At noon it’s easy to think ghosts are nothing but characters in campfire stories. At two in the morning, when the floorboard starts to creak, it’s a lot easier to believe in ghosts are real. Who’s to say if ghosts are real or not? Over at Reddit, users shared what finally got them to start believing in ghosts. Hide under the covers and turn on the lights, here are the scariest stories about supernatural encounters that got people to believe in ghosts.
1. Just Checking In
About one and a half years after my mom passed away, my dad and I had moved halfway across the country to be closer to my mom's family—95% of which I had never met before she passed away. Then one night, at 11 PM, I was in bed, and I saw her in my doorway. It was like she was checking on me, and left after a few minutes.
I couldn't explain it, and it never happened again, but I always thought she was just making sure I knew she was still watching over me.
2. Tommy Boy
My brother was looking through some old photographs with my mom and I. He pointed to one of my grandfather and said, "That's my friend Tom! He plays pretend with me!" He'd never seen that grandfather before. He's never even heard his name. The creepiest part? That grandfather had been dead for nearly three decades, long before I was born.
3. Pool Rules Say No Running
I worked at a public pool, I would work alone after hours cleaning the building, and the pool. One night around 2 am, I'm cleaning the change rooms. The pool has been closed for four hours at this time. I hear the sound of a child's laughter and bare feet running across the pool deck. I go out and scan the area; there's nobody in sight.
The doors are all closed and locked, there is nowhere a kid could be hiding. No wet footprints on the pool deck. I re-check the doors and the security monitors. I am the only person in the building. It was unsettling.
4. Why So Serious?
A while after my grandma died, my mom and I were looking at a photo of her we had on a shelf. She was never a nice person. Till the moment she died, she refused any help from anyone but was quick to steal and lie. My grandma also didn't like my mom. Anyways, I mentioned to my mom how in the photo she's not smiling, and how she never really smiled in life.
My mom agrees with me, and then the glass cracked straight across my grandma's lips in the photo. My mom took the picture down the next day.
5. Are You There, Dad?
I was visiting my mother after my dad died. She went shopping with her sister and left me alone. I heard my dad as plain as day up in his room. He got up from his computer chair walked over to the door and opened it. He walked down the stairs and stood on the last step for a few seconds before walking back up to his room and closing the door.
I was probably five feet from him in the living room. I just froze. It scared the heck out of me.
6. Kevin is Here
I used to "talk to ghosts" when I was younger. My parents told me I talked to a little boy named Kevin that would appear at my window, and come into the house to play. I would talk to him for hours, and a bunch of creepy things would happen around the house. I'm both the youngest and an only child—my half-sister and brother are 10 and eight years older than me, respectively.
I am my mother's only child, so there was no one close to my age to play with. The weirdest part happened after I was an adult, though. My niece was standing in the hallway one day looking into my old bedroom. She turned to my brother and asked: "Who's the little boy in Tia's room?" Recently, my brother and his family moved into our childhood home.
His youngest daughter, three years old, now has an "imaginary friend" named Kevin who comes in through her window. The same window he came through when I was a child. No one in the family ever told her about him.
7. Picking on Girls
I was always on the fence about believing in ghosts because there was no scientific evidence of them being real—and I was going through a big question phase with religion/afterlife at the time anyway. But my family moved into an old farmhouse when I was 12. This was a very old farmhouse with a build date around the Civil War.
The original owner's name was still on the old barn out back, and we found numerous old antiques built into the walls when we completely renovated the place. A few odd and end things happened after we first moved in, but distinct things started happening to myself after I turned 16, but never to my sister until after SHE turned 16 too.
The most prominent memory I have: The upstairs consisted of two bedrooms. One bedroom was the room at the top of the stairs, the second bedroom was in a separate room just to the left of the top of the stairs. I had the "private room," and my sister's room was the landing. When someone walked up the stairs it was VERY distinct, you could hear each individual step, and the creaks got louder as the person approaching got closer.
So, one night I am sitting on my bed watching TV or something, and I hear my sister come up the steps and go lay down on her bed—so I start talking to her. When she doesn't answer me I get annoyed and go into her room to figure out what her problem is—only she is not in there. My mind was blown because I KNOW I heard her.
I call for her, and she had been downstairs the entire time. We never felt threatened, but it did seem that this entity liked picking ONLY on women. Even my mother who absolutely doesn't believe in ghosts had to admit some odd things had happened. I think the funniest thing was having my ponytail pulled while I was doing the dishes.
I don't know why it was so funny... it just cracked me up that whatever it was felt like playing with my hair.
8. Leave the Light On
So my grandma used to live with me. She was in the room next to mine and would get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, which is in my room. There is a drop from her room to mine, so we put a night light outside the bathroom, so she could see the way. It was like this for about 12 years. Only a few days after she had passed away, I was in my bed with my cat and dog reading a book or something.
I remember my cat, and dog both waking up and looking to the night light. My cat got up, and went to the light, pawing at it and making noises. My dog just stayed still, not barking. I grabbed him so he would calm down, or go to sleep but he never took his eyes off that spot. That's when I saw what I can only say looked like light bending around the night light.
I was positive it was my grandma coming back to use the bathroom, and check on me, and the house. To this day—she died about five years ago—I still have that night light there, and turn it on every night for her. I haven't seen her or experienced anything like it again, but I'm sure she's still around.
9. Our Friendly Ghost
My parents have told me that I talked to ghosts as a toddler. I had a friend, who I would talk to, and when my parents asked I would say, "I'm talking to the man with the balloon". We also had a “ghost” who would leave really big handprints on our windows. No one in the family had big hands OR was tall enough to reach that high up.
If my mom cleaned the windows the night before, the hand-prints would be back the next morning. also talked to it, and we called it our friendly ghost. When my grandmother's dog died, I was convinced it had come to live with us. I often saw it at night walking around in the kitchen. I have had so, so, so many experiences with unexplainable things that I can't NOT believe at ghosts anymore.
When I was around five years old, my mom was pregnant with my younger brother. I woke up one night, walked to her room, came into her bed to snuggle, and laid my hands on her big pregnant belly. Something I normally never did. Less than five minutes later she started having contractions and she started going into labor.
My entire childhood was filled with experiences like this. I've had a few experiences as a teenager and young adult too, but not that often anymore.
10. Worst Best Ghost Stories
The worst ghost stories are always the ones with little children in them. Nothing scarier than hearing a child’s laugh in the middle of the night, knowing you don’t have any children. And children are creepily sensitive to the supernatural. Once, I was babysitting my cousin who was two at the time, and we were watching TV.
He went up the stairs to get his blanket, and no sooner than he turned the corner he suddenly screamed. I went to him, and he was just standing on the second step and bawling. He cried a lot, but this was just non-stop screaming, and giant tears, and he was very scared. The apartment we were in was known to have a faceless lady, and a little boy pops up every now and then on the second floor.
And the stairs had a little alcove above it that made you feel like someone was constantly watching you. I still hate going up to the second floor when no one’s up there because it never feels like you’re alone. The apartment mentioned above is low-income housing in a rather bad neighborhood, so there were a lot of creepy stories like this.
My aunt who lived there said she would often see the faceless lady in her room, sometimes in broad daylight. You could also see into the hallway from the upstairs bathroom mirror. Once, my eldest cousin was washing his face, looked up into the mirror, and saw a little boy standing in the hallway. Turned around, and no one was there.
In addition, the middle school in the neighborhood is even built on a graveyard, and a boy died by suicide in the locker rooms—it's said you can still hear him crying at night. Back when my mom lived in the neighborhood with her siblings in a different house, she and her younger sister (a different aunt) would often sneak out of the house, take the car and drive around, and park near the school just to talk.
One night they were talking, my aunt shushes my mom and asks if she hears it. My mom says, hear what? My aunt says she hears children screaming, and laughing outside the car like it's time for recess. In the middle of the night. They went home immediately after that. The next night, my mom is woken by my aunt crawling into her bed.
My aunt says she hears children again, screaming and laughing outside her window. They were on the second floor.
11. Don’t Go to Bed
When I was about 10-14 I had terrible insomnia. I would imagine things, and felt incredibly unsafe as though I was being watched, although I never admitted this to anyone. I began only sleeping on the couch, with my back against the wall, and had to have the TV or some sort of light on. I missed an immense amount of school because of this, so my mom had me see a neurologist.
The neurologist diagnosed me with some things, but the crazy part was during my sleep study I slept amazingly well, had no issues at all AND slept in the "real bed." Eventually, I got transferred to a children's hospital and speaking to the doctor I explained I would "see" things and felt uncomfortable, they had thought I was experiencing sleep paralysis.
When they told my mom she went ghost white. She pulled me aside and explained she was experiencing things, too. She described in detail what I was seeing. I would see a large dark figure that I believed to be a man who would walk the halls at night. I would see things happening or hear things happening, like a cup would fall off the counter or items on an entry table move.
One evening I remember seeing a black figure that was smaller, about the size of a basketball, run across my bedroom floor, hit the wall, and went under my bed. As I was convincing myself it was imaginary, my mom came running in since she heard the thud. At the time, we hadn't all concluded the ghost thing so I didn't say what it was, but ran out the house, and spent the night at my friend's because I was terrified.
My mom experienced many times the feeling of someone sitting on her bed. She said she'd think it was one of us, and look but there wouldn't be anyone there just an indent as if someone was. That evening she approached my brother, and asked broad questions like, "Do you have anything weird happen in home?" He also described what we experienced.
It was then I realized we must have paranormal activity, and I've believed it ever since. When we moved out of that house all my sleep issues abruptly stopped, and I haven't experienced any since.
12. Playing in the Halls
My aunt used to live above a convenience store. It was a duplex, and it had a mud-room that connected the front doors to each apartment. The other apartment was empty and unlocked so my cousins and I would hang out in there. One night, we were playing hide and seek in the empty apartment. My cousin and I are running from the seeker, and the hallway door slams shut in front of us.
We freaked out, and ended the game because we are too scared. We told our parents, and my aunt happened to have a night vision baby camera. She set it up in the living room of the empty apartment, and we can all see it on the TV in her house. We were watching it for about 10 minutes, dust is flying everywhere, and nothing is happening.
Out of the darkness, a Pepsi can rolled up, and hits the base of the camera. Everybody is like what the heck, this apartment is haunted. I never went up the stairs alone to get to her house again, I was too freaked out. About three years ago, the entire building burned down unfortunately, I don’t know the cause.
13. No Need to Be Scared
I was eight when my grandma died, and I was very upset over her death. So, around two months after she passed, I was going to my grandma's house where my grandpa lives. I woke up at 3 am and hear footsteps coming in from bedroom door. I froze, I saw my grandma walking up to me, and she said, "Hello little sweetie," and walked away.
I know it was not sleep paralysis, because I could move my hands and feet. In the morning, I told to my grandpa about it, and he said "I've seen grandma almost every night, she likes to visit, so don't be scared next time when you visit"
14. Kids Know the Darndest Things
My wife and I swear that our daughter used to talk to ghosts when she was a toddler. She was an only child at the time. The first instance I remember, was her telling me that she was talking to Nana. That's what I called my grandmother, who passed about 15 years before my daughter was born. My daughter was young, and so I hadn't even talked about Nana to her.
So, I showed her a picture and asked who she spoke to. There were four women—three of whom I didn't even know—but without hesitation, she pointed to my Nana. Ok, no biggie. Some months later, my wife and I are trying for baby number two. After my wife gets pregnant, my daughter is sitting next to her on the couch, and puts her head on her belly and says, "Mommy, there's a baby in there.”
Okay, maybe that's a coincidence. She overheard us saying something. A few weeks later, my wife miscarries. Maybe my daughter picked up on our sadness, who knows, but she again puts her head on her stomach and says, "Mommy, there's no baby in there anymore." Then, several months, and one more (very early) miscarriage later, my daughter tells us, "I was talking to my brother last night and he said that my sister is coming to live with me soon."
Again, she's an only child and had no (living?) brother. We were still trying at this point but had not taken any tests. We picked one up that night, and sure enough, pregnant. When the time came to reveal the gender, I wasn't even interested. My daughter had already said it was a girl. Sure enough, I have two daughters.
15. Leave Room for Grandpa’s Ghost
My girlfriend’s grandfather’s ashes were on a little shelf in the living room, right next to a very solid, and heavy angel statue. Well, one weekend she and I are fooling around on the living room couch, and out of the corner of my eye, I see the angel statue fly off the wall, accompanied with a deep grunt. Now when I say this thing FLEW off the wall, I’m talking seven to eight feet of air, before landing on the hardwood, and leaving a dent where the wing hit.
Even if this thing had fallen off the wall, it would’ve dropped straight down, not soared with force. Well, we both stood there in shock, and I whispered, asking if she had heard the grunt as well, to which she agreed. So, we both booked it for the day. Well, that night at dinner we told her parents what happened—leaving out the naughty bit—and Megan’s younger sister burst into tears saying she had seen a dark figure at the foot of her bed the last couple of nights, but didn’t want anyone to think she was crazy.
Grandfather that died had mental health issues that caused a lot of pain. Well, after that day, I was a believer.
16. Leaving Something Behind
I grew up in a very scientific family, I never knew my dad’s stance on ghosts, but they were never talked about so it really didn’t matter. One day, when I was in high school we were eating dinner, and I decided to ask my dad about our old house, and moving into it when I was just a baby. So, he told me a story. Apparently, when we moved into this house, we lived there about a week before we started to receive “gifts” once a week.
Every Friday morning, my dad told me that there would be some sort of hand-crafted gift sitting on the mantle of our fireplace. My dad was reasonably freaked out by this, because we were the only ones with keys to the house, and the last owner moved well out of state. So, he informed the local police, and they decided to patrol the property every Friday night looking for intruders.
They found nothing, and as you could imagine the gifts kept coming. So, my dad told me they eventually gave up, and feeling helpless he went to our local church. Eventually, he had a priest come and bless the house, and we stopped receiving the gifts. What really freaked me out about this, was the fact that my dad never believed in ghosts, and didn’t mention once that a “ghost” was causing these gifts to appear.
He’s an engineer so he always tries to debunk peoples “paranormal stories” with a realistic explanation, but he was 100% serious with this story. One of the gifts we received we actually still have; it’s a wooden sled with a small painting of a man (presumably my dad), pulling me and my sister on the sled. We received this gift about eight months to a year before my mother passed away from cancer, so that made the painting on the sled very freaky in hindsight.
My dad only told me this story once, and he denied he ever told me it when I asked him about it recently.
17. Fierce Protector
Once, when I was in university, I went to go see my therapist whom I had been seeing twice a week for about five months. On this day, he was uncharacteristically quiet, and I asked him if he was all right. He said he was fine, and we continued through what would be one of our most breakthrough sessions. A lot of repressed memories came up through it that have helped me to heal.
At the end of the session, I asked him why he was acting differently today than other days. He said, when I walked in I was accompanied by a warrior-like person. He said, he had the overwhelming feeling to perform as best he professionally could that day, and that he got the sense this “warrior” had fought a lot of battles to protect me.
This would seem coincidental, except for 10 years later, I was living on the other side of the world. I had a Puerto Rican neighbor I would see occasionally and eventually got pretty close with him, and his family. One day, as I was walking by he kind of gets quiet and weird, and then says in broken English, “do you know there is a soldier who follows you around?”
I knew instantly who he was talking about. In both instances the warrior/soldier was described the same, just over six feet, blonde curly hair, wearing primitive warrior clothing, and strangely “a white guy”. Neither of these people could have known that my closest brother who passed away at 14 was over six feet tall with blond curly hair, and always was my protector.
18. With You When They Go
I’m still not sure if I believe in ghosts, but there have been some weird things in my life that I can’t explain. When I was five years old, I woke up in the night, and my grandma was standing at the end of my bed, wearing a teal blue skirt and a matching blouse. I remember that it was summer, and the sky was still light, but not light enough for me to read, so I guess it was about 9 pm.
I sat up, she put her finger to her lips, and I rubbed my eyes a couple of times because I was sleepy, and when I looked back she had gone. I just snuggled back under my covers thinking how nice it was to see her, because I hadn’t seen her for AGES, and I hoped she would still be there when I woke up. Next morning, my house was eerily quiet.
My mum was in a worse mood than normal, but she had been crying, so I asked her what was wrong. My grandma died the night before. She had been crossing a road after her bingo turned out, at 8.30pm, about 60 miles away from where we lived, she had a massive brain hemorrhage in the middle of the road and didn’t even make it to the other side, let alone to my house 60 miles away.
She was wearing a teal blue skirt and matching blouse.
19. Attack of the Putty
When I was in fifth grade, I was playing with Silly Putty in my room when my mom called me down for dinner. I had molded it into a ball and placed it down directly behind me—I’m talkin’, setting it down as soft as can be. When I stood up to go downstairs, I felt something hit me in the back of my head with some force. So, I turn around and see my putty ball, not on the ground anymore, but bouncing on my windowsill until it eventually rolled back onto the floor.
Needless to say, I ran downstairs hysterically trying to tell my mom what had happened.
20. Cuddle Buddy
I still don't believe in ghosts...but...I did have a strange experience. I had a cat who I found in a ditch many years ago. She was cute, friendly, and I stopped to pet her, so she followed me back down the train tracks about a mile to my home. I opened the door for her and she went in. She was offered the opportunity to go back out, and did for a moment, but then came back in.
She was mine forever. I've had many pets over the years and loved them all. But this one was different. She wanted to be near me all the time. I'd often said I'd never had a cat who made me feel like my personal space was being violated before. She followed me up to bed every night and purred me to sleep. She died fairly quickly. I barely even had a chance to say goodbye.
I knew she was ill, having been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, which cat owners will know is not a good thing to hear. They vomit their food up, and waste away slowly, eventually succumbing to either congestive heart failure or kidney damage. She had taken a turn for the worse, and I thought her treatment wasn't working. On examination, they found tumors in her stomach and liver.
She had been dealt a mortal blow and was only going to suffer harder and harder. In the most painful decisions I've ever had to deal with, I put her down, and she even meowed one last time before the end. I forgot to mention that this cat was also the most talkative I've ever had. She frankly wouldn't shut up! I buried her in the yard to keep her close and tried to go to sleep, completely beside myself with grief.
As I lay down, I heard something familiar. I live in an old house, and my bedroom doesn't have a door so I installed one of those plastic sliding doors. The slats that it's made of make a tell-tale clacking sound when they're disturbed...like they did when a cat pushes in between them, and the doorframe. I heard this, and a moment later, I felt the foot of my bed compress and could feel the mattress deform around my feet, up beside my legs and roughly to my hips...I looked and…no cat.
I don't know how to explain this. I don't believe in ghosts, and I'm sure grief can cause some pretty significant psychological disturbances. A quick perusal of my post history will very quickly show I am ANYTHING but cuddly, but I was absolutely in the kind of deep grief where one would expect, as I loved that cat more than basically anything else.
Even typing this now, years later is making my eyes well up with sadness for my lost friend. I could write off the sound of the plastic slats as a breeze, or a hallucination. Older members of my family said they saw my father after he died, and I've read about grief-induced hallucinations before. But to feel my mattress deform like that...in exactly the way she used to circle my feet and come up beside me...
I don't know what to think.
21. See it to Believe it
Most of my family is extremely religious, and believe in ghosts wholeheartedly. Most of them claimed to have seen something paranormal at some point in their lives. I wasn't very religious, and I always thought to myself, "If I haven't seen it, then it's not real." That changed during my senior year in high school. I was dog-sitting at my great aunt's house while she was out of town for a few days.
A little after midnight, I'm watching a movie, and my aunt's dog starts barking like crazy and runs up the stairs at full speed. The dog was small but fierce. Suddenly, I clear as day heard a gravelly voice at the top of the stairs say, "Bad doggie." The voice was deep and masculine. I went upstairs because I was certain nobody else was supposed to be there.
I looked around, and there was nobody in sight. The dog was still barking at something that I couldn't see. She was just barking at an empty hallway. That's when I heard footsteps walking away from us down the hall, and into my aunt's bedroom. I could hear the footsteps, but I couldn't see anybody making them. I got right out of that house with the dog and went outside in my car.
The dog, and I slept there for the night. I'm not entirely sure what the heck I experienced that night, but I definitely believe in the paranormal now. I never told my aunt about what happened, but apparently, my great uncle, her husband, had died in that house a few months after I was born. I never knew him, but I'm willing to bet that it was him who I heard that night.
22. Humming Along
So, weird story that made me quickly question what was real and what wasn't. When I was around eight years old, and my brother was six, we had been playing video games in my room while my dad and mom watched football downstairs. For a while we had lots of fun, that was until I had a really bad chill down my spine, I shrugged it off before I notice my brother got a chill as well.
He continued playing the game, so I just thought if he wasn't worried, then neither should I be. Everything was going smoothly well, not for long. My brother paused the game, "Do you hear that?" he asked. I then heard a humming sound from what seemed to be a little girl. I nodded, "The humming right?" I asked him, he nodded as well.
The humming was coming from the hallway right outside our room, we began to be very nervous because my brother and I were the only children in the house. The door was shut thankfully so we did not see anything. After a few seconds of the humming, it stopped, and we heard footsteps from the attic. The thing about the attic though is that nobody ever really goes up there.
At the time, neither me nor my brother had been ever up there, and my parents only went up there once each. Once the footsteps stopped, and nothing else happened, we opened the door to see only the hallway. The next day, we told our parents in great detail what had happened, and they did the whole parent thing saying, “Oh you probably just heard us, it was your imagination."
Needless to say, if I didn’t believe in ghosts before that incident, now I did.
23. Get Out
I never believed in ghosts. But when I was a kid I had a friend who did. She believed she was haunted by the ghost of a kid that she likes to refer to as a little brother. One time, I was at her house, and we were in her room just having a conversation when she looked at the door and started shouting, "Get out," and, "This is my room, you can't come in here without knocking."
I swore at that moment that she was crazy. I questioned whether or not we should be friends. Then, a table where she had books and papers had everything on top of it fall to the floor as if someone had swept their arm across it. It was the kind of thing a living person might do in frustration. The whole entire table, with papers in the middle, was now cleared and everything was on the floor.
She got up in frustration and anger and slammed the door. She then apologized to me and went on talking about whatever we had been talking about prior as if nothing happened.
24. Money Problems
I started believing in ghosts when my grandma passed away. At that time, my husband and I were having several economic problems. So, the next days after her funeral, I started to dream about her, and she told me on my dreams, that if I need money for an emergency, just check under her mattress, and I will find $1,500 Mexican pesos.
I just ignored it, but those dreams were repeating again and again... So, I decided to take a look under her mattress and GUESS WHAT??? I FOUND $1,500 MEXICAN PESOS…!!!! And since that event, I haven’t dreamed of her again.
25. Playtime and Punishment
This story is not about me, but this one's about my three brothers. We used to live in the Philippines where everyone believes in ghosts, Duwende (dwarves), Diwatas (fairies), etc. Our old home was the second house built in our subdivision so it was VERY old, with huge mango, santol, and other fruit trees growing all over.
As my mom had told me, my three brothers were playing around, shooting these bamboo bow and arrows made for them by one of our helpers. It was all fun, and games until my third brother shot his arrow, and according to him and my brothers, it stopped midair and dropped. Needless to say, they found this weird and stopped playing.
On the next day, my brother is suddenly hit with a high fever out of nowhere. They were going to take my brother to my aunt who was a doctor, but my older brothers told my mom about the arrow stopping midair. My mom decided to take him to an "Albularyo," which is a practitioner of folk medicine. So, my mom took my brother to this guy so they could find out what had happened, and what they could do.
Once they met up, the Albularyo decided to do a ritual that involved dripping candle wax in water to see what caused the sickness. Once they did this, a small humanoid figure formed in the water, but it was missing a hand. The Albularyo told my mom that my brother probably shot an arrow, and hit a Duwende's hand, which is why he got hit with a fever as punishment.
26. Beach Front Property With a Catch
Up until my mid-20s, I would've told you there's no such thing as ghosts. Most things that people say, I think is their imagination or wishful thinking. Now, I don't know. I ...just... don't know. When I was in my 20s, and newly married, my spouse and I moved for his job. We needed to find a place to live pretty quick. We lucked into the perfect house.
It was old. In its previous life, it had been someone's beach cottage. Which I loved. What's better than living in a resort town, close enough to walk to the beach? Plus, it wasn't in a resort area. It was on the back half of someone's property, with one road in and out, and lots of trees and shade. Very quiet. No other people around.
Because the house had originally been a weekend cottage, it was one big room, with a small addition to one side that contained a kitchen and bath, and another addition off the back that had a bedroom. The big room was awesome. All windows on three sides, with a nice breeze most of the time. A fireplace. Lots of open areas.
The only thing that kinda pinged my radar was the landlord. When we rented, he was overly insistent that we sign a year lease and we couldn't break it for any reason. No matter what, we needed to pay out the lease, whether we lived in the house or not. I thought that was a little weird, the way he kept repeating that over and over because he wanted to make absolutely sure that we understood.
But, it didn't really register...at the time. Other than I was a bit worried that maybe there were trouble-makers or noisy parties on the beach or something. He assured us that it was a very quiet neighborhood, but he repeated again that we couldn't break the lease. I worked a nine to five job. My spouse worked 12-hour on/off shifts.
So, there were lots of times when I would be home by myself. The first month or two were fine. I liked the house. I liked the neighborhood. I liked the beach. I'm mostly a homebody, so when the spouse was at work, I would stay at home reading or watching a little TV or cooking. I'd always wanted to learn to knit, so I bought some yarn and started teaching myself.
Then sometime around the third month, I started to get very strong feelings that someone would be standing behind me while I was reading. You know, like looking over my shoulder. It only happened when I was alone in the house, and only when I was in the main room. Without thinking about it too much, I started sitting places where my back was to the wall, or reading in the bedroom.
When I went to bed at night, I started closing the door between the bedroom and the rest of the house. I felt safe in the bedroom. Sometimes, when I fell asleep in front of the TV late at night, I'd wake up to catch someone standing in front of the fireplace, just out of the corner of my eye. I thought I needed to stop dreaming so much.
But I started to stay in the bedroom after dark, with the door shut. Things started not being where I put them in the big room. I got kinda irritated with my spouse for messing with my stuff. I wasted 5-10 minutes almost every day looking for my handbag, or my car keys. Then one day when I came home after work, I found my knitting yarn wrapped and tangled around all the furniture in the big room.
I don't mean just a little bit. I mean the yarn was strung between couches and wrapped around the legs of the chairs. I told myself that my spouse was playing a trick on me, and I cleaned it up. Then I decided that I wouldn't mention it to him, just to see how long it took him to come clean. (He never did.) I moved my knitting to the bedroom.
My sister came to visit for a long weekend. I'd gushed so much about our lovely beach house that she came to visit and see the beach. She came for a four-day weekend. She slept on the pull-out sofa in the big room. After the first night, she told us that the sofa wasn't very comfortable, and she thought she was coming down with something, so she changed her travel arrangements, and she was leaving that afternoon.
She seemed agitated, but she wouldn't talk about it. A few days after she went home, she called me. She started the conversation with, "I know you don't believe in ghosts, and maybe I'm just being stupid..." My heart dropped. I thought I was the only one, and I was being so stoic and pretending I never saw or heard anything.
She went on to tell me that after she went to sleep that night in the big room, noises woke her up in the middle of the night. She thought it was one of us, but no one was there. Then, while she was sitting in the bed looking around, the windows started opening and closing. It just kinda went around the room. One window opened and closed.
Then the one next to that. Then the next one. And the next one. Then she heard footsteps walking straight towards her. But no one was there. The footsteps walked right up to the bed where she was sitting, then over the bed, continued across the room, and out through the side door into the kitchen area. She said she ran out the front door and spent the rest of the night on the front porch.
She came back inside when the sun came up, waited for us to wake up, and made excuses to go home. She didn't want to spend another night in that house. She said, "I know you won't believe me. That's okay. But I'm not ever sleeping in your house again." I told myself that my sister had always been a little nutty about stuff like that, so knowing that the house was old, she probably just had a very vivid dream.
I kept telling myself that. A few weeks after that, just when I'd stopped jumping at every stray noise, I woke up one Sunday morning and went to cook a leisurely breakfast for me and spouse. And y'all...I still don't know how to explain this. I opened the kitchen cabinets to get the dishes out to start cooking. All the dishes were rearranged. Not messy. Not tumbled about.
They were all very neat and orderly, but everything was on the wrong shelf. The shelf that normally held glasses, now had plates stacked on them. The shelves that normally held bowls, now had glasses on them. My first thought was that someone had been in the house during the night. I checked all the locks. Still locked.
We didn't know many people and I couldn't think of anyone who would pull a trick like that. Besides there was so much stuff moved that no one could do it quietly without disturbing people sleeping in practically the next room. So, I did what any half-crazed, scared-to-spit person would do. I pretended it never happened.
I pretended that I always kept the glasses on that shelf, and there was nothing strange about having all the plates on this shelf. I sure as hell wasn't moving anything back because I didn't want to see what would happen if I did. I cooked breakfast. I went on with my day. And later that afternoon, I told my spouse that I wasn't really comfortable in this house anymore. Could we find somewhere else to live?
Amazingly enough, my spouse never asked me why. He simply said that was probably a good idea and let's find something quick. And we moved out. We called the landlord after we'd already packed and moved the furniture. He came over and picked up the keys. He never, not once, asked why we were moving. In fact, he never met our eyes.
Just kept looking at the ground. We agreed to keep paying rent until he could get some new tenants. Months later, I asked my spouse if he ever felt anything strange in that house. He said, "Yeah, that wasn't a good house. Glad we moved."
27. O’ Brothers Where Art Thou?
We were in the process of moving from an apartment over a business, and I told the landlord about an experience I had one night. I got up to go to the bathroom, and in the hallway, I saw three dark shadows moving along the wall. They were man-shaped, and it looked as if you could reach through them into an infinite void.
I was terrified, and started yelling, and my father came out of his bedroom to see what was the matter and told me that I was dreaming it. I know to this day I wasn't, it was very distinct, and I was standing in the hallway. So, as I tell the guy I am glad to leave the place, no offense, he tells me sincerely that years ago the shop was a bakery, and there was a fire that burned the place, and it was rented by three brothers who perished.
He had the most bizarre look on his face trying to see if I was pranking him. Totally weirds me out to this day.
28. The Man
So, you know how kids see stuff when they're little? This is one of those stories. When I was younger, I was petrified of "The Man.” I don't remember any of this, because I was too young, but apparently, on multiple occasions, I would stand completely still and verbally whisper "Who is that man?" And when questioned what he wants, I would say, "I don't know, it's the man."
Anyway, most people would blow that off, but I happened to have three younger sisters, two of whom had eerily similar experiences. Petrified of "The Man," or as my other sister called him, "The Guy.” My mom was super creeped out and started seeking religious guidance—for real, she thought there was a demon in our home.
So, growing up I was always told about this, and when I questioned it as a teenager my mom brought me a photo. A photo of me as a baby. I'm in a rocker, the TV is off behind me, and there is a perfect glare of a close-up man. Distinctively looks like a 50-60-year-old man. Oddly enough, my parents took pictures from multiple angles that night, it's right when they remodeled the living room.
There is nothing in the room to cast a shadow or make it appear like a man’s face. Well, I'm suspicious, but never really believed. But then one day, I'm at my parents’ house. I’m 24, and my two-year-old is staring up my parents’ steps and whispers "Daddy, there's a man.”
29. See You Off
My grandfather died when I was in a very uncertain place in life. He didn't get to see me graduate college, because I flunked out, and worked garbage jobs for two to three years before getting my act together. He ended up getting mesothelioma and went from a fit and healthy old man to a skeleton clutching at his chest, and gasping for air within the span of a month.
I got to say my goodbyes before he was really far gone. I am afraid of hospitals, but I did go in and see him while he was still lucid, and I think he preferred I see him like that when I said my goodbyes, rather than the way my mom described him on his last few nights. We had that kind of mutual respect for each other, and sense of privacy.
That man always thought I was smart, even when I was failing school, and making terrible choices. I was always his granddaughter, and treated the same way, with encouragement—Fs on my report card or not. My grandparent’s house was like my sanctuary when I was little. My mom had a lot of issues, and I lived through two divorces, and countless out-of-state moves, but I could always count on my time spent with my grandparents to be peaceful.
Until my grandmother's pain issues got really bad, and she found...not so great...ways to cope with it. He also technically wasn't my biological grandpa, since my mom had been adopted. It did not matter to me. I'd go to their house, and eat homecooked meals and play Skip-Bo with him till like, 10 pm when it was finally bedtime.
So, the point of that massive wall of text, I loved my grandfather, he was a rock for me. When he passed I was upset, but he was in so much pain at the end that I was also relieved for him. He was taken too soon, but life is a witch, and super unfair, so at least in that unfair end he didn't suffer as long as some people do.
After he passed, I started having dreams about him, and their house. My grandmother had long passed by this point too. In them, we'd sit in the living room, or at the kitchen table, and he would just talk to me about things in my life. I very distinctly remember a dream where he warned me to get away from the abusive boyfriend I was seeing at the time.
As time went on, I got my act together and now I live a relatively comfortable life. I'm not rich or super successful by any means, but given the life I had...I beat some odds, let's put it that way. There was a reason I failed out of middle school and all kinds of other things. And as these years have gone by, I've had fewer dreams about him.
Now, sadly, I don't dream about him at all anymore. To date, my brother has had one dream about him, when he was about to graduate from college. An "I’m so proud"-type dream. It actually took me a long time to realize that I don't dream about him anymore. I still dream about their house all the time, but it's always empty.
I had one single dream about my grandmother, and it took place in her kitchen, with her making dinner with her back to me, which is a pleasant memory of how she was in life. I think the one dream from my grandmother was her saying goodbye, but all those dreams about my grandfather were him essentially watching over me.
And as I got my life together, he realized he didn't need to anymore, so he either moved on, or moved elsewhere. And that's why when I dream about their house, it's still because I remember it as a safe haven. But now it's empty, because they're gone, and have moved on. Which makes me happy, and so terribly sad at the same time.
But, at the same time, if my grandpa was confident enough in me now to trust I'd be okay, I must be doing something right. So, I do firmly believe that loved ones can, and do, watch over people if they feel they're needed, and there was a strong bond while they were alive. Your rationalization makes complete sense, too.
But it might be okay to let yourself think you were protected by something unexplainable in that instant, especially if it comforts you in some way.
30. The Nanny
When my son was a baby, he started crying in his crib at about 3 am. I sat up, dreading having to nurse him back to sleep for the third time that night. All of a sudden, I hear a soft, sweet, woman's voice over the baby monitor say, "Shhh...don't cry...go to sleep..." And my son settled right down back to sleep. In my sleep-deprived state, I was like, "Cool…she's got him," and I went back to sleep myself.
When I woke up that morning, I was like, "Did I just let a ghost nanny take care of my baby?!...Can she come back tonight?!" She did not...but I did constantly see orbs fly around over his crib over the video monitor which were clearly not bugs or dust.
31. Friendly Ghost
I have two different stories that made me believe that ghosts could be real. The first used to happen when I lived in a large house that had been converted into several flats in South London. There was one flat above me and my wife, and we knew the woman upstairs quite well, and we would know she was out because her car wouldn't be in the shared driveway.
On many occasions when the upstairs neighbor was out, I would hear footsteps in the flat above me even though we knew the upstairs neighbor wasn't home. The floors were wooden, and I could hear the wood creaking during the footsteps, so it was definitely something moving around up there. The upstairs neighbor didn't have a partner, or friends that may be staying over, it was also far too small for anyone to live up there without us hearing or knowing.
The second is a bit stranger than the first. In around 2001, a good friend of mine died of cancer in his early twenties, he was a tall guy called James, and he had short blonde hair. Fast forward to around 2010, and my best friend’s nephew who was about seven at the time was round at his grandmother’s house. The nephew was out in the hallway playing by himself, when his grandmother (my best mate’s mother) heard the young boy start up a conversation with someone in the hallway.
The grandmother didn't think much of it as kids often chatter when they play, but when the nephew came into the front room the grandmother asked who he was talking to. The nephew said he was talking to James out in the hallway. Naturally, the grandmother was a bit alarmed that someone was in the house talking to a child.
She asked the nephew a few more questions about who he was talking to out in the hallway, and of course, he gave a good description of my friend James, who had died 10 years or so beforehand, and had been to the house many times before he died. The nephew would have never met James, as he wasn't born when James died and would have had no reason to lie or make something up like that.
That one gives me goosebumps even as I write it.
33. One Last Goodbye
One morning at a friend’s sleepover, I rolled over, it was one of those dazed moments where I wasn’t sure if I was asleep or awake. I looked up and saw my grandmother above me. She told me she loved me very much and was so glad she had so many years to love me. She also told me that my boyfriend was wonderful, and we’d have a happy life together.
A few minutes later, I got the call that she had passed away. I genuinely believe that on her way out of this plane she took the time to say goodbye. The last time I had seen her I made her my priority at the family dinner, because I loved her so much, and hadn’t seen her recently. I pulled up pictures of the guy I was dating because I wanted to catch her up.
We’d only been together a few weeks at this point. But that didn’t matter, she asked if we were serious, and I said, “Yeah I think we are. He’s amazing and I really don’t want to spend my life away from him.” So her last words being that he and I would be happy together was beautiful. I sent her a Facebook message on our wedding day to tell her how much she meant to me, and how glad I was to have her blessing.
It’s silly, but I didn’t know how else to get the message down for her.
33. To Believe or Not to Believe; That is the Question
I used to constantly see, hear, and feel things while growing up. I'd see people in my bedroom at night, shadow or otherwise. I'd feel hands touching my legs, back, and stroking my hair. I once got sat on and my shoulder pushed down so hard I couldn't breathe and it was so incredibly sore the next day I could hardly lift it.
I'd hear a man angrily screaming my name that no one else heard, I'd get followed around my house by an unknown entity, I'd hear banging around the house and knocking on my window—all over my window all at once, like there was a large crowd. I'd see strange animals, people without faces, blurry couples, frightening creatures following the car, I'd hear voices beckoning me from outside in the middle of the night, and much more.
My belief changed in time though, I found out I have severe mental disorders—psychotic episodes and possible OSDD or CPTSD. Once I stopped thinking those things were real it got less severe. Then once I got professional help it almost completely stopped. There were some things that my friends also experienced with me, so I don't doubt the possibility of them being real, but a common theme of shared experiences was that a person with severe internal issues was always around—that person used to be me.
When I cut those people out if my life—they were terrible people, it wasn't because of their struggles—those happenings stopped. I see ghosts more like something we create, kind of like a manifestation of energy either made by us or left behind by a long history of fears and rumors and traumatic situations. There's a reason why different cultures only see the ghosts and demons they know, rather than a vast array of types.
We don't see the ones from faiths and folklore that we don't believe or know about, if we did, then maybe I'd be a little more inclined to believe it. But I still do believe in the possibility, and I love horror and supernatural stuff.
34. Aunt Joan and Me
After my aunt Joan (dad’s sister) died at 40 of alcoholism, we had a few experiences. The first was when, I was like five when she passed away, and my dad and I were over at his parents’ house taking care of it, while my grandparents were out of state with one of my dad’s remaining sisters. He was in the guest room, and I was in the room my aunt slept in when she lived there in high school.
My dad calls out, “I’m going downstairs now,” and a voice like my aunt’s calls out, “Okay.” I asked him about this a few weeks ago, almost exactly 20 years from when it happened, but my dad understandably doesn’t remember a lot from that point in his life, including that moment. The second happened the day after the funeral for my aunt.
My other aunt was back home in Pennsylvania—we were in Colorado where the funeral was held—and my living aunt was still having a hard time taking her sister’s death. She and her husband walk in the house after getting home off their flight and find a message on their answering machine. It’s from some stranger in New York who was asked to call my aunt’s number, and deliver the message that “Joan is ok, you don’t have to worry.”
He didn’t know who the caller was, just that he was given the number, and the message to relay. Pretty much my entire family understands it would have to be a coincidence of cosmic proportions if that’s all it was. She’s in a better place now. While I miss her, I know she was released of terrible suffering and I’m glad for that.
35. Stranger Things
Over a couple of weeks, years ago, while I was living with my ex, we were in the shower together, and the bathroom door got knocked on extremely hard and aggressively. I got out, and opened it, basically straight away, and there was no one there. No one was in the house, and all the doors were locked. We also had the cliché footsteps, and I remember one night there was this weird music coming from nowhere but still in the house. That was whack.
A Friday night, some teenagers from next door came by, saying there was someone in the house with them—they were alone for the weekend. So my mates and I, plus the teenagers, and my partner went out with them. We saw the lights go out all at once, but no one came out. The cops came and called for backup. They went through and found no one after looking for like 15 minutes.
The thing is, though, unless whoever was in there could climb four meters in a few seconds, the only way to the street was past us. The teenagers stayed with us that night, but we never heard anything about it again. They also moved away maybe a month after I think. The last thing that went down over those weeks was the one that freaked me out the most.
I heard as clear as day my name said right behind me, and then footsteps above me while doing some early morning weekend work. I used to work in a very high-security facility, and for someone else to be in the building they would have to have been let in by me, and couldn’t be in there before me as the alarms couldn’t be deactivated without my fingerprint.
I almost pooped myself, and after talking with my boss on the phone, and checking that there really wasn’t anyone else there besides me—no cars besides my work car and my private car locked in the grounds with the other work cars—there I bailed, and never did Saturday mornings alone. After that, nothing ever happened and nothing before. I still think about those weeks all the time.
It was freaking weird, and I have no explanation besides “Heck if I know, ghosts?”
36. Leave or Move On
I lived in a haunted house for basically all of my life, it used to scare the heck out of me when I was little, but I basically just got desensitized to it. We always experienced hearing footsteps, voices upstairs when everyone was downstairs, dogs following nothing around the room. Typical ghost stuff. Some of the stranger experiences include my grandma seeing her mother in her room at night.
My mom seeing a ball of light floating in our hallway. My brother and I separately heard fingernails tapping on the walls of our bedrooms, and when we called our mom into listen the sounds would stop, then as soon as mom left it would start again. We experienced this at different times—my brother for a week or so and then me—without knowing that the other one was having the same experience.
I had a desk toy in my room that had a little foam ball handing from a chain on it. My cousin and I were playing video games and the ball randomly bounced like someone had tapped it from below. The kicker was when my mom started feeling like something was climbing into bed with her, she describes it as like a dog trying, but failing to climb up on the foot of the bed.
She thought it was my dad moving his feet, but then she felt it when he wasn’t there and she was wide awake, so she knew it wasn’t him. She kept this story to herself, and then a few days later my uncle stayed the night in the guest room and described feeling the exact same thing. At that point, my mom waited for a day that everyone was out of the house, she opened up the windows and told the spirit that it either had to leave and move on, or it wasn’t allowed to bother us anymore.
Since then we’ve gone from activity every day, to one-off experiences every few months. We’ve been told by several people—who have slept in the guest room and had nightmares about it—that there is a portal in the closet of our guest room. Sometimes, I think that spirits just pass through occasionally and cause a flurry of activity.
37. Can’t Hide Under the Covers
I don’t really “believe” in ghosts; however, I moved into a house with my parents about 10 years ago. I was supposed to live in the large third-floor apartment with separate entrance, but the first week we lived there it gave me the wiggins, and I slept in the first-floor living room instead. The first two nights in the living room were restless but otherwise ok.
On night three, I was having even more trouble sleeping, and I was upset about how much trouble I was having when I heard footsteps on the stairs. After a few minutes, waiting for a member of my family to appear on the first floor, the blanket I was using was violently jerked away from me, and it landed across the room three yards away with no visible cause.
I waited...and waited. There was no one there. That was the moment I decided that there was something in the house I didn’t understand. I started looking for a new place later that week.
38. One Last Walk
When I was around five, my mother rented out our basement. The guy that lived there had a chocolate lab, named Mia. He didn't walk her and constantly fed her unhealthy human food. We would take her for walks with our dog, Hope, and she really enjoyed them. Super sweet pup. She started to have brown urine and was extremely lethargic.
He brought her to the Humane Society to be euthanized. One morning, I exited my room, and as I entered the dining room—which was sort of on a platform separating it from the living room—I saw her ghost sitting in front of the living room's screen door. She was looking out the door, holding her leash in her mouth, and let out a sigh.
She seemed sad and looked like she was longing to go on another walk. I called out to her, "Mia?" which startled her. She looked over to me and then faded away.
39. Like in the Movie
I was staying in the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado—the hotel that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining. Around 1 am I heard what sounded like children running up and down the hallways, interspersed with laughter. I opened the door to see what the heck was going on, and didn’t see anything. Quick little buggers, I thought.
Then the next morning when my significant other, and I took a tour of the building, the guide stopped directly in front of our room to tell us the story of young girls whose ghosts can be heard running up and down that same hallway.
40. Waiting for a Chance
So in high school, I worked kids’ birthday parties. The place was basically a giant gym, and gymnastics and dance classes were also held there. One day, I came in, and one of the girls I worked with who was very spiritual and very religious was totally freaked out. During the gymnastics class she taught that morning, one of the kids was staring up at the ceiling.
When she asked the kid what he was doing, he said "There's a little boy up there," and pointed at the ceiling. Strange enough, but whatever. Kids are weird. Later, two girls who were working a birthday party before mine came out of the gym and were visibly shaken. A pair of five-year-old twins went down a slide, and then stared at the ceiling.
They both said that there was a little boy "up there," in the same spot on the ceiling that the kid from the morning gymnastics class. We all went in and inspected the ceiling. Of course, it was just a regular, gray, warehouse-y ceiling. But we were all super freaked out at that point. During my party, I was pushing a little boy on the giant swing we had in the gym.
He, too, began to stare at the ceiling. He said, DIRECTLY TO MY FACE, "Hey, there's a little boy up there!" We told all of our coworkers and managers about the three separate experiences we had that day with children from different parties and classes seeing a little boy on the ceiling. The next day, we had downtime between parties, and nobody was in the gym.
There are cameras in the gym that allow parents to see their children playing from the lobby. My manager called us out of the break room, saying, "Guys, check this out." We come out and see the screen which is streaming from the gym showing that giant swing going back and forth. Nobody's in there. It's just the swing going.
I like to think that the ghost was truly a little boy who just wanted to play, and he finally got to go on the swing. Could be worse.
41. Home Again
When I was in my late 20s, I was dating my girlfriend (soon-to-be wife). We had been together for a while. One summer, July 3rd, her sister was abducted and killed by a group of six men. All the men were eventually caught and tried. The trials and the aftermath for the family were devastating, and debilitating for them for many, many years.
Fast forward three months after the funeral. I arrived at my girlfriend's house to wait for her to get off from her job as a nurse at a local hospital. Neither of her parents were home. Just me, alone in the house. So I went into the family room, turned on the TV, sat down on the couch, got comfortable and began to watch TV.
Clear as a bell, I heard my girlfriend's sister's voice in my right ear, just off my shoulder, call my name. I turned to look at the seat next to me and of course, there was nobody there. I stared at the spot on the couch next to me for a long while. Feeling a bit uneasy, I turned off the TV and went outside to wait on the porch.
42. Woman in White
I slept over at my buddy’s house. I woke up at 3 am to the sound of a woman crying, coming from right outside his bedroom. I figured it was his mom arguing with another family member, so at first, I felt very awkward rather than scared. Then things began getting more intense. She started screaming “$7?! You did this for $7?!”
And as she began getting louder, and louder I thought I might need to intervene before someone got hurt. I stood up, walked to the door, grabbed the handle, twist, open the door. Instant dead silence. Every sound I heard died in a heartbeat. It went from a war zone to being able to hear a mouse fart. Outside his room, every light in his house was off, there was no one else awake, nothing.
It's been a long time and I still can’t fully explain what the heck happened. I woke my friend up, and he told me he once saw a lady in a white gown walking up his steps, and thought it was his mom. But when she didn’t respond to him calling out to her, he followed her up the stairs, and when she turned a corner, she disappeared.
Then one day, when they were moving out of this house, his cousin and sister arrive at the new house after grabbing some things from the old one, and tell everyone that they swore they saw a girl in a white gown standing at the upstairs window as they pulled out of the driveway.
43. Don’t Say Her Name
I have a couple of stories, even though nobody believes them. Good thing I have witnesses, so my mind is at peace. As a background, growing up I was always taught by my dad to never be afraid of ghosts or spirits as if they existed, he would have seen his grandma again, the person he loved the most until she passed away.
When I was 12, one of my aunts (my dad's sister) was visiting us after years of living outside my country. At night, they were remembering stuff from the past and started telling me and my siblings about their childhood stories. At some point, they talked about all the horrible things that their stepmother did to them.
From forcing my dad to sleep on their house roof at night, to breaking plates on my aunt's head when she didn't like the food this woman cooked. Out of nowhere, my aunt turns very pale and starts to hyperventilate, then choke. Then in between what we thought was a panic attack, she said something along the lines of: "Leave...alone...freaking...mouth..." and then she passes out.
A neighbor from across the street was a doctor, so my dad ran to get her. She checked her, and she said she was good and looked like she was just sleeping. Out of nowhere, my aunt wakes up and starts crying nonstop. The doctor and my dad tried calming her down, and my mom hushed us out of the living room. While she was crying, I could hear she was telling my dad "It was her, it was her! She was screaming at me! She wanted us to leave her alone, to get her name out of our mouths."
Years later, as I questioned if this might have been a response to stress caused by reliving those traumas, and not a supernatural occurrence, I talked to my cousins about it. They were all surprised, as this has never happened before, even though she would always tell them the stories of her stepmother, so my theory was out of the question.
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