While horror movies can surely leave us terrified, its the true scary stories from history that really burrow into our brains and stay there. From true crime to the paranormal to the just plain eerie, the real-life creepy stories are the ones that provide a lasting fright that fictional ones cannot.Perhaps Mark Twain put it best when he said, Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isnt.Historys most chilling scary stories of aliens, murder, and monsters indeed remain far stranger than fiction. They take uncanny turns and deliver startling scares that no writer or filmmaker could dream up in quite the same way.Discover some of the creepiest stories that are entirely true and are all the more terrifying because of it.True Scary Stories: The Mystery Of The Enfield MonsterThe Reading EagleHenry McDaniel looks at the torn screen door of his home following his encounter with the Enfield monster.One night in 1973, the two young McDaniel children of Enfield, Illinois claimed to see a weird creature lurking in their yard and trying to get in the house. But father Henry McDaniel chalked their creepy story up to the active imagination of childhood.However, he changed his mind later that night. After being awoken by strange scratching sounds, McDaniel grabbed a gun and a flashlight and peered outside his front door. There, between two rosebushes, he saw a creature that was almost like a human body, just as his children had described.It had three legs on it, a short body, two little short arms, and two pink eyes as big as flashlights, he recounted to a reporter.Mt. Vernon Register-NewsNews clipping of McDaniels eyewitness account of the Enfield monster.McDaniel said he fired four shots and was sure he hit the creature at least once, causing it to make a hiss much like a wildcats before it ran off toward a railway embankment. McDaniel was stunned when he saw the monstrous beast jump 80 feet in three jumps before quickly running out of sight.The police found scratches on the door screen as well as footprints in the dirt near McDaniels home that looked dog-like with six toe pads, yet no clues pointed to an unusual creature. McDaniels sighting made the Reading Eagle but it was clear most people didnt believe it was true.It didnt help that a 10-year-old neighbor faked his own eyewitness account of the beast, only to later admit that his testimony was a prank against the McDaniels. Creative CommonsA rendering of the Enfield monster, highlighting the glowing red eyes seen by Henry McDaniel.McDaniel reported two more sightings of the alleged beast to local cops but he said they eventually threatened him with jail time because nobody believed what he saw had been real. But McDaniel was adamant and stood behind his scary true story.If they do find it, McDaniel said in an interview, they will find more than one and they wont be from this planet, I can tell you that.After McDaniels public testimony about the Enfield monster, other eyewitness claims began to surface. Monster hunters swarmed the town and at least five men were arrested after firing shots in the area and claiming to have photographed the creature.To this day, no explanation has been uncovered for this small-town creepy story.People Literally Being Saved By The BellWikimedia CommonsPatients suffering from catalepsy were once frequently mistaken for dead and thus buried alive.The term saved by the bell is an idiom commonly used to describe people who escaped difficult situations thanks to a last-minute solution. But the light-hearted phrase actually may have a true scary story behind it related to a medical condition known as catalepsy.Catalepsy is a medical condition in which a patient endures an uncontrolled state of muscle rigidity and unresponsiveness. The condition is often linked to episodes of catatonia.Although the disease is widely understood now, in the past it caused sufferers to be mistakenly buried alive. After newspapers reported on these tragic endings, writers like Edgar Allan Poe built similar incidents in his own creepy stories.Public DomainA design for a safety coffin featuring an above-ground bell that could be rung from the inside.The frequency of catalepsy patients being mistaken for dead people led to a string of quick-fix solutions by doctors and gravekeepers, though many of these ideas created new horrors of their own.One well-intentioned yet morbid solution was the creation of waiting mortuaries. In these hospitals for the dead, the bodies of suddenly catatonic patients were kept under observation for a few days to make sure they were actually dead. Waiting mortuaries were well-stocked with food, wine, and cigars in the event that a patient woke up.Another more gruesome solution to avoid burying those who were still alive was to perform examinations to test the deadness of the patient.People thought to be dead had their fingers hacked off or endured smoke being literally blown up their butt. The assumption was that if the person didnt wake up then that meant they were unequivocally dead. Otherwise, the procedure was used to revive those who were on the edge of death via tobaccos supposed restorative properties.Wikimedia CommonsA rendering of a person being buried alive by Swedish painter Odd Nerdrum.There was only one problems with such test: Catalepsy prevents patients from feeling pain during their catatonic state, so employing extreme measures proved to be an ineffective method of confirming whether a person was dead or alive. True scary stories of being buried alive also spawned the creation of safety coffins. In 18th- and 19th-century Europe, especially Victorian England, enough people were being mistakenly buried alive that coffin-makers came up with a number of solutions.These caskets were designed with above-ground horns or bells that a person who found themselves mistakenly buried alive could ring from the inside when they woke up trapped underground. Some of these safety coffins also came equipped with a stash of poison in case the person figured out they wouldnt be saved. Other models used glass panes that would fog up if the person was still breathing. Some had tubes that gravekeepers would have to sniff each day to confirm that the body inside was actually decomposing. Other people were simply buried with the keys to their own coffin in their pocket. But the bell models were among the most pervasive. These morbid contraptions were allegedly where the phrase saved by the bell came from, according to some.Its unclear whether safety coffins did any good to reduce the number of people who were accidentally buried alive. But the thought of being trapped with no escape for eternity is enough to send a chill down your spine.The post 9 True Scary Stories That Are Almost Too Creepy To Believe appeared first on All That's Interesting.