3 Chilling TRUE Scary Blizzard Horror Stories

I moved to South Dakota about 5 years ago. It was the first time I'd ever lived alone, and honestly, it was long overdue. My parents had been on my case for years about getting out of the house, and I finally caved.

I'm not exactly a social butterfly, so the idea of living somewhere secluded actually appealed to me. The house I found was in one of the snowier parts of the state, tucked away on a stretch of land where the nearest neighbor was a solid walk away. That was fine by me.

For the most part, that's exactly what I got. The first few years were uneventful in the best way possible. I kept to myself, went to work, came home, and didn't bother anyone.

I never introduced myself to any of the neighbors, partly because I'm just not that kind of person, and partly because there wasn't much of a compelling reason to do so. The houses out there are so spread apart that you could go weeks without seeing another soul. Everything changed one afternoon in early February.

I was at work when the snow started coming down. At first, it was nothing unusual, but within an hour, it had escalated into something else entirely. The wind picked up, visibility dropped to almost nothing, and the roads started getting dangerous.

My boss eventually told everyone to head home before conditions got any worse. I drive a lifted truck, so I wasn't too worried about making it back. I've driven through plenty of bad weather before, and the truck has always handled it well.

Still, there were certain section of the drive that had me a little concerned. By the time I finally pulled into my driveway, I was just relieved to be home. But when I went to unlock my front door, I realized it was frozen solid.

I stood there for a second processing what was happening, then tried again, but it wouldn't budge. I didn't have a lighter on me or anything else that could generate enough heat to thaw the mechanism. I tried breathing on it, cupping my hands around it, even banging on it a few times out of frustration.

None of it worked. I walked back to my truck and sat there, not sure what to do. The heater was blasting and I told myself I'd just wait out the storm.

Maybe it would die down in an hour or two and I could figure something out. But as I sat there watching through the windshield, the snow only seemed to fall harder. After maybe 10 minutes, I realized I was making a mistake.

The longer I waited, the worse things were going to get. My truck was already half buried, and even with the lift, I doubted I'd be able to get back out of the driveway. So now driving wasn't even an option anymore.

I didn't have anyone to call. I didn't know any of my neighbors and my parents were hours away. I tried to drive the truck out of there, but like I suspected, it was stuck.

My only real option was to walk to one of the neighboring houses and ask for help. I hated the idea of it showing up at some stranger's door asking them to take me in. But I didn't have another choice.

Staying in my truck all night wasn't going to work. The gas would eventually run out, and then I'd be sitting in a freezing metal box in the middle of a blizzard. The closest house was still pretty far away, probably a/4 mile or so.

By the time I reached it, I was shivering uncontrollably. It was a tiny one-story house, and even through the blowing snow, I could tell it was in rough shape. I knocked on the front door as loud as I could.

I waited for a good minute and I was just about to turn away and try the next house when the door swung open so violently I actually took a step back. The man standing there looked around 50 years old with a very nondescript face. He looked at me for a second without saying anything, then introduced himself as Joe.

I explained my situation and he nodded slowly, stepping aside to let me in. I should have felt relieved, but something about him felt off from the start. It was hard to pinpoint at first.

The house was warm, which was all I really cared about in the moment. He offered me a seat on the couch and sat across from me in a worn out armchair. We made small talk for a few minutes, or at least I tried to.

He answered my questions, but his attention seemed to be somewhere else entirely. His eyes kept darting around the room, from me to the floor to the ceiling to somewhere over his shoulder. It was like he couldn't focus on any one thing for more than a few seconds.

At first, I thought maybe he was just nervous about having a stranger in his house. That would have been understandable, but the longer we sat there, the more unsettled I became. He couldn't focus on the conversation either.

He'd be mid-sentence and then just trail off, staring at a spot in the wall like he was looking through it. I decided I wanted as little interaction with this guy as possible. I told him I was exhausted and asked if I could just get some sleep.

He seemed almost relieved by the suggestion and pointed to the couch, saying I could crash there for the night. I asked if we could turn out the light and he flicked off the lamp without argument. But he didn't leave.

He just stood there in the doorway for what felt like a full minute, not saying anything, not even moving. I lay on the couch with my eyes half closed, trying to look like I was already drifting off. Eventually, after this long, uncomfortable pause, he finally receded down the hallway toward what I assumed was his bedroom.

I really did try to sleep. I was exhausted, and the couch was actually more comfortable than I expected. But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was deeply wrong.

Every time I closed my eyes, I started to drift off and then jolt awake, convinced I heard something. About an hour in, I actually did start hearing things. It took me a few seconds to realize that the thumping and scraping sounds were coming from above me.

At first, I told myself it was just snow shifting on the roof. That happens all the time in heavy storms. But these sounds were different somehow.

That didn't make any sense, though. The house was one story. There was no upstairs floor for anyone to be walking around on.

I lay there staring at the ceiling, trying to convince myself there was a rational explanation. The sounds continued for several minutes, sporadic but persistent. And then, without warning, there was a thump that was considerably louder than all the previous ones.

It was so sudden and so forceful that I shot up right on the couch. And as soon as I sat up, I saw him. Joe was standing in the doorway again.

He must have been there for a while just watching me in the dark because I hadn't heard him come back. My skin started feeling itchy. I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could get a word out, he literally charged at me.

He jumped over the back of the couch and tackled me to the floor. The next few seconds were pure chaos. We rolled around on the carpet and I realized he was trying to put me in a chokeold.

He was stronger than he looked and for a moment I thought I wasn't going to be able to get him off. I kept resisting and he started yelling. He screamed at me to stop fighting.

He kept referencing this her like I was supposed to know what he was talking about. He said she was lonely and something about how she would find me good company. I wasn't thinking about that though.

I was fighting for my life. I finally managed to get enough leverage to shove him off me. I scrambled to my feet, grabbed my coat, and ran for the front door.

I didn't even put my coat on. I was too terrified to waste any more time. Behind me, I heard that crazy scream something.

I'm pretty sure he said, "She's not going to be happy," or some insane along those lines. I ran and didn't stop until I reached the next house. The family who answered the door were normal people, a husband and wife from the looks of it.

They took one look at me and pulled me inside without asking questions. I slept on their couch that night. The next morning, I woke up to the wife, who introduced herself as Kathy.

She was making everyone coffee. The three of us sat at the kitchen table and I told them what happened. As soon as I described the house, the husband, whose name was Brandon, interrupted me.

He asked if it was Joe. I said yes and he just nodded like he wasn't surprised at all. He told me that Joe had been a problem in the area for years, but then he told me something that gave my skin that itchy feeling again.

About a decade earlier, Joe's wife had disappeared. There was never any official investigation. Nothing was ever proven, but most people in the area suspected he killed her.

The body was never found. I immediately connected the dots, but kept my mouth shut for whatever reason. I still have no idea why I didn't speak up.

I did end up reporting my experience to the police, but I don't think they ever did anything to deal with it. The scariest part is that I still live in the same house 3 years later. Nothing has happened since that night in the blizzard, but I'd be lying if I said I don't get a weird feeling every time I drive past Joe's house.

The one silver lining to all this is that I got close with the family who took me in that night. But I always get a weird feeling every time I go over there because it reminds me of Joe and whatever god-awful thing he's done to his wife. This happened last winter during one of the worst blizzards I can remember.

I'm 27 and live alone in a small rental house in upstate New York. I work remotely in finance, which sounds fancier than it is. Mostly, I just sit at my desk and stare at spreadsheets all day.

The point is, I rarely have a reason to leave the house during the week. Some weeks, I don't leave at all. Anyway, the local news has been hyping up this blizzard for days.

You know how they get. Every storm is potentially historic or life-threatening until it dumps 3 in and everyone moves on, but this one actually looks serious. The weather alerts were telling people to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary, stock up on essentials, all that.

So, I went grocery shopping that morning, grabbing enough food to last me through the weekend, and then I settled in for what I assumed would be a boring few days of working from home. The snow started in the midafter afternoon and by around 8:00 p. m.

I could barely see past my front porch. I spent most of the evening on my couch, half watching TV and half listening to the wind howl outside. It's a specific kind of sound, wind during a blizzard, not like a summer storm where it comes and goes.

This was constant, like the house was inside a tunnel. At around 10:30, I heard a new sound. It was kind of like a loud thud followed by this dragging sound, sort of like something heavy being pulled across wood.

I figured a tree branch had come down. There are a few old oaks near my driveway, and with all that snow and wind, it wouldn't be surprising if one of them dropped a limb. About 15 minutes later, though, I heard a car horn.

It wasn't a normal honk. It was weak and intermittent, almost like someone had tapped the horn on accident. I went to my front window and looked out.

There was a vehicle stopped near the end of my driveway. I could see its headlights cutting through the snow, but that was about it. I stood there for a few minutes waiting to see if anyone could get out, but I couldn't make out any movement.

With the storm the way it was, I couldn't even tell what kind of car it was. My first thought was that someone had slid off the road. It happens out there, especially in weather like that.

It sounds callous, but I wasn't about to trudge out into a blizzard to check on a stranger. Not when I could barely see 10 ft in front of me. I went back to the couch and tried to focus on something else.

At around 11:00, I heard knocking at my front door. I didn't open the door. Instead, I walked over and called out asking who was there.

A man's voice answered. He said his car was stuck and he needed to come inside to warm up and use a phone. His voice sounded strained, like he was out of breath.

Part of me felt guilty. If this guy really had been walking through that storm, he probably was freezing. But another part of me still wasn't fully ready to just open my door to a stranger in the middle of the night.

Instead of opening the door fully, I cracked it. Making sure to keep the security chain locked. The man on my porch was covered in snow, like to a laughable extent.

It was caked on his jacket, his shoulders, his hair. He was shorter than me and he was visibly shivering. He said his phone had died and that he'd been walking for some time trying to find a house with lights on.

I was just about to open the door when I noticed his boots. I don't know what made me look down, but I did. And here's the thing, his boots were clean.

Like clean and dry, too. If this guy had really been walking through a blizzard for any length of time, his boots should have been caked with snow and ice as well. Hell, mine get like that just walking to my car.

I felt something cold settle in my stomach that had nothing to do with the weather. I told him again that I would call for help and make sure someone came for him. He asked me to be let in again more firmly this time.

I didn't respond. I just closed the door and locked it. I could hear him say something on the other side, but I was already walking to get my phone.

I called 911 and explained the situation. While I was on the line with the operator, I heard footsteps move from my porch to the side of my house toward the back. The operator told me to stay inside and keep all the doors locked.

She said police were being dispatched, but warned me that response times might be delayed because of the weather. I moved to a side window and peaked out, not wanting him to see me. The man was standing near the corner of my house, maybe 15 ft away.

He wasn't moving. He was just standing there looking up at the windows. A few minutes later, I heard banging on my back door.

Like someone was trying to break through. The whole door was shaking in its frame. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and retreated to my bedroom.

I locked the door behind me and stood a few feet from the door. The banging stopped after maybe a minute. I don't know how long I stood there.

It felt like hours, but was probably closer to 20 minutes. At some point, I heard the car horn again, the same one from earlier, but this time it was one long continuous honk. Luckily, the police arrived shortly after that.

They found a vehicle partially buried in a snowbank, but it was further down the road than where I'd seen the headlights. The engine was cold when they checked it, not warm like it would have been if someone had recently been driving it. Here's the part that still gets me.

The officers told me there were no footprints leading from the vehicle to my house. Apparently, the snow was undisturbed between the car and my property. There were footsteps leading down my driveway and around my house, but they stopped at the driveway like someone had been driving a separate car.

The police searched the area, but didn't find anyone. The next morning, after the storm had passed and the sun was out, I went outside to look around. To my horror, there were muddy handprints on the exterior of my bedroom window, which definitely hadn't been there when the police searched the property.

It was like the person had come back after they had left, or had been hiding and never left in the first place. A few days later, I found out that another house about half a mile away had been broken into during the storm. The homeowner wasn't there at the time, so no one was hurt, but the strange part was that nothing was reported stolen.

Whoever broke in didn't take anything. Why anyone would break into a house during a blizzard and not even steal anything is beyond me. It's almost like whoever did wasn't trying to rob the place but do something else.

I know the whole incident doesn't sound that scary, but I can't help but feel like whoever was trying to get into my house, probably the same person that broke into the other house, was there to do something sinister. I'm just glad I didn't open my door. This happened several years ago now.

I have told maybe three people about it. My wife, my brother, and one close friend who I knew wouldn't think I was losing my mind. I'm telling it here because I still don't have an explanation.

And at this point, I've accepted that I probably never will. I'm 34 and I live in British Columbia. For most of my 20s, I was a professional skier, alpine racing mostly.

I competed nationally for about 6 years before my body started telling me it was time to stop. Nothing dramatic like a career-ending injury or anything, just the accumulation of wear and tear that happens when you've been throwing yourself down mountains since you were a kid. I stepped away from competition when I was 26, which felt like the right call at the time and still does.

But retiring from competitive skiing doesn't mean you stop skiing. If anything, it freed me up to do the kind of skiing I actually loved, backcountry stuff away from the resorts and crowds. I say all this not to brag, but to establish that I knew what I was doing out there.

I was avalanche trained, certified in wilderness first aid, and familiar with every protocol you're supposed to follow when you're skiing alone in remote terrain. I'd done dozens of solo trips in the back country without incident. The plan that day was simple.

I was going to hit a remote range a few hours north of where I lived, a spot I'd skied before, actually. The weather forecast was calling for light snowfall, maybe a few inches, but nothing that would prevent a day trip. I checked the avalanche conditions the night before and again that morning.

Everything looked manageable. I got to the mountain just after sunrise, strapped on my gear, and started skinning uphill. The snowfall started picking up while I was climbing, which wasn't unusual, but the wind had changed, too.

It was coming from a different direction than the forecast had predicted, and it was stronger than it should have been. Visibility was also dropping much faster than I was comfortable with. The smart move would have been to just turn around immediately, but I was already at the top of a line I'd been looking forward to all week.

I told myself just one run and then I'd call it early. I've replayed that decision a thousand times since then. And before you say it, yes, I know it was stupid.

I know experienced people die all the time in the back country because they make exactly the kind of call I made that day. I knew it then, too, but I did it anyway. The descent started fine.

The pitch was manageable, and I was skiing conservatively just to be extra safe. About 2/3 of the way down the mountain, though, the worst possible thing happened. If you've never been caught in an avalanche, it's hard to describe how fast it happens.

One second you're in control, the next you're just not. It's not the same thing as wiping out or even catching an edge. The snow moves and you have no choice but to move with it.

I got lucky. The avalanche wasn't big. Probably a class two, which was enough to knock me off my skis, but not enough to bury me.

I tumbled maybe 30 or 40 yard before I slammed into something solid. Slammed as an instant deceleration. I don't even know what it was.

rocks probably or maybe a tree buried under the snowpack. But all I remember in that moment was the feeling in my left leg. I remember just lying there trying to convince myself everything was all right, but it wasn't.

My skis had released. That was good. That's what they were supposed to do.

But one of them had tumbled further downhill, and I had no idea where it ended up. I tried to stand and immediately collapsed. The pain in my leg was unimaginable.

I can't even begin to describe it. I managed to get myself into a sitting position and took stock of the situation. The snow was still seemingly getting worse, too, which meant I was likely in the opening moments of a blizzard.

But the worst part was obviously my leg. I couldn't put much weight on it, which meant I couldn't ski out even if I found my other ski. My options were limited.

I had three choices. Two of them were suicide, and the third wasn't much better. I could stay where I was and hope someone came looking for me, but only one person knew where I was that day and he wouldn't have assumed something was wrong for at least a few hours.

I could try to dig and wait out the storm, but I didn't have the supplies for an overnight and the temperature was dropping. Or I could start moving painfully and slowly to try and cover as much ground as possible before conditions got even worse. I chose to move.

It's not like I had much of a choice. I secured what was left of my gear and started limping downhill using the one pole that was miraculously still in my hand as a makeshift crutch. Every step sent through my leg, but I had to keep moving.

As for the snow, my prediction turned out to be correct. It only got worse, and at that point, it was falling so heavily that I could barely see. I was ignoring the pain in my leg, focusing on moving as fast as I could, and wondering whether I was going to die out there when I heard something behind me.

At first, I thought the adrenaline was finally getting to my head and overwhelming my brain. That was genuinely my first thought, that I was becoming delirious in my final moments before passing out. But I turned around anyway, and what I saw confirmed that I was hallucinating.

There was another skier moving downhill toward me. I can't describe it, but seeing him emerging from the snow filled me with an emotion that has no word. I was skeptical as to whether what I was seeing was even real, simultaneously relieved and terrified that there was another person out there and something else.

It was fear, but for what I didn't know, he reached me within a few minutes. He was alone and backcountry equipped like me. He pulled off his helmet to readjust his goggles and asked if I was hurt.

And I told him what happened. Without wasting a second, he moved up to my side and let me put my arm around his shoulder. We started moving together.

Like I said before, I felt something that I couldn't explain. There was something beyond the adrenaline, pain, relief, and confusion. It didn't feel like a normal interaction.

It felt like he hadn't stumbled upon me by accident, as crazy as that sounds. We talked about the basic stuff, most of which I don't remember. But there was one thing he said that stayed with me for whatever reason.

He told me he hadn't used his legs in a long time and it was nice to get back on solid ground. I didn't really know what he meant by that. I assumed he was talking in some ski jargon I didn't know.

I laughed and we kept going. At one point, I had to stop. I remember this exact moment like it was yesterday.

I leaned against a tree and closed my eyes for literally 4 seconds. And when I opened them, he was gone. There was no one there.

But unless he buried himself in the snow, there was really nowhere for anyone to go either. I yelled for him. What else was I going to do?

But no one called back. I started looking at the snow in the immediate area, thinking maybe he had gotten buried. Nothing.

It gets worse, though. There were no tracks in the snow other than my own. I started freaking out.

He'd been right there, right next to me, supporting half my weight for what must have been like an hour, but there was nothing. I started feeling dizzy, like someone had just punched me in the gut. And the feeling I had been feeling earlier came back.

The rational part of my brain was insisting there had to be an explanation. Could I have been more disoriented than I thought? Maybe the snow had filled in his tracks faster than mine.

Or maybe I had hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe I was already dead. I didn't have time to figure it out.

The storm wasn't going to wait for me to process what had happened. I don't know how I made it back to my car. The last mile or so was such a blur.

Just pain and cold and the stubborn refusal to stop moving. But I did eventually make it. I drove myself to the hospital and finally got some good news.

The doctor told me my leg was severely sprained but not broken. They told me I got incredibly lucky. Fast forward to a few days later and I'm still recovering at home.

But I can't stop thinking about one thing. That other skier. Where he'd come from, where he'd gone.

why there hadn't been any tracks. I kept telling myself I'd figure it out eventually, but I think that was mostly wish casting. I was combing through some local skier centric website, something I do often, and that's when I stumbled upon something terrifying.

It was a story about a fatal backcountry skiing incident. A man who'd been lost in a storm a few weeks [music] prior. It had happened on the same mountain range, and authorities hadn't been able to find a body.

The worst had been assumed. There were no photographs of the man on the article, and when I searched up his name, I didn't find any Facebook or Instagram profiles or anything of the nature. So, I can't compare the man I saw in the mountain to the man in the article.

But, it's still a chilling coincidence nonetheless. I choose to believe the shock and hypothermia were causing me to hallucinate and my memory playing tricks on me. Maybe my brain constructed something to convince me that I wasn't alone on the mountain, but I remember his shoulder under my arm.

I remember feeling him helping me down the mountain. There's no way I could have moved that fast by myself. I still ski, but I haven't gone alone since then.

I still have no idea what helped me off that mountain.