallen asleep and I mistook the pins and needles feeling for something far more sinister in my fever induced state.
Of course, fever doesn’t explain the other incidents I witnessed in my bedroom periodically over the rest of my teenaged years... like the stint I went through where my alarm kept going off at odd hours, even though I was making sure it wasn’t set for those times! I really was making sure though because my mom had gotten upset with me for letting it blast on full volume because it woke my dad up early and he worked long hours. That went on for weeks it seemed then stopped as suddenly as it started, I never figured out what had been going on. And then there was this framed picture set my great grandparents had given to my sister and me... I had one in my room, she had the other... I never talked to my sister about it, but mine was a stitched picture of some Dutch looking kids spinning yarn or something... sometimes at night their arms would move just like they were really going through the motions of spinning it! It freaked me out, I hated those pictures... but for some reason I got the matched set. I’ve never hung them up in any of my houses, but I don’t know why I never got rid of them either. They’re stuck in a tote in my basement now, I don’t even like looking at them.

@milena5757 - That used to happen to me when I was a young teenager. But it was after our pet cat died that I used to feel it still jump up on the bed at night to sleep with me. It even used to need the covers like cats like to do. it only lasted for a little while and went away. Makes you wonder but I do think things like this happening are a side effect if you will of angst. For whatever reason when we are low or going through a really emotional time that's when "hallucinations" ,for lack of a better word, are visited on us.

OMG milena5757 My cat Katie passed away and every once in a while I feel her jumping up on the bed too. This when I'm awake... not asleep yet, and not even thinking about her. A few times I've actually turned on the light to see what is on my bed. Of course nothing.

Another rather weird occurrence, much more recent than the dead guy sitting on my bed in my teens, this one happened mid-summer of 2014. I was camped out in my travel trailer, on a friends farm while house hunting in the area. I was parked next to the big old barn & connected to it's power & water supply. For several nights, the smoke alarm started going off about 3am, every night like clockwork, for no reason- there was absolutely no smoke nor fire anywhere. I finally got so fed up with the damn thing waking me that I ripped it off the wall & gutted it- removed the batteries- to disarm it. It still went off the next night! I was pretty freaked out about that but what happened next made that pale in comparison. I had brought my pendulum with me and would 'ask' (the universe?) for an answer if I was on the right path in buying this particular property I was interested in, and had just made an offer on. The paperwork sat on the kitchen table. As I did my thing with the pendulum just before midnight, I found it very strange that, instead of swinging in it's normal counter-clockwise direction, it was veering wildly all over the place like it was possessed. I got angry at it and threw it down in disgust, then went to bed. A few hours later I was awakened by one of my dogs, sitting quite anxiously at the far side of the bed, rather than coming face-to-face to wake me as was normal, so that I had to look that direction. When I did, I noticed a weird orange glow in the trailer, and could hear popping sounds. I pulled out my ear plugs and was instantly engulfed in a deafening roar. Jumping out of bed, I went to open the blinds of the small emergency escape window by the bed, but instinctively knew I didn't need to see outside to know what was going on. The barn was on fire. At that moment, I heard a voice, clear as day, spoken to me directly inside my head rather than from outside into my ears, and it said, "RUN!!!" I grabbed a dog by the collar in each hand and we raced out of the trailer into the night towards the farmhouse. I stopped to look back when about 20 feet out of the trailer to see an enormous fireball about 50 ft high, only a few feet from where my head had been moments before. The trailer, along with the barn, was totally destroyed. Thankfully, I escaped with my dogs. The fire chief determined it was arson, one of over 20 set that summer. To this day, I wonder about a few things: what was going on with the smoke alarm going off for no reason at 3am every night? (that would be about the time the fire started). Why was my pendulum swinging like it was possessed? What made my little poodle cross rescue dog go to the far side of the bed, where the fires glow was visible behind her, rather than directly to lick my face as she normally did? And who yelled RUN at me, and not from without, but within, my head? I may never know the answers, but I am very grateful nonetheless. This is what was left of my trailer the next day, with the skeleton of a construction trailer directly behind, and the remains of the barn behind that- basically, ashes. A footnote: a few days later, I was sitting outside with the friends from the farm who had lost the contents of the barn, (no animals, just stuff), and their boss, and we all witnessed a very strange phenomenon: a balloon drifted across the field from the west, and stopped over the now cold site where the barn had stood. It dropped a few feet then hovered, slowly rotating as if on an unseen axis, then gently rose back up several feet, and turned to float off to the south. All of us who saw this agreed it was an impossibility.

Very eery Milena...and very thought provoking.

Right around the time I had my horrible sleep paralysis experience in 2016 that I hinted at in my original post above our smoke alarms also kept going off for weeks at a time at random hours. It disturbed me because they say electrical issues are a sign of paranormal activity and our units are physically wired into our electrics due to new building codes. We did not have a fire, thankfully. I also heard a voice directly in my head but it wasn't trying to save me. Just typing that has made me anxious. Your experience must have been quite harrowing.

Milena, did you buy that property you made an offer on, that the pendulum went crazy over? Anything strange since then?

Milena, so very glad you were all right. You had someone watching out for you, I think! And that reminds me...after Mom died five years ago my brother and I were the executors of her will. He was located in another state, so we talked regularly on the phone and one evening in the middle of a particularly tough conversation about another sibling's actions (unfortunately the family split on this) his kids started hollering at us to look at this balloon that had been stuck at the ceiling of his 20 foot family room for days. During the conversation the balloon had drifted down, through the kitchen, out into the foyer and about the time they all said, "If it goes and sits in Mom's chair I'm going to be freaking out." Well....it floated gently to the chair in his living room that had been Mom's favorite, the same chair his dogs often still sit next to for no reason. There is just no way it was random. So yes, I believe we definitely don't know all that's out there in the universe! Thanks for letting us vent all this Houzz. Who would've thought?!