Solved Murders - True Crime Stories - A Cabin Trip Turns Into a Night of Terror When a Stranger Knocks After Sunset PART1 #3

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

#horrorstories #reddithorrorstories #ScaryStories #creepypasta #horrortales  #cabintriphorror #strangernight #terrorinnature #isolatedfear #nightknocks  Part 1 begins a terrifying tale of a peaceful cabin getaway turned nightmare when an unknown stranger knocks after dark. The isolation of nature collides with creeping dread as the narrator and friends confront fear, suspicion, and escalating danger. This chilling introduction sets the tone for a suspenseful story about survival and the unknown lurking just beyond the shadows.  horrorstories, reddithorrorstories, scarystories, horrorstory, creepypasta, horrortales, cabintrip, strangerdanger, isolatedterror, nighttimehorror, truehorrorstories, survivalstory, fearinnature, darkwoods, suspensehorror, terrifyingencounters, nightmareunfolds, realfear, hauntedcabin, creepyknocks

There's so much rugby on Sports Exter from Sky. They've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter Sports Extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time we've got every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more. Thus the URC and all the best European rugby all in the same place.

Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra. Jampack with rugby. Phew, that is a lot of rugby. Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months. Search Sports Extra. New Sports Extra customers only. Standard Pressing applies after 12 months for the terms apply. Collini, did you know if your age between 25 and 65?

Well, you can get a free HPV cervical check. It's one of the best ways to protect yourself from cervical cancer. And you know what? I actually checked only recently when mine was due and no exaggeration. It took me less than five minutes. You go online to hsec.com slash cervical check. But in your PPS number, check in the date of birth. And then they tell you when your next appointment is due.

Oh my God. I know. And you can check you're on the register on the website so you can phone [phone]. If your test is due today, you can book today are hsccccc. i.e. 4 slash cervical check. I don't usually tell this story. Not because it's some big secret, but because it takes a special kind of listener to not

roll their eyes and call me crazy halfway through. And trust me, I've seen that look before, the, oh, wow, this guy's probably off his meds, look. But the truth is, I'm not crazy. I work in finance. Numbers, logic, spreadsheets, that's my thing. I know what's real and what's not. My job is literally about sorting through chaos and making sense of it.

And yet, even after all these years, I still can't make sense of what I saw. This all started back in 2007. At the time, I was living just outside Salt Lake City, Utah. A pretty chill suburban area, lots of families, parks, and neighbors that waved politely but didn't really know your name. I had a nice little town home there, about a 30-minute commute to work, longer if traffic decided to ruin my day. My job was unpredictable. Salary life and finance is like that. Some weeks I'd be home by noon, other times I wouldn't see my own bed until three in the morning. Wall Street never sleeps, and apparently, neither did I. The night this happened was

Father's Day. I'd stopped by my parents' place after work, had dinner with them. and got home around 9 p.m. I remember feeling tired, but in that peaceful way, like it had been a good day. Now, my townhouse was pretty straightforward. Walk through the front door, and the first thing you see is the staircase going up. Upstairs was a tiny hallway, master bedroom first door on the right, spare bedroom next to it. Downstairs was the kitchen and living area. Usually, my routine was, drop my stuff, grab a snack from the kitchen, then head upstairs to shower and crash. But I'd already eaten, so that night I figured I'd skipped the snack and just hit the shower. I went to flip the light switch at the bottom of the stairs.

Nothing. Dead. I sighed, figuring the bulb finally gave out. No big deal. The street lamp outside usually spilled a little light through the upstairs window anyway, just enough to see where I was going. I hung my jacket, started climbing the stairs, and that's when I heard it. A low, guttural hiss. It stopped me cold. At first, I thought maybe a pipe was acting up, or maybe there was a raccoon somewhere it shouldn't be. But this hiss wasn't random noise. It was, alive. It sounded like an angry animal, deep and wet, like the noise a lion makes when it's not fully roaring but letting you know you're on thin ice. I froze on the steps, my eyes slowly lifting to the top of the staircase. Even now, all these years later, just thinking about it

gives me that same icy twist in my gut. The master bedroom door was open, nothing unusual there. But the thing that made every hair on my body stand up wasn't the door. It was the, shape on the ceiling above it. I swear to you, I saw a figure clinging to my ceiling. I know how that sounds. Like I'm making up some scene from a bad horror movie. But I'm telling you, it was there. A dark figure, on all fours, sticking to the ceiling like gravity had decided to stop working for it. I couldn't make out its face.

The light was dim, just enough to see the silhouette. But when it moved its head, strands of long hair swung downward, dangling in the stale air. That detail, God, that detail, made my stomach flip. It wasn't just a shadow. It wasn't my imagination. Whatever it was, it was real enough to have hair. My body reacted before my brain did. I let out this pathetic, high-pitched yelp, stumbled back a step, and that's when the thing made a sound I'll never forget. It screamed. Not human, not animal, but something that cut straight through me. A wet, gutterl shriek that I felt in my chest. Then it was gone. There was a loud

thud, then the sound of glass shattering from the hallway upstairs. I didn't stick around to investigate. I bolted out the door, straight to my car, and locked myself inside, shaking like a kid who just saw the boogeyman. Ten of the longest minutes of my life crawled by before a police cruiser pulled into the driveway. Two officers walked up, guns drawn, and I spilled my story, well, part of it. I told them someone was in my house, that I heard noises, saw a figure, and then heard a window break. I left out the, on the ceiling part. I didn't want to end up in some psych evaluation room. They went in, searched the whole place, and came out 20 minutes. There's so much rugby on sports extra from Sky. They've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually

used for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter sports extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time we've bet every Champions Cup match exclusively live, bus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup and much more. Thus the URC and all the best European rugby all in the same place. Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra.

Jam-packed with rugby. Phew, that is a lot of rugby. Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months. Search Sports Extra. New Sports Extra customers only. Standard Pressing applies after 12 months, further terms apply. Kalini, did you know of your age between 25 and 65? Well, you can get a free HPV cervical check.

It's one of the best ways to protect yourself from cervical cancer. And you know what? I actually checked only recently when mine was due and no exaggeration. It took me less than five minutes. You go online to hse.e. Forward slash cervical check. Put in your PPS number, check in the date of birth. And then they tell you when your next appointment is due.

Oh my God. I know. I know. And you can check around the register on the website so you can phone [phone]. If your test is due today, you can book it today or hsccccccc. e.4 slash cervical check. It's later.

No intruder. No footprints. No signs of forced entry besides the shattered upstairs window. I filed a report, but nothing ever came of it. Two weeks later, I moved out. Found a crappy little apartment closer to work and never looked back. To this day, I can't explain what I saw. I've browsed forums about cryptids, aliens, skinwalkers, whatever.

you want to call the unknown. I've read the posts from people who swear they've seen creatures crawling on ceilings, lurking in shadows, watching from places they shouldn't be. I believe them now. But I refuse to become one of them, those people who spend their whole lives chasing ghosts, spiraling into obsession. I'm not trying to find that thing. I'm not trying to solve the mystery. I just, accept that it happened, and I'll never have closure. That wasn't that. That wasn't the only time my life dipped into the twilight zone. I grew up in Georgia during the 1980s, in this tight-knit little community where everybody knew everybody. Back then, my favorite thing in the world was camping in the backyard with my little brother, Donnie. Almost every Friday night,

we'd pitch a cheap tent under the oak tree, load it with G.I. Joes, and play until we passed out. Our neighborhood was safe enough, but the edges of it were, sketchy. This was peak-crack. epidemic, and it didn't take long for drugs to creep into even the nicest places. There was this old guy across the street, Mr. Carl. Retired World War II pilot. His wife passed in 84, and after that, he just, unraveled. Within a few years, he was strung out on crack, wandering the streets at night. Eventually, the bank took his house, and he started sleeping on benches. We still saw him every morning on our way to school. He'd wave, sometimes chat with us. Friendly guy, even when life had chewed him up and spit him out. Then one day, he was just gone. Weeks went by. A month, maybe. Nobody knew what

happened to him. Then came the Friday night that ended our backyard camping for good. Donnie and I were out there, shooting rubber band rifles our dad made for us, trying to knock down little plastic soldiers. It was warm, quiet, perfect, until we heard rustling in the bushes. We were used to raccoons and stray dogs, so we felt brave. We grabbed our weapons and went to the back fence, Donnie with the flashlight in hand. That's when a figure stepped out from behind a tree. I recognized the bomber jacket immediately. Dark brown, worn at the elbows.

The Army veteran cap sealed it. Mr. Carl. Or at least. I thought it was him. But the man wearing his clothes looked too young, stronger, different. And then I noticed the dark stains all over his jacket and jeans. Blood. We just stood there, staring for what felt like forever, until Donnie croaked out a shaky, what are you doing back there? The man slowly reached down and picked up an axe. That was all the convincing we needed. We dropped our wooden rifles and bolted. I remember the sound of something slicing the air behind me, and when I glanced back, I saw the axe spinning through the night. It slammed into our tent, collapsing it instantly. We screamed our way into the house,

hysterical, babbling nonsense. Dad tried to calm us down, then went outside. By the time the police showed up, whoever it was had vanished. We never camped in a back. We never camped in a back. We were backyard again. And we never found out what really happened to Mr. Carl. Years later, after high school, after moving states, after thinking I'd finally outrun the weirdness, it found me again. I had just turned 18. My family moved to Texas for a fresh start, though really, it was to get away from the mess my older sister Jocelyn left behind. She was always in trouble, cops, court, parole officers, the works. Weeks after we settled into the new house, Jocelyn ran away. Mom had to fly back to Georgia to deal with her arrest in Atlanta. I stayed behind,

house sitting. The first morning alone, I went jogging to get to know the neighborhood. Everything seemed normal until, mid-run, I felt it. That unmistakable prickling on the back of your neck. Someone was watching me. I scanned the empty street. Nothing. No cars, no people, just neat lawns and quiet houses. But my instincts screamed at me to go home. I cut the run short. I got inside, locked the door, and went upstairs to shower. That's when I heard it.

A dull thud from downstairs. I froze. Water dripping, heart pounding. Then another thud. I killed the shower, threw on clothes, and crept down the stairs. And that's where the next chapter of this story begins. When I got downstairs, everything looked, normal. Too normal, honestly.

You ever get that gut feeling that the silence in your own house feels wrong? That's exactly what I felt. My living room, spotless. Kitchen counters, clear. TV off. No windows open. No pets to blame it on. Just me and that lingering.

you're not alone, dread crawling all over my skin. I checked the front door, locked. Back door, locked. I stood in the middle of the kitchen holding a dripping towel against myself, breathing like I just run a marathon. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears. Then, thud. This time it was from upstairs. I froze. My first thought was, okay, great, now we're playing musical chairs with this ghost or intruder or whatever the hell is in my house. My second thought was, I need a weapon, now. The closest thing I had was a big metal flashlight I kept in a kitchen drawer for blackouts. I gripped it like it was Thor's hammer and crept up the stairs. I had this internal pep talk going like, all right, maybe it's just the house settling.

Or a raccoon. Yeah, a raccoon got in somehow. and it's going to be fine. But then I remembered Texas raccoons don't throw things around like a linebacker. When I reached the top of the stairs, the hallway stretched out in front of me, my bedroom at the end, the guest room to the side,

bathroom in between. The air up there felt, thick. Like someone had turned up the humidity or something. Every step I took made the old wood floors creak like they were tattling on me. I peaked into my bedroom first. Empty Closet

Empty Under the bed Empty I checked the bathroom Shower curtain pulled aside Nothing Finally I opened the door to the guest room That's when I knew

Without a single doubt in my mind I wasn't alone Someone or something had written on the inside of the window in what looked like steam except the room was cold as ice It was just one word, but it hit me like a punch to the chest. Run, I didn't scream. I didn't cry.

I didn't even blink. My body just went into full autopilot survival mode. I bolted down the stairs, snatched my keys from the counter, and flew out the front door barefoot and still dripping from the shower. I sat in my car, engine off, shaking so hard my teeth were chattering. I just stared at the house, waiting for it. I don't even know. A face in the window.

A shadow? Something to confirm I wasn't losing my mind. After maybe five minutes of frozen panic, I finally cranked the engine and drove to the nearest Walmart parking lot because, let's be real, Walmart at 11 a.m. feels safer than a haunted house at any hour. I sat there for two hours, scrolling my phone, trying to convince myself I was overreacting. When my mom finally called to check in on me from Georgia, I lied. I said everything was fine.

I didn't tell her about the thuds or the word on the window. I didn't want to give her another reason to think moving to Texas was a mistake. But that night, the house didn't let me forget. I slept on the couch with the lights on and the flashlight in my hand. Sometime after midnight, I woke up to a sound I can only describe as someone dragging their fingernails across the living room window. Not fast. Slow. Deliberate. Like they wanted me to know they were out there. When I finally worked up the courage to peek through the blinds, there was nothing. I wish I could say that was the end of it, that the creepy stuff stopped and life went back to

normal. But like all these stories I've been dumping here, the worst was yet to come. About a week later, I was doing laundry in the garage. I had the door to the driveway open because Texas heat will cook you alive, and I needed the breeze. That's when I saw it, something small and dark sitting just at the edge of the driveway, maybe 30 feet away. At first I thought it was a dog. But when it moved, I realized it was crawling on all fours like a person trying to imitate an animal. I couldn't see its face, just this jerky, unnatural motion that made my stomach flip. I whispered to myself, nope, nope, nope, not today, and hit the button to close the garage door. As it slowly descended, the thing stopped moving and turned its head toward me.

I finally saw its face. Or maybe her face. It was a woman, pale, with stringy black hair stuck to her cheeks, eyes way too wide. And she was smiling. Not like a friendly smile. Like a, I know something you don't. smile. The last sliver of daylight disappeared under the garage door, and I backed up against the washing machine, clutching a wet towel like it was a shield. I didn't hear anything else.

No footsteps. No scratching. Nothing. I didn't go outside again for three days. I could keep going, because trust me, the nightmare didn't end there, but I'm already sitting here with chills writing this, and I'm still in that same, don't look behind you, state of mind. And here's the thing, nobody believes this stuff unless it happens to them. You tell someone, and they look at you like you're crazy, like you're making it up for attention. But I know what I saw. I know what I felt. And somewhere out there, she's probably still crawling around someone else's neighborhood, waiting for them to notice her. Three days later, I finally convinced myself to step outside. again. It was 9 a.m. sun shining, birds doing their whole Disney movie routine, basically the

opposite of a horror setting. I thought, all right, broad daylight. Nothing scary ever happens in broad daylight, right? Wrong. I walked around my property, checking the yard, the driveway, even the patch of gravel where that crawling thing, that woman, had been. Nothing. No footprints, no mud, sign that anyone had been there. For about two hours, I almost felt normal again. Then I decided to check my security camera footage. Now, here's the thing, I had only installed the cameras a week before because I was paranoid after that first run incident. Two cameras, one facing the driveway, one pointed at the backyard. I figured if anything weird ever happened, at least I'd get proof I wasn't losing it. I pulled up the app on my phone, scrolling back to the night after I saw her.

The first few clips were just bugs flying by, cars in the distance, a raccoon waddling through the yard. Totally normal. Then, at 3.17 a.m., my stomach dropped. There she was, crawling into the driveway from the street on all fours, moving in that same jerky, unnatural way. She stopped halfway, turned her head toward the camera, and smiled. Same wide-eyed, teeth-bearing, nightmare fuel grin. She stayed like that, completely still, for seven full minutes before crawling out of frame. I replayed it three times. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the phone. And then it hit me, the backyard camera. I tapped over to it, scrolling through the timeline, and yeah, there she was again. This time, she was standing,

right up against my back door, staring through the glass like she was waiting for me to open it. No knocking. No sound. Just, waiting. And here's the part that still makes my skin crawl when I think about it, she waved at the camera. Slow, like she knew I'd see it later. That was the moment I officially said, nope, I'm done. I packed a duffel bag, booked a cheap motel away, and left that house without looking back. The motel was gross, yellowed curtains, sketchy carpet, that weird smell like cigarettes and mildew, but for the first night in weeks, I felt, safe. I left the TV on for background noise and actually managed to sleep. When I woke up around 6 a.m., there was a knock at my door. Not like housekeeping.

Not like the loud bam-bam-bam of someone impatient. It was soft. Rhythmic. Tap, tap, tap, tap. My chest tightened. I didn't move. After about 30 seconds, the knocking stopped. I waited another five minutes before creeping over to the window and pulling the curtain back just an inch. Nobody was there.

I told myself it was probably some random guest, maybe a drunk or someone at the wrong door. I almost believed that, until I saw the condensation on the outside of the window. One word, smeared in a finger trail, found, I swear my soul left my body. I backed away from the window so fast I tripped over my own bag. My hands were shaking as I grabbed my car keys and called the only person I trusted, my best friend back in Georgia. When he answered, I didn't even say hello. I just said, I'm leaving Texas.

Today, the drive back was a blur. I barely stopped, just fuelled up and kept moving east. I have expected to see her crawling on the side of the highway in my rearview mirror. By the time I made it to my friend's place in Georgia, I was running on fumes, mentally and physically. I crashed on his couch and didn't check my phone until the next morning. When I finally did, I saw I had a notification from the security camera app. The thumbnail froze my blood. It was her.

Standing in my empty living room. Somehow, she had gotten inside. I never went back to that house. I signed the paperwork, sold it at a loss, and left Texas behind. To this day, I don't know if she was some unhinged woman, something supernatural, or a mix of both. All I know is that she wanted me gone, and she got what she wanted. Sometimes, though, I still wake up in the middle of the night, conveys. I'll see that same pale face staring through my window.

And every morning, the first thing I do is check the glass for finger trails. So far, it's been clean. But for some reason, I know it's not over. To be continued.