They say seeing is believing, but sometimes, people see things that they simply can’t—or won’t—believe. That’s the case for the people of Reddit who were brave enough to relive the unsettling moments where they experienced something that sent a chill down their spine. Whether it was an impossible apparition, something in the sky, or a Ouiji board that just wouldn't die (more on that below!), these stories may come off as fiction to the readers, but they were terrifyingly fact to the people who experienced them. So, continue reading down below to judge for yourself—worst-case scenario, you might find some good stories to tell around the campfire.
1. Ghost Plane
Didn't see it but heard it. My friends and I got a cheap set of walkie-talkies from Walmart and were playing around with them in the middle of the day. There's a bit of silence as we're trying to figure out the volume, then out of nowhere, there's a male voice saying, "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!" It came through all of our walkie-talkies and it definitely sounded like it was from one of those aircraft headsets.
We try to answer back but there's no response. I called non-emergency, but they said there weren't any reports of distressed aircraft or ships, and even if there were, they couldn't do anything about it. Alternatively, a couple months later, I saw a plane with an engine on fire go over my campus, but apparently no one else did.
2. That’s Just the Lorax
I grew up on a two-acre home with plenty of trees and room for an eight-year-old to run around. Our house was heated in the winter by a wood fireplace, so we would periodically cut down one of our own trees to save money. Well, for about two years, there was a stump less than a foot tall near the house, and at least once a day, without fail, I would see someone standing on the stump.
Usually, it was out of the corner of my eye, but once or twice I looked directly at him. I always looked away quickly because it startled me and then he'd be gone, but my sister says she experienced the same thing. Nothing ever came of it though.
3. Take the Hint
All right, buckle up. My neighbor was dying of a heart condition about six years ago. He knew he was, so he was giving away all of his valuables to people he trusted with them. Neighbor gave me his tackle box. He loved to fish. I would see him come home from fishing every day and he’d just sit on his porch and skin fish.
I just put the tackle box in my closet and didn’t really do anything with it since I don’t fish. Anyways, soon after, he passed away in his home. Exactly a week after that, I woke up to the tackle box at the foot of my bed. Weird, but my step dad likes to mess around. I figured it was him, so I put it back. The next morning, I wake up and it’s at the foot of my bed again.
So, I ask my step dad what the deal was, and he had no idea what I was talking about. To test this, I put the tackle box in a spot that he wouldn’t find, nor would he attempt to get it. Under my bed, all the way in the back against the wall, and I put stuff in front of it to conceal it. Next morning, nothing. Okay, I guess it was him.
I didn’t give it much thought after that. Three days pass, I wake up one morning and there it is, at the foot of my bed. Now I’m starting to freak out. So I did what any rational person would do and I went fishing with it. After I went fishing, I put the tackle box away, and it hasn’t moved since then. It’s still there.
4. Disappeared Without a Trace
This happened to me last year and I fully understand why no one believed me because it sounds ridiculous. Every morning, I need to wake up at 5 AM to catch the 5:30 AM bus to the train station to go to university. I had to be there by 8 AM but I like to get there half an hour early. To get to the bus stop, I have to walk down this bike path and under this bridge to get to this quiet backstreet road.
There is zero light on the bike path. This street is dead quiet. The right side of the road is a continuation of the bike path, and the left is a normal footpath with a long green hedge. One morning, I was standing there waiting for a bus and this old woman comes walking out from under the bridge. I didn't see her at first because as I said it was pitch black on the bike path.
She crosses the road and walks up to me. She asked me if I knew where X road was. I turned to point in the direction of the road she was looking for. I turned back and she was gone. This old woman, who was walking at a snail's pace, disappeared within three seconds.
5. Trading Places
My one weird thing was this—some friends and I were hanging out one summer’s eve when we were around 15. It was night, clear, and we were all lying on my friend’s trampoline in the backyard. We were all just chatting and looking at the stars. Suddenly, we're all like, “What the heck? Did you just see that?” We all swore we saw a formation of stars trade places with each other.
They sort of left a tail, like a shooting star, before resettling in their new positions. They all moved at the exact same time. It was strange that three of us seemed to see the same thing.
6. He Needed to Know How It Ends
This makes me sound crazy, but anyways. It was a warm summer morning back when I was a kid. I was standing in our hallway putting on my shoes when I randomly peeked into our living room and saw a see-through male figure surrounded by rainbow-colored light standing right in the middle of the living room. He was reading a book and didn't seem to notice me.
I thought it was weird but I didn't feel scared or anything. It felt like the room was filled with a warm, loving energy if that makes sense. I kind of just shrugged it off and went about my day, probably because I was too young to really understand what I'd seen. A few days later, when my mom tucked me into bed, she read me a bedtime story about a kid who meets an angel or something like that, don't remember the story exactly but what was interesting is the author's description of what that angel looked like.
It was exactly the same as the strange rainbow man I had seen in our living room a couple of days before. It even said that angels will often visit humans surrounded by strong, rainbow-colored lighting and manifest themselves while reading a book. I casually blurted out, “Oh, I've seen an angel then!” and my mom was like, “You have? That's great!”
We didn't talk more about that for a while, until one day when I randomly asked my mom if I could see a picture of my grandfather who died unexpectedly while my mom was pregnant with me. She found an old family album and we looked through pictures of my parents' wedding that happened exactly one year before I was born.
There was a picture of three or four people sitting together, laughing and having a great time at the party. I immediately pointed out the guy who sat in the middle and said, “How funny! He looks just like the angel I saw!!” My mom's face turned white as a ghost. She was just about to tell me that this was indeed my deceased grandfather who I never got to meet.
I'm very convinced it was him visiting me.
7. It’s All in the Reflexes
This was four years ago. As I was walking on the sidewalk on a busy afternoon, I saw a suspicious boy/man who was about 18 years old. He was 10 meters away and walking what appeared to be towards me. I kept my eyes on him despite the fact that he wasn’t looking directly at me. His eyes were roaming, jumping from object to object.
As we approached one another, half a meter away from each other, he takes out a knife and tries to stab me in my left side. He wasn’t really fast, so I easily dodged it and immediately turned to see who he was, or if he was trying to stab me again. To my surprise, he continued walking, and after couple of meters, he stopped, turned around, smiled and gave me a thumbs up, then continued walking in the opposite direction.
To this day, I don’t know who he was or what he wanted and even my family doesn’t believe me, because “if someone wanted to stab you, you can‘t stop him. You aren’t experienced enough to dodge it like that,” or something to that effect.
8. Intruder Alert
I woke up to a sound in the darkness. It sounded like a door shutting. At first, I thought it was a dream because I could hear it in the dream as I was waking up, kind of like when someone calls your name when you’re dreaming. But then I looked at my cat and his hair was completely standing up and he was beaming at my bedroom door.
This was the moment when I got really scared because I know animals can pick up on that stuff and I thought he might know something’s wrong. My cat doesn’t do this type of thing unless a dog is in the room. So I looked over at the door and the only way I can describe it is it looked like it was swaying, slowly, like it was breathing, like someone was standing on the other side of it trying to hear if I was awake.
This swaying was accompanied by a shadow. I don’t mean a supernatural shadow, but it looked like the shadow of a person behind the door. I was paralyzed with fear. I lied there for five minutes, naked, watching this door sway. I considered yelling and trying to scare them away but I was terrified someone might respond.
I legitimately thought this was the moment where I would have to defend myself or be killed. I don’t own a gun but after 10 minutes or so I mustered up the courage to check every room in the house. I checked every corner too. But there was no one there. I don’t know what happened, but my evolutionary traits kicked in and I completely believed someone was outside my door.
9. Don’t Mind Her
I spent one summer in high school living with my aunt and uncle and watching their seven-year-old daughter for them during the day while they worked. I was up late one night watching TV in the living room. The living room was right off of the kitchen, separated only by an L shaped bar. I saw my cousin, out of the corner of my eye, walk down the hallway from her room into the kitchen.
It was way past her bedtime, so I told her she needed to go back to bed. When I didn’t hear her answer, I got up and walked around the bar and into the kitchen. There was no one there. I checked under the bar to see if she was hiding from me, and there was no one there, and nowhere else she could’ve gone from the kitchen.
I walked down the hallway to her room, and she was fast asleep, snoring, so there was no way it was her. It baffled me, and freaked me out, because if I didn’t see my cousin, who was the little girl that walked into the kitchen? Several years later, I was talking to my aunt and she nonchalantly brings up the ghost in her house.
I laughed it off and she said, “No, I’m serious. We have a ghost. Your uncle and I both have seen her and heard her. We call her Giggles, because we hear her giggling. We usually only see her in the hallway before she disappears.” All of a sudden, I remembered the disappearing girl in the kitchen. I asked her what her ghost looked like.
She said she had blonde hair with braids and wore a white dress. My cousin is blonde. On the night in question, I thought I’d seen my cousin in a nightgown walk down the hallway, but apparently it was the ghost that resides in my aunt’s house.
10. It Has Its Eyes on You
Fishing on Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park with a good friend, about 50 feet from shore. Around 8:30 PM, I see glowing red eyes. Up in the trees. Like, red—like the Predator, I guess. I do a double-take—they are gone. I decide not to say anything, maybe I'm trippin'. Did just smoke up. Nope. Five minutes later my buddy says, “I just seen some glowing red eyes up in the top of those trees.”
I feel goosebumps. “Yup, I saw them too.” We look back and they are gone. We decide to aim the boat towards the shoreline. It's not dark yet but the sun is going down. We saw nothing. No owls, no goats in the trails. We didn't get off the boat but we had a good look around. When I ask him about it—this was around 10 years ago—he just says he doesn't want to talk about it. I can't blame him.
But after all these years, I've never heard or seen anything like those glowing red eyes, 30 to 40 feet up in the trees. Staring at us. I copied and pasted this next part (I knew nothing about the history when we went fishing there, by the way). “For more than 100 centuries, people hunted and camped along the original shores of Lake Minnewanka. The Stoney people called it 'Minn-waki' or 'Lake of the Spirits.' They respected and feared this lake for its resident spirits. The Early Europeans called it Devil's Lake."
I used to go camping there. I do not anymore. Mostly because it's bear country for most of the summer. But yeah, also because of those bright red eyes. I will never forget that. Most surreal thing I've ever seen.
11. That Doesn’t Belong Here
I saw a panther sized black cat darting out of a water retention/artificial forest near a school in the desert. Logically, it shouldn't be able to survive there, but good lord I saw it. Animal control wouldn't let that exist, there isn't really enough food for it, and the summers get dangerously hot if you've got black fur.
Must have been four to five feet long. It doesn't make sense, but I 100% saw it, and so did the friend I was with.
12. Grandma Never Left
Two stories here, both about my grandma. Near the end, my grandma had trouble controlling her bowels. She wore a diaper and would typically go all over the toilet. After she passed—she passed in the house under professional care—my family cleaned out the house, took the wallpaper down, cleaned the place spotless because we were going to move in in the next month or two.
About a week after we finished cleaning we went back to make sure everything was good, we get to the bathroom my grandma used and there was literally poo everywhere—the walls, the ceiling, behind the shower curtain, literally the entire bathroom was essentially coated. Freaked me out because I knew it had to be my grandma, no burst pipes or anything wrong with the plumbing.
Second story—We ended up moving in after the “situation.” My parents were out of town, so my brother and I had some friends over. We were in the basement playing Magic the Gathering when I went upstairs to grab everyone drinks. In the line of sight from the fridge was the TV in our family room. Out of nowhere, the TV turns on, full volume, to the show The Commissioner, which was my grandma’s favorite show.
She was also hard of hearing, so it being at full volume was normal for her. I freaked out and ran into the basement to get my brother, we go upstairs and the TV is off but the recliner is reclined. I shouldn’t have been scared because it had to be my grandma, but I was young. We lived in that house a few more years and a few other things happened, but those two stick out to me because they were so close to when she died.
13. Nun on the Loose
I went to a non-religious high school in the United Kingdom. I was always a nerdy kid and the teachers always liked me, so I often got given tasks like delivering papers to other teachers or to bring sick kids to the nurse. Basically, little jobs which meant I was walking around the school occasionally outside of class times.
For about a month or so, I kept seeing this nun walking around the school grounds when nobody else was around. I'd get back to class and tell my mates, but they all thought I was taking joking around with them. I asked a few of the teachers, and they just openly laughed at me, saying we don't have nuns at the school (obviously I knew that).
It became a massive running joke with a lot of people in my class that I was the weirdo who kept seeing nuns who weren't really there. I even saw the nun when I was with my friends once and pointed her out and then she WALKED AROUND THE CORNER. My friend just missed her and we couldn't find her after running after the nun.
One girl later said she also saw the nun but still, people didn't believe me. Over 10 years later and I'm still bitter.
14. Saved by the Nightmare
My wife, kids, and myself were in the car together, driving by some cliffs near where we live. We stopped to take in the view and snap some photos. I lined the kids up with the cliff drop and ocean behind them and took some pictures. As they took a step back for me to get a better picture, they fell off the edge of the cliff.
I woke up sweating and petrified. The nightmare felt so real, one of those that really sticks with you. I went for a pee and checked in on all the kids, all fast asleep in bed, apart from my five-year-old daughter. She was on the floor—she had fallen out of bed but somehow was still sleeping. Next to her on the floor, knocked over I assume when she fell, was a bedside lamp.
The bulb from the lamp was singeing into the carpet, I think ready to burst into flames.
15. Nothing Out of the Ordinary
My friend's grandma's house was right up against a cemetery. He always told me it was haunted and would see crazy stuff there but I never believed him. One night, we were over at her house and I swear, I saw something the size of a toddler run from the living room, through the dining room, and into the kitchen. When I looked at my friend he just went, “Did you just see that kid run through the house?”
It looked more like a fast running shadow than an actual person. There was no one there. There were no kids around—it was his grandma’s house and we were the only ones over. It was late at night and no doors were open or closed. When we told his grandma, she was just like, “Oh don't worry about it. It happens all the time.” After that, I started believing in ghosts.
My friend also said that when he used to sleep there, he would push the spare room's television away from him, making sure that it faced a different direction, all because he would wake up at night and see people in the reflection staring back out at him and watching him sleep. It scared the ever-loving crap out of him.
16. Don’t Go in the Basement
This might end up buried but I'm going to add it anyways. I work the night shift at a hospital and during the night it's fairly common for us to run out of particular supplies that we need. During the day, there is normally a worker from central supply who you can call and they'll bring up what you need directly to your floor. But at night, we don't have that luxury so we often have to go down and get it ourselves.
Central supply is in the basement of this hospital that has been around since the 40s, so it's creepy enough. I had heard stories about how creepy it was and people getting uneasy feelings while down there alone. I was naive and didn't really believe it until one night I had to go down there by myself. The place is huge and dimly lit with rows of shelves of hospital supplies everywhere.
I'm in the middle of these shelves looking for what I need when I just start to feel a shiver run through my entire body. The hair on my neck is standing up and I just get this feeling of complete dread, like I'm not supposed to be there. Then, all of a sudden, I see this black figure dart past me out of the corner of my eye.
At first, I thought I was just seeing things because it was like 3 AM and I was tired, so I brushed it off. I go to leave and suddenly I hear a huge crash behind me. A variety of supplies were wiped completely off the shelf and all over the floor and in the corner of the room, I just see this black figure like thing standing there.
Every hair on my body is standing up at this point and I get my butt out of that place as fast as possible. I came back to my floor and all but one of my coworkers thought I was bluffing. The only one who believed me saw my face and without me saying anything said to me, "You saw it too, didn't you?" Yeah, I never went down in the basement ever again.
17. Doppelganger Ghost
Not quite sure how young I was at the time, but I was probably between five and eight. I was in my babysitter’s bed at the time in her trailer park. It was 3:00 AM and I had woken up because I had to pee. When I woke up, I looked down the hallway to see my babysitter leaning against the wall like the stereotypical cool guys do in movies.
I made eye contact and I felt my body go cold because she was still sound asleep next to me in bed. I went under the blankets trying to hide and when I looked back she was gone. I didn’t want to sound crazy so I’ve never told anyone. I just sat in her bed watching infomercials until 6:00 AM when she woke up. Never even thought about sleeping there again.
I honestly forgot how much this affected me until I started writing this. Really freaked me out, man.
18. She Was Right Here, I Swear!
I was walking to class from the dining hall on my campus when I saw a lady yelling for help and banging on a window in a nearby building. Lots of people were walking past but I was the only one who seemed to acknowledge it. I went to the window to help and she told me she was locked in a room in the building and that she needed me to come in and open the door.
Now, I don't know the layout of this building at all, so I had no clue where she was located. I decided it would be best to call campus security for help, despite her desperate pleas for me not to call them and to just let her out. I call them, and when I hear them coming, I go to greet them so I can take them over to the window.
I leave for maybe a maximum of 15 seconds and when I return with campus security, she is gone. We can't see her at the window and campus security goes inside to double-check and sure enough, there is no trace of her. Campus security definitely thought I was crazy and I'm sure my professor thought I was full of it when I explained to him why I was late.
No one seems to believe me that this happened but I swear it did.
19. Locked Up
An old lady was tapping on the window to get our attention from a room on the second floor. When I walked up to the building, I yelled up at her, asking what was wrong. I could see her mouthing words, but she wasn’t yelling—it seemed like she was speaking normally, as if there wasn’t a window and 20 feet in between us.
After a couple of minutes, I found out that she was trapped inside a room on the second floor. I immediately assumed the worst and figured that she was being held against her will. I didn’t see any cars in the driveway, so I decided I would go in. Before I went into the house though, I had my cousin get his cell phone out and dial 911, ready to hit send and complete the call should anything happen. I enter the building.
The door opened to a dark, concrete hallway with old, dusty children’s toys that looked like they were from the 70s—rocking horse, red wagon, etc.—bunched up along the left wall. There were no other doors that I could see, only a spiral staircase at the end of the hallway. I started to climb the stairs and as I reached the second floor, I saw her.
The old lady that was tapping on the window was now sitting in a rocking chair watching some show on a very small black and white TV. The door to this room seemed more like the front door to a house than an interior door—it had glass panels from top to bottom. At this point I was very confused—three minutes ago she was saying she was locked in this room, now she’s just watching TV?
I knock on the door and she responds, “Come in.” As I turn the handle and go to open the door, I notice that it is, in fact, locked. But, there's no deadbolt, and I’m turning the knob completely, so I know that it can't be locked. By now, the lady is standing right in front of me on the other side of the door, trying to open it as well.
That is when I stepped back, and noticed a large screwdriver jammed into the floorboards on my end of the door, keeping the door from opening. Someone locked this woman in the room from the outside with a screwdriver. My mind is racing at this point. I make one quick attempt to pull the screwdriver out, but I couldn’t get it.
I tell her I’m going to get help. I get out of that building real quick and tell my cousin to call the police. The police show up and surround the building, guns drawn, and then they enter. As they’re entering, a car pulls into the driveway. A couple gets out of the car, trying to figure out what was going on. It turns out that this lady was their mother/mother-in-law and she suffered from dementia.
Every time they left the house, they would lock her in that room to prevent her from wandering off. After reading about the issue, I found that it’s a fairly common—albeit illegal—thing people in this situation do.
20. Didn’t Sign up for This
As a Marine, I used to have the graveyard patrol shift at the Beirut Bombing Memorial. Part of the memorial is dedicated to a veteran's cemetery. Oddly enough, I never got freaked out being completely alone in a remote cemetery, in the middle of the night, surrounded by dense woods on all sides. It was actually kind of peaceful, to be honest.
However, one night I was patrolling near the perimeter fence where some of the oldest headstones are when I heard the sound of a woman humming. I followed the sound and noticed a light glowing through the vines and brush of a large tree. As I approached, I could literally feel my hair beginning to lift, as if there was an electric current in the air.
I pushed aside the brush and what I saw nearly took my breath away. It was an old, weathered headstone with a large cross etched into the marble. Only the cross was glowing a bright, vivid blue, like a neon bulb. The humming was also suddenly much louder and had a weird plurality to it, like it was coming from hundreds of voices at once.
Needless to say, I freaked out. I screamed like a scared little girl and sprinted back to the parking lot. I radioed the guard who was supposed to relieve me and forced him to come early, then spent the rest of my shift in the cab of his truck. I don't think he believed me, but he stayed in his truck and didn't go out on patrol until the sun was fully up.
A few days later, I worked up the nerve to return to the grave—during the day, of course. As I suspected, in the light of day it was a completely mundane headstone. There was no name, only the aforementioned cross. I ran my hands over the stone and checked to see if maybe there was some sort of hidden light source or solar panel, but no, it was just plain, solid, unremarkable stone. The humming was gone, too.
I eventually returned to my normal shift, but never again experienced anything out of the ordinary. I never learned whose grave that was, either, but I find myself thinking about it from time to time. It certainly sounds absurd when I say it out loud, and I suppose it could have been a hallucination or a trick of my tired brain, but I don't believe it was.
I think it was real. A ghost or spirit of some sort, thought I don't think it was malevolent at all.
21. Preparing for Doomsday
Not sure if it counts as creepy or overall scary, but it was weird. Back in high school, I lived in a large apartment complex, it was maybe around eight or nine at night and completely dark. I was with a group of friends—four or five people—we were just talking and messing around with a friend’s pair of walkie-talkies when we looked up in the sky and saw two fireballs, or what can be described as fireballs, just appear in the sky and slowly move in a line.
Just as that happened, we started getting what sounded like military communication over said walkie-talkies that was really static but words came in every now and then. About 10 or so minutes later the fireballs disappeared and the communication cut out. There was absolutely nothing about this on the news the next morning, and no one ever believed me.
22. Practicing Their Dance Moves
I heard footsteps and banging in my attic for about two months. Almost every night, I would hear them from above me—the steps are only like five feet from my room—small taps or footsteps. Then it gradually got louder to the point it sounded like an audible foot was pressing on the wood. I told my dad and he told me it was probably an animal that got up there or something.
The weird thing is, my sister heard the same noises as me, since her bedroom was in the same hallway as mine. My dad might have been right, as it was completely gone after two or three months and right now at 2 AM, I don't hear it. But I don't know...I swear to god if I hear it after I post this I'm actually gonna piss my pants.
23. If It Wasn’t You…
Something like this happened to my sister and me as well. We both slept upstairs in separate rooms on opposite ends of a short hallway. It was only our two bedrooms on the top floor. I’d often hear typing on a keyboard and/or soft steps walking down the hall to the stairs in the middle of the night. It was so natural and clear sounding that I never questioned it.
It was during the time when MSN was popular and I just figured my sister was up past her bedtime chatting or had to use the bathroom, which was downstairs. This went on for all of my childhood, with me not thinking anything of it. I moved out of my parents' house around 10 years ago now and a couple years ago, my sister and I were chatting.
She brought up that I kept her up with my constant keyboard clacking and trips to the bathroom at night. Turns out, we had been hearing the same noises at night growing up and assumed it was the other one making them. We both felt the same way about the noises, almost nostalgic and certainly not threatened.
24. Pranked by a Ghost
Had my laptop in my bed just before going to sleep—not plugged in, on battery. Made an offhand comment on some website about how I wasn’t scared of ghosts and didn’t believe in them. Then I turned it off and went to sleep with the laptop beside me in my bed. Next morning, when I try to power it on, nothing happens. But the laptop feels unusually light.
That’s when I realized the battery had been physically removed and placed in the kitchen. I was alone in my apartment and do not have a history of sleepwalking at all.
25. On to the Next One
When I was around nine or 10, this guy who looked about 40 kept appearing in every single public place I was in. With my parents or not, he was there. At the store? Yes, he was there, and he bought everything me and my family bought. In school? Yes, he was staring at me on the other side of the school gate. Out in the city? Yes, following me in the streets.
I told my parents so many times and they just ignored me and said I need to stop believing everything my brother says—since my brother was really into creepy stuff at the time, he was 14. One day this guy just disappeared. The next thing I knew, one of my friends kept seeing the guy everywhere. She many times pointed out that the guy was outside the school gate watching her.
I never saw him on the other side of the gate. Then she told me the guy disappeared after a few weeks. Then, this other kid started telling everyone about the guy following him. About seven months passed and I moved to another town. Still gives me creeps.
26. Angels in the Woods
Not really creepy or scary, but my parents went canoeing in the middle of nowhere with some troubled youth. While they were on the river, their canoes capsized and people were having problems swimming and getting to shore. About three to four large men came out of nowhere and helped them all to shore then completely disappeared afterward.
My parents swear they must have been angels, as there’s no way they appeared and disappeared that quickly when they were in the middle of nowhere.
27. Room 237
In the same room of my old house, I have seen a convulsed face floating outside my window and my brother has also seen it. I saw the same face over a number of periods and it would do stuff like smile and float closer and further from the glass. Our youngest brother a few years later complained that he didn't want to play with the boy in his room anymore as he was getting too much blood on his toys.
It was the same room.
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28. Straight From a Horror Movie
I was getting on the elevator in the metro. To get from the train platform to the main platform with the turnstiles and exit, you have to take the elevator. So I got on with this older guy. It was just the two of us. I glanced over and this guy was watching me. Pointedly. And he was smiling, but not in a nice, welcoming way.
You know, in the cliché creepypastas where they talk about monsters with “unnaturally wide smiles”? That's exactly the kind of smile this guy had. Anyway, I looked away from him because I thought he was just crazy or something. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw him making these weird gestures all over his chest. It almost looked like he was making the sign of the cross or something.
Finally, the elevator doors opened and we both got off and walked towards the turnstiles. I swiped my card to exit and then turned around to see if this dude was following me. And he was—gone. There was nowhere else he could have gone. We were at the only exit for the station. Unless he turned back, ran, and got on another elevator in about four seconds.
I just...don't know. I don't know where he went. Anyway. I'm from a small town and sometimes weird things happen in the city that I don't quite understand, but I just chalk it up to me being practically a redneck. But this was really out there. And it's been bothering me. Anyway. There we go. That's all. Thanks for reading.
29. Can’t Get Rid of It That Easily
My mom runs an antique business and has for years. I've worked with her on various occasions, often changing between working the shop with her and doing construction with my dad. For a while, she ran her business a few towns over with my best friend's dad, and the business was OK, but didn't make enough to support the both of them.
Well, a few years back, she sold her ownership to him, and just boxed up some of her things from the shop to bring home. My dad, however, surprised her and rented her a building in our hometown so she could run her OWN shop. She quickly brought everything there and began unpacking. While unpacking, I found an old Ouiji board from an estate sale she had bought out.
I showed her, we joked about the creepiness of it, and she said when she'd gotten it, her coworker had jokingly played with it to tease her—our family isn't super religious, but we ain't about tempting demons. She thought he'd thrown it away, but apparently he'd snuck it into her stuff as a final prank. So, we laughed, and she tossed it in the garbage pile.
A few months later, I was running the front desk when she brought a box of antiques to price down from the attic. We began going through it and what happened to be in the bottom of the box? The Ouiji board, still in its cardboard case, with a planchette underneath. I recognized it as the same one—the box had the same tears and dents I remembered.
Mom and I looked at each other, and after much debating, threw it away—again. Well, in about 2017, mom stopped opening the shop—we weren't making too much while open—and instead started buying out estate sales or helping them run it, then buying what was left over to take to the shop, which we still owned. It became a storage house for antiques she hoped to one day sell.
This last week—May 20, I believe—she asked me to help buckle down and clear out damaged junk from the shop. We began going through boxes and boxes and moving them to a trailer to take to a garage sale location. As I was shuffling a box through to the back area to load it, I heard my mother shout, "No. WAY." I thought maybe she'd been bitten by a spider or found something valuable, so I set the box down and rushed back to her. What I saw sent a chill down my spine.
In the back room where she was, the back wall was lined with shelves, and there were clothing racks and boxes of clothes stacked in front of it. After moving the boxes, the shelves were in clear view. Most were cluttered with knick-knacks or such. But on the bottom shelf, centered and all alone, there sat a familiar board game sized cardboard box.
We stared at it, then each other. Neither of us said a word. We pulled it out and sure enough, it was the SAME DAMNED BOX. The corners were torn. The sides were scratched. Same one. I'd seen it thrown out twice before, yet here it was. We tried to tell my dad, but he isn't superstitious. My brother didn't believe us. They assume it's a separate game, and part of me wants to think so too.
But I've seen that box too closely too many times. I know it's the same one.
30. There’s Someone Out There
A few years ago, I went camping with my dad, my sister, my dad's friend, and my dad's friend's dog. To get where we camped we had to boat across and down a river to where some old woods are. This was proper camping, not a campsite or anything. When we were there, my sister and I decided to play hide and seek. I ran into the woods to find her, and about 30 seconds in I see this medium-sized man, about 50, with long, ungroomed, grey hair just standing there.
I saw him for about half a second because I was running and did a turn and only caught a glimpse. As soon as it happened my heart raced and I felt it deep inside my body. I turned back to see him and he wasn't there. I knew I really saw him because he was in a yellow raincoat that stood out abruptly in the woods. I called out hello a few times because I knew my dad could hear me, and if I got in a situation, him, his friend, and his dog would run over if I screamed help. But he was just gone.
I yelled at my sister to come back and she did straight away. I told everyone, but no one believed me that he was there. Well, at about 3 AM that night, a police helicopter had flown right down above our camp at the clearing on the edge of the woods. They had a huge bright white light pointing on the camp and my dad and his friend went out to look.
I don't remember what quite happened, as I was tired, so I just lay there on my sleeping bag, a bit worried. I remember the helicopter left like five minutes later. The next morning, we packed up and left. Boated down the river to the cars, and on my dad's friend's car was a small card, like the size of a business card, but it was a light purple with a flowery background.
It had a poem about death on it and said RIP at the bottom. A small number of days later, my dad's friend saw in the paper that a guy had gone missing right where we went camping by the river, and must have been thought to have drowned or something right where we were camping. Still, no one believes me that I saw the guy next to our camp.
31. Passing to the Other Side
When I was three, we were picking up my grandparents for a Sunday drive. I was sitting in the back seat on the passenger side. My grandfather was sitting in front of me. Suddenly he keeled over, dead of a massive stroke. As they hustled my little sister and me out of the car and into my grandparents' store, I happened to look over my shoulder and plainly saw grandpa walking down the street with two men.
Both were dressed in suits, which made it all the more incongruous that grandpa was wearing the same gray sweater and peaked hat he'd been wearing a moment before in the car. There was nothing particularly creepy about the experience, except that I wouldn't accept that grandpa was dead because, after all, I'd just seen him walking down the street.
Naturally, this didn't go over very well. But I loved my grandpa, I didn't want him to be dead, and I knew what I had seen! When our family doctor arrived to pronounce grandpa dead, my mother asked me if I would take his word for it. We had a very good, trusting relationship with our doctor, so I said that I would. The doctor assured me that my grandfather had in fact died.
But he was the only grown-up who didn't treat me like I was crazy. He listened respectfully as I told him what I had seen, and he suggested that maybe the men in the suits were angels. This seemed reasonable. Problem solved. But to this day I can still see grandpa walking down the street with those two men. And no matter what my parents tried to tell me, it wasn't just a guy who looked like grandpa coincidentally wearing exactly the same clothes he'd been wearing in the car.
It was him.
32. Phantom Family
For YEARS there was a picture of a family sitting on the table in my grandma's house. The picture would be taken down every now and then and a new portrait would go up. It was a portrait of some extended cousins—I don't know their names. One day, my mom and I were in a grocery store and I spotted that family. I pointed them out to my mom and she had no CLUE who I was talking about.
They weren't cousins. She had no idea who they were. I told her they were in a picture on grandma's table. She said there never WAS a picture on that table. Later that same day, we had to go to grandma's to drop something off. When we got there, I went to the table, and the picture was gone! I was there less than a week prior. I remember that picture!
When mom went to the bathroom, I asked grandma about the picture and even she had no idea what I was talking about! To this day, TO THIS VERY DAY, this mystery still bugs me.
33. Just Passing by
When I was about eight or nine, my brother and I were lying in bed ready to go to sleep when all of a sudden our room illuminated with a bunch of flashing lights. It was probably around 10 PM at the time and we were terrified. The lights went on for a good minute and afterward, we immediately looked out the window to see what it was, but we saw nothing.
No car, no random person playing a prank on us, nothing. So we tan to our mom and tell her what happened, but she didn't believe us. She just tells us to go to bed and stop making stuff up. To this day, my brother and I vividly remember this, but no one ever believes us.
34. Careful What You Wish For
Ghost story time. I was living with a few of my friends a year and a half ago and we’re all pretty religious—at least two of us work in religion. We were talking about how we didn’t believe in ghosts or demons, at least in the sense that we couldn’t see them if they were real. We started talking about how if we saw one it would change our perspective entirely.
I said out loud, “If something is here, I wish it would just show us.” Two nights later, I’m sound asleep and have the most vivid, brutal nightmare I’ve ever had. Long story short, I was in my childhood house, we were getting robbed, and the robber shot my father, only it was me, I was the robber. My father and I had a very strained relationship and the detail of the shooting woke me up in tears. I mean I was SOBBING.
I looked at the foot of my bed and saw a man sitting on his heels staring at me. It looked like he was 80 years old but never hit puberty—that’s as best I can describe it. His face looked kind but his eyes looked so wicked it struck terror into my soul. He almost looked curious, but morbidly so. He was wearing clothes that looked like he was a newspaper salesman from 1890s New York.
I only saw him for a split second and he was gone. The wild thing is I got ALL OF THAT DETAIL in just a split second, like he wanted me to remember him. HERE’S THE CRAZY PART. So I was spooked, right? I went into our living room and watched YouTube and some Twitch streams for a bit until I convinced myself I was just half asleep and still spooked.
I lay back in bed and the moment my head hits the pillow my roommate sits straight up in bed—still asleep—points at the foot of my bed and says, “ComeHereDevilLog, who is that”? I LOST MY GOD DAMN MIND. I literally drove home at 3 AM and told my parents through tears I wanted to stay home until summer. I stayed at home for a week or so and then went back.
My roommate started having night terrors after that, but we moved soon after. I’ve never been so scared in all of my life.
35. The Haunting of Two Minds
I have a similar story. I absolutely hate this story. My brother loves it. He says it gives him chills every time he hears it, but I think he thinks it's a "ghost story" I made up. I wish I did but it happened. I was dating a guy in college. His mother was a pharmacist by day and into stones, crystals, and tarot cards by night.
She lived about 20 minutes from our college campus and we frequently went to visit her and spend weekends at her condo/his old house. It was nice and made me feel like I had a home away from home. One night, like every other night, we watched TV, had sex, and fell asleep in his old room. I woke up in the middle of the night to pee.
I go out and in the middle of the hallway, I see this woman dressed in red with long blond hair—but she didn’t have a face. No distinct features that I could remember. She was just kind of...glowing? It was like she was in the sun, just bright, but the hallway was pitch black. That's not the worst part though. I obviously freaked out, skipped going to the bathroom, and went to wake up my BF.
He woke up startled and told me he had had a nightmare. He said he was dreaming of a woman being chased by men and described her to a T—a woman in red with long blonde hair. I told him what I saw and we were literally shaking in fear. We didn’t sleep that night. I don’t know if his mother summoned someone or something.
I don’t know if I even believe that. But the place was not homey that night, or the following morning. Maybe I was just spooked, but I never went back to that house, and we broke up shortly after.
36. Don’t Look Away
When I was a kid, I used to stay at my grandparents' house a lot. They’ve had that house for as long as my mom has been alive, possibly even longer. All I know is that the history of the property is still unknown to this day. Anyways, I used to stay in my mom's old childhood room—it was called the purple room due to the purple carpet and the lavender wallpaper.
It was a pretty big room with a queen-sized bed in the middle and a humongous window right next to it. During the summer, I would frequently stay at that house and spend a lot of time in that room. One night, I vividly remember waking up late at night, probably one or two in the morning, and seeing a puppet show outside my window. I wish I was making this up.
They were hand/sock puppets and it looked like it was only performed by one or two people. It was only a shadow of this performance, which threw me off, so of course I assumed I was still a little tired and totally out of it and imagining the whole thing. I decided to brush it off my shoulder and ignore it. Oh man, do I regret that.
As soon as I turned over on my right side, there in the doorway, was a large black figure. It was pitch black out in the hallway, but I could clearly see a figure standing there. My stomach sank and my heart started beating quickly. I was wide awake now. I blinked a few times and I swear every time I did, it got a little bit closer.
When it got arm's length away from me, that’s when I felt my heart stop beating completely and my body turning cold. I swear I could see my breath because of how cold it was. I was able to muster up a scream that woke up both of my grandparents and brother from their deep slumber. My grandma was the first one to come into my room, but as soon as she flicked the lights on, it was gone. Never to be seen again.
I was sobbing and trying to tell her what I saw, but she just kept stroking my hair and saying I was just having a bad dream. I know that wasn’t a dream and what I saw was real. I also believe that this thing that I saw as a child followed me when I moved to a different state. I was about six or seven when this happened and I’m 16 now.
To this day, no one believes me.
37. What Did Jennifer Do to You?
When I was about 15 years old or so, I went upstairs in the early evening. The light was hitting the window at a low angle, and covered the wall over my bed with yellow light. The reflected light contained the shadow of words, and spelled "Execute Jennifer." I went to get my sister to show her, and the message was gone.
She didn't know what to say, and didn't believe me. I told her that I didn't know anyone called Jennifer and we agreed that that was probably for the best. We laughed it off, but I couldn't figure out how the words got there. The best guess I could make was that there's a bus shelter across the road with a large ad space behind reflective Plexiglas, and that maybe words from that advert were reflected onto the wall.
Maybe my brain misread the words as something sinister. I've always had a logical outlook on the world, but I never figured out what that message was about or how it got there.
38. Glitch in the Matrix
Maybe less creepy and more just flat out weird, but one Christmas morning, many years ago, my friend and I decided to meet up at a park to hang out. Now, this park has a clear view of a very major highway and unsurprisingly, it was empty. Maybe one or two cars every seven minutes or so. However, at one point cars just stopped coming entirely for like a 30 minute period and out of the blue, a horse-drawn carriage made its way down the highway.
My friend and I kind of looked at each other to confirm that we were both seeing it, and yes it, was real. Mind you, this is SoCal, so this isn't a common occurrence at all. Still, we brushed it off as maybe a quince celebration or something and got up to start walking back to my house. Suddenly, we look up and a parachuter is dropping down a decent distance away.
No plane in sight, and no logical landing location. We both stare at him for a while before continuing to walk. A few seconds later, we both look back to see how our man up there is doing and he's gone. We confirm with each other that yes, we both saw him, and yes, he seemed to have disappeared. As we walk, puzzled, a car drives by.
No problem there, we were in a neighborhood at that point. However, he turned a corner and we heard nothing but pure silence. We were maybe 10 feet from that corner, so logically, we should have at least heard it go into the distance, but we didn't. It turned the corner and was just gone. We ran to see it, and there was no trace.
I'm pretty sure we were in some sort of alternate reality there.
39. Hide and Seek
I work the night shift at a nursing home. At my first job—five years ago—the building used to be a school in the 50s, so the set up is already eerie. Anyway, there was the usual noises heard in the distance and cold chills every now and then. The faucets in the rooms used to start running water randomly and the lights would turn themselves off and on, but the last straw was when one night I felt someone tap me on the shoulder.
When I turned around I saw a silhouette pressed up against the privacy curtain and two skinny grey legs in blue slippers at the bottom of the curtain. When I moved the privacy curtain—thinking a resident had wandered into the room—no one was there, even though I could clearly see the outline of the body when I grabbed the curtain to move it.
I called in and quit the next day. Me calling DON's private number: “Hey this is so-and-so. I don’t think I'm coming in tonight. Actually, I'm not coming in tonight. I'm not coming back in any night. I quit. DON: “Can, can I ask why?” Me: “Uh. No.” Then I hung up. The facility I work in currently is down the street from that place and one of my current coworkers used to work there.
She has a similar story.
40. He’s Real to Me
When I was growing up, I had a friend named Adam. He was never able to come out during the day, only right before all of us kids had to go home for the evening. Adam lived a few houses over, in a house with an overgrown yard. I met his parents once. They were very strange, didn't smile, and obviously didn't want me there.
I remember Adam telling me that he was sick, that's why he couldn't play that much. He was a small boy, pale with dark hair. Eventually, Adam stopped showing up altogether. And I eventually moved on, though I do remember going to his house a couple times to see if he could come play, and his dad just gave me this look before closing the door in my face.
Later in life, I asked my sister if she remembered him. She doesn't, and according to my parents, that house was empty the entire time we lived there. I don't know who Adam was and I don't know why I so vividly remember him and his parents. As far as I can tell, he wasn't real, and yet I have perfect memories of him and his parents.
41. Monster in the Closet
When I was seven or eight, I would have a recurring nightmare that one of my dolls came to life, played with me, and then would try to pull me into my closet with her. I’d follow her into the closet at first, but then she’d show me this little door at the back of the closet, and my heart would start to race. I don’t know what it was about that door, but I knew something bad would happen if I went through it.
I’d start to struggle and try to pull away, but the doll was too strong and would start pulling me through the door. At this point in the dream, I’d always wake up screaming. The worst part was, I had night terrors, so sometimes I’d wake up standing next to my closet. Every night before bed, I’d make my parents make sure there wasn’t a little door at the back of my closet. There never was.
Anyway, I was talking to my mom the other day and this dream came up. I’m laughing about it and how ridiculously paranoid I was about dolls and that closet, but my mom gets really quiet. She tells me the creepy part of that dream wasn’t the doll—it was the fact that there used to be a little door at the back of the closet, but when I was one-year-old, they remodeled the house and put a wall where the door used to be.
There’s no way I could have remembered that door, but years later, I kept dreaming about it. None of my friends believe this story, but I swear it’s true.
42. Time Literally Flies by
I used to have a buddy who lived in the same neighborhood, a few streets over. One night, we were having a couple of beers in his backyard while playing cards. I had some things to do the next morning, so just before 10 I said my goodbyes and shoved off. It was a short walk—MAYBE 15 minutes door-to-door—so I never drove.
Anyway, it was a nice night and a totally uneventful trip. But when I got home, my roommate was coming out the front door, coffee in hand, and dressed for work. He gave me a funny look and said he thought I was asleep since my truck was in the driveway. I told him where I'd been and asked why he was going in to work at night.
That's when he kind of laughed and asked if I was drunk. We stared at each other for a minute and then he told me it was just after FIVE IN THE MORNING and he was going in just like he usually did. In my entire life, I'd never felt more confused than I did in that moment. I could tell he was dead serious, but I KNEW I had just left my friend's house.
I checked my phone and sure enough—five something in the AM. My roommate left for work. I paced circles in the living room for a bit then called the friend whose house I'd just left. He groggily answered and confirmed I'd left at 10 the previous evening. I have no idea what happened during those seven hours of my life and it gives me chills to think about it all these years later.
I wasn't drunk, I wasn't tired, no one could have slipped anything in either of the two Coors Lights I'd had. No known medical conditions that would have caused me to blackout, and nothing has happened like it since. I just don't know what happened to that time.
43. Friend Bear
Okay, so my daughter is now almost two and has long since moved into her own room. We have one of those video monitor things where you can see/hear the baby on this little TV thing or you can turn the picture off and just get sound. So one night maybe a month ago I'm sitting in bed, scrolling through Reddit or something, and I start hearing my daughter babbling to herself. Now, it's really late, like one or two in the morning. Much later than she is ever awake unless something is wrong and she is sick or cutting a tooth or something.
So I turn the picture on the monitor on and see her standing up in her crib facing sort of diagonally away from the camera. I can see her hands in front of her but only like half of her face. Now is a good time to mention that we have been teaching her ASL since she was about three months old, and she has been responding and conversing in sign since about ten months. I can see her signing things like "nice," "silly," and "fun" and, oddly enough, "no," "don't like" and "bear." Of course being the good and loving mother I am (and really not wanting to deal with an overly sleepy baby in the morning) I get up to see what the heck she is doing.
When I get to her room she is still standing up and signing/babbling towards the far corner of her room. I ask her what she is doing and who she is talking to and she signs/says (as best as she can) "friend" which she does with her whole hands and not just her index fingers and signs "bear" again. I tell her that no, see Bear (who is actually one of her stuffed toys) is in bed behind her not in the corner of the room but she just giggles at me and signs/says "silly" and "mommy."
I can see she is wide awake so I sit down in the rocker next to her bed and try to figure out what woke her up but all she will tell me is "friend" and "bear" and occasionally duck down like she is hiding and making shhh noises. I finally get fed up and ask her who Friend Bear is and her response literally gave me chills because she doesn't speak well yet but she managed to say, very clearly and with the most serious face a 20-month-old can pull off, "No name, no name, shhhhh."
Well now I am well and truly freaked out so I tell her to ask "No Name Friend Bear" to go home because it is too late to play and I did what any good loving mother would do. I gave her a pacifier, went back to my room, turned off the monitor entirely and hid under the covers in my room where my good and loving husband would protect me from nameless invisible bears.
44. Nobody’s Home
I was babysitting my little sister while my grandparents were out of town (we lived with our grandparents) when we hear my grandparents’ bedroom door open. I grabbed the only weapon I had, a mini Yankees baseball bat, and was just sitting with my sister quietly in my room. We heard someone walk down the hall to the kitchen when I called my uncle to come check on us.
This whole time, I wasn't completely convinced that what I was hearing was real, so ten minutes later he arrives and comes in through our front gate (we had a large outdoor courtyard). He comes and searches the house. We go into our grandparents’ bedroom. Their sliding glass door to the courtyard was open, and the chair in front of it was pushed forward, propping up the blinds.
So, someone had clearly entered the house, but my uncle searched the house, and no one was there. We assumed whoever it was had probably left when he heard someone come, so my uncle left. After that, my sister and I were in the kitchen eating some food when the doorknob to the garage door starts rattling, first softly then harder (the knob was broken and is almost impossible to use).
I grabbed my sister, ran out the front gate, got in my car and left. I have never been so scared in my life.
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