Parenting, although I have never done it personally, appears to be a challenging, daunting, and sometimes nightmarish gig. For instance, I recently learned that sometimes, you have to suck your child's dried snot out of their nose with your own mouth. (I swear, this is a thing that happens.) I regularly wipe my kitten's boogers from his face, but that suck-and-blow thing is next-level. The frighteningly weird possibilities of parenthood are apparently endless, though. Consider, for a moment, just how scary baby monitors can be: recording hours of footage of possessed-looking infants, picking up conversations between strangers... weird baby monitor stories are surprisingly common, and seriously creepy.
The last time I was left in charge of a child, it was when my sister and her husband went on a date, and asked me to watch my two-year-old nephew. It was late enough that he was already in for the night, so I just sat myself on the couch with music the turned down low enough so I could hear him. (Even though honestly, I was at a loss for how I could actually be helpful in most scenarios other than make funny faces, but that's neither here nor there.) As it turns out, there was no baby monitor — I had to rely on my own questionable hearing to keep tabs on him — but honestly, I'm so happy that was the case. As I'm quickly learning, baby monitors are terrifying little gadgets that make otherwise angelic-looking infants look downright evil. And if you don't believe me, just wait. Here are some of the scariest instances of baby monitors providing what looks like a glimpse into the bowels of actual Hell:
1. Night Vision Baby
Those luminous eyes are probably pretty helpful for when it can legally drive but for right now... that is one rather demonic-looking baby.
2. Graveyard Shift
For whatever reason, I feel like adding kids to an already scary situation (like darkness), amps up the fright factor eleventy billion times. This creepy baby monitor pic of a toddler is perhaps the best example of that. It was originally shared on Reddit by the user jcmcma0733, who shared this little backstory for the photo: "My cousin woke up in the middle of the night and randomly looked at the baby monitor and saw this. She said it scared the sh*t out of her. She stayed like this for several minutes." Hi, yes — no thank you. No thank you at all.
3. Overheard, Real-Life Terrors
Last year, a Redditor asked fellow users if they'd ever heard anything creepy come through their baby monitors. The stories poured in fast, and soon over 200 commented flooded the thread. As Redditor truevwlove shared:
When my daughter was about 8 months old I was in her bedroom cleaning while she was playing in her crib. I had her monitor turned down, but when I noticed the red lights moving, signaling noise, I turned it up. I heard, plain as day, a child screaming something along the lines of "I'm sorry, no!! please no!!!" The worst part is that I could actually hear him being hit. Not slapped, but seriously beat. I lived in a heavily populated area of Pittsburgh so there was no telling where this was happening. I grabbed my daugther and ran outside anyway, hoping to hear the child scream from an apartment or house so I could call the police, but I couldn't zero in on it. Such a horrible feeling, not being able to stop this poor child from being beat. I never looked at any of my neighbors the same.
4. Jingle Bell Rock
On that same Reddit thread, winglamo shared a creepy experience between a senior citizen and a baby monitor. And honestly... I can barely even:
This isn't something I heard from my kid's room, but it was something creepy heard over a baby monitor. I did at home care for a little while, and there was this one client I had a couple of years ago. The lady I assisted had dementia, and she was just at the point where the good days were fading. We had a baby monitor in her room so we could hear when she was waking up. I'll go ahead and mention that we also had bells pinned to her sheets so that when she was trying to get up on her own (fall risk) we would hear the bells jingle. It was common to hear her down in her room talking to "that man." Asking "who are you?" and "what is it?" to an empty room. One evening her and I were in the living room together by ourselves, and I heard the bells start jingling on their own over the baby monitor. There was no ceiling fan, the AC/heat wasn't running, no windows were open. I always had bad feelings in her house, with things like cabinets opening and one really creepy time where it sounding like footsteps coming down the hallway which really scared me. I'm honestly glad I will never have to go into that house again.
5. Demonic Sounds
In case ghosts aren't your bag fear-wise, how about aliens? How about some aliens talking to you over a baby monitor ?
6. Celestial Visitor
More aliens. "Shut up," the filmer says. "It's not aliens." But it doesn't sound like she's even convincing herself.
7. High Alert
Is this baby even old enough to stand straight up like that? What is he looking at? To make this clip all the more horrific, consider the caption: "My wife heard her name being whispered 'Naa-taa-shaa...' she looked at the baby monitor to find our son like this."
8. Paranormal Pranksters
Check out this creeptastic tale, shared by Redditor GRZMNKY:
I was at a friend's house one night, and she was putting her little boy to bed. Her baby monitor had a camera built in and was installed at the foot of the crib. She also had one of those mattress sensors in the crib.
Well, we are sitting down, watching a movie and the receiver for the monitor is on the coffee table in front of us. The sound sensor spikes and the screen goes white. She picks it up, and all you can make out on the screen is an eerie face. We go running into the room and her kid is sound asleep. We look around and don't see anything strange, so we go back to the movie.
About 10 minutes later, the same thing happens. I get up quietly and sneak into his room, while she stays on the couch. I catch the kid standing up in his crib, with his face right up against the monitor. He is smiling like crazy and giggling. He looks over at me and quickly lays down and acts like he is asleep.
I let her know whats up, and she laughs it off... a few nights later she tells me the same thing happened to the monitor, but her boy was sitting on the couch next to her, at the time.
9. Directorial Debut
This clip is mostly creepy because the mama refers to her offspring as "stink bottom" without an obvious lick of irony.
10. Double Vision
Mirror-image demon babies are what truly make a house a home... as the old adage goes. Oh wait, no? It doesn't? OF COURSE IT DOESN'T THIS IS NOT OK.
11. The Truth Comes Out
Of course, not all of the stories I stumbled upon were scary for all parties involved. Take the confession of punkwalrus, another Redditor who admitted this long-held secret about the time they scared the bajeezus out of a woman while using a two-way baby monitor:
Okay, in early 1990, I worked for a volunteer-based security group. We didn't have a radio license for real walkie-talkies yet, so we had a set of headsets that worked off some common household frequencies. These frequencies were used for child's walkie-talkies, cheap cordless phones, drive-thru speakers, baby monitors, and such.
During an outdoor distance test, I picked up some lady's cordless phone where she talked about gross medical stuff, but she couldn't hear us to get her to stop.
So while testing a battery replacement, I picked up a two-way baby monitor in a nearby apartment. There was a baby fussing and the sound of some woman doing dishes. "I'll be right there, hon..." the woman said.
On a whim, I pushed "TALK" on my headset, and said with a loud, demonic voice, "FEED. ME!"
Then I heard the shattering of dishes.
That was hilarious when I was 21... but after reading this, I feel bad. :(
Sorry, lady stranger.
Oh man; I seriously feel for that woman, whoever she may be.
Images: Pete/Flickr; Imgur (4)
