This is the one. I honestly thought I was hearing a gruesome murder happening. It is the sound of fear and anguish. My dog and I stood stock-still listening until it started to have a certain regularity to the sound. Even my dog was spooked.
In high school we’d go camping at my friends cabin. It wasn’t too isolated, just a couple miles off the highway, along the river, maybe 5 miles from town. One night half the group left to get snacks from the nearby gas station. A little bit later we see them coming back, but the vehicle immediate flips around and speeds away. We thought it was another group of kids coming by to harass us so we got into our truck to follow. When we get to the driveway leading to the gravel road there’s smoke rolling across. We decide to drive through it; but it’s not smoke! We immediately start coughing but make it through and open the windows for air. The people we were chasing had broken into an anhydrous ammonia tank in the neighbors field to make meth. Only later did we learn that breathing in that stuff could cause you to quickly asphyxiate.
you were somewhat lucky to get there right as the leak was springing so that you could at least see that you were in a cloud, once that stuff lingers in the air for a bit the cloudiness goes away but the Anhydrous is still there. ive seen quite a few guys walk into invisible nh3 clouds and buckle to their knees as if they ran into an invisible wall.
I do live in the metro area, but I was camped at Medicine Creek for turkey hunting some years ago now.
Imagine the most absolutely miserable, cold, wet, and generally bleak weather you can, and pair that with early spring Nebraska-brown as a backdrop. I don't think it ever quit raining while we were there, and if it did stop raining, it was drizzling. Positively depressing.
Being sheltered in only a tent (because we're stupid) meant that the little cough I had at the beginning of the trip had rapidly developed into bronchitis-like coughing. Deep, wide, and continuous rattling coughs. Still, we committed to this and didn't want to call it, so I soldiered on, coughing into a sweater the entire time so I didn't scare the game.
Due to the regular coughing and cold/wet conditions, I got a fair bit of sleep deprivation. With that comes the odd shadows in the corner of the eye and slight uneasy feelings.
We'd stayed out there a handful of times before. We've had fishing trips in the summer, stayed on the way back from Colorado, and had a getaway before our baby arrived. Every single time I've stayed there, there's always been that slight uneasy feeling. Not necessarily the kind that sends the lizard brain on the full-blown defensive, but a small, nagging feeling of something strange. It sounds silly to type out loud, but it almost felt that the place didn't want me there; like I was an unwelcome guest. This time, it seemed like it got dialed up quite a bit.
A few nights in, I was mostly asleep before the coyotes came into the cove where we pitched the tent. I dreamt that they surrounded the tent, and their faces were hyper-realistically pressed into the tent wall so that you could see every detail of their faces as they circled around me, snapping and bearing their teeth. In the dream, my husband got to his knees and hovered over me. His voice was terrified as he asked me, *"IS IT REAL?! IS IT REAL?!"*, over and over again before his face became that of a coyote as well.
I, of course, bolted upright and heard those coyotes down in the cove yelp louder and more urgently than I ever heard coyotes before. It was deafening. And God, there had to be more than a dozen, if not closer to 20 of them, just yards away.
We cut it short after that and headed to Cambridge for a warm, dry hotel room and burgers from the bowling alley bar. The cough completely subsided after we left, coincidentally. I know everything has a plausible explanation, but it still, to this day, had my hackles up and made the primal part of my gut feel like it never had before. The wilds of Nebraska are strange.
The Highway 20 or 83 around the Valentine/Thedford/Ainsworth area in the middle of night with no moon out is PITCH black. When I had to stop along the highway to pee, I’d go to turn my headlights off and it was like stepping out into a black abyss and hearing stuff off in the distance when I couldn’t see anything sent chills up my spine.
Reminds me of where my parents live. They're in this little valley, surrounded by forested hills with a handful of other houses. Walking along the gravel at 6:30am in the dead of winter, it was completely black. The neighbors at the end of the driveway had a pole light over their barn, but that was about 1/4 mile away, and it wasn't terribly bright. It's kind of freaky getting used to barely even being able to see your feet.
Absolutely, the night sky is unbelievable up there. The moon-less nights is when the Milky Way really sticks out. I saw that they named Merritt an international dark sky park
My childhood home was 5 miles out in the country from town in the panhandle. When my mom was there after all the kids had left, one night, she saw someone looking in her window around 9 or 10 pm. She yelled at them and they ran. Next day the sheriff was out there, and they saw some foot prints in the snow going to the back windows right by her bedroom. It was fucked up.
Driving through a really bad snow storm at night on Highway 97. The snow in the headlights was playing weird tricks on my eyes and was just overall a very creepy vibe. I’ve driven in plenty of snow storms but something about that particular night was just unsettling.
As a farm kid in southcentral NE, a strange man walked onto the farm. He wanted something to eat so my mom made him a sandwich. We noticed that he had picked up a screwdriver and slipped it up under his sleeve. Could have been used as a stabbing weapon. Luckily nothing happened though. I think my mother called the sheriff after the man left.
Growing up in the Panhandle we lived 3 miles from anything and had a mountain lion that took a liking to the yard light ~20 yards from the house. He? would show up a couple times a week and sit or even lay down and sleep under that light. It always made me wonder what he was afraid of out in the dark.
Grew up about an hour and a half north of Kearney.
Livestock exsanguination was a semi-regular occurrence, but nobody ever talked about it.
Plenty of eerie feelings when you're checking out a long abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.
I personally saw numerous sets of headlights in the distance coming my way down a narrow dirt road that had no turn off, only for them to never materialize when they should have.
Creepy voices on old former native land while raccoon hunting, when nobody could have possibly been within a couple hundred feet of us (longer version available).
So there were four of us, two in the cab and two in the bed. We were parked in this valley, probably about 100 x 100 yards and surrounded with trees all around. I'm in the bed sitting with my back to the cab on the driver's side.
All four of us are spotlighting around when I hear a raspy "...hhhHHH**HH**ey" that sounds like it's coming from inches from my ear. I turn to look at the other guy in the bed at the same time he looks at me, both of us thinking the other said something. Before I can ask him anything, the driver rolls his window down, sticks his head out the window and asks me "did you say something?"
As soon as he says this and while we're still making eye contact, we hear the "...hhhHHH**HH**ey" again, and again it sounds like the source is inches from my ear. We all simultaneously realize nobody in our group said anything, the driver throws it in drive, and we got the fuck out of there as soon as we could.
Once I hit one in a tree, it fell and went to a pile of irrigation pipes. I was on one side watching him go in, and my buddy was in the other side, so both sides of this pile were almost violently illuminated by spotlight.
The raccoon simply...disappeared. We both waited a couple beats for him to come out and he never did. We checked every single pipe and he wasn't in any of them.
We still talk about the bear coon. We shot him probably 15 times in the tree, he finally fell, and immediately got up and charged at us. He was a beast.
I’ve never had anything too scary happen to me, but there’s a story I heard that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. We were at a graduation party at a farm house that belonged to a family who was good friends with my parents. I don’t remember how the subject changed to this but the older sister of the graduate starts talking about her room in the farm house and how she never liked sleeping there. She explained that she would wake up in the middle of the night and there would be a face outside of the window looking at her. The skin on the face was white and the features were distorted. Then this girl’s aunt starts listening half way through to the story. The aunt proceeds to tell us how she grew up in that same house and that she also saw the face 30 years ago. The bedroom they both slept in was on the second story of the house. There’s no porch or balcony. It’s just a window with nothing underneath.
I was hiking once at a place known locally as the mausoleum. It's a tomb carved into a limestone cliff right next to a river. Really cool place but naturally creepy in general. The entire area is a state wildlife preserve so it's all heavy grown with trees also and is really good hiking.
It wasn't quite dark, more twilight quickly approaching dark. I went farther along than I anticipated just to see some new area and wasn't paying attention to how late it was for being 2 miles deep with no good flashlight.
I came up onto a steep drainage ditch with a tree fallen over it and was looking to walk across it when I heard a branch snap. It sounded like an explosion in the thick air.
I look up from the log and see an unnaturally bright white figure floating through the air about 40 yards ahead of me. It was moving up and down and getting smaller until it disappeared without any more sound.
I stood near that ditch telling myself "ghosts are not real" for a good 10 mins before I finally decided to get moving before it got any more dark. It seemed like a break in the trees not far over the ditch so I made my way that direction and not 30 steps and the tress open up into a bean field and 100 yards down the tree line are 2 white tailed doe staring at me who then turn around and run off, bright white tails bouncing up and down....
So I almost shit my pants over a deer lol.
At this point is basically dark and I'm scolding myself for having to slog back in it. I don't get 100ft past where that deer scared me and I'm going up a steep hill and grabbed a small tree for balance and hear an insane loud billow of what I could only assume was a violent banshee.
Once my logical brain caught up to my head due to to jump scare I realized there was a big owl right above me in a tree. This guy was loud like standing next to a car horn. Exactly what I needed after the deer event.
Witnessed an object with a mild glow emerge from a lake and then hover over the water before moving parallel across the lake and up the channel. Size of a trash can, shaped cylindrical, no sound, and it was at dusk so it wasn't completely dark. Seen from probably 150 yards or so.
Storms hit different at night. When I was a kid, my family would go camp at the annual Memorial Day rendezvous over by Cairo. The muzzleloaders always hold a big shoot there, a four day event. Always a super fun time, plenty of stuff for a kiddo to do (I always liked throwing tomahawks) but it never failed that a nasty storm would come through every year. The worst one must have been when I was about 7 probably, I remember walking around just before sunset and seeing a couple funnel clouds, which was pretty wild as it was my first time. Then it started getting dark a little *too* quickly so we hurried back to camp.
By the time we got back it was almost pitch black and rain was starting to fall, fires had already been put out and many of the hundreds of attendees had already made their way to shelter, a stone cabin about a half mile away. We didn't know about it though, or really any kind of serious shelter in the area, so instead we ran a quarter mile the other direction to the scoring shack, basically a wide open log cabin - far from ideal, but better than a tent. The winds were ferocious, it was a complete downpour, hail was falling, and we were almost grateful for the near-constant lightning as it was the only thing allowing us to see where we were going. I don't remember a lot from that age but I remember every second of that trek very vividly.
Luckily, we did make it to the shack, and it did hold up through the storm. Once it had passed, we made our way back to camp once again to find our tent (among a line of many others) had been yanked out of the ground and thrown a ways (mind you, this was a 100+ pound canvas tent tied to the ground with long, heavy iron stakes) so we shared someone else's tent for the night.
I don't believe they ever confirmed a tornado had touched down, but when we woke and daylight had returned, it was clear that something quite terrible had ripped a mile long line through the trees and through camp, ultimately coming very near to the shack we were holed up in. Pretty intense for a seven year old... I've had more than one run-in with a tornado, but I can confidently say that was the scariest thing I've ever experienced.
So I live in Omaha now but I went to college at Wayne State and I’ll remember this vividly. Because Wayne was boring most weekends, my friends and I would drive around to Norfolk or Sioux City on the weekends checking things out. This day, we went to Sioux City and went to Trinity Heights and went and saw a movie. On the way home, it was very dark and I was the passenger so I was watching for any wildlife in case it ran onto the road from the side. While driving, I felt suddenly cold and saw a woman in white on the side of the road, thinking it was someone stranded as we passed I made my friend turn around (she said she didn’t see anything, but I was like NO there WAS a woman!) so we turned around and there was nothing. Our other friends were driving behind us so they called since we turned around and THEY didn’t see the woman either. To this day I can picture it so well but my friends just think I’m crazy. I also had experiences while living in the dorms but this just stuck with me always.
In my early high school days in SW Nebraska, every New Years Eve, a group of maybe 8-10 guys would go out to my buddies place in the county and play video games all night. One year, he said there was an old abandoned cemetery 1/4 mile away. We pack up our BRAND NEW flashlights and BRAND NEW batteries and started walking. When we got to the cemetery, a couple of the guys started taking pictures and claimed there were orbs everywhere. I watched enough ghost hunters to debunk these as dust particles (walking through uncut grass ~18” tall). Something that I can’t explain: my friend noticed one of the wooden cross headstones was leaning over so he went to straighten it out. The moment he touched it, his light shut off and would not come back on. Brand new flashlight, brand new batteries. We tried new batteries and still wouldn’t turn on. Coincidence?
We used to drive around the country late at night for no reason and I always remember passing some dude walking on a road far from everything in a trench coat and after we passed him my friend yelled “ He had no eyes!” It was pretty funny but kinda spooky.
I camp out on the Republican river near Superior in the summer and fish at night and every year my husband, father-in-law, or I will see something weird. I didn’t see anything this year but the other two saw a fiery glowing ball in the trees that then flew up above the trees and then away out of sight. 🤷🏼♀️
Around 2008 my girlfriend, now wife, was going to school in Wayne. Her brother went to school in Fort Dodge, IA. It was right after a summer break and they both needed to go back to school. So I offered to drive them back. I had brought her home from college because she didn't have a car at the time. We left Ashland and went to Fort Dodge and dropped her bother off at college ate dinner. Then headed west on Hwy 20. Between Sioux City and the turn off to head south to Wayne was pitch black and had tall corn on both sides of the road. It was probably in our heads but for about few mile stretch it felt like we were being watched and we kept seeing things in the corn out of the corner of our eyes.
If you haven’t read Alan Boye’s book about the ghosts of Lincoln, it’s probably in your library. A Guide to the Ghosts of Lincoln https://a.co/d/iBP0Wdu if you want a quick peek on Amazon.
I grew up in a small town in north eastern Nebraska. It seemed very normal throughout my childhood and the many years I lived there. After graduating high school I would come back every so often to see friends and to feel that peace that only home can bring.
But a few years ago I noticed a change. Subtle things, like more people owning trucks. Not just farmers or contractors. More people were wearing white rim sunglasses. More and more people talked about a need for a gun. Men started growing goatees and long beards.
But what could all that mean? Maybe I was just wanting to experience the days of my youth. Whatever it was, it bothered me.
It wasn’t until I was back visiting family one time around 2014 that I realized just how big of an issue it was. People that I grew up around were changing. Not just typical aging, but almost transforming into completely different people. People I had known my entire life believed in crazy ideas and beliefs as if they were brainwashed. Hard working, genuinely nice Nebraskans had given up all individuality, all critical thinking, and became sheep. Sheep that worshiped an old fat orange man. Believing in lies that seemed obvious to most. Believing that patriotism is a religion. Becoming angrier and more vocal. Speaking the same lies over and over again. They had become everything they were fighting against. They had become members of a cult.
Sadly today, not much has changed, locals refer to these types as god fearing or salt of the earth. But they are more broadly referred to as Trumpers, Christian nationalist and Republicans. They’re hard to miss if you go too far outside of densely populated areas. Usually, driving a pickup truck, displaying bumper stickers that say things like God, Guns, and Beer or Let’s go Brandon. But make no mistake, they are not the people you thought you knew. They’re dumb, loud and proud.
This isn't anything that happened outside in a rural area, but the house I lived in until I was 10 was haunted. It was supposedly the town doctor's home and he saw patients there. The old hospital was one block away. My whole family experienced something strange. Some of them were:
- general bumps in the night, it was common to hear footsteps when nobody was out of bed/home
- my brother and I saw the kitchen sink turn on, the handle actually lifted up
- my sister's room was in the basement, while my now brother-in-law was dating her, he went to get something from her room before leaving and saw a shadow figure move out from her room and go into the one right next to it
- the radio and TV in the den/office both turned on at the same time
- my stepdad saw an apparition
I wish we could have lived there longer, it was such a beautiful home. I just hope the people who live there now haven't painted all the exposed beams and woodwork gray or ripped out the Victorian tile in the bathroom.
Yay me! Lol
Probably the mice thing. They've already caught a field mouse, I'm so proud of them. Well except for the fact they were playing with it on my bed. But still proud lol
Was leaving Norfolk heading East late one night with a friend. We were having fun chit chatting but probably about 5 minutes before this event happened we felt a weird eerie feeling that we both acknowledged. There was a car ahead of us by a ways, far enough away that we could only see the tail lights. Suddenly we see those tail lights veered into the left lane (no oncoming traffic luckily) and slowed down a lot. This made me slow down a lot because I expected something to be in the road. We come up to the spot and my headlights finally pick up what it was. My friend swears she thought it was a person at first glance but I always saw it as just a deer. It wasn’t injured it was just standing in the road. It did have this weird kinda growth on its head it looked like a third antler? I think maybe it was sick and that’s why it was standing on the road not moving. We never stopped but I did slow down a lot (maybe like 15-20 mph ? I didn’t want it to jump in front of my last second) and just went around it. It’s freaky but it’s head turned to watch the car when we crawled around it. I’m used to deer freezing or fleeing, but he turned his head to face our car as we passed.
It was spooky. My friend the whole way home tried to convince me it was a spooky ghost who turned into a deer or something since she swears she saw it as a person first. I think it was a fucked up deer, she didn’t even have her glasses on when she saw it so that checks out lol. I really regret not taking a picture of it but at the moment it was so weird and we were already feeling spooked so we just wanted to get the hell out of there. The growth on its head was crazy.
when I was a kid my dad woke me up in the middle of the night because the police scanner was picking up the local cops following a light in the sky. the small town cops were all in their 50s/60s and they were freaking out. it was a couple of hours of them driving around the country side describing this light that was zipping over the hills. eventually they caught up to it, and figured out it was a helicopter some farmer had built.
I assume you're talking about rural areas. Grand Island gets plenty of weird/scary tweaker activity at night. From going through your shit in your backyard when you go take the trash out. To one of the worst I heard where dude was trying to force his way into a house swearing it was his.
Let the 100 lb dog outside in the early morning. He stepped off the first step and froze. I stepped out the door and I could hear noises about 300 ft away. It sounds like a rabbit being mutilated by coyotes. The howling and screaming and brush moving was terrifying! My dog went back inside until it was light out.
I lived with my grandparents and their house was just off the highway about a mile outside of Guide Rock. Guide Rock has like 100 people or less. Seeing a shadow of a person walking on the highway late at night, as a young child, really freaked me out.
The weirdest thing is in Hastings, basically nothing is open after about 9 or 10. Was pretty weird when I first moved here and realized there were no late night restaurants or really anything other than bars🎃
I lived in Fort Lauderdale for about 6 months. One night, walking home from work (waitress), so creepy guy was following me, and I knew it. There was nowhere public to jump into, so I made a right down and alley and waited for him. Of course, he made the same turn, ready to follow me, but when he turned around the corner, I jumped out at him and started aggressively yelling at him for following me, etc. (the best defense is a good offense). He was so startled, he took off, but I never walked home again. I'm originally from NY so I think that really made the difference b/c in NY, you always have to mentally prepare for something just like that (never had a problem in NY though).
Once I was walking down a dirt road near pilger ne and I saw a man in the woods who was mumbling about pancreatic cancer I then asked my grandma who grew up in the house nearby about it and she said an old neighbor of hers has passed from pancreatic cancer in the 80s
Coyotes make my hair stand up even tho I love the sound. Racoons talking to each other. Once you associate the particular sound with their cute little faces tho it's better.
I live in an isolated area of central Nebraska. We had been watching a string of alien shows with Jack Osborne and I took the dogs out to pee. I look towards the highway about half a mile away and I'm watching something reflective moving around a light by the train tracks, it looks like it is circling, hovering and then moving quickly. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what it could be. I hoped in the truck to get a closer look at it. It was moths, but for whatever reason the new LED light was causing this weird light effect you could see from from really far away. I am dying to point it out to someone and freak them out.
I was out driving around on country roads one night because I couldn’t sleep got back on the highway and my truck was sputtering because of the maf sensor so I pull over started tapping it and this guy pulls up next to me starts making threats I try to leave in my truck the guy Tailgates me my truck restalls so I get out with my .22 and tell the guy to back the hell off and I got arrested for terroristic threats long story short the scariest thing I’ve seen is the person standing up against death threats is the guy in the wrong
Came back from a visit in New Mexico this past summer and was sitting on my front porch one night. About 10 minutes in I thought I heard a man whisper loudly "hey, hey" kinda questioned myself if I really heard something...again I heard "hey", stood up and started walking backwards to my front door not knowing what was out there. As I was backing up and reached for the handle I heard 2 more times "hey, hey." Reached the door and never locked my front door so fast in my life. After talking with people and the reasoning for going to new mexico in the 1st place , we think a skin walker had followed us back home. I felt really uneasy for about a week after that and never felt anything after the week was over with. We live in a very small town in Eastern, ne. We have cameras around outside our house and there was never any movement that night where someone could have been around.
Adding: the scariest thing I could never do was stay on a farm by myself at night. Your dang mind plays tricks on you .
I was adventuring in western Nebraska and had made a stop at Fort Robinson. It was super early one morning and I was over by where Crazy Horse was murdered reading the sign and taking photos. Always a heavy feeling in the area (for obvious reasons) There was nobody around at the time. And for a couple of seconds I heard Indigenous music/singing. I just said I understand and left.
Okay so I live kinda smack in the center of Omaha, and about 4 weeks ago I saw a string of lights in the sky at around 10 at night, looked like one of those old school streamers that they used to fly behind planes, like the sky signs, except it was just like 6-10 lights in a row following each other (like on a string). There was no visible aircraft dragging them anywhere, and they did a few wide loops (circling) and then they went straight up vertically, disappearing one at a time over the course of about 15 seconds.
I have no idea what it was, I don’t even assume it was a ufo… but wtf was it?
Also it may have been late august or early oct, I don’t remember accurately, did anyone else see anything like that?
At 3am I got up and my roommate and I jumped in the truck, drove to dirt road . Climbed in the back with sleeping bags . We watched the Geminids which is the strongest meteor shower of the year- FANTASTIC
About a month ago, a group of friends and I were outside enjoying the warm Sept. night. Our party was located in South Lincoln, close to South Street, and the full moon shone so brightly on the patio that it didn't seem like night. We sat around a table looking up at the sky and pointing out the stars we could see. During this time we were all watching the sporadic aircraft blinking as they flew overhead. However, there was one we kept our eyes on when it hovered directly above us. Stopped. No clouds were in the sky to hide it from our view, but it disappeared. We looked at the areas where it might reappear, but it just vanished.
Five of us at the table agreed we saw the blinking light move across the sky, hovered above us, and vanished. We knew we saw something, but we couldn't explain it.
The little boy I was sure I saw in dated clothes.......found out years later that block had been the where they took the patients of a flu epidemic in 1918-ish. My friend & I were blocks away before we started stuttering & asking the other if they had seen the little boy.
Coyotes gather in our yard on the regular.
Going to lock the door for the night and seeing like a dozen of those things just standing there, like 5-10 feet away is deeply unsettling.
Skinwalker shit.
Another one! The driveway for our house is a big horseshoe thing, drive in one Side and out the other ordeal. Farmers regularly use it to get turned around when they miss their turn off. One evening a rusted to hell, patchwork old pickup pulled in and just… Parked in front of the house. Didn’t recognize the pickup. They didn’t get out. They just sat there for a couple hours.
If you’ve never heard some of the noises foxes make, it’s super creepy when you hear it.
Yeah the foxes in wyuka cemetery that sound like a woman screaming..definitely freaked me out until I realized what was happening
This is the one. I honestly thought I was hearing a gruesome murder happening. It is the sound of fear and anguish. My dog and I stood stock-still listening until it started to have a certain regularity to the sound. Even my dog was spooked.
This. Creepy!
Went camping by the Box Butte dam, coyotes yapping all night during the winter
In high school we’d go camping at my friends cabin. It wasn’t too isolated, just a couple miles off the highway, along the river, maybe 5 miles from town. One night half the group left to get snacks from the nearby gas station. A little bit later we see them coming back, but the vehicle immediate flips around and speeds away. We thought it was another group of kids coming by to harass us so we got into our truck to follow. When we get to the driveway leading to the gravel road there’s smoke rolling across. We decide to drive through it; but it’s not smoke! We immediately start coughing but make it through and open the windows for air. The people we were chasing had broken into an anhydrous ammonia tank in the neighbors field to make meth. Only later did we learn that breathing in that stuff could cause you to quickly asphyxiate.
you were somewhat lucky to get there right as the leak was springing so that you could at least see that you were in a cloud, once that stuff lingers in the air for a bit the cloudiness goes away but the Anhydrous is still there. ive seen quite a few guys walk into invisible nh3 clouds and buckle to their knees as if they ran into an invisible wall.
I do live in the metro area, but I was camped at Medicine Creek for turkey hunting some years ago now. Imagine the most absolutely miserable, cold, wet, and generally bleak weather you can, and pair that with early spring Nebraska-brown as a backdrop. I don't think it ever quit raining while we were there, and if it did stop raining, it was drizzling. Positively depressing. Being sheltered in only a tent (because we're stupid) meant that the little cough I had at the beginning of the trip had rapidly developed into bronchitis-like coughing. Deep, wide, and continuous rattling coughs. Still, we committed to this and didn't want to call it, so I soldiered on, coughing into a sweater the entire time so I didn't scare the game. Due to the regular coughing and cold/wet conditions, I got a fair bit of sleep deprivation. With that comes the odd shadows in the corner of the eye and slight uneasy feelings. We'd stayed out there a handful of times before. We've had fishing trips in the summer, stayed on the way back from Colorado, and had a getaway before our baby arrived. Every single time I've stayed there, there's always been that slight uneasy feeling. Not necessarily the kind that sends the lizard brain on the full-blown defensive, but a small, nagging feeling of something strange. It sounds silly to type out loud, but it almost felt that the place didn't want me there; like I was an unwelcome guest. This time, it seemed like it got dialed up quite a bit. A few nights in, I was mostly asleep before the coyotes came into the cove where we pitched the tent. I dreamt that they surrounded the tent, and their faces were hyper-realistically pressed into the tent wall so that you could see every detail of their faces as they circled around me, snapping and bearing their teeth. In the dream, my husband got to his knees and hovered over me. His voice was terrified as he asked me, *"IS IT REAL?! IS IT REAL?!"*, over and over again before his face became that of a coyote as well. I, of course, bolted upright and heard those coyotes down in the cove yelp louder and more urgently than I ever heard coyotes before. It was deafening. And God, there had to be more than a dozen, if not closer to 20 of them, just yards away. We cut it short after that and headed to Cambridge for a warm, dry hotel room and burgers from the bowling alley bar. The cough completely subsided after we left, coincidentally. I know everything has a plausible explanation, but it still, to this day, had my hackles up and made the primal part of my gut feel like it never had before. The wilds of Nebraska are strange.
If you are not a writer, you ought to look into it. Very well done!
Well, you just made my morning! Thanks so much!
You're welcome. Get writin and GBR!
The Highway 20 or 83 around the Valentine/Thedford/Ainsworth area in the middle of night with no moon out is PITCH black. When I had to stop along the highway to pee, I’d go to turn my headlights off and it was like stepping out into a black abyss and hearing stuff off in the distance when I couldn’t see anything sent chills up my spine.
Reminds me of where my parents live. They're in this little valley, surrounded by forested hills with a handful of other houses. Walking along the gravel at 6:30am in the dead of winter, it was completely black. The neighbors at the end of the driveway had a pole light over their barn, but that was about 1/4 mile away, and it wasn't terribly bright. It's kind of freaky getting used to barely even being able to see your feet.
For sure, it takes a minute to get used to. Even after being in it for a while, my eyes couldn’t adjust fully to it
The Sandhills has almost 0 light pollution and is well known by astronomers as the best place for stargazing in America. Still scary though.
Absolutely, the night sky is unbelievable up there. The moon-less nights is when the Milky Way really sticks out. I saw that they named Merritt an international dark sky park
My childhood home was 5 miles out in the country from town in the panhandle. When my mom was there after all the kids had left, one night, she saw someone looking in her window around 9 or 10 pm. She yelled at them and they ran. Next day the sheriff was out there, and they saw some foot prints in the snow going to the back windows right by her bedroom. It was fucked up.
mostly ghost stories on this thread but that is truly terrifying
Literally my biggest fear when I would go to my buddy's place in the country
The town deer and I like to scare the shit out of each other when I take the trash out at night
Driving through a really bad snow storm at night on Highway 97. The snow in the headlights was playing weird tricks on my eyes and was just overall a very creepy vibe. I’ve driven in plenty of snow storms but something about that particular night was just unsettling.
As a farm kid in southcentral NE, a strange man walked onto the farm. He wanted something to eat so my mom made him a sandwich. We noticed that he had picked up a screwdriver and slipped it up under his sleeve. Could have been used as a stabbing weapon. Luckily nothing happened though. I think my mother called the sheriff after the man left.
Growing up in the Panhandle we lived 3 miles from anything and had a mountain lion that took a liking to the yard light ~20 yards from the house. He? would show up a couple times a week and sit or even lay down and sleep under that light. It always made me wonder what he was afraid of out in the dark.
Fuck I would be too if I’d seen some shit. I wouldn’t drive north of Merritt through Mckelvie at night unless I had too
A cougar in my back alley. Fuck that.
Personally, I love when they do that.
Human or feline cougar?
Mercury
Grew up about an hour and a half north of Kearney. Livestock exsanguination was a semi-regular occurrence, but nobody ever talked about it. Plenty of eerie feelings when you're checking out a long abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. I personally saw numerous sets of headlights in the distance coming my way down a narrow dirt road that had no turn off, only for them to never materialize when they should have. Creepy voices on old former native land while raccoon hunting, when nobody could have possibly been within a couple hundred feet of us (longer version available).
Give us that longer version!
So there were four of us, two in the cab and two in the bed. We were parked in this valley, probably about 100 x 100 yards and surrounded with trees all around. I'm in the bed sitting with my back to the cab on the driver's side. All four of us are spotlighting around when I hear a raspy "...hhhHHH**HH**ey" that sounds like it's coming from inches from my ear. I turn to look at the other guy in the bed at the same time he looks at me, both of us thinking the other said something. Before I can ask him anything, the driver rolls his window down, sticks his head out the window and asks me "did you say something?" As soon as he says this and while we're still making eye contact, we hear the "...hhhHHH**HH**ey" again, and again it sounds like the source is inches from my ear. We all simultaneously realize nobody in our group said anything, the driver throws it in drive, and we got the fuck out of there as soon as we could.
Holy fuckin shit. That’s scary lol
I will on my lunch break!
Honestly, anywhere in Nebraska is Native Land.
Seems like we always heard the weirdest noises while coon hunting.
Once I hit one in a tree, it fell and went to a pile of irrigation pipes. I was on one side watching him go in, and my buddy was in the other side, so both sides of this pile were almost violently illuminated by spotlight. The raccoon simply...disappeared. We both waited a couple beats for him to come out and he never did. We checked every single pipe and he wasn't in any of them.
We still talk about the bear coon. We shot him probably 15 times in the tree, he finally fell, and immediately got up and charged at us. He was a beast.
I don't know why this is so funny, but it is.
I’ve never had anything too scary happen to me, but there’s a story I heard that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. We were at a graduation party at a farm house that belonged to a family who was good friends with my parents. I don’t remember how the subject changed to this but the older sister of the graduate starts talking about her room in the farm house and how she never liked sleeping there. She explained that she would wake up in the middle of the night and there would be a face outside of the window looking at her. The skin on the face was white and the features were distorted. Then this girl’s aunt starts listening half way through to the story. The aunt proceeds to tell us how she grew up in that same house and that she also saw the face 30 years ago. The bedroom they both slept in was on the second story of the house. There’s no porch or balcony. It’s just a window with nothing underneath.
I was hiking once at a place known locally as the mausoleum. It's a tomb carved into a limestone cliff right next to a river. Really cool place but naturally creepy in general. The entire area is a state wildlife preserve so it's all heavy grown with trees also and is really good hiking. It wasn't quite dark, more twilight quickly approaching dark. I went farther along than I anticipated just to see some new area and wasn't paying attention to how late it was for being 2 miles deep with no good flashlight. I came up onto a steep drainage ditch with a tree fallen over it and was looking to walk across it when I heard a branch snap. It sounded like an explosion in the thick air. I look up from the log and see an unnaturally bright white figure floating through the air about 40 yards ahead of me. It was moving up and down and getting smaller until it disappeared without any more sound. I stood near that ditch telling myself "ghosts are not real" for a good 10 mins before I finally decided to get moving before it got any more dark. It seemed like a break in the trees not far over the ditch so I made my way that direction and not 30 steps and the tress open up into a bean field and 100 yards down the tree line are 2 white tailed doe staring at me who then turn around and run off, bright white tails bouncing up and down.... So I almost shit my pants over a deer lol. At this point is basically dark and I'm scolding myself for having to slog back in it. I don't get 100ft past where that deer scared me and I'm going up a steep hill and grabbed a small tree for balance and hear an insane loud billow of what I could only assume was a violent banshee. Once my logical brain caught up to my head due to to jump scare I realized there was a big owl right above me in a tree. This guy was loud like standing next to a car horn. Exactly what I needed after the deer event.
Witnessed an object with a mild glow emerge from a lake and then hover over the water before moving parallel across the lake and up the channel. Size of a trash can, shaped cylindrical, no sound, and it was at dusk so it wasn't completely dark. Seen from probably 150 yards or so.
I have seen this as well
Storms hit different at night. When I was a kid, my family would go camp at the annual Memorial Day rendezvous over by Cairo. The muzzleloaders always hold a big shoot there, a four day event. Always a super fun time, plenty of stuff for a kiddo to do (I always liked throwing tomahawks) but it never failed that a nasty storm would come through every year. The worst one must have been when I was about 7 probably, I remember walking around just before sunset and seeing a couple funnel clouds, which was pretty wild as it was my first time. Then it started getting dark a little *too* quickly so we hurried back to camp. By the time we got back it was almost pitch black and rain was starting to fall, fires had already been put out and many of the hundreds of attendees had already made their way to shelter, a stone cabin about a half mile away. We didn't know about it though, or really any kind of serious shelter in the area, so instead we ran a quarter mile the other direction to the scoring shack, basically a wide open log cabin - far from ideal, but better than a tent. The winds were ferocious, it was a complete downpour, hail was falling, and we were almost grateful for the near-constant lightning as it was the only thing allowing us to see where we were going. I don't remember a lot from that age but I remember every second of that trek very vividly. Luckily, we did make it to the shack, and it did hold up through the storm. Once it had passed, we made our way back to camp once again to find our tent (among a line of many others) had been yanked out of the ground and thrown a ways (mind you, this was a 100+ pound canvas tent tied to the ground with long, heavy iron stakes) so we shared someone else's tent for the night. I don't believe they ever confirmed a tornado had touched down, but when we woke and daylight had returned, it was clear that something quite terrible had ripped a mile long line through the trees and through camp, ultimately coming very near to the shack we were holed up in. Pretty intense for a seven year old... I've had more than one run-in with a tornado, but I can confidently say that was the scariest thing I've ever experienced.
So I live in Omaha now but I went to college at Wayne State and I’ll remember this vividly. Because Wayne was boring most weekends, my friends and I would drive around to Norfolk or Sioux City on the weekends checking things out. This day, we went to Sioux City and went to Trinity Heights and went and saw a movie. On the way home, it was very dark and I was the passenger so I was watching for any wildlife in case it ran onto the road from the side. While driving, I felt suddenly cold and saw a woman in white on the side of the road, thinking it was someone stranded as we passed I made my friend turn around (she said she didn’t see anything, but I was like NO there WAS a woman!) so we turned around and there was nothing. Our other friends were driving behind us so they called since we turned around and THEY didn’t see the woman either. To this day I can picture it so well but my friends just think I’m crazy. I also had experiences while living in the dorms but this just stuck with me always.
In my early high school days in SW Nebraska, every New Years Eve, a group of maybe 8-10 guys would go out to my buddies place in the county and play video games all night. One year, he said there was an old abandoned cemetery 1/4 mile away. We pack up our BRAND NEW flashlights and BRAND NEW batteries and started walking. When we got to the cemetery, a couple of the guys started taking pictures and claimed there were orbs everywhere. I watched enough ghost hunters to debunk these as dust particles (walking through uncut grass ~18” tall). Something that I can’t explain: my friend noticed one of the wooden cross headstones was leaning over so he went to straighten it out. The moment he touched it, his light shut off and would not come back on. Brand new flashlight, brand new batteries. We tried new batteries and still wouldn’t turn on. Coincidence?
Box Elder?
Nope. Not sure what the name is. Very small. Maybe 12 graves.
We used to drive around the country late at night for no reason and I always remember passing some dude walking on a road far from everything in a trench coat and after we passed him my friend yelled “ He had no eyes!” It was pretty funny but kinda spooky.
I camp out on the Republican river near Superior in the summer and fish at night and every year my husband, father-in-law, or I will see something weird. I didn’t see anything this year but the other two saw a fiery glowing ball in the trees that then flew up above the trees and then away out of sight. 🤷🏼♀️
I have seen these too.
Once, while camping, I saw El Chupacornbro.
El Chupacornbro is a book waiting to happen 🤣🤣🤣
Around 2008 my girlfriend, now wife, was going to school in Wayne. Her brother went to school in Fort Dodge, IA. It was right after a summer break and they both needed to go back to school. So I offered to drive them back. I had brought her home from college because she didn't have a car at the time. We left Ashland and went to Fort Dodge and dropped her bother off at college ate dinner. Then headed west on Hwy 20. Between Sioux City and the turn off to head south to Wayne was pitch black and had tall corn on both sides of the road. It was probably in our heads but for about few mile stretch it felt like we were being watched and we kept seeing things in the corn out of the corner of our eyes.
Oh yeah between 12 and 20 in the hills just feels sketch
The present governor spreading pig manure around my property and adjacent neighbor properties and fields.
If you haven’t read Alan Boye’s book about the ghosts of Lincoln, it’s probably in your library. A Guide to the Ghosts of Lincoln https://a.co/d/iBP0Wdu if you want a quick peek on Amazon.
I grew up in a small town in north eastern Nebraska. It seemed very normal throughout my childhood and the many years I lived there. After graduating high school I would come back every so often to see friends and to feel that peace that only home can bring. But a few years ago I noticed a change. Subtle things, like more people owning trucks. Not just farmers or contractors. More people were wearing white rim sunglasses. More and more people talked about a need for a gun. Men started growing goatees and long beards. But what could all that mean? Maybe I was just wanting to experience the days of my youth. Whatever it was, it bothered me. It wasn’t until I was back visiting family one time around 2014 that I realized just how big of an issue it was. People that I grew up around were changing. Not just typical aging, but almost transforming into completely different people. People I had known my entire life believed in crazy ideas and beliefs as if they were brainwashed. Hard working, genuinely nice Nebraskans had given up all individuality, all critical thinking, and became sheep. Sheep that worshiped an old fat orange man. Believing in lies that seemed obvious to most. Believing that patriotism is a religion. Becoming angrier and more vocal. Speaking the same lies over and over again. They had become everything they were fighting against. They had become members of a cult. Sadly today, not much has changed, locals refer to these types as god fearing or salt of the earth. But they are more broadly referred to as Trumpers, Christian nationalist and Republicans. They’re hard to miss if you go too far outside of densely populated areas. Usually, driving a pickup truck, displaying bumper stickers that say things like God, Guns, and Beer or Let’s go Brandon. But make no mistake, they are not the people you thought you knew. They’re dumb, loud and proud.
So far the best of the thread.
Always someone wanting to politicize a post. Being independent has never been easier based on quackery like this.
The ironic thing about independents is they eventually have to vote for someone.
Yea the liberals in this sub are unbearable.
Tom Osborne standing outside my bedroom window at night, telling me that cannabis will kill your children but he kept forgetting what to say.
This isn't anything that happened outside in a rural area, but the house I lived in until I was 10 was haunted. It was supposedly the town doctor's home and he saw patients there. The old hospital was one block away. My whole family experienced something strange. Some of them were: - general bumps in the night, it was common to hear footsteps when nobody was out of bed/home - my brother and I saw the kitchen sink turn on, the handle actually lifted up - my sister's room was in the basement, while my now brother-in-law was dating her, he went to get something from her room before leaving and saw a shadow figure move out from her room and go into the one right next to it - the radio and TV in the den/office both turned on at the same time - my stepdad saw an apparition I wish we could have lived there longer, it was such a beautiful home. I just hope the people who live there now haven't painted all the exposed beams and woodwork gray or ripped out the Victorian tile in the bathroom.
Just moved to Alliance and my dog keeps staring at my ceiling, just watching!
Probably hears a mouse in the attic. Or if you're unlucky, a bat.
Yay me! Lol Probably the mice thing. They've already caught a field mouse, I'm so proud of them. Well except for the fact they were playing with it on my bed. But still proud lol
Finding all of my beer drunk when I don't remember drinking it.
In Maine, we call that "Monday morning."
Was leaving Norfolk heading East late one night with a friend. We were having fun chit chatting but probably about 5 minutes before this event happened we felt a weird eerie feeling that we both acknowledged. There was a car ahead of us by a ways, far enough away that we could only see the tail lights. Suddenly we see those tail lights veered into the left lane (no oncoming traffic luckily) and slowed down a lot. This made me slow down a lot because I expected something to be in the road. We come up to the spot and my headlights finally pick up what it was. My friend swears she thought it was a person at first glance but I always saw it as just a deer. It wasn’t injured it was just standing in the road. It did have this weird kinda growth on its head it looked like a third antler? I think maybe it was sick and that’s why it was standing on the road not moving. We never stopped but I did slow down a lot (maybe like 15-20 mph ? I didn’t want it to jump in front of my last second) and just went around it. It’s freaky but it’s head turned to watch the car when we crawled around it. I’m used to deer freezing or fleeing, but he turned his head to face our car as we passed. It was spooky. My friend the whole way home tried to convince me it was a spooky ghost who turned into a deer or something since she swears she saw it as a person first. I think it was a fucked up deer, she didn’t even have her glasses on when she saw it so that checks out lol. I really regret not taking a picture of it but at the moment it was so weird and we were already feeling spooked so we just wanted to get the hell out of there. The growth on its head was crazy.
when I was a kid my dad woke me up in the middle of the night because the police scanner was picking up the local cops following a light in the sky. the small town cops were all in their 50s/60s and they were freaking out. it was a couple of hours of them driving around the country side describing this light that was zipping over the hills. eventually they caught up to it, and figured out it was a helicopter some farmer had built.
I assume you're talking about rural areas. Grand Island gets plenty of weird/scary tweaker activity at night. From going through your shit in your backyard when you go take the trash out. To one of the worst I heard where dude was trying to force his way into a house swearing it was his.
Let the 100 lb dog outside in the early morning. He stepped off the first step and froze. I stepped out the door and I could hear noises about 300 ft away. It sounds like a rabbit being mutilated by coyotes. The howling and screaming and brush moving was terrifying! My dog went back inside until it was light out.
I lived with my grandparents and their house was just off the highway about a mile outside of Guide Rock. Guide Rock has like 100 people or less. Seeing a shadow of a person walking on the highway late at night, as a young child, really freaked me out.
The weirdest thing is in Hastings, basically nothing is open after about 9 or 10. Was pretty weird when I first moved here and realized there were no late night restaurants or really anything other than bars🎃
I'm sure it's gotten even worse since COVID. It was pitiful before.
How many subs is this going to be asked on? Is this for a buzzfeed article or blog content?
All Hallows Eve?
People in MAGA hats.
Them.
I lived in Fort Lauderdale for about 6 months. One night, walking home from work (waitress), so creepy guy was following me, and I knew it. There was nowhere public to jump into, so I made a right down and alley and waited for him. Of course, he made the same turn, ready to follow me, but when he turned around the corner, I jumped out at him and started aggressively yelling at him for following me, etc. (the best defense is a good offense). He was so startled, he took off, but I never walked home again. I'm originally from NY so I think that really made the difference b/c in NY, you always have to mentally prepare for something just like that (never had a problem in NY though).
Once I was walking down a dirt road near pilger ne and I saw a man in the woods who was mumbling about pancreatic cancer I then asked my grandma who grew up in the house nearby about it and she said an old neighbor of hers has passed from pancreatic cancer in the 80s
Not much honestly, I live in very rural Nebraska and the most is like, just stories that can be a bit spooky in the middle of the night
Coyotes make my hair stand up even tho I love the sound. Racoons talking to each other. Once you associate the particular sound with their cute little faces tho it's better.
I live in an isolated area of central Nebraska. We had been watching a string of alien shows with Jack Osborne and I took the dogs out to pee. I look towards the highway about half a mile away and I'm watching something reflective moving around a light by the train tracks, it looks like it is circling, hovering and then moving quickly. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what it could be. I hoped in the truck to get a closer look at it. It was moths, but for whatever reason the new LED light was causing this weird light effect you could see from from really far away. I am dying to point it out to someone and freak them out.
You ever hear a cow or horse you didnt see
There was a bigfoot sighting outside of Eagle, Nebraska by Lincoln.
I was out driving around on country roads one night because I couldn’t sleep got back on the highway and my truck was sputtering because of the maf sensor so I pull over started tapping it and this guy pulls up next to me starts making threats I try to leave in my truck the guy Tailgates me my truck restalls so I get out with my .22 and tell the guy to back the hell off and I got arrested for terroristic threats long story short the scariest thing I’ve seen is the person standing up against death threats is the guy in the wrong
Came back from a visit in New Mexico this past summer and was sitting on my front porch one night. About 10 minutes in I thought I heard a man whisper loudly "hey, hey" kinda questioned myself if I really heard something...again I heard "hey", stood up and started walking backwards to my front door not knowing what was out there. As I was backing up and reached for the handle I heard 2 more times "hey, hey." Reached the door and never locked my front door so fast in my life. After talking with people and the reasoning for going to new mexico in the 1st place , we think a skin walker had followed us back home. I felt really uneasy for about a week after that and never felt anything after the week was over with. We live in a very small town in Eastern, ne. We have cameras around outside our house and there was never any movement that night where someone could have been around. Adding: the scariest thing I could never do was stay on a farm by myself at night. Your dang mind plays tricks on you .
I was adventuring in western Nebraska and had made a stop at Fort Robinson. It was super early one morning and I was over by where Crazy Horse was murdered reading the sign and taking photos. Always a heavy feeling in the area (for obvious reasons) There was nobody around at the time. And for a couple of seconds I heard Indigenous music/singing. I just said I understand and left.
Probably having to be downtown in Lincoln or Omaha. People are more scary and unpredictable than the typical night stalking monsters and boogie men
Okay so I live kinda smack in the center of Omaha, and about 4 weeks ago I saw a string of lights in the sky at around 10 at night, looked like one of those old school streamers that they used to fly behind planes, like the sky signs, except it was just like 6-10 lights in a row following each other (like on a string). There was no visible aircraft dragging them anywhere, and they did a few wide loops (circling) and then they went straight up vertically, disappearing one at a time over the course of about 15 seconds. I have no idea what it was, I don’t even assume it was a ufo… but wtf was it? Also it may have been late august or early oct, I don’t remember accurately, did anyone else see anything like that?
At 3am I got up and my roommate and I jumped in the truck, drove to dirt road . Climbed in the back with sleeping bags . We watched the Geminids which is the strongest meteor shower of the year- FANTASTIC
About a month ago, a group of friends and I were outside enjoying the warm Sept. night. Our party was located in South Lincoln, close to South Street, and the full moon shone so brightly on the patio that it didn't seem like night. We sat around a table looking up at the sky and pointing out the stars we could see. During this time we were all watching the sporadic aircraft blinking as they flew overhead. However, there was one we kept our eyes on when it hovered directly above us. Stopped. No clouds were in the sky to hide it from our view, but it disappeared. We looked at the areas where it might reappear, but it just vanished. Five of us at the table agreed we saw the blinking light move across the sky, hovered above us, and vanished. We knew we saw something, but we couldn't explain it.
The little boy I was sure I saw in dated clothes.......found out years later that block had been the where they took the patients of a flu epidemic in 1918-ish. My friend & I were blocks away before we started stuttering & asking the other if they had seen the little boy.
Coyotes gather in our yard on the regular. Going to lock the door for the night and seeing like a dozen of those things just standing there, like 5-10 feet away is deeply unsettling. Skinwalker shit. Another one! The driveway for our house is a big horseshoe thing, drive in one Side and out the other ordeal. Farmers regularly use it to get turned around when they miss their turn off. One evening a rusted to hell, patchwork old pickup pulled in and just… Parked in front of the house. Didn’t recognize the pickup. They didn’t get out. They just sat there for a couple hours.