13 Screams Before Sunrise True Tales of Halloween Terror

13 Screams Before Sunrise True Tales of Halloween Terror

A chilling true account of the screams that haunt one small town every Halloween night

The Night It All Began

People always say Halloween’s the one night you should stay inside that the veil between the living and the dead gets paper thin. I used to roll my eyes at that kind of thing. Just stories, I thought. Until last year. It happened in Kentucky, at my grandmother’s old farmhouse. She’d passed the year before, and I went back to pack up what was left. The place sat miles from town, surrounded by cornfields that looked like they hadn’t been touched in decades. No neighbors. No streetlights. Only the kind of silence that hums in your ears. The locals had warned me, half-joking, about the “Halloween screams.” Thirteen of them, they said. Always before sunrise. No one ever went looking for where they came from. Some said they were echoes. Some said they weren’t echoes at all. I didn’t believe a word of it until I heard the first one.

The First Scream

It hit me at exactly 12:01 A.M. The sound didn’t come from far away like you’d expect. It was close. Right outside the field. Too human. Too jagged. Not an animal. Not the wind. I grabbed my phone, but the screen froze on 12:01 and wouldn’t move. Even the old mantel clock stopped ticking, its hands caught between seconds. Then, four minutes later, another one. Closer. That’s when I realized the house had... changed. It wasn’t creaking anymore. It was listening.

Something in the Walls

You can feel when a house notices you. The walls shift differently. The air feels charged like it’s waiting for a signal. Every little sound that night seemed to come from somewhere new. The pipes groaned, thin footsteps creaked in the hallway, and every few minutes, the screams outside came again. By the sixth one, I started keeping track. I don’t know why. Maybe it was instinct or maybe counting was the only thing that kept me from breaking apart. One, two, three… building and building and building. I told myself if I made it to thirteen, it’d be over. But maybe that was the wrong wish to make.

Out in the Cornfield

The eighth scream pushed me out the door. I didn’t even think. One second I was in the living room, the next I was knee-deep in corn, barefoot and shivering. The soil squished wet beneath my feet like something pulsing underneath. The air didn’t move, but the rows of corn did, leaning toward me, whispering against each other. The ninth scream came from the direction of the house. Only it didn’t sound like it was outside anymore. It was inside. The lights in the windows flickered, then went black. For a moment it looked like something was walking past the curtains tall and slow, bending in the wrong places. I didn’t go back. I couldn’t. I just kept walking toward the hill.

The Thirteenth

Everyone in town knows about that hill. They say it’s hollow beneath full of old tunnels or maybe graves. The tenth scream came from underneath me, shaking the ground so hard I nearly fell. The next one stretched too long, like metal scraping against metal. By the twelfth, I felt the noise crawl up through my legs and into my chest. And then… The thirteenth one didn’t sound real. It scraped through the air like it was alive high, sharp, endless. And as it rang out, the horizon lit up red. Not dawn-red. Wrong-red. The kind of color you only see behind closed eyes. I looked down and realized I was standing on top of a patch of uneven soil small indentations everywhere. Handprints. Dozens of them. Thirteen clear as day, pressed into the dirt as if someone had tried to climb out.

When Morning Came

By sunrise, everything was still again. No screams. No movement. The world looked normal too normal. When I drove into town, no one mentioned a thing. But outside the diner, the sheriff was posting a missing person flyer. A local girl. Sixteen. Disappeared sometime after midnight. That’s how the stories started changing. They stopped calling them screams and started calling them “The Thirteen.” And every year since, someone goes missing on Halloween. Always before dawn. Always after thirteen cries break the night.

Why I Can’t Forget

I’ve tried so hard not to think about it this past year, but I wake up most nights around 3:13 to a faint knocking at the window. Thirteen quick taps. Always thirteen. No breeze. No branches. Just the same pattern. I’ve thought about recording it, but the idea of hearing it played back terrifies me. Sometimes I wonder if those screams are meant to keep something sealed away or if they’re warnings that something’s already loose. Either way, I can feel this year’s Halloween coming. And my stomach twists every time the clock hits midnight. If you ever hear them the thirteen don’t count. Don’t listen. Just get away. Because once you reach that last scream, it’s already too late.