While certain people actively pursue thrills by indulging in horror films, there are everyday folks with experiences so eerie that they could easily serve as the basis for a chilling screenplay. And these 9 hair-raising incidents we’ve compiled are sure to send a spine-tingling shiver down your back.

• When I was little I claimed to have an imaginary friend, who had light brown hair and wore a night gown, and she had stars for eyes. Well, my niece was living at my old childhood home, and she told me that she has a friend who misses me, and she asked why I went away. When I asked who, she described my old imaginary friend. It was super spooky. © StarDustAndLus / Reddit

• I went to see The Sixth Sense when it first came out with my wife. We had just moved into our new house, and my wife was pretty shaky when we came home. We didn’t have kids at this point. She insisted that I go through all of the rooms in the house to check for…who knows what.Being a dutiful husband, I eyerollingly went through all of the bedrooms, and was finishing up in the guest bathroom. The door was ajar, and I pushed it open…and heard, right next to my head, the loudest, most blood-curdling scream ever. Turns out that the cat was behind the door and somehow had its tail in the jamb—and when I opened it, it got pinched. © lobstah4 / Reddit

• One night, when I was 9, I decided to sneak downstairs after everyone at home was asleep to have something to eat from the fridge. I had to navigate the pitch dark house all the way downstairs in total darkness like a tiny ninja. All of a sudden, I heard a fork click on the counter. I froze. The microwave clock light showed the outline of a man sitting at our kitchen counter. He couldn’t see me, but I saw him: a skinny guy, eating our leftovers, and drinking our milk from the carton.I slowly backed away, crept upstairs, and woke up my mom and dad. They made way too much noise and took way too long, and by the time they got downstairs, the kitchen was empty. Everyone said I read too many horror comics so they blew off what I said. I started tracking the position of everything in the kitchen.One day the paper napkin holder was on the wrong side of the counter. Another day, a mug was in the sink that was NOT there the night before. Then one day, I was in my room reading when I looked up. There’s an A/C vent over my bed. Behind the vent, a pair of eyes were watching me. I freaked, so my parents searched our attic and the crawl space under our house. Nothing.Some time later, our house started to smell. The A/C people said something had probably crawled into our vents and died. Turns out what had crawled into our vents and died was the guy. We lived in an old house with lots of space between the walls and big ducts. He’d been living in them for months. He’d put a foam pad beside my bedroom vent so he’d be comfortable while he watched me. The police said he’d made lots of “drawings.” No one ever identified him. To this day, I can’t look inside the vents in houses. © grady_hendrix / Twitter

• I was 6 and remember playing in my room and my grandpa walks in and talks to me for a few minutes. After a bit he gets up and tells me to “be a good girl for mom”, kisses me on the forehead, and walks out. Mom comes in about 5 mins later hysterical and told me my grandpa had died overnight, and we had to leave to go be with the family two states over where he lived. © shayluhhh / Reddit

• I talked to a boy named Kevin when I was a child. He came to visit me at my window every night, and we would play in my bedroom. Sometimes he stayed in my house, too, instead of going back out the window. I very thoroughly described him to my parents before I grew up and no longer saw him. My brother and his family moved into our childhood home a few years back. Within the first month or so of living in my old bedroom, my 3-year-old niece described Kevin to my brother exactly. To a tee. We’ve never told her, or any of the other kids, about Kevin.Previous to that, when I still lived in that house, my older niece asked us who the little boy in the hall was. She was the only child present. The hall is about a three-foot space between my old bedroom and my brother’s old bedroom, and the bathroom. One space with three doorways. She was looking right into my room. © eegreck / Reddit

• I’d been living alone for less than a week. I got some Chinese take-out and was eating in front of the TV. I finished my meal and cracked open the fortune cookie. It read, “You will have a visitor tonight, lock your door.” There were no visitors that night, but the memory still haunts me. © captainklaus / Reddit

• When I was maybe 10 or 11, I went swimming with my grandma in her pool. I grabbed a pool noodle, jumped in with it, and submerged it. I blew on one end to make water come out the other, but instead a fountain of cockroaches erupted from it, spraying all over me, my grandma, and the pool. I had a panic attack and took an hour-long shower, sobbing all the while. © pineapple_warhorse / Reddit

• I woke up one night around 1am, heard the shower was on… I first thought it was my brother, he works night shifts, so thought he had come home late and was in the shower… It went on for about half an hour until I got up and went to see what he was doing…No one was in the shower, my brother wasn’t home yet, I was the only one in the house. Still to this day, I have no idea how it turned on or who did it. © designerlogic / Reddit

• My old co-worker had a son that was in his mid-thirties and he had a son named Hunter that was 4 or 5. She said that Hunter would have bad dreams and that he would sleep with his dad when he got scared. One night his dad woke up because he heard Hunter calling him. But he was calling him by his name, not ’dad’.So he went to his room and he was asleep. He woke him up and said “Hunter, you were calling me. Is everything okay?” And Hunter said, “Dad, when they call you, you’re not supposed to answer,” and fell back asleep. He asked him about it in the morning, but he said he didn’t remember saying it. © LumosTheNox / Reddit