Reddit Users Share Hometown Horror Stories, Have Fun Not Sleeping Again

Does your hometown have any terrifying secrets or incidents?

Every small town in America seems to have some darkness in its soul, and I don't mean that in a "Stranger Things" kind of way. I mean it in murderous kind of way.

Well, I was scrolling through Reddit Thursday as I often do, and I landed on a thread that is pure nightmare fuel.

Reddit users share their most horrifying town incidents.

A Reddit thread titled "What was ‘The Incident’ in your home town?" is blowing up, and it's all about exactly what you'd expect. The most horrifying moments in people's hometowns. Be warned this one has some wild stuff in it.

Check out some of the scariest and wildest answers below, and make sure to send me your reactions to David.Hookstead@outkick.com:

• A landlord called a plumber because of clogged drains. Turns out the cause of the clog was from a "fleshy substance" which turned out to be the remains of a missing girl. Tenant ended up being convicted of two murders. I happened to know the sister of one of the victims.
• Principal was having an affair with his assistant. When the assistant’s husband found out, he killed her. Their kid was a student in the school.
• The mayor's aide hit my mom with his truck when she was 13. Guy needed glasses to drive but wasn't wearing them. The mayor made all charges go away even though Mom was severely injured. Just things that happen in small towns. Her whole family except for her own parents sided with the mayor. Years later, one of Mom's cousins married his son. We don't speak to or see anyone from Mom's side of the family.
• The retired principal of the elementary school was on his riding lawnmower in his yard. He apparently went a little over the property line onto his neighbors yard. The neighbor came out and shot him dead.
• Some nutjob rammed the front door of city courthouse with his SUV with the intent of getting in and taking hostages. Instead the city swat team was about 30s away in the middle of a drill, so the van was already loaded and ready. He didn't get very far...
• I've told this on Reddit before, but one evening in 1974, a high school boy was involved in a very minor fender bender in front of our local theater. He panicked and fled the scene. They found his car several miles south of town, parked by the expressway with the motor running. He was nowhere to be found. He hasn't been heard from since.
• My next door neighbor lost his mind and held his wife and son hostage for 8 hours in their house and the SWAT team was there. Spike trapped his car and surrounded the house. I was only 8 or 9 and, at the start, was more concerned about my ability to go to school because that day was field day. I wasn't allowed to go to school and had to be evacuated out of my house by 4 SWAT members. He ended up surrendering and I missed out on my last field day.
• We had a pet serial killer on the loose a while ago. Poisonous food was being left for them to eat and we lost something around 20 of our furry friends. The town was in an uproar and luckily the prick was found. The city police was quick to hand him over to the state police before the town lynched him.
• A football player at my high school died standing at the corner, waiting for the bus to take him home from school. The STOP sign, located about two feet over his head, just dropped off and struck him in the head, killing him instantly. Found out the next day at school; it was devastating.
• I’m from Broward County, Florida. The whole place is an incident.
• Among others a man kidnapped and kept a young girl as a sex slave and kept her separated from society. He was on active probation too and his house was just never searched.
• Kid was walking home from school with his Walkman on at full blast, and he liked to walk on the train tracks. He just wasn't thinking, one assumes. The next day they told the school about his death over the morning announcements, and I was bummed all day. Finally my buddy was like, "Did you know him?" I told him no. Then he's like, "Then why do you care?" I suppose it was a good question, but really. That's a f*cked-up way to die.
• Three teens drove home from one town over where a corrupt bar owner would let teens come in and drink. They hit a sharp turn and rolled their car, it caught on fire while 2/3 passengers were either trapped inside or too beat up to escape. One person crawled from the wreck while she listened to them burning alive. The bar owner was never charged.
• Small community, where everyone knew everyone. A kid (who was then in the class below me) accidentally shot his brother in the stomach (and died), as they were playing with their father's hunting rifle. That family never really healed. The parents split up, and the kid (who's in his 40s now) became the village drunk.
• All the neighbors once a month used to be sitting on their porches in lawn chairs with popcorn everytime we had a family fight and the cops showed up
• A guy who disappeared mysteriously from the local nightclub 11 years ago. I'm very much a believer in Occam's razor, but there really is no obvious explanation: this was in the middle of a well-populated town, miles away from any bodies of water or major roads. I suspect some people who were there that night know more than they're willing to give away, but that's pure speculation. Which, sadly, has been a running theme among the community. I've heard many far-fetched and downright bizarre theories about the guy's demise - including that he was buried underneath a shop that was being built at the time, and that a group of Irish travelers kidnapped him, chopped him up and fed him to the pigs. Everyone you ask has an opinion, and rarely is it a very level-headed one.

Are you ready to not trust your neighbors and stay awake at night after reading all those horror stories? I certainly am. I'm going to stay locked inside with the safety of my weapons and knowing that if anything goes down, I'll at least be on my home turf.

Honestly, I have nothing that matches anything above. My rural Wisconsin hometown had a murder, a shooting and I'm sure plenty of affairs over the past 20 years, but nothing would rise to the level of being on the list above.

To be honest, the guy who was murdered I didn't even know, despite it happening literally right up the road from my house. We did have a pretty famous cold case, but the actual killing happened more than a decade before I was born. I'm not sure I can count it. 

A viral Reddit thread is shining a light on the most disturbing hometown stories people have experienced. (Credit: Getty Images)

Now, my parents could tell you all stories for days about some of the stuff that happened in their region of Wisconsin when they were growing up. However, that's stories for them to tell - not me. I'm just glad I didn't have to live through anything too scandalous. Does your hometown have any truly terrifying incidents or secrets? I want to hear them at David.Hookstead@outkick.com!