Every year, just as fall settles in and winter teases with its first chilly whispers, spooky season lovers everywhere rejoice.
Halloween is a mind frame, more than a holiday, these days. It represents those fall vibes more than almost anything else, and it typically stretches — for true believers — from mid-September to October 31. Even after the holiday itself has passed, the spooky season continues, keeping its fans in dark tones, witchy feels, and ghostly decor until the next set of holidays comes in to ruin the fun.
I’m a loyal follower of the religion that is spooky season, and I work to etch those seasonal vibes into every corner of my life. Obviously, that means movie nights take on a distinctly horror-tinged flavor, and my meals sport an exponential quota of pumpkin, apple, and salted caramel. It also means that I spend my free time browsing a different sort of Reddit sub, giving my favorites a brief rest to instead lean into the site’s creepiest, eeriest, most unsettling corners. From real-life horror stories to the eerie machinations of countless twisted minds, here are some of the most fittingly scary subs Reddit has to offer.
r/NoSleep
This one is a personal favorite. For anyone keen on horror but not the classic kind, r/NoSleep offers up a nice detour from those annual rewatches of vintage franchises. You won’t find any true stories among the sub’s offerings, but you will find plenty of creatives sharing a look at their spine-chilling imaginings. A variety of mid-length, fictional stories populate the page, offering up a diverse selection of stories about everything from the mind-bending and wild to the disquieting, disturbing, and downright chilling.
r/Creepy
You can find a little of almost anything over on r/creepy. The clearly-titled sub is largely made up of various, unnerving images, from real-life shots of liminal spaces to works of art, unsettling snapshots, and long-held artifacts. It’s a catch-all for the creepy chasers among us, and anyone who likes feeling those cold fingers of disquiet creep up their spine will find plenty to enjoy among its wealth of submissions.
r/LastImages
Not every snapshot nestled among the lineup in r/LastImages is overtly creepy, but there’s something inherently discomfiting about knowing that a single image holds perhaps the last ever glimpse of a person. Some are famous faces, well known in the years leading up to their deaths, and some of these images are part of history — detailing moments just before a disaster or widespread tragedy — but others are entirely ordinary. They show people, just like you and I, going about their lives days, weeks, and sometimes moments before disaster permanently stole them from the world.
r/LetsNotMeet
Oftentimes, the scariest stories are the true ones. Sure, tales of paranormal encounters and violent, blood-soaked murder sprees get the blood racing, but it’s the crossover between fear and reality that really makes us want to crawl beneath our covers, never to emerge. Those are the stories contained in r/LetsNotMeet, a sub where people share their real experiences with odd, unnerving, and downright frightening people we all hope to never meet in a dark alleyway.
r/TrueCreepy
This simple, straightforward sub lays it all out in its ‘about’ section, describing r/TrueCreepy as “A place for the truly creepy.” Notably, entries on this sub do “not have to be true,” just “so long as it is truly creepy.” As a result, you’ll find a wide variety of submissions to this eerie sub, where people share real, historical photos and factoids alongside creepy encounters in video games, unintentionally unsettling art, and anything else a person ever saw in the wild and considered truly terrifying.
r/MorbidHistory
Then there’s r/MorbidHistory, which only details true, but unnerving, events. The sub contains a range of real-world, historical stories, art pieces, and photographs depicting the wide range of horror humanity doles out on a daily basis. Many of the collected results compile stories and images from wartime and remind us that we are all capable of great evils that are simply too often done under the guise of government. Just don’t look into this sub if you’re squeamish — it focuses on the bloodiest, most morbid aspects of our collective history, and it’s not for the faint-hearted.
r/Paranormal
If real-world horror isn’t your bag, give r/Paranormal some consideration instead. The sub doesn’t technically rely purely on fictional content, but it’s up to you to decide how many of those possessed dolls and poltergeists are rooted in truth. Even if you don’t believe the occasionally bold claims made in posts, the creepy factor is undeniable — particularly for those who believe in the paranormal. Posts to the sub oscillate between real encounters, sometimes caught on video or camera, and those unsettling moments that, real or not, keep you awake deep into the night.
r/Lovecraft
The name might lead you to believe that r/Lovecraft is dedicated purely to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, but the sub actually spreads the love to all of life’s odd, Lovecraftian moments. The sub celebrates everything Lovecraft, from the author’s own offerings to other weird, eclectic favorites. A slew of art pieces depicting various takes on characters like Cthulhu are sure to accompany any perusal of this sub, alongside images of strangely Lovecraft-esque sightings in real life, and art that speaks to the Lovecraft in us all.
r/CreepyPasta
If you’ve spent more than a few years among the denizens of the deep web, you’re well familiar with creepy pasta. Over on Reddit, a sub dedicates itself entirely to the trend, collecting images, stories, and the occasional video in keeping with those high creepy pasta expectations. Online, most anything horror-related is linked back to creepy pasta, which leaves the sub with plenty of room for diverse content, and results in a broad range of submissions. You’ll find everything from that old, forgotten story you read two decades back to the web’s latest horrors archived on the page, and it’s well worth a visit for anyone who’s long enjoyed the web’s eeriest offerings.
r/TwoSentenceHorror
For the time-poor among us, those utterly distressing stories over on r/NoSleep are tempting, but often a bit lengthy for a quick spooky aside. Instead, pivot over to r/TwoSentenceHorror, which provides tiny, bite-sized versions of the three-course meals over on r/NoSleep. The sub contains a range of fictional, creative stories thought up by the wild minds of web users everywhere, and all with almost no time commitment attached. This sub takes the “two sentence” aspect of its name seriously, and you won’t find a single story on its pages that stretches much longer.