Everyone tends to experience strange phenomena throughout their lives. These include experiences people can’t explain, and experiences people don’t want to be able to explain. From friends who have gone missing to dark family secrets, read along as people reveal their freakiest real-life mysteries.
1. Where Is He Now?
I had a friend named Andrew in the fourth grade. We'd have lunch together every day, just us two. He insisted I tell him what I want for my birthday that year so, just to get him to stop, I said, “I want a pink, remote-controlled toy car,” especially because I thought no one made those in the part of the world (I'm from in the early 2000s, btw).
Andrew showed up at my birthday party, handed me the pink, remote-controlled toy car, hung around for a while, and then his parents picked him up. And want to know the scariest part? I never saw Andrew again—he never returned to school. I've tried asking around, no one remembers him, not my old classmates or my parents. I wonder about him a lot.
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2. The Disappearance And Reappearance
I had a little red bull named Dido that I got as a baby. His name was one of my first words and I hated going anywhere without him. When I was about six, he disappeared. I sobbed and cried and eventually got over it, but it always bothered me that he just up and vanished. I couldn't figure out where I would have left him.
Our best guess was that we left him at my grandparents' house in Virginia about three hours away, but they could never find him. Flash forward to two years ago, my grandma and I were shopping in a thrift store and I was looking through purses. I opened one that I liked to make sure the inside wasn't ripped—and I couldn't believe my eyes. Dido was in there.
I thought it was a crazy coincidence that the same kind of stuffed animal was in it, and so I checked the little tag on his ear and my name was written on it. It was actually Dido. So yeah…what in the world?
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3. Dodged A Bullet
I was told that when my teen parents were giving me up for adoption, they considered giving me to my father's older sister. My biological mom, who I am in contact with, says she passed because she got very weird vibes from the lady. I am not in contact with my biological dad, so I can't really get more details, but the stories about her are chilling.
Apparently, this woman is now in prison for poisoning her three grandchildren. I've searched the Internet many times and I believe this happened in Idaho, but who knows. I don't know the name of the lady, or when this happened...but I'd love to know if it is real.
4. Help Does Not Exist
I was driving home from an out-of-state college one night with a friend. It's worth noting that this happened at about 11 at night. My tire blew out half a mile before Exit 126 on the interstate. My friend and I have never changed a tire before, but I've seen my dad do it. Unfortunately, I didn't have a tire iron. My friend looks across the interstate and says, "There's a light on at that building, I'll go check to see if they have one!"
So, he comes back with a tire iron and says, "It was a mechanic shop, they are letting us use this as long as we bring it back." We get the job done and bring it back to them. To this day, I have looked for that shop every time I pass by in the daytime…it does not exist.
5. Straight Out Of A Movie
We stayed at a ridiculously cheap AirBnB. When we booked it, we thought it looked nice, but then in reality, it was in a mansion in a major city and cost almost nothing. We searched the room we were in for cameras or something, because this place had it all…a jacuzzi, pool table, library room, multiple kitchens, pool, cellar, tons of weirdly empty rooms, two gardens, etc.
There were no other guests during our week here. The operator lived on the property in another area and was very attractive and in frequent states of undress. We made no complaints about this ever. While being very friendly, there were little things that led me to believe they were working in the adult movie industry somehow. Through conversations, I learned they'd be stopping AirBnB soon.
Now, we've left. The house depicted in our history/invoice is a different, much more modest house. Their profile has completely changed. It's one of these situations where I'm insanely grateful for the opulent conditions, but beyond confused as to what went down. I took some videos of the place and obviously I know where it is, but it feels like a dream that I can't entirely prove happened. The whole situation felt like a nice version of one of those Hostel movies.
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6. Sound The Steps
I was 17 and a new mom when I got my first apartment. I had graduated early and was waiting for my friend to graduate to move in with me. It was an upstairs apartment with outdoor wooden steps leading to my door. Every night when I turned out the lights, I would hear heavy footsteps climbing the stairs. Then there would be nothing.
I got brave one night and stood at my door after lights out. I heard footsteps and jumped into action. I flung the door open—then my stomach dropped. There was not a soul to be found. I even looked at the ground in case whoever it was had jumped. Nothing. My friend moved in and heard it the first night, then never again.
But it keeps getting weirder: The day she moved out, it started back up. It’s been almost 30 years and I still haven't figured it out.
7. The Random Act Of Kindness
About 20 years ago, my parents, my brother, and I arrived home after being out all day. It was around seven in the evening. As we drove into the driveway, we noticed something sitting on our porch. When we got out of the car, we saw that it was one of those disposable aluminum baking dishes and something else wrapped in foil.
We got inside, opened it up, and inside was homemade lasagna and garlic bread. There was no note left with it. We were utterly confused. My family decided to eat it despite not knowing its origin. I chose not to. I was jokingly told to call authorities if they started to experience signs of illness. They ate the whole thing and everyone was fine.
At the time, we were close to all of our neighbors. We asked around to see if one of them made it for us, but they all said no. My mom began to think we received it by accident. She checked with the person whose mail we always got because our addresses were similar. They had absolutely no idea what we were talking about.
To this day, we still have no idea who the intended recipient was. My thought is that someone dropped it off for a person who just experienced a passing or life event that prevented them from cooking. But, we would have heard about that from our neighbors. So, either this person was incredibly lost and left it by mistake, or it was a total random act of kindness.
8. What’s That Noise?
I have a neighbor, a late 20-something to early 30-something man. He's white, blonde, bespectacled. He comes across as a nerdy sort of guy. Maybe he is an engineering grad student? He lives with his girlfriend, who's a geeky-looking Asian girl a few years younger, but nothing crazy, and their dog, who is a large, shepherd-y mutt.
To set the scene, I live on the first floor of an old Victorian standalone home. He lives on the ground or maybe on the second floor of the building next door. Our buildings are separated by a handful of feet. Every so often, very late at night or very early in the morning, I hear a disturbing sound. He will just start screaming. It exclusively happens between three and five in the morning.
Occasionally, I can make out a word, and if I can, it's always a curse word. But mostly, it's just a long, guttural, garbled roar. It's deep, and it's angry. I don't think I've ever yelled like that. It's incredibly loud. Even with my windows closed, and his windows closed, his scream wakes me up from the deepest sleep. It gives me the creeps.
What the heck is he yelling for? My boyfriend is a much deeper sleeper than I am, so for a long time he never heard it. He always said, "Oh, he's probably gaming or something." Which makes sense…nerdy dude, awake at four in the morning, sure. But, the yell is so primal, so frightening, so full of rage, that I always doubted that explanation.
But then, my partner heard it. He was working all night on a chapter of his dissertation. He immediately discarded the gaming theory. It was just too extreme. It happens more often now. My boyfriend has heard him a few times now. I hear him at least once a week. I worry that maybe he's yelling at his girlfriend. But I never hear her shouting back, or anything.
They seem happy enough when we see them walking on our street. I worry also that he's yelling at the dog. Sometimes, they let the dog out into their backyard at six or seven in the morning, and the dog just barks barks barks. But other than that, they seem to take good care of the dog. I see them walking him and saying nice things to him like, "Who's my good boy!?" every day. Last night, he shouted again. It was a wordless string of syllables, 15 seconds long, at around four in the morning. It took me half an hour to fall asleep again. Why does he do it?
9. Vanished In The Air
When me and my sister were kids, we had this baton we loved to play with. It was pretty big, about as long as I was tall at the time, and we'd throw it into the air a lot. Well, one afternoon, we were doing just that. My sister got a pretty good spin on it, and tossed it up…Gone. It never hit the ceiling, never landed, we didn't catch it, it just vanished.
Both of us were super confused and we spent a long time looking for it. The thing is that it made a really loud noise if it hit the ground. I imagine we'd have heard it if it ever did land, and we'd just moved in so there was nothing in the room we were playing in. There was nothing it could have fallen behind or anything. My sister insisted she watched it disappear in mid air, and I was pretty sure I'd seen the same thing.
We never did find it, and it still bothers me that I have no idea what happened to that thing.
10. Where’d It Come From?
I lived in a small apartment at the top of a short, insignificant block. I always kept everything locked at night, because it's a big city. I got up one morning and found a shiny lapel-pin in the shape of a TV company's logo on top of the fridge. The fridge was shorter than my head height, so I saw the fridge-top clearly every time I went into the small kitchen.
There was nothing else on the fridge, and only the ceiling above it. No one else had been in the apartment for days. Everything was still locked, windows included. I'd never seen that pin before, and I had no links to anyone associated with the TV company. I have always wondered where that lapel pin came from.
11. From Deathbed To Life
I got sick once. I didn’t feel good, but I was still hungry and ate normally. Then things took a horrible turn. After a few hours, diarrhea started, and within three hours after that, I had gotten so ill I collapsed. I never vomited or felt nauseous though. I was eating, drinking pedialyte, and drinking water, but I got so sick so fast that I was having heart problems and my potassium fell into dangerous levels.
The hospital ran every test they could on me, but nothing came back to say what it was. The next day, I was weak, but fine. I shared every meal with my spouse, no one else around me got sick, but it still drives me crazy years later. What was it? Some illness within hours took a healthy 23-year-old and caused them to need three potassium pills and two IVs in the ER with constant heart monitors and blood pressure checks.
When I left the hospital, my blood pressure was 89/50. I also slept for three days after. No one could figure out what it was, no one else got it. I want to know what it was!
12. What’s The Truth, Mom?
I have always wondered about something I saw on my birth certificate. I am the oldest child in my family, so I was surprised to see that the box listing previous live births to mother had a 1 in it. My mom says I'm the first child she had, so I went and found my son's birth certificate and the same/equivalent box on his is 0. Hmmmm.
13. Dreaming Of Real Life
One night, I couldn’t sleep, and I decided I wanted some popcorn. I went downstairs to get some, and from there I have three parallel memories. The first being: I went downstairs, ate some popcorn, and came back up. The second being: I went downstairs, couldn’t find the popcorn, and had some chips. The third being: I went downstairs and could only find an unopened bag of popcorn, which I couldn’t open without scissors, so I went back upstairs.
The next morning, I realized that I definitely didn’t get up more than once, so at least two of the three memories had to be dreams. Maybe all three. I’ll never know which one really happened.
14. An Exact Duplicate
Once when I was younger, I had a kinda crappy toy revolver that broke after a couple days. A couple months go by and one day, suddenly and inexplicably, an exact duplicate appears in my cupboard, perfectly functional. I still can’t wrap my head around it. A lot of people have told me that it was probably my parents, which I can get.
But, this is pretty much impossible. The duplicate appeared months after the original broke, and I had even forgotten about it by that point. I didn’t care much for the toy revolver, it was just for a costume, so why would my parents buy me something they knew I didn’t really want in the first place? Also, there was only one in the packet.
15. The Good Pneumonia
I had terrible problems with a dry cough when I was a kid, particularly in the autumn-winter days, and most of the time during the night. I could cough the whole entire night, and even learned to both sleep and cough at the same time. Doctors sent me to some tests and other specialists, but did not find anything. It was declared as such.
I would have to live with it, drink some syrups and teas, and that was that. When I was in my first or second year of high school, I got a strange and not so naive pneumonia, with constant high body temperature. I remember not going to school for a couple of weeks, and that it was spring semester. I have recently realized I have never had a dry cough since that pneumonia. I just keep asking myself, what has changed in my body/lungs since then?
16. A Gash Of A Memory
When I was nine years old, I woke up around 11 at night, and I wanted a glass of water. So, I went downstairs. I got halfway down the stairs, my dad saw me and just started SCREAMING. I had blood all down my leg and a huge gash in my leg. I had to go to the ER and have nine stitches. It was a really deep gash.
I had no idea how it happened at that point. When we got home, we looked at the bed and there was a single solitary drop of blood on the white sheet I had been sleeping on. There was no other blood anywhere. There was nothing sharp anywhere. There were no springs sticking out of the mattress or anything that could have caused it.
I asked my dad recently about this situation, assuming I'd misremembered and there was some logical explanation, but no. He says they never found out what caused the massive deep gash in my leg. What's even weirder is that I don't remember it hurting whatsoever. I wasn't even aware I was bleeding while coming down the stairs.
I do remember going to the bathroom earlier that evening and my leg hurt slightly, but not enough to stop me just getting back into bed and going to sleep. I remember sitting on the kitchen counter while my dad went to a neighbour to get them to call for an ambulance since my dad is deaf. I remember it was a bit sore, but only on the level of a paper cut. But, it was clearly a huge gash. I still have a big scar. It was very weird.
17. Girl Gone Missing
I knew this girl that my brother liked and she was adorable. He would ride bikes with her and they were really cute together. Then, we hadn’t seen her for three days, so we went up to their house and knocked on their door. This older dude answered and we said, “Hey is this girl here?” and he said he knew no one with that name, so we left.
I never saw that kid again and she never talked about moving. The house wasn’t up for sale either. There were no signs or anything. My brother got really sad.
18. Makes No Sense At All
About three years ago, I lost my sense of smell. It happened over the course of a week. First, everything smelled different than how it used to smell, and then, nothing. I went to several doctors and had a battery of tests done. They did scopes up my nose, MRIs, etc. The final diagnosis was “sometimes people just lose their sense of smell.” I’d like to know what the heck really happened.
19. Framed For What?
During high school, I was called up by the principal to his office and my English teacher was there. When they told me why I was there, my blood ran cold. They were drilling me because they had a note from me left on her table that said, "I want you" and it had a drawing of a huge Johnson. Now during high school, I wasn't the best of kids and clowned around a lot, so I wasn't that grade A student that teachers automatically assumed would tell the truth.
In my defense, I started to argue back that they had no proof and that they can't blindly accuse me just because of a note, which anyone could have written. My smart attitude and logic got me a lunch detention only, thankfully. I never actually found out who framed me with the note.
20. A Medical Mystery
My eyes are wonky. Over a five-year span during my 20s, one eye would inexplicably dilate randomly for a minute or two. Sometimes it happened once or twice a year, sometimes it happened every other month. Doctors and ophthalmologists alike were slightly alarmed, since it indicated a possible neurological issue, but since it was so rare and random, they couldn’t do much to figure it out.
At the end of that period, I was getting off work one evening and I noticed a gray “staticky” spot in my vision. I went from doctor to eye doctor to ER within a couple hours because it was feared I was having a stroke. The eye doctor found specks of blood in the vitreous fluid of my left eye. I had an MRI to rule out the stroke or MS possibility. Nothing was found to explain why I had blood floating around in my eyeball.
I developed a few more spots in both eyes over the next few weeks. They all were eventually reabsorbed by my body. I really can’t count how many times my eyes were dilated and looked into during that time. No one could ever explain why it happened, and it hasn’t happened again since.
21. Skeptical Of The Sounds
So, these are actually two mysterious happenings and I'm not sure whether or not they're somehow related. One day, when I was around seven or eight, I was playing in the backyard when I heard my mom calling out to me from the kitchen like she usually did when I used to be out in the backyard all by myself for an extended period of time and she felt the need to check up on me.
As usual, I answered back promptly. A moment later, I heard the main gate opening and closing, indicating we had a visitor, so I peeped out to see who it was. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was my mom! She told me she had gone to our neighbor's place to return something she had borrowed, but then got caught up in chitchat. Who or what called out to me from the kitchen then?
I could swear that it was exactly the same voice and tone as my mom's. Strangely enough, I wasn't scared. It was a little unnerving, but then I eventually pushed it into the back of my mind. Fast-forward to several years down the line, I was in my room and studying for the upcoming end-of-semester exams, when I distinctly heard a disembodied voice calling me by my nickname.
I'm not quite sure how to explain this, but the voice sounded like a "loud whisper." You know, when you're at a few arms' distance from another person in a room and you need to call out to them but the situation demands that you remain quiet, so you articulate the person's name in a way that's audible enough to them while avoiding being heard in the entire room.
The voice seemed to be coming from the direction of my parents' bedroom which was opposite to mine. I looked that way and didn't hear anything, so I went back to my books. But then, I heard it again. It came from the same direction as before and then stopped again when I turned that way. It couldn't have been a prank or something, since it was just me in my room, and I could clearly hear my parents talking in the living room.
We don't have anyone else staying with us. It freaked me the heck out, but I didn't bother looking into the matter, writing it off as an auditory hallucination. In hindsight, though, my inaction might have been due to a subconscious fear of finding out whatever it was. A few days later, I heard it again. This time while I was taking an exam in my college.
It felt as if whoever or whatever that voice belonged to stood real close to me and whispered right in my ear. I haven't heard these voices since then. I haven't been able to figure out what on earth they were all about to date. Most people to whom I have recounted these incidents, including my family, are of the view that it was all in my head, while the rest think of it in terms of the paranormal. Since I'm skeptical by nature, I can't bring myself to buy either this or that, so I guess it will remain a mystery forever.
22. The Black Out Prank
I used to work at a movie theater. One night, I was closing, so I was there until like 11 to midnight. My manager asked if I wanted to stay after I was done and watch a movie with him and some friends. We were allowed to watch whatever after we were closed, as long as we turned everything off before we left, I said yes and invited my friend to come, too.
So, my friend gets there at like 12:30 and she asks if I have a jacket she can use. I said yeah, told her to go get it out of my car. Everything at this point was normal. The movie ended at about three in the morning and we went to leave. That's when we saw it: All of the windows on my car were painted black. Even the side mirrors and the tiny little useless windows by the back doors.
My friend group used to tag each other’s cars a lot, but we would always draw dumb teenage stuff. Luckily, since my friend had come, she just drove me home and the next morning I went back and cleaned the windows. None of my friends ever confessed to it, which was strange because we always took credit for our stupid pranks.
Also, the only other people who knew I was there at the theater that late were my friend and the manager, who were both inside with me. I guess it’s possible my friend texted our other friends, but she was never really into the pranking, so it would have been very out of character. Also, she seemed genuinely surprised when we saw the car.
This happened about ten years ago and I still have no idea who did it. Also at that theater once, I found a dead squirrel laying in a perfect spread eagle in the exact middle of my windshield. I was parked with the front of my car facing the theater, which is very tall and not easily accessible to squirrels. I’m not sure if it was a suicidal squirrel or someone playing another weird prank on me.
23. Stars In The Sky
At the start of the summer of 2004, I was at a friend's party to celebrate graduating from high school. The party was in a remote place on my friend's parents' farm. There were maybe 40 or 50 of us, all scattered around in the fields with loud music, liquor, and food. Another friend and I were a bit tired of the loud music, so we isolated ourselves from the others and just laid on our backs in the grass and stared at the sky.
Since there were almost no lights around us, we were able to see many more stars than we could in our hometown. A few minutes later, we started to see one of the stars moving. We thought it was a satellite, but then we saw another one, and another one. Suddenly, I realized something was very wrong. Almost all "stars" were moving, at the exact same pace, in the exact same directions.
We could see regular constellations in their regular places, obviously not moving, and then maybe one or two hundred similar lights moving. The thing is, we had had no alcoholic drinks, and it looked nothing like satellites or a shooting stars shower. I've tried identifying this phenomenon for years and I was never able to.
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24. Lost And Found
When I was 11 years old, I went on a spring break holiday with my parents and grandparents. We went by plane to a country over 1,000 kilometers away. There's pictures of me wearing my glasses while on that holiday. Later, back at home, the glasses were gone. Of course, we all thought, I'd left them in the vacation home over 1000 kilometers away.
Dang, I’ll need to buy new ones, probably…Right? On Monday, I go back to school and explain to the teacher my vision is a bit impaired since I lost my glasses while on holiday. He says, “No, you left them on the sports field the Friday before the holiday. Your glasses are on my desk.” They were actually there! I still can't explain those pictures...
25. A Mistress Revealed
My dad was cheating on my mom and she saw a "witch" who told her that he could reveal who my dad was cheating on her with. I was with her when he did this ritual. I think I was about five or six years old at the time. He broke a bunch of little papers into bits and then poured them into a cup of water. He then stirred the water and the pieces of papers formed together and revealed a human face.
My mom recognized her, and later it was confirmed to be true. I’m still not entirely sure how he was able to form an actual person's face with bits of paper. What really bothers me about the experience is that he didn't charge my mom for this service, and pretty soon afterward the building that he worked out of had a "For Rent" sign.
26. Never To Be Found Again
Back when I was a single-figure age, my mum bought me a toy miniature snooker/billiards table from the shop down the road. It was very cheap and all plastic, and the balls still had the mold lines on so they wouldn't roll properly. Therefore, the only fun to be had was in dismantling the little cues. As I remember, they were made of two stick parts screwed together, with a hard plastic colored ring sandwiched in between.
These rings were about the same size as my nostrils, and the inevitable consequence was that I stuck them up one and then shot them back out by holding the other and blowing really hard. Eventually, one of the rings never came out. I know for a fact it was stuck well up my nose at least until I went to sleep that night, and I don't remember ever finding it again. I didn't say anything about it at the time, obviously, though I was mildly terrified. So where is it? Is it still rattling around inside my head somewhere, nearly thirty years later?
27. The Perfect Slice
One winter morning, I put on my favorite hoodie and went for a drive to the local grocery store. I love crisp, cold mornings, so I had the windows down. I drove to the store, got out, and as I’m heading inside, a breeze kicked up. “That’s odd,” I thought, “I’ve got long sleeves on, how can I feel that breeze so distinctly?” I glanced down and noticed a perfect laser-cut-like incision in the sleeve of my hoodie, right over the inside of my elbow.
It was a perfect cut, and the edges were burnt rather than frayed. It seriously looked like someone had sliced my sleeve with a laser scalpel. I had no burn mark on my arm underneath. I had not touched anything heated before I departed for the store that morning. I literally put on the hoodie—which had no damage on it when I first put it on—and left.
Somehow, during that drive, something left a perfect slicing burn across the sleeve of my hoodie without burning my arm underneath it, and without me seeing it happen as I drove. I have no idea what the heck caused this and it bugs me to this day.
28. No Memory Of The Night
I grew up in the country, and my sisters and I would camp in the backyard in the summertime. One night, we woke up to a chilling sound. A woman was screaming for help in the woods next door. Literally, "God, no! Help! No, please, help!" and so on. Being a bunch of little kids, we were too scared to leave the tent, even when the screaming stopped.
Our parents slept like logs, so they didn't hear anything and didn't believe us the next day. We looked in the woods ourselves, but found nothing. My sisters don't remember the night, but I do and I've since learned of the wendigo and how it will lure in victims by mimicking the final words of its last victim. So I'm stuck wondering: Was this just a dream? A false memory? Wendigo? I don’t know, but I sure would love to find out.
29. It Should Be Underground
As crazy as this sounds, I swear that my grandfather was buried with a knife that he made himself. A few months ago, I was cleaning my room and found it. I was never given that knife and we all knew it was buried with him. I’ve moved houses since his passing too. I don’t know how I got it. Also, I feel the need to point out that we did go to the graveyard a week or so before and I went after I found the knife to make sure I didn’t somehow become a grave digger and it was left how it was before.
30. The Toilet Ghost
I was on a holiday in Malaysia, and when I got to the hotel room, I saw the little water hose next to the toilet that was used to clean butts. These are commonly found in Asian countries. It had been squirting water all over the bathroom. The floor was soaked. The staff was really friendly, they cleaned it right away and I made sure the little faucet was sealed tightly. But that wasn't the end of the story.
In the middle of the night, I woke up and went to use the bathroom. The little hose was opened fully and was squirting water all over the bathroom. Now, to others, this might indeed sound insignificant, but South-East Asia is famous for its many, many ghost stories and I had been hearing many of them days before my visit to the soaked bathroom hotel.
During the same holiday, I'd also seen a gardener at a resort on an island talking to himself at night. I was told he was talking to his "friends" whenever he was on the island, but on the mainland he was the most sane, normal dude you'd meet. It didn't help that the hotel with the mysterious faucet was known for hauntings. I'm a super skeptical person and I like to always find a rational explanation for everything, in this situation water pressure or something, but it was weird.
31. Rat On The Run
My friend and I were playing outside when we were around ten years old. We saw a rat start running and we chased after it. It ran behind some bushes, and when we went back there to look, we saw the rat. It looked frozen solid. We poke at it with a stick and eventually pick it up and it was a plastic rat figurine the same color, size, and everything of the rat we were chasing.
Did that rat we were chasing turn into a plastic figurine? Did it just so happen that a plastic rat toy/figurine was behind those same bushes? We still talk about this day and we’re currently in our 20s.
32. The Anonymous Letter
About two years ago when I was 18, I moved in with my grandparents for about seven months. The move was due to family issues, so few people even knew that I had moved. Living there was a difficult part of my life. Dealing with the sudden change was depressing and strange. One day, I received an anonymous letter in the mail.
This curious letter had no return address and I had to pay the mailman $0.21 for the postage. There was no writing whatsoever, only typed words. It was my name and my NEW address. The letter was crinkled, paint-splattered, and torn. As mysterious as this sounds, the contents were far stranger. Inside, wrapped in thin wax paper, a torn piece of paper read “Freedom is a state of mind.”
There was a picture of an open birdcage in the corner. Behind the paper, there was a single undeveloped negative photograph of something that to this day I can't make out. I was very new to the area and hadn't made any friends. Only my immediate family and my grandparents knew of the move. I asked everybody! Nobody I know had sent the letter. But I do have one idea.
I never knew my birth mother. I was adopted at age three by my biological father. My grandparents have lived in the same place since I was born. I know it's crazy, and I tell myself I don't care, but what if my birth mother sent it to me in a time of need? Who knows. It's a mystery to me. The letter was more unsettling than sweet. I still have it. Mysterious.
33. Unexpected And Unknown Guests
In 2016, I was living in a duplex with about five other people. Everyone had different sleep schedules, and there were usually one to three friends over at any given time. I generally go to bed around midnight, and my room is down a hallway from the common area. This meant I could hear whatever was happening out in the common area.
I can get very grumpy when I’m trying to sleep, and was known for walking out wearing a bathrobe in the middle of the night and yelling at everyone to shut the heck up. One night, as I was trying to fall asleep, I heard someone come in through the front door. The front door is right next to my bedroom, and there are two doors you have to walk through, so it’s pretty noisy.
Whoever walked in was talking and making general loud noises right in the hallway outside of my room. It was pissing me off quite a bit, so I threw on my robe and walked out to yell at them. I wasn’t wearing my glasses and I have bad eyesight, so I didn’t see their faces, but I thought I recognized them as one of my roommates' friends. I had no clue how wrong I was...
They were a little taller than me with short brown hair, and facing away from me at the time. I angrily tell them to shut up as I am trying to sleep and have to wake up in the morning. They start to turn around, but I immediately go back to my bedroom so I don’t ever really see their face. There also wasn’t anyone else out there.
When I woke up, I texted my roommates and asked if anybody had been over that night. I also texted the person I thought it was, asking if he had stopped by. No one had been over, and none of my other roommates or friends fit the description of the person I saw. To this day, I have no idea who it was that I saw. We didn’t always keep the front doors locked and usually my roommates and their friends were high or intoxicated, so they might not have remembered their interaction with me. Oh well.
34. Where Could They Possibly Go?
Here's something that's been happening for about 15 years. It doesn't seem to bother anyone except me. Glasses started disappearing from the kitchen. At first, I thought it was my teenagers just being mean. I'd rant and fuss and look through the house, including under beds. I never found a single glass. So then, I thought they were taking the glasses with them when they left. I never caught them doing that.
I started buying plastic go-cups and asking people to use those. They just looked sideways at me and said okay. No one used the plastic cups. The kitchen glasses still disappeared. When I'd get down to the last 3-4 glasses, I'd go buy another set that matched the old ones. After several years, I started buying stuff that didn't match. So, I would have a general idea of exactly what went missing when.
It was bizarre. Everything would be fine, then several glasses would disappear. The ones that disappeared always matched. So, not being completely crazy, I figure one of my kids is doing it. They were probably doing something with their friends. Maybe it was some kind of secret party or something? It never stopped happening. I just put up with it. I buy a new set of glasses about every six months.
So now, it's many years later. All the kids have moved away from home. I live alone. The glasses are still disappearing. In fact, I have to go buy a new set soon.
35. From The Waist Down
When I was three or four, my bedroom was a small office-sized room that connected to my parents' bedroom on the second story. I woke up one morning unable to move my legs to get out of bed, paralyzed waist down. I felt a chill run down my spine. I eventually rolled myself out of bed and dragged my body through my parents' room and halfway down the stairs until my parents heard me calling for them.
I told my mom, “I can’t walk,” and she thought I was joking. The next thing I remember, I’m on my parents’ bed and my parents are shining a flashlight in my eyes, and are freaking out. Apparently, my eyes were deep in their sockets, or deeper than they should’ve been. The next memory I have, I’m on the floor with paramedics around me and they’re giving me shots/IVs.
I just remembered freaking out because I hate needles. I got transported and was in the hospital for a few days. They ran a lot of tests and couldn’t figure out why I became paralyzed. Eventually, after a few days, I just got better and was eventually released. Still to this day, no one knows why.
36. No Boys In The House
When I was a teenager, I found some small boys' shorts in the dryer while doing laundry. I lived in the house with my parents and sister, and she and I were about 14 and 16 years old at the time. We never figured out where those shorts could have come from.
37. A Childish Hacker
About a month ago, I stepped away from my Mac on which I had an ongoing Messages chat with a friend. I came back to my Mac five minutes later and the text, "i lik peepee" was typed in my chat window. It hadn't been sent, thankfully, so I deleted it, but took a mental note. Two days later, a similar event happened; the word "sad" suddenly appeared in Messages.
Before you think someone here was playing a joke, I live alone. Yes, my WiFi network has a password. No, nobody else has ever had a login on this Mac. I did immediately change my login password and disabled all sharing and remote login options on my Mac. I also installed Malwarebytes and did a scan. Nothing was found. The events have not repeated themselves. But if someone had the know-how to hack in, why would they do something so innocuous and childish?
38. Not A Fan
When I was younger and The Office was still on television, I wasn't a fan back then. But, I specifically remember that after Michael left, they were looking for a new manager. Ray Romano, James Spader, and Jim Carrey all had their scenes. But the mystery is that I vividly remember that there was a vote by the viewers to determine which of them would be the manager, but now I can't find any proof of this. I know I wouldn't have dreamed it because I didn't watch The Office back then.
39. Move It And Lose It
We moved out of our old house to my parents’ for a month then to our new apartment. During this time, all of our possessions, with the exception of clothes and toiletries for the month, were placed in a POD in storage. We packed it ourselves in our driveway, locked it with our own lock, and had it delivered to our apartment a month later.
Everything inside was exactly as we left it, which we knew because we took pictures for proof. We are missing several items in the kitchen such as a pizza cutter, meat thermometer, whisk, two of our daughter’s cups, wooden spoons, and the bottom half to a cup and pitcher combo. We unpacked everything ourselves, bringing a box in and putting everything in it away before getting another box in.
But, we still have no idea where that box is. We had at least seven people help us verify our house was 100% empty when we left, so it wasn’t left there. I’d like the pitcher back, but just want to know where the rest went!
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40. A Moment In Time
We have this weird family heirloom that we don’t know the origins of. It’s a ring my grandma found while cleaning some sheets. She worked for a company that cleans hotel bedding and stuff. They let her keep it, so she used it as a wedding ring because she never had one. Then, it got passed down to my mom and now my sister has it. The weird part about it is there’s an inscription on the inside that says Francisco and 2-30-70 which seems like a date, but that date doesn’t exist.
41. Who Is She?
When I was in middle school, I hid my report cards on top of this really tall bookshelf in my room. One day, I climbed up to hide another one. There, leaned up against a wall and on top of all the report cards, was a picture of some girl in her late teens/early 20s. I fell because it took me by surprise. I have absolutely no idea who this person is.
I pick it up and ask my parents who she is, and they both say they have no idea. I still have no idea who the lady in the picture was or how it got there. My parents didn’t play a trick on me because my report cards were still there and they never asked me about them when I continued to hide them.
42. Right Out Of Existence
As I walked up the steps in my house carrying a tray of freshly painted Warhammer models, I tripped on the top step. My models and paints went everywhere, but I soon recovered everything except for one model. This model, I never saw again, even after searching every possible room and corridor it could have fallen in, and even lifting the edge of the carpets to look.
One second it was there, the next it might as well have fallen out of existence. This still haunts me to this day.
43. All Of The Details
I have a memory that it’s impossible for me to have. My family owned a blue Chevy Nova that we eventually sold in a private sale. We met the man in the parking lot of a local eatery and sold him the car. I told my father that I remember the sale well as one of my earliest memories, including the details of the restaurant name, the place in the lot where we parked to sell and let the man inspect the car, and the fact that he was wearing a dark red shirt.
This is the scary part: My dad sold the car more than a year before I was born. Whenever I bring it up, he gets freaked out and tells me to drop it.
44. Put Away For Safekeeping
I lost my late grandmother's watch one day when I was trying to get out of the rain. It started to rain suddenly and I was only a couple of streets away from home. I wanted to make a run for it, but I stopped to take off the watch and put it in my handbag because it was very old and I didn't know how waterproof the face was and I was scared of damaging it.
When I got home, I checked my bag for it, but I couldn't find it. I immediately retraced my steps back to the exact spot that I stopped in case I dropped it, and I couldn't find it. The weird thing was, I remember very clearly putting it in a particular pocket in my bag. It just disappeared without a trace and I never quite figured it out.
I hate that I lost something so precious and it especially bothered me that it happened that way, rather than some kind of forgetfulness or misplacing.
45. What’s Above Was Below
Once I was on an overnight flight in Brazil and I looked out the window and saw the moon and stars BELOW the plane. I thought I was seeing things so I asked the person next to me and they saw it too. We weren’t over any oceans, literally the middle of the continent. I watched it for about an hour so if it had been reflecting on a lake or something it wasn’t that.
I started to get freaked out and then all of a sudden I looked out the window and it was normal again and the stars were above me. I didn’t see any moon. I PROMISE I wasn’t asleep. To this day I can’t explain it and it weirds me out! Nobody believes me either.
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46. Never Heard From Again
My grandmother told me a story when I was 12, about 18 years ago. She had a younger sister, Doreen, who was 20 at the time and from a very small community. The community wasn’t really even large enough to be considered a town in Oklahoma. Doreen decided that she wanted to be a movie star and so she left for Hollywood. This was in the 1960s, I’m not sure the year.
She was never heard from again. Not one single person in the family ever heard from her again. My grandmother has always wondered what happened to her little sister, and since I heard the story, I’ve always wondered too.
47. How’d He Get In?
Back in college, I dropped my wallet on the road of the departures terminal when dropping my sister off at the airport. I didn't realize until I got home and started tearing the house apart looking for it. Right when I was about to give up, I got a call on my cell phone from a shuttle driver who saw it on the concrete and picked it up.
He found my college ID, and, as luck would have it, his sister worked for the school's admissions department and was able to get my cell phone number from the student directory. Not only that, by pure coincidence, he would be in my neighborhood the next morning and could drop it off. Amazing! But here's where it gets freaky. The next morning I was woken up by a sharp knock on my door.
I groggily answered it and sure enough, there was a man in a shuttle driver's uniform holding out my wallet. He wordlessly handed it to me, I stammered out a thank you, and before I could offer him a reward or anything, he spun around and left. However, once the warm fuzzies of meeting such a good samaritan faded, I realized something.
At the time, I lived with seven other people. The front door was always kept locked. Not one of my roommates saw or heard anything, and certainly no one let in a strange man at eight in the morning. The door the driver knocked on was my bedroom door.
48. On The Other End
I had turned my cell phone off and left it on my bed while I got ready for work at Carl's Jr. When I left for work, I forgot to take it with me. After being at work for a few hours, the phone on the wall rang. Now, I had worked there for a couple years and, being just a lowly cook, I was never allowed to answer the phone. However, this night it was very slow and the manager on duty was in her back office.
The phone rang a few times and I called out to her, "Hey can I answer it?" "Sure," she replied. Quickly, I ran over and grabbed the phone, "Thank you for calling Carl's Jr. How can I help you?" There was silence on the other end. "Hello? Helloooo?" There was still no answer, so I hung up. The night continued and a few hours later I finished my shift.
I went home and showered and went to my bedroom where I found my cell phone just where I had left it, and still off. I turned it on to see if I had any missed calls, and sure enough, there was a voicemail. I played the message and it started ringing. "That's weird," I thought. When I heard a voice speak, my blood ran cold: "Thank you for calling Carl's Jr. How can I help you?"
It was me from a few hours earlier at work. The message played out exactly as I experienced it and then ended when I had hung up. To this day, I have no idea how such a thing could be possible. That was also the only time, during my two and a half years at Carl's Jr., that I ever answered the phone at work.
49. Found But Not Solved
When I was two years old, my mother disappeared. She had just moved to Virginia with me and my younger brother. My older brother was living with grandparents in Pennsylvania, where my dad was in lockup. She left me and my brother with her sister one night. Her brother-in-law and a friend of his gave her a ride up to a bar, because she was going to be looking for bartending jobs that evening. They'd never see her again after that night.
My mom was 24 at the time, and had just moved to Virginia two months before. She never came home. She just disappeared in between stops at bars. My brother and I were eventually placed into foster care. The next year some hunters/hikers in the woods across town found some human remains. They were just bones by that point.
My mother was able to be identified from dental records. The cause of passing was blunt force trauma and GSW. A couple years later my younger brother and I were adopted by two amazing parents. It was a closed adoption, but they never kept the truth from me. However, I didn’t get to talk to or see anyone from my birth family again until after my younger brother turned 18.
I got to learn a lot more about my family after that. But, my mother’s murder from 1985 has never been solved. It was “reopened” again about eight years ago, but I still haven’t heard about any new developments.
50. The Mystery Relative
Growing up, we had a relative we would visit every Christmas. She was an old lady, very short and very strange. But, she didn't look or speak like everyone else in the family. I asked who she was once and was told the following story…My great grandfather was enlisted in the armed forces and went abroad to fight in WWI. When he returned home to his family, he had an infant girl with him.
He instructed his family to never, ever ask questions about who she was or why he brought her, but to treat her as family. Eventually my great grandfather passed and the mystery remained, even to her.
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