Trust us: There really ARE more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies. Whether it's the unsettling premonition they can't quite explain to the downright terrifying encounter with the Other Side, these Redditors swear they've had a paranormal experience. And after reading these stories, we have to believe them...
1. Skipped A Whole Day
When I was in the third grade, the most terrifying experience of my life happened. There was a day where it seemed like I didn't exist. I walked into Spanish class first thing in the morning the next day, and we all went over our work from the previous day. I didn't have mine and had no recollection of having it assigned or learning the material on it.
I asked some other students about it, and they said they remembered me being there, in the class. After leaving Spanish, I went back to my normal grade school classroom and we did some math-related stuff. We were supposed to go over our work from yesterday, but once again, I didn't remember there being homework at all.
Occurrences like that kept happening for the rest of the day. My friends all unanimously stated that they remembered me being there for the whole day, but I didn't remember anything. And it was only that one day. I still have no idea what happened.
2. One Step At A Time
My dad had this habit of knocking his fingers on the wall in our hallway as he walked by, and he also had a crackly toe. Together, it made a very distinctive sound whenever he passed by our rooms at night. It was like a “bada bada bap,” followed by a popping noise. As kids, we always knew when we were in trouble by the tempo of that sound.
As in all cases, time eventually marched on and my older brother had a kid of his own. This was a few years after our dad had died. One night, I was babysitting for his kid, who was upstairs in her crib. She was about 18 months old at the time. Over the baby monitor, I can tell she's not napping anymore, but she seems to be occupying herself with something or other.
All of a sudden, I hear a sound that goes “bada bada bap, pop!” and the baby starts to giggle. It took me a minute or so to recognize that sound. But when I did, I went rushing upstairs as fast as I could—and I couldn’t believe what I found. The door to her room had been closed when I put her down to sleep, but now it was wide open and she was standing in her crib, looking at the far corner. There was nothing there.
3. There’s No Place Like Home
Growing up, I lived in a haunted house that my dad just recently finally admitted was messed up. I have read these posts before and have always wanted to post this story, but I never have. Now, I think it's finally time to share my experiences. When I was little, my parents divorced and I went to live with my dad as he was moving to a new town.
We ended up buying this big house out in the country outside of a little podunk town. This house was huge for just the two of us, but it was right on a little pond with an island, so it was cool. There were other houses around, but it was basically surrounded by cornfields. This fact scared the heck out of me because the movie Children of the Corn had just come out.
That movie still terrifies me to this day, and I am as old as can be. Anyway, bizarre stuff started happening almost immediately after we moved in. On Halloween, my dad and I bought this huge pumpkin, carved it, and put it in the front window. We went out of town one night, and when we came back that thing was smashed to pieces in the middle of the living room floor.
It was at least 10 feet from where it had been sitting earlier. I didn't think much of it because my dad played it off, but I heard him on the phone with his new girlfriend later that night saying how freaky it was. Yea, he moved on pretty quick after mom. He’s a straight player. Anyway, weird and random noises happened pretty much every night and we just grew used to it over time.
Even voices started to appear, but my dad always told me it was just the house settling. I have never heard any other house say the name "Jeffrey" when it settles. Yet that was what I would always hear someone calling out. But then there are two particularly messed up instances that happened to us there. They were so bad that scared us into selling the place.
Even years later, my dad still talks about how it freaked him out. First, there was one night that we had a really bad storm. I was 10 years old, so my dad was done letting me crawl into bed with him anymore. I had to brave that out on my own. Anyway, at about 3:00 in the morning as this storm had been raging on for a couple of hours, we suddenly hear this loud BOOM from the first floor.
Both of our rooms were on the second floor. And then we hear glass shattering. My dad yells at me to stay upstairs and he goes down to investigate. He came back up 20 minutes later and tells me to go back to sleep. Turns out our basement window had been blown out by the wind during the storm. The freaky thing was that all of the glass had landed outside the house.
Not one shard inside the room. He got it fixed the next day and never mentioned it again. But then, there was the second big incident. We had a pull-down attic that was in the hallway between my bedroom and the bathroom. One night, I woke up to go to the bathroom. As I was walking down the hall, I ran into that freaking hanging attic door.
My dad was sound asleep in his room, so it freaked me out. However, as I was walking back to my room after my bathroom break, I ran into that freaking attic door again. I heard some rustling going on up there and figured dad was up there, so I walked past the attic toward his room. But he was in there, snoring. I freaked out and told my dad.
He got up and turned on his bedroom light, all angry at me. We both looked into the hall and, even though the hallway light was off, we could tell that the attic was now closed. My dad was angry. He told me to go to bed and turned off the light. To this day, I still turn on every last darn light upstairs in my current house whenever I have to pee. Much to the dismay of my wife.
We moved soon after and I have never gone back to that place. I probably never will.
4. Sleepwalking, Sleep Talking, Sleep Crying
When my brother was about seven years old, he woke up one day acting really strange. He didn’t get out of bed. My mother went in to check on him and he started sobbing. It was awful and he sounded so full of despair. It wasn’t the cry of a seven-year-old. He was so, so upset and it really worried us both. My mother kept asking, “What’s wrong? You can tell me!”
After a long few minutes, he finally confided in her. He told her that he had been living the same day over and over and over and that it was always the same. But that’s not what upset him. What made him cry was that today was the first day in a really long time where something had changed. We never spoke about it again. He was seemingly fine after a few days, but I still have no idea what happened.
I know my brother, and it’s not something he’d come up with out of the blue. It was completely unexplainable from my perspective.
5. Hold On A Second...
One time when I was around eight or nine years old, I had a strange experience where I suddenly felt and noticed that everything around me paused/stopped for about two seconds. We were driving to my uncle's house, which was usually a 20-minute drive, and we were stuck in traffic. My mom was talking to me and my brother, and while she was in mid-sentence everything stopped.
The car wasn't moving. No one was breathing. Clouds, other cars, my brother's arms going up in the air, any sounds (like the radio, my mom's voice, cars driving); EVERYTHING JUST STOPPED. I didn't notice this until immediately after the pause, and the first thing I did was say: "WOAH! DID YOU GUYS JUST FEEL THAT?!"
Everyone looked at me like, “Huh?! Feel what?!?” and I replied saying, "It felt like everything just...stopped for a second and then started again…like in the game Mario when you press pause!" They had no idea what I was talking about, but I remember that feeling and that moment all the time and I still don't understand what exactly happened. But I know I felt everything stop and restart!
6. Seeing Into The Future
In 2015, I had just started a business with my brother flipping houses. He had been on a road trip with his daughter for a little over one week and had just gotten back home. I spoke with him on the phone and he said that he would be down to meet me at the property that we had just remodeled that Friday to finish it up and get it listed.
When I hung up the phone, I was walking into the kitchen when I had a thought so disturbing, it’s unforgettable. It just suddenly popped in my mind: “He isn't coming because he is going to have a heart attack and die tomorrow." I have been scolded in the past for being negative, so I just kept it to myself and tried to put it out of my mind.
The following day, I was sitting on the edge of my bed, when my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and it was my mother. I immediately knew what the phone call was going to be about. I picked up the phone and my mother said that my brother had just had a heart attack and they were trying to revive him. She said she would call me back.
I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was already gone. I walked into the kitchen and stood there in a daze. I looked up at the wall where the late afternoon sun was casting a bright spot and found myself staring at it. It seemed to get brighter and wider and in an instant, it had surrounded me and was holding me. I wasn't scared.
I just stood there letting the bright light envelop me. Just as quickly as it happened, it was gone and I was brought back to reality by the sound of my phone ringing. I realized I had been holding my breath and answered it. It was my mother saying that he had died. To this day, I cannot explain this, but it was such an intense feeling.
7. To Youth And Back
I remember when I was little, my mom took me to Disneyland and we stayed at a super nice hotel nearby. But...yes there is always a but...it was next to the fire escape. For some reason, that put me off. I remember turning the other way on the bed and seeing something horrific. It was a younger version of my mom looking at me wide-eyed and smiling very creepy.
I closed my eyes and turned the other way to face my real mom and once I turned back the other way the young version of her was gone.
8. The Man In The Mirror
When I was younger, I lived with my gramma. Her house was, to say the least, freaking spooky. We would hear noises at all hours of the night, and not just the house creaking kind of noises. What we heard was much more terrifying. It was more like people talking in hushed voices in odd rooms in the house. We heard dogs barking in our basement, even though we didn't have dogs at the time.
But the one memorable story about this that I have is that I went to the bathroom late at night, and the bathroom mirror faced our dining area. So, walking into the bathroom, of course I look into the mirror, and looking into it, I saw something that made my jaw drop. There was someone standing at our dining room table. Old, old clothes, long white hair, and a very dressy type suit.
I turned around to look and didn't see anything. Needless to say, I slept in the bathroom that night because screw that thing.
9. The Recurring Ghost
We lived in a small town with a bridge connecting to the small island that me and my family lived on. While my auntie dropped me and my sister back off at our house around five in the morning, she was heading back towards the city and took the only road that exits out of the small island. She stopped at the stop sign and reached for her purse on the floor which was on the passenger’s side.
When she looked up, she said she saw something that made her blood run cold. There was a girl wearing all white with her hair covering her face. It creeped her out and she booked it. What was even creepier is that the same thing happened to my other auntie who came into town around three in the morning, but they saw her when they were going towards my house on the other side of the island.
There was a legend I heard about the island being cursed by spirits. Living on the small island for most of my childhood, there have been a lot of scary experiences happening to everyone living there and a lot of bad luck.
10. Sister Act
I’ve been waiting for some time to tell my story. Let me tell you, keeping this to myself has been a special kind of torment. If I ever tell this to an actual person, they would undoubtedly call me crazy or schizophrenic or something. Maybe writing it down somewhere, anywhere, will help to set it straight in my head. Perhaps someone out there reading this can help me out with a reasonable explanation that I’m just not seeing.
A little background context: when my sister was in utero, she was originally part of a set of twins, but “swallowed up” her twin as the pregnancy went on. It’s called a “Vanishing Twin.” This will later become relevant to the story, so bear with me. My sister (let’s call her M for the purpose of simplifying the story), has always had trouble with sleepwalking.
My mom has had her examined by several specialists. It’s that bad. They’ve only ever eased the problem temporarily, however. She sleepwalks on average about ten times a month. At the time this story took place (about a month ago or so), I was home from college for the weekend. I often stay up late at night, and decided to relax a little and watch some TV before going to bed.
It was about 1:00 in the morning, I’d say. I was lying on my side watching my show with headphones on. I could see the hallway in my peripheral vision. When I next looked up, I suddenly noticed my sister standing in the doorway. Her eyes were half-closed. She looked like she was sleepwalking. I took my headphones off and saw her slowly walking towards me.
When she got close, I felt my stomach clench and got the most intense feeling of dread I’ve ever experienced. She didn’t look like my sister. Every facial feature was slightly off. The way an identical twin doesn’t completely resemble the other twin. What gave it away weren’t her physical features, though. It was her facial expression.
She had this smile on her face, is what I’d guess you’d call it, since the corners of her mouth were turned upward. It didn’t look like any smile I’d ever seen, though. It somehow encompassed every awful, evil feeling I’ve ever experienced, read about, and imagined feeling. It made me think she was going to start screaming at any moment, and never stop.
Every single hair on my body was raised. She was just staring at me. I noticed, dimly, that her eyes were wide open now. She didn’t look like she was sleepwalking anymore. Eventually, I managed to say her name, in an attempt to get a response out of her. What she did next still haunts me. She then stopped smiling, and said, “No. I don’t think we’ve been introduced. I’m Annie.”
I think I was actually paralyzed with fear when I heard that. Somehow, eventually, I managed to scream and shove her away. My parents came crashing into my room. They thought someone had broken into the house. When they turned on the light, I knew it was M standing next to me again. Her face looked completely normal again.
She was awake at this point. She blinked a bit and said she couldn’t remember coming to my room. The reason I was so freaked out was that just a few years ago my mom had told me about the fact that M had absorbed her twin in utero. But she also told me that she had kind of morbidly considered what she would have liked to call her second daughter. She told me she would have called her Annie.
11. Figure This One Out...
I was in elementary school. It was late at night and I was watching I Love Lucy with my dog in the living room that nobody else uses. I'm just sitting there minding my own business when, out of the corner of my eye, I see this...figure. I turn quickly to look, but it's gone. At the exact moment that I turn to look, my dog barks in the direction where I saw it and her ears are all pointed up.
That's when I knew I wasn't just imagining things. The weird thing is that I wasn't afraid at all and, somehow, I knew that whatever it was that I saw wasn't anything bad.
12. Just Keep Watching
I was a young mother with two kids about eight months old and three years old. We lived in Pittsburgh in an old Victorian home—very common there. We had just come home from a long Easter Sunday at my brother-in-law’s. The kids were tired and we needed to get up early for work and daycare so we were hurrying to unload the car and get them into bed.
I ran upstairs and got the baby down in her crib. My husband was unloading and parking the car, etc. When I returned to get my son to put him to bed next, this strange feeling came over me that I can’t fully explain. Instead of taking him upstairs, I just walked over and turned on the TV in the living room and asked him if he wanted to watch it for a while with mommy.
Peter Pan was playing that night. So, he happily snuggled with me on the couch in the dark living room watching the show. My husband came in and asked me what in the world I was doing? Why had I turned on the TV when we needed to get him into bed? I really couldn’t explain my impulse and I just told him not to worry about it, I’d get him down in a little while. And we kept watching TV.
As time went by, my husband got more and more concerned about how late it was getting and why I wouldn’t put our son to bed. He kept asking me to turn off the TV and take him upstairs. The more upset he got, the more stubborn I became about not taking him upstairs. I knew this made no sense as we both knew he needed to go to sleep.
We were usually very strict about bedtime and we were way past our son’s. Plus we rarely let the kids watch TV. So, my husband was right to be upset with me as I was behaving very uncharacteristically. But in spite of his pleading with me, I just wouldn’t budge. It was baffling for me as well as my husband. It was like part of me knew he was totally right and the other part of me was helpless to explain why I was behaving so oddly and was so determined to keep him downstairs and NOT take him upstairs.
Just as my husband started to get really frustrated with me, we heard a terrifying noise upstairs. We looked at each other and both ran to the stairs and saw what looked like a white cloud rolling at the top of the stairs and starting to come down the stairs. We both thought something had happened in the baby’s room, like her crib had collapsed or something large had fallen in her room.
So, we raced upstairs and found she was fine. She was still asleep and nothing in her room was disturbed. But in my son’s room, we saw a cloud of white dust still coming out the door. We looked inside and saw that his entire plaster ceiling had collapsed. Only wooden lath remained and big heavy chunks of thick plaster had fallen all over his bed.
It was covered. One big piece was lying on his pillow right where his head would have been had we put him to bed when we got home. He would have most likely been seriously injured, if not worse. But, instead, he was downstairs watching Peter Pan and Wendy. To this day, I can’t explain why I turned on the TV or refused to put my son to bed as expected.
Or, why I became more and more stubborn as my husband begged me to stop the madness and get back on track. There was a very strong force in me at the time that I really couldn’t override even though I knew that what I was doing made no logical sense. But, whatever it was, it saved my son’s life. My husband and I were both extremely thankful. Nothing like that has ever happened to me since then. My son is now 38 with two young sons of his own.
13. Someone Is Lurking
To this day I don't know if this actually happened, or if I dreamt it. I experienced waking up in the middle of the night with my eyes closed and my shoulders lifted off the bed, as if I'm doing half of a sit-up. My right arm was also raised upwards and hanging in mid-air with my hand pointing towards the ceiling. With my eyes still closed, I felt a firm grip on my hand, as if someone had it in a handshake.
I opened my eyes and looked into the dark empty space. I still felt a very firm grip on my palm. I felt a male presence, but I couldn't see anyone. After a few seconds, my arm and shoulders dropped and I went back to sleep. I told this story to my mother, who I lived with, five years later. She said she often felt the presence of an old man in the house, and once thought she saw him in the early hours of the morning.
14. Briefly Back In Time
While at university, my friends and I ran out of booze. Hardly any shops were open because it was later on, so the only option was to walk the mile or so to the nearest 24-hour supermarket. Between the supermarket and the dorms we lived in was just row after row of suburban houses which all looked the same. As we were walking down one road, we passed a field with a large campfire and some people riding horses around it.
There were people playing musical instruments, and general sounds of a good time going on. The horses, fire, and the lanterns which were dotted about, gave it a very old fashioned feel. Maybe five minutes after passing the field, now walking past houses again, one of my friends commented on how weird and out of place that gathering of people had been.
My other friend and I had been thinking exactly the same thing so, out of curiosity, we turned around and walked back to find out exactly what was going on. Our jaws dropped when we got there. There was nothing there. Not just no people or horses, there was no field; just more and more houses. Even though we were absolutely certain we were on the right road.
We'd simply turned around, we walked up and down the neighboring roads too. We found nothing. We weren't intoxicated, though we'd had some drinks, and so I've got absolutely no idea what happened that night.
15. Time Flies When You’re Having Fun
This wasn't me but my ex, and it still freaks me out when I think about it. Here's what happened. One day, he went for a bike ride, rode around town, and came home. This is where it gets weird. Seemingly to him, he arrived home the same day, some two hours later like a normal ride. His family absolutely freaked out when he walked inside though.
He had been missing for two whole days. No one could find him. They had even started to get the authorities involved. He literally thought that he had just gone out for a bike ride and came home, and that was it. To this day, he still has no idea what happened. I think alien abduction is the most likely explanation, and so does he.
But I guess no one will ever know for sure.
16. Be My Guest
I was visiting family and staying in a hotel with my boyfriend, who has since become my husband. The first night there, we went to bed and I woke up in the middle of the night facing the window. I noticed there was a dark shadow in the corner of the room that looked like the shape of a human. After staring at it for a while, I realized that it must have been a floor lamp, since that corner was kind of bare and that's the most logical explanation.
I rolled over and went back to bed, not giving it another thought. The following morning, I remembered this incident and turned to look into the corner where the lamp was. And there isn't a floor lamp there. The corner is bare. I mentioned it to my boyfriend and he went white. He told me that he woke up in the middle of the night because he felt like he was being watched, and had to get up out of bed to go to the bathroom to try and shake the feeling.
I vaguely remember him getting up, but hadn’t put two and two together until right now. The feeling still sticks with me in dark rooms to this day.
17. The Demons Are Back
My mother told me when she was pregnant with my brother she used to get crazy nightmares of “shadow-figures” that kept harassing her two or three times a week claiming that they are coming for “him.” She never understood what it meant until one fateful day. That’s when she gave birth to my brother, but eight weeks premature. He unfortunately didn’t make it.
My parents had to make the decision to pull the plug and let him rest peacefully. Two days after that whole ordeal, she had the same nightmare, but instead, they were taunting her saying, ”We got him, he’s ours now.” She never had a single one of those nightmares again. That was 20 years ago.
18. Bathroom Break
One year, I was at my daughter's house. She and her husband had been given his deceased uncle's house as a gift. At one point during my visit, my daughter, my granddaughters, and I had gone to the store. My son-in-law (James, who is 5'9" tall and stocky) and a friend of theirs who lives with them (Gary, who is 6' tall and with a thin build) both worked at the same shop delivering packages, but sometimes one would get off before the other.
To properly set this scene up, there are a few things you should know about the house. Firstly, it is on the older side. When you walk into the foyer, my daughter’s room is off to the right. Straight ahead, you walk into the kitchen, and off to the right is the living room with the bathroom off of that. She kept blackout drapes in the living room, so it was dark.
So we get back from the store and my daughter goes out back. The kids run upstairs in their typical way, and I am in the kitchen by the counter, unloading bags. I am facing the back door when a shiver runs down my spine. I see a tall shadow move from the bathroom and it goes straight towards the TV and entertainment system.
I think to myself that Gary must be home, because Gary would always come home and go straight to the TV, where he had a little bowl that he would put his keys and spare change in. I get done and go to use the bathroom. And, as I finish and leave, it crosses my mind that I didn't see Gary in the living room. My daughter had come in from the back, so I asked her where Gary was.
She said that he was still at work. I told her no, I just saw him into the living room. She and I just passed it off. I got to mulling over it and, when James came home first, I asked James if his uncle was more like his build or taller and thinner. James tells me his uncle was tall and thin. We got to talking and James told me that his uncle made his bedroom where theirs was now, instead of an upstairs bedroom, as he had gotten older and sicker and couldn't use the stairs.
So if he ever had to go to the bathroom, he would just walk right through the doorway where my daughter and James had their TV and entertainment system set up. Gary got home a few hours later.
19. Question And Answer
I was 12 years old. My grandmother was sick in the hospital and I was at the mall with my two older cousins, trying to clear our heads and get away from the grief for a while. An older gentleman walked up to us smiling and handed one of my cousins a piece of paper. It read "Why didn't the family answer the door?" We looked at the man confused and he gave us a second piece of paper, still smiling. What he said next chilled me to the bone.
He continued, "Because they were already dead." He then giggled and walked away. My cousins grabbed me by the hands and basically ran with me all the way back to our car. We were desperate to get back to the hospital where we wouldn't feel so alone and vulnerable. I still get goosebumps when I think about that weird man and the creepy way he laughed and smiled at us.
20. I’ll See You In My Dreams
A couple of years ago, I had a recurring dream where I was reliving one of my childhood experiences. It was one where I was playing with my cousin, and at the end of the dream when he was getting ready to go home, I said goodbye to him and for some reason, it felt different that time. A couple of days later, he ended up dying due to a sudden and unexpected heart problem that surfaced out of nowhere.
He was only 25 years old, so it was very shocking and unusual. To this day, even three years later, every two or three weeks or so I find myself having very vivid dreams where I'm talking with him and having full, in-depth conversations. My friend says it's my cousin reaching out to me from the other side, and while I don't believe that fully, I can't otherwise explain it rationally.
Something I forgot to mention is that he was born the same month and year as me, just eight days apart, and so we'd been very close friends since we were young kids. That’s part of what made this whole experience feel so spooky to me.
21. Only A Few Steps Away
I was in the eighth grade. My parents had left town to visit my sister in college and my brother was hanging out with his girlfriend. I was home alone, except for my three, big white labs. We live out on a ranch, maybe 10 miles from town, so really far from everyone else. Our house is built on a hill, so the bottom of the house is a giant concrete block, and there are a few old wooden steps you have to climb to get from the back porch to the ground.
Anyway, my bedroom window is right next to these stairs. I'm laying in bed, watching YouTube, and I hear something on the steps. I'm not talking about a raccoon, cat, or dog...I'm talking boots. One step, two, and three. My blinds are down so I can't see out the window, and I don't really want to. A few minutes go by, and here it is again.
Now I'm done. I called my mother. I'm in the hallway, almost in tears, asking my mom what to do. She says, "Are the dogs even barking?" I realize that they are not. I hung up the phone, and think I must just be paranoid. I’m not kidding you. Two seconds pass and my dogs erupt. They were barking as loudly and furiously as they could, with their hair up and snarling.
I ran back into my room and locked the door. I'm shaking, almost in tears. The closet in the house is across the main room, which is nothing but windows, and I don't want to be seen by the mystery thing, and possibly shot. Then it escalated quickly. I hear the steps ONE TWO THREE rapidly go down the stairs. I call my brother in tears, and he scoffs making fun of me, and begins heading home.
I sat there, and one last time, I heard one SINGLE step on the stairs and then nothing. All I have to do is pull back the curtain and look, but I cannot. Eventually, my dogs went to sleep, my brother came home, and nothing happened. I have no idea what was out there. Our yard has a large wooden fence with chicken wire, so no cows or other large animals could get in, but nothing small made that noise.
Being a teenage boy, I thought I was tough...I got really humbled that night.
22. Man’s Best Friend
When we first moved into our old house, our uncle gifted us two puppy Labrador retrievers. I named one Charlie, and my brother named the other one Gordo. A few months later, they both came down with the very dangerous dog illness known as “parvo.” Charlie ended up passing from it, while Gordo survived. More time passes, and I don’t remember what we were celebrating, but I remember being the only one inside the house.
Everyone else was in the backyard around my dad, who was barbecuing. I was sitting on the couch, where you can see the glass sliding door in the kitchen, and I could see outside. The door was closed. I got up to go to the bathroom. I was right at the end of the hallway when I felt Gordo jump on the back of my legs. He pushed me so hard that I remember I actually stumbled forward.
I turned around to pet him, and there was nothing there. And the slide door was still closed, and everyone was still outside. There was absolutely no way that Gordo or anyone in my family could have been the cause of what I felt. I was sitting on the toilet wondering what could possibly have just happened. To this day, I still tell myself that it was Charlie, but I will never actually know for sure.
23. Repeat Offender
This past year in college, we had a ghost named "Gideon" living in our dorm that followed my roommate from place to place. Or so he claims. He’s the one that dubbed the ghost "Gideon." He would hear his name, feel his bed shaking in the middle of the night, stuff like that. And he wasn't the only one to experience it...
As the school year went on, Gideon began to get comfortable with all of us, and the strange activity began to become more frequent and noticeable. When home alone, I've heard faucets running, only to look about and find nobody else in the dorm or apartment. I heard knocking on my door, and when I opened it, nobody would be there.
I'd hear quick little raps of about three to five knocks every time I was alone in the apartment with my bedroom door closed. Every once in a while, late in the night, I'd hear a loud slap on my door or on my wall. I have a metal water bottle that I keep on my window sill and, one night, it sounded as though someone was just picking it up and setting it down softly over and over again.
The bottle sounded like it was being dropped down just hard enough so that there would be a metallic clinking noise on the sill, which happened to be made of concrete or something. One time, I heard a noise as though something had fallen off of my desk. When I woke up, my Chapstick was on the floor beside my bed. It had originally been standing up in the middle of my desk.
I heard it drop to the floor the night before, but my windows were closed and my fan was off, so I don't know how it could have gotten there. On another occasion, something I couldn’t see mysteriously handed my pillow to me. I woke up at some point in the night to find it wasn't on the bed. I then reached out groggily, and it suddenly appeared in my hand.
Something had tried unlocking my roommate's door from the outside—but that’s not the creepiest part. He found little scratches from where the door meets the frame, and part of the center of the door was scratched as well. I had a guest spending the night at our place one evening, and they saw some strange shadow moving around on my ceiling. We all tried to recreate the shadow, but in the end, we couldn't succeed at doing so.
The shades were down, so there wasn't too much light coming in. My roommate was alone and saw somebody out of the corner of his eye walk past his room. I hope this doesn't sound weird, but the figure was walking towards the wall that's just floor-to-ceiling windows, and there's nothing there other than a couch. When he left his room to see who it was, there was nobody there.
And nobody could have gone anywhere, being that we were on the fifth floor. My other roommate, the one that first brought Gideon in with him, one afternoon, of course, when alone, saw a shadow figure walk into one of the bathrooms. One night, I experienced a loud knock on my door. I said, "Yeah?" I then got up and opened my door.
There was, of course, nobody there, and at the same time as I opened my door, my roommate across from me opened his door, claiming that somebody had just knocked on his door too. He thought it was me, and I thought it was him. We had our doors knocked on at the exact same time. I never felt Gideon was a bad presence, or anything like that.
He was just kind of there and doing his thing. He never caused any harm to any of us others who lived there, so I have no hard feelings against him for haunting our place. There was never anything bad that happened to any of us for having him there, other than an eerie feeling being watched in the place, as though you were never entirely alone.
25. Deep Into The Fog
I was playing with a drone with my friend at our elementary school after-hours. I went to pick up the drone, and when I did, it became incredibly foggy and quiet. I went back the way I came, since that's where my friend was. I kept running in that direction. Terror welled up in my chest. It just kept getting foggier and it felt like I was being watched. Eventually, my friend just appeared, and the fog went away.
Me: "Weird how the fog went away like that." Friend: "Fog?" Me: "Yeah, it was foggy for nearly 10 minutes. I could barely see." Friend: "It hasn't been 10 minutes." Me: "But I was running back here for what felt like ages." Friend: "No, you've been standing still for about 30 seconds." To this day, I still don't know what happened.
25. Digging Down Deep
When I was about 13 or 14 years old, I lived in Hawaii on a military base along the side of a volcanic crater (AMR, for those who know the area well). The townhomes that we lived in were up along the slope of the mountain, but the last 500 feet or so were just empty hill space, leading to a cliff overlooking the crater (which had businesses and such in it, long dormant).
Well, anyway, my friends and I, being the young teenagers that we were, loved hiking the side of the crater and walking along the edge.It was mostly flat leading up to the edge and there was a fence along most of it, so this isn't quite as unsafe as it sounds. At one point, we found an abandoned bunker, most likely from WWII. It was about a mile along the side of the hill.
So, naturally, we decided to go exploring. We got inside and found that it was mostly pretty empty. There was a mount for what I would assume would have been some heavily dangerous equipment at some point, and then there was a locked metal door. It was pretty rusty and sounded kind of hollow, like there were a few spots you could probably see-through except for the fact that it was very dark in there and completely pitch black inside.
We'd go to this bunker and kind of hang out and play all the time—until the last time we ever went. We got there at around 5:00 in the afternoon and we were sitting around talking about random things (probably games like Animal Crossing or Phantasy Star Online at the time). All of a sudden, we started hearing this faint banging noise coming from behind the door.
We all froze up and got super silent, and the banging was rhythmically speeding up. Like, at first it would be a slight bang every 15 seconds or so, then after about 20 faint bangs they would be 10 seconds apart, etc. It got to the point where they were about 5 seconds apart and much, much louder than they were when they first started.
Then, they abruptly stopped altogether. We looked at the door and watched as some of the old "rust powder" from the top of the door crumbled and fell to the ground. We got up to nope the heck out of there, started climbing the ladder out, and the person that left last—there were three of us, and I was second, so the person climbing behind me—swears he heard a loud bang against the door as he finished climbing out.
We ran down the hill and some officers spotted us. They told us that we weren't allowed to be up there, and about two weeks later they had built a fence and sectioned off the entire area. I still have absolutely no idea who or what was down there causing that banging noise, if anything. Not to mention why the officers seemed so eager to keep people away...
26. One Last Goodbye
I came home from work at around 2:30 in the morning. I sat down to take my boots off. While I was bent over, I felt someone put their hand on my shoulder. I looked but there was nobody there. I felt a shiver run through my body. Shaking a bit, I went to bed. About a half-hour later, the wife's phone rang—and when she picked it up, she was shocked.
It was my uncle calling to get help because he just found my aunt dead in her chair. It turned out she passed around 2:30 in the morning from a heart attack. We were very close. I think she was saying goodbye.
27. A Friend In Need
Okay, so this is a true story that scared the heck out of me in a big, bad, way. Back when we were 18 years old, I had a mate who reckoned he was getting either haunted or stalked by this dark and menacing figure. I was kinda dubious. So one night, I am sleeping over in his parents' big old wooden mansion. He gives me his parents’ bed for the night. It was the perfect storm of creepiness.
His stepmother had a massive porcelain doll collection facing the bed, and I absolutely hate those things. The family dog was an old Aussie sheepdog, but with full cloudy white cataracts covering his eyes so that he looked as freaky as he possibly could. So, for those keeping track: old house, porcelain dolls, a blind dog with white clouded eyes. Perfect.
So at some point after midnight, I wake up in his parents’ bed. A freakin’ cold wind is blowing through the open door, in a closed house. Also, I got this feeling of intense terror all of a sudden. Then, to top it all off, I notice that the dog is hiding under the bed and crying. The actions of the dog are my proof that it wasn't just a nightmare that I was having.
Then, a big, black-robed figure coasts in through the door and hovers over the four-poster bed. It was at least about eight feet tall. To say the figure looked “menacing” is putting it mildly. On top of that, the temperature is suddenly icy cold, which also scared the heck out of me. So this figure hovers for a few minutes while I try to wake myself up. Unfortunately, I am already awake this whole time.
Then I lie there, completely still and too scared to move while the dog whines under the bed. I am too scared to check on the dog because if it stares at me with those blind cloudy white eyes, I know it will be too much for me to handle. The dog was definitely scared as heck. It stayed under the bed whimpering throughout this entire experience.
Once I gathered up the courage to move again, I went over to my friend's room and told him what had just happened. His reply only made things worse. He calmly answered “Now you know what I go through every night,” then rolled over and went back to sleep. Screw that menacing figure! My friend eventually got his church to do an exorcism, which apparently worked. That's my story, and it is completely true.
28. Always A Hand To Hold
Several times in my life, a ghostly child-sized hand has grabbed mine. The two most memorable was visiting an old restaurant with my dad and his wife when I was around 11. We were climbing the stairs up to the second floor and the host/hostess was leading us, explaining how old the building was and all this. Suddenly, I felt someone grab my hand. I turned around because it felt like a small kid had run up and grabbed me mistakenly but no one was there.
The second time was when I was in college, standing in an elevator on my way up to my friends' apartment. I felt a distinct grab on my hand, from down below, like it was a little kid. I have had many kids grab for my hand like that back when I babysat, and the feeling was so real I immediately looked down to see if I'd somehow missed a kid in the elevator with me.
But again, no one. Maybe kid ghosts like me or maybe I have weird nerve things going on with my hand. Who knows
29. Lifted To New Heights
This may sound weird, but to this day I still have no explanation as to how this happened. I live in a 36 story apartment building and was on my way to go out and head to the mall. We live on the 30th floor. I get in the lift at Floor 30 and press the ground floor button (Floor G). When the lift opens at the ground level, I notice that the whole foyer and lobby area look completely different.
Different couches, lights, colors, etc. I was really taken aback by it. I make my way to the exit and, after seeing the outside area and then looking back to the building entrance, I make a chilling realization. The building I’m in is not the one I live in. This building was in the same local area, not too far away from mine, but I have no explanation as to how or when I got in there.
This seemingly all happened while I was in the lift. I'm the kind of guy who is very skeptical and down to earth, but this experience still gets to me every time I think about it.
30. Pigging Out
I used to live in Arizona, near a mountain that is considered sacred to the Native American tribes in the area (Pima and Maricopa). There were a lot of Skinwalker rumors in the area. For those who don’t know, a Skinwalker is an evil witch-like figure in Navajo mythology that is said to be able to shapeshift into the form of an animal.
My friends and I loved camping, and we were lucky enough to get permission to use a site near the mountain, along the Salt River, for a weekend getaway. The first thing you have to understand is that we were a pretty sheltered group of kids. We didn't use any dangerous or mind-altering substances, and we only ever drank in moderation.
We mostly went out to share creepy stories around the campfire and nerd out for a night or two. We had all spent a lot of time in the desert and were all familiar with the land and wildlife of the area, even the rarer species. We were sitting around our fire, listening to the river and the animal sounds around us. Crickets, cicadas, birds ,etc. The moon was almost full, and the desert was very beautiful.
Then, suddenly, everything goes quiet. Just the sound of the river remains, and even that seems spooky and different than it had sounded just a moment earlier. The air grew still, and seemed to get cold. We hear rustling in the undergrowth across from our fire. Out steps a Javelina. Javelinas are in the pig family, usually a brownish color.
The biggest ones are about the size of a medium-sized dog. They're actually kind of cute. But this one was different. It was huge and looked jet black, with glowing red eyes. It paced around a bit, and seemed like it was moving around the fire so that it could look each one of us in the eye. I have never seen anything look at me like that, and I work with psych patients.
Its gaze was cold and searching, like it could see through me. After what felt like forever, it finally backed up through the undergrowth and headed away from us. The night got warmer, and the normal sounds started up again. We spent the rest of the night very close to the fires, and got the heck out of that spot as soon as the sun rose.
I really want to believe that it was just a male Javelina scoping out some territory. But every instinct I have says that it wasn't…
31. Gone,With A Trace
A few years ago, I was about to take a test and they were going over a bunch of questions, just checking for red flags and what not. At one point, the test-giver said, "Has anyone here recently lost a loved one?" I thought to myself, "Nope," Then, the next thing I know, I thought, "Huh, pretty weird, why am I still thinking about that question?"
Then I thought, "Still pretty sure the answer is no, yet here I am still feeling weird about that question. Kind of odd." When I finished taking my test, I went back to work and sat down in my cubicle. I saw a note that said, "Call Grace." Grace was the name of my dad’s girlfriend. I called and she started crying. I don’t know why, but I quickly said something along the lines of, "It's okay, I know. You don't have to say it."
My father was gone. I don't tend towards the supernatural in any way. Every story about that kind of stuff that I've ever read, I honestly just assume is either phony or a misunderstanding of actual events. But whenever someone talks about unexplained experiences, I think back to the fact that I knew my father was gone hours before I could have known or been told. And I honestly can't explain it.
32. The Avoidant Wanderer
I was camping in a valley all by myself with no cell service. I stayed late on a trail and ran into a nice local dude as it was getting dark. He showed me a local camping spot close to the road and the river, but camouflaged. I had a fire, drank a little, and listened to my friend’s comedy podcast. I was loud and visible.
Because it was dark already, I decided to sleep in the back of my truck under my topper next to all of my gear as opposed to setting up my tent. The next morning I made a fire, cracked another drink, and started making breakfast. Then, I notice that there is a man at the edge of my camp. He comes closer but never looks directly at me.
This dude looks homeless, has a long ratty beard, and has at least a hundred plastic grocery bags tied all over his clothes. I comment about how nice the day is. There was no response from him. I begin to get creeped out. I offer him breakfast, nothing. He sort of paces around the perimeter of my camp. I offer him a drink, but he just turns around. The dude is just standing there, back to me wandering around.
I’m realizing that there isn’t going to be anything good happening here. I had my bear spray and buck knife super close. I give him an ultimatum, “Hey, you are either going to acknowledge me or leave immediately!” He ignores me. I grab the bear mace and walk a few steps towards him. He sulked away and I threw my stuff in my truck and left that place right quick. I wonder if he had watched me during the night and I thank my laziness for staying in my truck instead of a tent.
33. No Chance To Try
Almost 10 years ago, I bought two bottles of drinks. One was a clear red liquid and the other was a cream one. I don’t know the names. It was local stuff here in Germany. I bought them and drove home. I placed them on my kitchen counter and went to the bathroom to wash my hands. Halfway there, I heard two loud sounds, as if bottles exploded.
I went back to find exactly that. Both bottles had exploded. They didn’t have carbonic acid in them, there was no temperature difference, nothing special. They just exploded all over the kitchen both within a second. Almost at the same time.
34. Nowhere To Be Found
I was a summer camp counselor when I was in my late teens. I woke up in the middle of the night having to pee, so I climbed out of my bunk and left the cabin. I wasn’t going to walk the quarter-mile to the bathrooms, so I peel it out and pee on the back wall of the cabin. The front faces out into the big open courtyard, the back is against a tree line.
Not long after it's flowing, I hear a bit of laughter. Two kids were giggling and whispering to each other. It was no big deal, there are like 250 kids here for the session. There was a pair of troublemakers in the one cabin over from mine, so I figured it was them. My first thought, however, is to make sure whoever these kids are don't stare directly at me while I pee.
So, I start to waddle around the far corner, and once I'm there, I peek around in curiosity. I watch two kids, eight years old or so, walk down from between the two cabins into the wooded area. It's dark out, so I wasn't able to identify the campers, but all I'm sure of is a couple of kids left their cabin for some late-night shenanigans.
Again, no biggie, I used to get into the same type of nonsense as a camper. I finally finish relieving myself, zip up, and walk out from behind the cabin towards the trees, shrouded in darkness, where I had just watched these two rogue campers escape to. By now, the laughing has stopped, and I'm soaked in the silence of upstate Michigan wilderness.
There's nothing and no one to be found, except for myself, who at this point is starting to freak out a bit. As my eyes dart around, I quietly call out for the kids I know are near. I know they are, because I saw them. I must've spent an hour creeping through the woods, and out to the other side where there is a massive open grassy area the size of ten football fields.
The silence is deafening and I start to cry...not because I can't find the kids, but because I'm realizing there may have never been any kids to begin with. I just sat out there for another 30 minutes or so. I told myself I was waiting for them to pop out from the dugout or behind the archery targets, but really I think I was just too scared to move a muscle at that moment.
I know how powerful the mind is, especially in the sleepy state I was in. But, I also know what I heard and I know what I saw that night. Over a decade later, I still have trouble explaining this to myself in any sort of rational way.
35. Bringing Out Your Inner Animal
I was hunting raccoons one night on my wife's family farm, and I saw some creature come out of the cornfield that I have never seen before or since. It was bipedal, it was about two or three feet tall, it had legs where the "knee" joint bent in the opposite direction of traditional animals, it was covered in short spotty fur, and it had short, thin arms.
Think like a very skinny kangaroo without a snout that stood more vertical and had weird legs. I have never found a description of another animal like it that is even remotely close to the North Dakota/South Dakota border area where I live. I got a good look at it in the clear light of my flashlight, maybe 10 seconds before it ran back into the corn.
I don't believe in any cryptozoology or anything like that, but I know what I saw and I know that it was not normal. It freaked me out pretty bad.
36. Singing The Blues
When I was in high school, I always used to listen to music on my Discman device before I went to bed each night. One night, I was listening to Weezer's Blue Album. The album was store-bought, not burned, so it was the official, legitimate version. I was getting nice and relaxed listening to “Only in Dreams,” when all of a sudden the music cut off and it was just loud static.
It was obviously very jarring, so I opened my eyes and sat up. In the corner of my dark room, across the way and above the door, there was a white fuzzy orb-like type thing just floating there. I couldn't make out much of a shape, but I definitely could point out the head and two dark holes that would appear to be eyes.
I looked at the thing for a few seconds, then immediately dived across the room to turn a light on. By the time I looked back, it was gone. I had one of those atomic clocks as an alarm that I had never bothered to set up, even though I had gotten it two years prior. All of a sudden, the previously empty clock was now displaying 88:88. Not flashing, just the numbers.
It never set again and I had to throw it away. Eerie night, to say the least.
37. A Leap Of Faith
One time I was over at a friend’s house. We were probably about seven or eight years old at the time. We were playing Frogger on the PS1, and as the afternoon goes on, a storm develops. At one point, lightning strikes the house. All the power in the house gets instantly cut off. Yet, somehow, we were still playing the video game.
It takes a few minutes for us to really register what is happening. Thinking this was awesome, we played for about a half hour before we started getting concerned. Eventually, we pulled the power chord for the PS1 out from the wall socket. And somehow, the game was still on. We proceeded to unplug the TV and the controllers as well. It got bizarre at this point.
Still on. My friend dropped his controller, and Frogger moved. That frog hopped across the highway with all power chords unplugged from any possible source and controllers disconnected from the system. This, of course, re-established the 'coolness' of the situation for us, enabling our young minds to play a little while longer without fully questioning it.
It wasn't too long, though, before the strangeness of the situation overwhelmed us and we proceeded to leave the bedroom and whatever demon spawn had decided to visit us that afternoon. Several hours later, we returned when the power was restored. Now, the game was off and all was once again as it should be.
38. All In The Family
Well, when I was a kid, a bunch of strange stuff would happen, but my parents would lie about it so as to not alert me. That didn't stop them from telling me when I got older, though. One particular occurrence was that almost every night, there would seem to be someone who went down our hall and would seem to toggle with the doorknobs as if he were locking them, but everyone in the house was asleep.
Another strange thing that happened was that I heard laughing that didn't belong to anyone in the house. I asked my mom if she had one of her friends from work over, and she just replied "Yes, but they left just now." And so I left it at that. In hindsight, there's no possible way that anyone could have gotten out of the house in the time it took for me to hear the laughter and approach my mum.
Lastly, there was a very very strange event that happened to my sister. She swears it happened. So it was sunny outside, maybe around 10:00 in the morning, and she thinks to herself "Mom and dad are gonna be late to work!" So she goes to wake them up, only to find a disgruntled couple saying, “It's the middle of the night, leave us alone.”
So she goes to the window again, only to find that the day has ended and it's already nighttime. I heard this "time loss" ordeal could potentially be attributed to aliens. I think I might also have a few more if anyone's interested. There’s actually a decent handful of bizarre and paranormal phenomena that have taken place within my family.
For another example, my uncle bought a new house a few years ago, and apparently, there was an old woman who had trouble letting go. My aunt then randomly found said lady just "lounging" on the couch one day. She has no idea how the woman got there. So, as you may expect, my aunt freaks out and demands that she leave her alone, because "It's our house now."
I guess she left. I think I might have more, but I'm seriously lacking in the details department, and I wouldn't bother posting without such things.
39. Stairway To Heaven
In the house I lived in before this current one, about two years ago, I was sitting on the living room couch watching some kind of show or another. To the left, there was a staircase that opened up into the kitchen, adjacent to where I was. As I was sitting there, I saw out of the corner of my eye that there was someone coming down the stairs.
I thought it was likely my mom, as I was living with my parents at the time. I figured she was probably just coming down for a late-night snack. Instead of seeing her, however, I saw what I can only describe as a tall dark mass coming down the stairs. Somehow, I knew its intentions were good, so I wasn't scared and nothing else happened that night.
The next morning, without any mention of the incident from me, my mom starts in by saying: "I saw someone walking down the corridor upstairs." This was right around the same time when lights would inexplicably turn on and off all over our house.
40. Little House On The Prairie
I don’t claim to know whether or not the paranormal is real, but I know at least what happened to me. It happened in college, conveniently right near Halloween. My friends at the time were quite diverse in our religious beliefs and, it being All Hallows Eve to some, my Wicca friend decided that he wanted to show us all his beliefs. I enjoy the paranormal, and I always have.
As a man of science, I enjoy trying to explain the seemingly unexplainable. Mostly, I enjoy the psychology of it, watching our brains try to piece together things it wants to believe. The subconscious grasps at fragments of reality, resulting in a psychosomatic hallucination. My friend said he wanted to try to summon something.
He said to trust him and, even while trying to remain skeptical, we indulged his request. He lit candles and turned off the lights as we formed a circle around some candles. We sat down and held hands as my friend bowed his head and began humming. He kept humming his “Om” as we all closed our eyes. That’s when it happened. Suddenly, an image of a cottage appeared in my head.
It was surreal and so clear. I could feel myself there. I was in a calm grass field. I was standing just at the forest edge when I slowly walked up the path to the cottage. It had two floors and was a natural wooden brown. I looked over and saw that the window near the door was shattered. Then, suddenly, my girlfriend at the time screamed.
She got up and ran out of the room. Another one of my friends jolted back and yelled: "Oh God, what did I just see?" What he said next made my blood run cold. He then starts frantically talking about how he saw himself as a wolf. He then starts talking about the details. He was in a field. He ran towards a house. It was the same house that I saw, everything matching down to the last detail.
It wasn't just some vague description, but everything was the same, from the field to the colors. Everything. I asked about the windows because I remembered that one was broken. He said he saw himself jumping through it. We stared at each other and knew. We saw the same thing. We heard my girlfriend scream again and we ran out of the room to check on her.
She is cowering in a corner, crying. She won't stop crying about “her children.” Of course, there's one big problem with that. She doesn't have any children. She is in tears crying out for them, crying out for children that we know she doesn't have. We try to calm her down but we can't. We ask her what happened when she says: "The dogs got them. They attacked them. Oh God, the blood!"
We tried to calm her down, but she kept crying until slowly we all became very silent. What she was describing was what we all saw, and we just sat in silence.
41. Hailing The Darkness
It was the middle of the night and I could have sworn I was lying awake in my bedroom for a long while. My wife was leaning towards me and snoring softly and otherwise being endearing. She started whispering unintelligibly in her sleep which I thought was adorable right up until it suddenly became rhythmic, like a soft chanting—but that wasn’t the scariest part.
The accordion door on my closet creaked open slowly, and out stepped a tall, dark, demonic-looking thing. I was petrified and completely paralyzed as this thing crept closer, all while my wife is still whisper-chanting inches from my ear. I blinked and it was over, just like that. I was just awake in my room, my wife snoring quietly. I felt like I was in shock for hours afterward.
42. With You In Spirit
Growing up, my great-grandmother on my dad's side was my best friend. I spent many of my days curled up in her lap, watching The Price is Right and her "soap operas" while she'd gently stroke the back of my head and call out answers or yell at characters on her shows. She was one of the coolest women that I have ever known.
Tragically, she was diagnosed with cancer when I was about 12 years old or so, and within a month she was gone. The hardest part about it was that I was living with my mother at the time, and didn't even know she was sick until my dad called to ask if I'd go with him to her funeral. For so long, I was angry at my dad and his family for not telling me sooner and giving me a chance to say my goodbyes.
One afternoon, when I was in my early 20s, while standing in my backyard getting things ready for a New Year's Eve concert and party that my boyfriend and his band were throwing, I was talking to a friend. I don't remember how we got to talking about my great-grandmother and how I was still having a hard time with letting go of the anger and resentment I felt. Then everything changed.
I was telling her how much I wished I'd had a chance to tell her I loved her one more time. I knew she already knew it, but I still wanted to say it. I was overcome with more sadness than I usually felt when I thought about her, and was trying really hard to not break down and cry. Then, all of the sudden, I felt a warm, firm hand make one gentle stroke down the back of my head, just like she used to do when I was small.
My heart stopped and I whipped around to see...nothing. However, in that same moment, my sadness was replaced with a sense of peace. I can't explain it, and I don't go looking for an explanation. I don't expect people to believe me when I tell them about it. None of that really matters to me in this instance. The feelings that rushed through my body in those few seconds, and the emotions that came, and those that left felt like I was being told everything was already known and to not be sad anymore.
It felt like closure.
43. Time Does Not Exist
I drove a 50 mile round trip in 12 minutes a few weeks ago. I have the time-stamped “I’m leaving” text to a friend I sent while pulling out of the drive at 8:00 pm. I confirmed that the time on the car’s dash clock and the wall clock near the door was close to eight when I walked out my door to my car. I drove 25 miles to my parents’ home to grab my laptop I had forgotten, and 25 miles back home.
I got home at 8:12 pm. The dash clock in the car, cell phone, and every clock in my apartment confirmed this. Some of those are analog, so it couldn’t have been a weird hack. It can’t be a prank. Nobody knows there’s a watch in my nightstand except me and there’s a clock on the nightstand. So, if somebody somehow was just messing with me, they’d have missed that one that I checked when I got home. I used my phone as an alarm to get up early that next morning. All the clocks are still synced.
44. Bringing The Heat
This is pretty freaky. I still don't know how to explain it. About two years ago, my sister, my infant nephew, and I moved into an apartment building that, we later discovered, was previously used by an elderly community. From the moment we moved in, we felt uneasy. The weird feeling wasn't enough to get us to ditch our seemingly awesome apartment, though.
Especially not a cheap two-bedroom that allowed dogs and had a pool! A few months after moving in, weird stuff started happening. We’d see shadows moving in an otherwise still room, objects not being where they had been left, baby toys talking to themselves in dark rooms, etc. Just the kind of things that would make your skin crawl.
To make matters worse, even when it was bloody hot outside, my bedroom would be freezing cold and the closet door was always broken in an open position. It didn't matter how often we would get it fixed, it would instantly be broken again. Now, this is where it gets a little crazy. One morning, I woke up and my bed had been moved.
I hadn't even as much as wrinkled my sheets while sleeping, yet my bed had been slid three feet away from where it normally sat against the wall. I then began having pretty intense night terrors. I'd jump out of bed screaming and throwing my blankets, begging for my sister to save me. This would happen at least three times a night on average.
One night, I had a particularly vivid night terror, only I didn't feel frightened. I jumped up in bed, looked around, and what I saw was so terrifying, it’s unforgettable. I saw eyes peering around my broken closet door. I leaned in and saw a man in his mid-20s staring back at me. I said, in the calmest voice I could muster. "I'm going to give you a few minutes alone, but then you need to leave."
I stumbled over to the living room and sat on the couch for 10 minutes, then I walked back to my bed. From that moment on, no more baby toys talked, my closet door closed with ease, and my bedroom was always at a normal temperature.
45. Dreaming Into The Future
I work at a home improvement store and I work around powered equipment all the time. One night, I had a dream I was spotting for my coworker carrying a unit of 2x4's, on aisle 29. I remember my vision went black and I thought to myself, "That guy actually destroyed me!" Then, I woke up and was relieved it was only a dream.
Fast forward a couple more days, I was spotting for my coworker, and he was carrying a unit of 2x4's, on aisle 29, and something flipped in my brain. It told me to walk a little faster. The next thing I know, the driver of the forklift unexpectedly floored it and slammed into the panel saw. It would have easily crushed me if I didn't listen to my brain.
After that, I remembered that dream. I freaked out on the driver and some harsh words were said. He lost his license.
46. This Ole Warehouse
Here we go! This is a brief account of an experience that I had almost a year ago in the warehouse where I work alone. No one I've told about it has believed me, but perhaps you all will. I work in a warehouse that my father purchased. He bought it for 25% of its cost, from a farmer who seemed very excited to finally be rid of it.
It’s in the middle of Mennonite country, with no neighbors for a solid half-mile around in all directions. Look out the window, and all you see are cornfields and scraggly trees. Cell service? Forget about it. I work here alone, painting and preparing the front office portion for eventual functionality. To get to the front office, you must go through a hallway from the main warehouse, into a secondary office, and then through another door into the front.
I frequently hear bumps and thuds and occasionally will go into the warehouse and feel air movement, but I've always attributed it to drafts and animal life in the roof. The only thing that has ever made me uneasy about the building is the fact that all of the door locks are reversed. Whoever installed those locks didn't intend to keep people out…they intended to keep something in.
It never really got too freaky, until one day I was in the front office when I began to hear the thudding. I ignored it and continued to apply masking tape to the door that I was working on. But this time, it was accompanied by a screeching sound. Not loud, but audible. I was freaked out, but convinced myself that it was just an upset raccoon or squirrel that had found its way inside.
I continued working—until I heard the slam. The door to the secondary office had been open. It sounded like it had violently slammed shut. I peeked around the corner and saw that I was right. The secondary door was now closed. I tried to “logic it through” in my head that a strong draft had sucked it closed, although I knew there was no such draft.
The thudding began again. Closer this time. I've never been able to put proximity on it, but now it sounded like it was right on the other side of the door. I froze, unsure of what was happening. My eyes locked on the door handle, which began to turn. The door disengaged its latch and slowly swung open. Wider...wider...
Nothing there. Nothing visible, no air movement, just quiet. So quiet. A quiet that seemed to overwhelm me with its presence. A quiet so thick I couldn't breathe. The quiet was shattered when the screech came again. This time, it was clearly human. Pained, angered, and emanating from the main warehouse. The door slammed.
That entirely broke my frozen state—and I knew I had to go. I ran. I got into my car and drove until I was in cell range to call my father. He didn't believe anything about the doors closing, but agreed that the building had something weird about it. He told me he'd be right out. Fast forward half an hour. My dad and I met up and drove back to the warehouse.
I showed him the door that slammed, showing him that it was separated from both the front office and the main warehouse, so no draft could have closed it. I told him about the thuds, the screeching, and the sudden quiet that overcame the building. He decided that we should check the main warehouse. Emboldened by his presence, I led the way.
Something you should know about this warehouse: It was formerly a furniture manufacturing place owned by a Mennonite farmer. They made handmade chairs, tables, etc. Because of all the cutting that went on, the floor is thickly coated with dust. We walked into the warehouse and saw nothing out of the ordinary. The dust was untouched, the doors were closed, and the windows were locked.
The only thing that was out of the ordinary was one of the hanging fluorescent light fixtures. It was hanging askew, and swaying slightly. Insisting we take a look at the mount to ensure it didn't just break loose, my dad grabbed a step ladder. He supported it while I climbed up and grabbed the swinging light. I looked on top of the light...and what I saw sent chills down my spine.
There was a handprint. A single, fresh, inhumanly large handprint. No footprints in the dust around the light, no signs of a presence. Just one sole handprint. I climbed down and switched places with my father. He saw it and said, "What the heck? There's been no one in here for years!" He climbed down and told me he'd been suspicious of someone breaking in and swiping parts from the warehouse light system.
He couldn't believe me that this wasn't human, that something wasn't right here. The last thing he said was "Nothing is in here. Next time, just go back to work." And then, as if to show its presence, the thud returned. This time it wasn't just a thud, but more of an earthquake. The entire building felt like it moved. The heartbeat-like thud was then overlaid by the screech.
The awful, awful screech. It felt like it was coming from the walls themselves. We ran. We ran and I haven't returned back there ever since. My father hired someone to finish my job and has since moved into the office. He's heard the thudding, but thus far nothing has happened further. What actually happened? I don't know.
Nor do I ever care to know, if I’m being completely honest. Some questions are truly better left unanswered. What I do know, however, is that there is something paranormal going on in that building and the man who sold it to us knew about it. I'll never forget the sound of that lock turning by itself or the feeling of that thunderous silence.
47. Hidden In Plane Sight
Before I was born, my grandfather's brother died in a plane accident while training during WWII. The plane crashed in Montana. About 50 some years after the accident, my grandfather wanted to create some sort of book about his brother. He pieced some things together, and gathered items that had belonged to him from his childhood and also from before his death. Eventually, he took a trip to Montana to visit the crash site.
He found it. I think at that point it was some guy's farm, but a crater was still visible in the ground from the impact. There were pieces of the plane everywhere. He brought a piece back for me, which I still have. I don't know how much time he spent there, but at one point he asked the guy who owned the property if there was anything else.
The guy told him no and my grandfather asked if it was okay if he explored the property a little more. The owner was fine with this. From what my grandfather told me, he walked up some hill, looked around, and as he turned around to walk back to the crash site, he noticed something stuck in the ground. He knelt down and was shocked to realize that his brother's dog tag was sitting right there.
He wears it all the time now. I don't know if you would qualify it as a paranormal story, but I always found it fascinating, and too big a coincidence to just be left to pure chance.
48. Someone Is Out There
I was visiting my Navajo family on the rez earlier this year. Me and my cousin went outside at night to smoke in his dad's broken-down car. We were talking deeply about how different life is out in the city versus on the reservation and in the middle of the conversation we both heard footsteps in the dirt coming towards us. We weren’t scared at first, because we just assumed it was his girlfriend coming to join us.
When we poked our heads out of the car to look there was nothing. Nobody. That’s what we call a yeni, or what’s more commonly known as a skinwalker.
49. Still With Us In Spirit
I graduated high school and lived in the same town while I went to college. A couple of years after graduation, I was stopped at a traffic light and a guy was crossing the street. I recognized him as Chris. One of my good friends had dated him, and we hung out a few times. He looked pretty pale, like he was on some kind of bad substances.
It didn't really surprise me, as that seemed like where he may have been heading back in high school. Whatever, no big deal. A couple of years after that, I started hanging out with another girl from high school, and we mentioned seeing people around town from our graduation class. I mentioned seeing Chris. She gave me a blank look and said, "You saw who?"
I confirmed, "Chris Jones, you know, short dirty-blond hair, kinda tall, skinny guy." She paused, and what she told me next made my blood run cold. She said, "He died the summer we graduated." I was like, "...wait, what? No way." She explained that he went down to the local lake, was doing some illicit substances, fell off the boat, and drowned. I later asked my other friend who had dated him in high school if this was true. She confirmed.
So the guy I saw casually crossing the street was apparently a dead guy.
50. Someone’s Creeping Around The House
I was watching a movie in the basement of my parents’ house and making out with my girlfriend. My parents and little brother had left for the weekend at one of his youth hockey tournaments earlier that night. They boarded the dogs somewhere too. All of the sudden, without ever seeing a car pull up into the driveway from the basement window or hearing the side door at the top of the stairs open, I heard a noise that sends chills down my spine.
There are HEAVY steps across the length from the kitchen on one end of the house through the dining room and through the hall to the other end where my brother’s and my bedroom were, then they stop. My girlfriend confirms she hears it too when she looks at me spooked and confused and says, “Who’s home?” I ran up to the kitchen and didn't hear anything, the door was still locked.
I go into alert mode, grab a knife and start searching the house. There was no one. All windows were shut and locked, all doors too. There was nothing missing, nothing disturbed. My girlfriend went home because she was spooked. I kept the lights on all weekend. The house had never felt haunted before and nothing really ever happened after. I don’t know who we heard.
51. He Gave You A Shout Out
My story isn't scary, but it’s pretty freaking unexplainable. I'm walking through the main station of BART one day. For those who don’t know, BART is the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. It's the train station that takes you to and from San Francisco and elsewhere, where an average of 375,000 people pass through on a daily basis.
I walk up the escalator to my train, and pass by an envelope lying on the ground. At first, I didn't think much of it, but I took a couple of steps back to pick it up anyways. The next part freaked me out. I looked at the address, and it was addressed to me. I instantly look around to see if it was a practical joke, or if I was about to get attacked or something.
Neither of those were the case. The sender was a family friend. We'll call them the Johnsons. I knew that Mr. Johnson took the BART daily, but I had never personally ran into him there. After work, I call him up and ask him about the letter. Turns out, he had about 300 letters with him on the BART, and was going to send them out for his daughter's graduation party.
What in the world are the chances of him dropping the one letter addressed to me out of the 300 in his briefcase, combined with the chances of me being the one out of 375,000 people to pick it up? Pretty wild.
52. Three’s A Party
Me and my friend were haunted for a whole summer by a ghost we called “Victor.” He’d torment us at both of our houses. When we slept over at my friend’s house, the haunting grew horribly worse. One of the two scariest things that happened included when my friend had a bloody handprint in his attic. Well, one day, we went up to his attic to get some stuff and that bloody handprint was gone—but that wasn’t the scary part.
There were dozens of bloody handprints scattered across the attic ceiling, like almost too many to count. It freaked the heck out of us. We hurried up and climbed down the ladder and got his dad. When we all went back up, every handprint was gonna except the original one. Yet, we both saw all the other ones on our previous trip to the attic.
Then, one day, his parents were out of town and I was staying over. Anyway, we both worked at Taco Bell and I had gotten off before him, so he just gave me a house key and told me to go to his house and just wait for him, because he got off like 30 minutes after me and his house was about a 20-minute drive. Anyhow, I went to his house and let myself inside.
But, when I got to his room, I felt his hand and heard his voice whisper, “Gotcha,” in my ear. I even felt his breath. So, I turned around to tell him he scared me…yet I was home alone. I completely freaked out. I went and sat on his bed then he calls me crying saying he got an immediate feeling of dread, like something bad was about to happen to me.
He told me to get out of the house, so I took the heck off and got in my car, and drove to the end of the driveway. Well, he got home like 15 minutes after that and we went and checked the house out kind of shouting, “Get out of the house Victor, this is our home, not yours!” The haunting didn’t last much longer after that.
53. And It All Came Crashing Down
Many times when I sleep in a certain room in my house, I will wake up seeing a dark figure across the room facing me. Its presence never fails to wake me up immediately. Also, twice now we have heard loud crashes coming from the downstairs kitchen while we were all asleep upstairs. And when we rush down to see what happened, nothing is there. There aren't any close neighbors either.
54. Oh, You Beautiful Doll!
When I was younger, around seven years old, I started getting glass dolls from my grandmother every year for Christmas. I didn't particularly like them, but I set them up in my room anyway. After about three years of this routine, I had accumulated about 10 of them in total. The most recent one I got was dressed up in Native American attire and looked eerily like me.
For context, I identify as Native American. Something about this doll just gave me the creeps, so I put her behind the rest of the dolls in my room. They were in a row of seven and the other three were behind them. I woke up the next morning and made a disturbing discovery. The Native American doll was now in front of a redheaded one, as if they had got up and switched places.
I was a very freaking superstitious child, so I pulled her from the group and set her on my bed with a pen and paper. I then told her that I knew she was alive and that she should write something on the paper before I got back. Crazy, I know. I went downstairs for a few hours and when I returned, the doll was on the floor along with the pen.
The paper was on my bed, still blank. I wasn't taking any freaking chances, so I put her in the dumpster outside. I thought my nightmare was over—I was so wrong. The next morning, I wake up and all of my dolls’ heads are facing to the right, even though they usually face forward. And at the end of the line of dolls, the Native American one was sitting where they were all staring, facing forward.
I freaked the heck out and tore her apart, limb by limb. I then put every limb in a different dumpster, then gave every other doll back to my grandmother. My mom never believed a word of it and this is my first time recanting the experience to anyone else. And I have goosebumps as I type. To this day, if I see a doll in someone's home or even a store, I try like heck to stay away from it. Freaking dolls…
55. A Dream Becomes Reality
One time when I was 17, my girlfriend at the time and I were laying in bed. She was sleeping and I was just laying there, cuddling her. We were facing towards my window with the bedroom door on my back, which was closed. It was pitch black. I wasn’t on my phone or anything, just laying there. All of a sudden, I felt something touch my shoulder, not just a light touch but it felt like a physical person had touched me.
It scared me so much that I jumped up and shot down towards the end of my bed. I looked behind me and nothing was there. I ran to turn on the light. My girlfriend asked me what was wrong. I told her what happened and she told me right before it happened she was having a dream. When she explained, I was stunned. In the dream, she was looking at us in the third person and saw someone behind me.
Then, the person touched me. As soon as it did in the dream is when it did in reality. Up to that point, I already believed in the paranormal, but that experience definitely solidified it.
56. Who Played The Prank?
I was 17 and the oldest of four and lived on the far end of a house next to the garage. I liked it over there because it was quiet and dark and I had space away from everyone. When I slept at night, I’d occasionally leave my door half open to let the light from the laundry room shine a night light into my room. One night, I did exactly that around 10:00 pm and cozied up into bed.
From the orientation of my bed, I would actually face the door laying down, and there was no other way in or out of my room. I hadn’t quite closed my eyes yet when my bedroom door slammed closed. I didn’t think much of it...I actually thought my brother was playing a prank on me. At this point, I should say that when the door is closed, I could see absolutely nothing in my bedroom at all, and this was before cell phones, so I couldn’t exactly shine anything to see what was going on.
I said something like, “Not funny Erik,” thinking that he was on the other side of the door playing a prank. As soon as I finished saying that, I heard a bizarre noise. It was the crinkling of paper. If you grew up a few decades ago, it’s the same type of thick paper that you used to get from grocery store bags before they switched to plastic.
You know how if something is loud enough in a closed space, you can kind of triangulate exactly where it’s coming from? It was just like that in the center of my room. It lasted about four or five seconds. Now, I’m starting to sweat bullets and kind of praying that it’s my brother just really committed to a joke. About 15-30 seconds pass of dead silence and I muster up the courage to jump to my feet, rush to the light, and flip it on.
There was absolutely nothing on my bedroom floor that could have made that sound. I checked under my bed and in the closet for Erik, and nothing. I marched out to the other side of the house and all my siblings were asleep in their beds. I asked everyone the following morning if they had closed my door and no one had.
I could never quite explain what happened, but several other eerie things happened at that house over the next few years, I just couldn't shake it. The eeriest of which was to my sister who complained of the “tall man” that would visit her at night through the walls. It still gives me goosebumps typing it out even 20 years later.
57. The Time Had Come
When I was in sixth grade, my grandfather died. I was in English class, sitting in the front row and doing my classwork. All of a sudden, I felt a strong kick in the gut. Whatever happened, it was forceful enough that it made me bend over my desk in pain and brought me to tears. But it went away as fast as it came, and I was just fine a moment later.
Out of curiosity, I looked at the clock in the back of the room, and it was 10:35. I went home at the end of the school day and found out that my grandfather (who I was very close to, as my grandparents had raised me) had died at around 10:35 that morning. By no means am I a religious man, but I really wish I could have an explanation for what exactly happened that day.
58. Picture Perfect
This doesn't really apply to me directly, but still. There was this guy who I used to work with, called Dan. Dan was a chill guy who everyone got along with, but he was also a little bit weird at times. He used to believe in a lot of strange things, such as aliens, ghosts, government experiments on everyday people, etc. A whole lot of out-there conspiracy theories.
He wasn't a religious man, but that's beside the point. Anyway, while messing around at work one day, he's explaining some stupid things to us about how he's seen spaceships, and how all this paranormal stuff happens to him whenever he's at home alone. Some of it sounds quite ridiculous, but I listen anyway and enjoy the fascinating narratives.
A couple of weeks later, he invites me around for a few drinks. I was driving, so I couldn't really drink, but I still went over to hang out. After some time, we get onto the subject of ghosts and he starts explaining things to me, like how he was once eating an apple and it exploded just as he went to take a bite. I laughed it off and thought it could have just been some sort of pressure with the way he was holding it that caused it to "explode." I wish now I'd stopped listening.
He was completely serious about this. He pulled out a few pictures of this apple and started showing me the damage it had done to him. There was a picture of him with a cut on his cheek caused by this "apple." However, I was still not convinced of this ghost that he allegedly had in his house. He was not messing around, though.
He said, "Hold on actually, I'll show you!" He pulls out this shoebox, full of pictures from around the house. He says "Just flick through those, you'll see." I sigh and say "... okay." I'm going through these photos of a recent Christmas. The usual photos. Kids opening presents, the family having Christmas dinner, having a few drinks at night, a group shot, etc.
Then I stop. This was the photo that left me in awe. His family was standing in front of this mirror, and I kid you not, in the reflection of the mirror was an Edwardian girl, smiling straight at the camera. This was not one of those 'could be a smudge' type of things. It was not a 'hidden behind someone’ or ‘can barely make it out’ type of things either. No.
This was a clear, full color, legitimate, and high-quality photograph, with the girl's reflection being black and white. You could make out her face, her smile, her clothes, her hands, everything! It doesn't end there though. Dan says to me "I told you I wasn't kidding you!" I go on to the next photo. Same sort of thing. Family members have moved around, and so has the girl.
She's doing a different pose now. She's smiling and showing her teeth. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. There was this black and white girl, standing right inside the mirror, smiling at me. Like she'd be there the whole time and wanted me to know it. I felt like someone had just thrown a bucket of ice-cold water over me. Like I was being watched.
Like I wasn't welcome anymore. And I suddenly felt like I needed to leave that place. I put the photos back in the box and not long after that, I left and went home. I still don't believe in ghosts, aliens, or anything of that supernatural sort. But I know what I saw in those photos and I know it scared the heck out of me.
59. Mom Always Calls
A while back, I was in my kitchen making breakfast. I distinctly heard my mum call my name. Bear in mind, I'm 36 and have lived away from her since 21! After that morning, I had an overwhelming feeling I should go to her house. I'd only gone over the day before and there was no need to, but hey, I heeded it and went anyway. I’m so lucky I did.
I found my mum lying on the floor unable to get up and in pain. She had Parkinson’s, so she had fallen and couldn't move, as her tablets had worn off. I called the ambulance and they helped check her over and popped her shoulder back into place. How did I feel that and where did that audible voice come from?
60. The Most Popular Guy In Town
This one is not necessarily paranormal per se, but I guess this falls more under the general "unexplainable" category. Anyway, on the same day, I was recognized by at least five different store clerks and people on the street, none of whom I had ever met or seen before. I was just grocery shopping, running errands, etc., and they would come up to me and say hello as if I was supposed to know who they were.
The first place I went was to the corner store to pick up a snack. I walk in and the clerk weirded me right out. He says: "Hey, you're back so soon!" I had never been to that corner store before in my life, so I told him this. He acted very surprised, and claimed that I had come in earlier that day. The next place I went to was the exact same deal.
An employee who was stocking things at the grocery store said he had rung me up an hour or so before, then the cashier greeted me with a "Welcome back" when I was checking out. Later that same day, at the phone store, I was asked if my phone was still giving me problems, because apparently, I had come in half an hour ago complaining about problems with receiving text messages.
The employee claimed that me and this other version of myself even had the same phone. As I walked out, a jogger ran past me and proclaimed, "Hey man, funny running into you again!" I didn't stop him to inquire further, as I was a little confused at this point. Then, later that night, while I was waiting for the bus, a random woman approached me and just struck up a conversation as if we were old friends before realizing I wasn't who she thought I was.
After saying this out loud, I realize how mundane it might sound to some. But to me, having lived through it, that was easily one of the weirdest days I've ever experienced. If it wasn’t something supernatural going on, then either it was a huge coincidence or I was the target of one of the most elaborate and subtle pranks in history. And the prankster still hasn’t revealed himself.
61. One Last Visit
I was helping my dad take care of my grandma after my grandpa passed. He unfortunately shot himself down by the detached garage they had on their property after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. One morning, after my dad leaves for work early, I get there while she is still asleep and I doze off in the back room until she wakes up.
I wake up in a very dazed state while it's still dark outside and walk into the living room and see my grandpa standing there next to his chair, glowing gold. I say to him, "Papa?! What is going on??" and ran up to hug him. He said to me, "It's alright, I'm no longer in pain, I love you." I woke up in the backroom to a picture falling off the wall that hadn't been touched in ages.
I don't believe in ghosts nor am I religious, but I told my dad about it and he said he had a similar dream. It didn't scare me but I really don't know if it was a dream or a supernatural experience.
62. The Fool On The Hill
I have two crazy stories related to this subject. In elementary school, I used to walk home with my best friend and then walk through a few people’s yards up a hill in order to get to my house. I was walking up the hill one day and saw a girl walking ahead of me, in my yard, with long, braided, light brown hair. I thought it was my neighbor, who wore her hair like that a lot.
So, I shouted out "Hey! Alexa!" But she didn't turn around. Figuring she just didn't hear me, I started to run to catch up to her. Oh boy, I wish. I had just turned the other way. The view between her and myself got interrupted by a tree for a split second, and when I passed it, poof! The girl was gone. There was nowhere for her to go, considering that I didn't have any trees in my backyard.
So I assume that either I was just hallucinating or it was a ghost. I can’t think of any other way that a fully vivid, living version of my friend could have just appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared into thin air like that. But I know what I saw.
63. The Phone Goes Flying
I had gone home with my boyfriend after work, and we were just relaxing in bed watching YouTube on his phone. He was on the left lying on his side and I was on the right side, but I got up from bed and put my phone face down on the right side of the bed. It was easily at least two feet away from him. I was going to massage his back and as I walked around the bed to his side, I suddenly saw him curl up in pain and let out a yelp.
As I leaned over him to see what was wrong, my phone just suddenly fell from next to his face. I was instantly shocked because I knew it wasn't in my hands, so I couldn't have just dropped it on his face. He looked back at me and also looked very confused, asking me if I had thrown it on the bed, therefore making it bounce back at his face.
I shook my head, and we just started trying to replicate that exact moment but we just couldn't. Everything we tried, all possible ideas, didn’t work. There was literally no way my phone could've made that distance. He asked me what it looked like when it happened, and I said it just looked like my phone had suddenly teleported next to his face and he actually agreed with me, saying he never saw it move.
But, it felt like someone had flicked his ear instead of a phone hitting his face. We spent half an hour trying to find a logical reason. I'm just more concerned with the fact we couldn't replicate it. Not even once did the phone ever come even half as close. I have absolutely no clue how that happened and neither does he.
64. Get Out Of The Car
My parents live about an hour away in the middle of nowhere. There’s a hiking spot I love, especially around this time of year, on the way. So, I stopped there around nine in the morning. The trail was “temporarily closed” and no other cars were there, so I just got out real quick to snap some pictures of the fall foliage.
All of a sudden, I hear a cough. Me being paranoid, I immediately got back in my car and locked the doors. There was a man walking up the path from the highway. He doesn’t say anything, just stands in front of my vehicle and motions for me to get out. I started my engine, naturally, and he didn’t budge. I shakily gassed it, maneuvering past him through the grass.
I’m a 90lb. woman. I’m never going to the middle of the woods alone again. Especially miles from civilization.
65. Behind Closed Doors
I work in a restaurant and, one afternoon at about 3:00 when business is typically really slow, I had gotten an order and needed to go into the walk-in cooler to get something to make it. And as I walked around the line and looked down the hall at the walk-in door, I suddenly saw a tall figure with a white t-shirt, gray cloth shorts (like gym shorts), and dark tennis shoes walking into it.
And then the door closed behind him. I had no idea who it could have been. Initially, I thought it must be a bartender who worked there at the time, because he was a tall and slim-ish guy. So I figured he was just grabbing some drinks to stock the bar with before the dinner shift began. I headed down the hall and opened the door.
I then reached for what I needed and turned towards where the drinks were stored. I was planning to say something to my co-worker, but nobody was there. I then looked the other way. Still nothing. I thought it was really weird, but I just grabbed what I needed and went out and finished my day of work. It wasn't until the next day when I thought about it deeper that I got very freaked out.
I could have actually been in that walk-in room with a supernatural apparition of some kind. That door was the only way in and out of the room, and I remember seeing the figure so clearly. Clear enough that I can still vividly recall all the details about it that I was just able to describe to you here. I tried to get my manager to look at the camera footage that would have been covering that general area at the time, but he just blew me off saying that ghosts aren't real and that I was full of it.
But this wasn’t just like a normal objection to a request. He somehow seemed really against the idea of looking into this. Like possibly he didn't want to know if it was real or not, and would rather just pass it off as my imagination. Or maybe like he knew something about this and didn’t want me to find out. It was a very, very strange experience for me.
And the worst part of all is that it never occurred to me to talk to any of the other managers that worked there about it, to see if they might be more willing to look at the video than my immediate manager was. This thought didn’t occur to me until after many months had passed, and the video was definitely long gone by that point.
I know for a fact that I saw that door close behind that figure. I just don't know if he had opened it himself or if someone else had opened it and then it closed slowly after they had walked out. So yeah, there you have the story of my one and only paranormal experience. I still have no idea how it could possibly have been anything but a real, legitimate ghost.
66. Even Ghosts Have To Do Their Business
As far as haunted houses go, mine is pretty intense. We have had several experiences over several years, but this one is my favorite of them all. It all started when I walked in from the garage door one day with my brother and sister. At our house, there is a door to your left when you come in that is the downstairs bathroom that leads to a bedroom.
That bedroom happens to be my bedroom. So we are all talking and coming through the door, everything normal, when all of a sudden the bathroom door loudly SLAMS shut. The lights come on in the bathroom and we could suddenly hear the sound of a woman's voice yelling “OUT!!” At first, I believed that it was just my sister and that we must have walked in on her when she was using the bathroom.
But I quickly realized that this was not the case. I go around the house to the other door to the bedroom and enter. The lights are out and the window is locked from the inside. I go to check the other door leading to the bathroom. That one is locked as well. Despite there not appearing to be anyone in the bathroom, I could clearly hear the sweeping motion of feet, as well as seeing a shadow appear to be pacing back and forth on the floor.
I use a coat hanger to unlock the bathroom door after screaming for whoever it was to answer, and announcing that I was armed. I believe I had a large metal rod in my hand, just in case things got ugly with who or whatever was inside there. I turn the knob and then open the door. A huge wave of cold air floods the room from the bathroom.
But no one was there. My sister was at a friend's house, I quickly confirmed. The house was completely empty and locked up tight. I have no idea what kind of presence had created the sounds and sights that came from the bathroom that day. All I know is that an elderly woman died in the house in the late 1970s. My room was her former room, because it was handicap accessible.
So I have my theories about the connection to that. But at the end of the day, who really knows for sure?
67. Your Guess Is As Good As Mine
I was out watching the stars one night, and saw a light looking like the ones you see on airplanes. But this one was moving in a square formation. It was too dark to see exactly what kind of vehicle the light was attached to, but the light was moving repeatedly in the same location for a while. Then, I saw how the vehicle started moving away.
The sudden speed increase made me think that it could not possibly be an airplane. I then pondered whether it could perhaps be a helicopter. But if that was the case, it must have had a rather large square platform beneath it with a rail or beam for the light to follow. So that theory didn’t make sense or seem plausible either.
I can’t say I definitely know what I saw in the sky that night, but to me the most obvious explanation is that it was some kind of alien spacecraft. My second story isn't as mysterious, but I simply can't explain except for me being extremely lucky, to the point where it doesn’t make sense to have happened. When I was much younger, I once fell from a third-floor balcony, and crashed face-first onto a gravel path.
But I was completely fine. I walked away with absolutely no bruises, scratches, or injuries at all on any part of my entire body. Not even scuff marks on my hands or knees. To this day, every time I think back on that accident and try to make sense of it, I can literally come up with nothing. It was either some abnormal freak of nature scenario, or something supernatural stepped in to keep me alive.
68. The Man Of The Hour
I have a mystery man in my house. My husband and I for a time slept in separate rooms. He would often come into the room that I was in in the mornings to get clothes or socks. I would be aware that he was in the room, but I generally just ignored it because I didn't want to wake up yet. This was a fairly regular occurrence that I had gotten completely used to after a while.
Then, a few times, it seemed like he was just standing there. I woke up to the awareness of someone standing there. Of course, I figured it had to be my husband. It ticked me off mildly, but each time I just dozed back off and forgot all about it. It was no big deal in my mind, just a weird little sensation that I had noticed.
After one particular episode of this, I was very upset because my husband had apparently been standing there for some time and I thought he was supposed to be at work already. I opened my eyes and there was a man at the end of my bed. But it wasn’t my husband. I have no idea who it was, actually. It took me a split second to process what I was witnessing.
And then I literally screamed and jumped up as fast as I could. But just like that, the man was gone without a trace. I finally confronted my husband about a lot of those times that I thought it was him standing and hovering over my bed silently while I slept, but it turns out it wasn't him. That spooked the heck out of me.
My husband and I eventually ended up getting a divorce for a number of personal reasons. But the mystery man has still stuck around. I don't really get a sense of malevolence when he’s there, just a general feeling of being watched. And I know that it definitely isn’t sleep paralysis, because I can fully wake up and control my body even while it’s happening.
Hey all you parents out there, you know when you're asleep and your kid comes into your room wanting something and you know they're there before opening your eyes? This feels exactly like that. I have sat up or opened my eyes many, many times in the morning, expecting to see one of my kids, but only to see the mystery man instead.
It's the same man every single time. Tall, slim, dark hair. Kind of an impish look to him. He's actually quite handsome. His features are quite pleasant. He always seems to be smiling mildly.
Over the years, he has scared the heck out of me on multiple occasions, though. If this is a recurrent dream, it really sucks and I wish it would stop happening.
But there’s more. I have also noticed that he's been slowly moving from the end of my bed up to the side, near my head. There is nothing like opening your eyes and looking right beside your head expecting to see a five-year-old child, and then instead seeing a pair of long, adult legs that go way up above your eye level. And then you see this man looming over you, and that vision continues to vividly endure even for a flash after switching the light on.
I swear I'm going to have a heart attack one day as a result of this. The last time I saw him, he did something that I had never seen him do before. He was right near the head of the bed again. But this time, when I opened my eyes, it was like he had been waiting for me and he leaned his face in until he was literally eye to eye with me.
He had a huge grin on his face, and his face was maybe only about six inches away from my face. I screamed my head off and scurried away, then I turned on all the lights. It was terrifying. Again, I don't get any sense of malevolence from him per se, but being a single woman alone in my house with my children, it's very much a sense of "WHY IS THERE A MAN IN MY HOUSE AND WHERE IS MY MACHETE?" for me.
I don't know if it means anything or makes any difference, but I've actually sat there and talked, hoping that whatever this creature is would hear me. Especially after the last time, I have made a point of giving this communication attempt a serious shot. So I sat there in my room and said out loud that if anyone wants my attention, that's okay.
But I added that this is not the way to do it, and that “You're scaring me.” I haven't really had scary problems ever since making this announcement, and it has been around six months since then at this point. There has not been one incident with the mystery man in all that time, positive or negative. Which only reinforces my belief that he is some kind of supernatural ghost.
But there’s one more thing. I found out that my grandma apparently had a mystery man in her house as well. Not quite the same way, but she definitely believed she had one. And she wasn't someone to lie or over-dramatize things. She apparently often claimed that she’d see this man watching her in broad daylight in her home.
Similar thing, she thought it was an intruder. She didn't actually stop and question it until after he was gone. I wish she was still alive so that I could ask her more about her experiences with this. I do remember hearing about somewhat similar things as a kid, but I remember it as being a much more benign or even positive thing.
Back then, I would feel like I had someone sleeping with me in my bed, only to then find that there was nobody there. Yet it vividly felt like someone was. I just thought my stuffed animals must have come alive at night or something, because I was only a kid at the time and not capable of really examining the situation at any deeper level than that.
I'm trying to choose to think of it as some sort of benign and possibly hereditary guardian if any of this stuff is actually real. I have had some terrible, terrible things happen to me in my life and a consistent theme in my dreams and my sleep is me feeling completely loved, but without quite being able to recognize where the source of that love is coming from.
And then I wake up feeling deeply loved even when nobody in my life really does love me. I don't know if I truly believe any of this stuff, but if there really is any guardian out there that does this stuff for me, I am forever grateful. Either that, or my brain is just really good at fulfilling my subconscious needs in my sleep. In which case, thank you brain!
69. Take Off Your Coat And Stay A While
I may be late to this party, but screw it. I live in a haunted house. I don't mean haunted like Amityville Horror or something like that. But our house is almost 100 years old, and we have a ghost living in it. No ands, ifs, or buts about it. Our first clue to this being’s existence was shortly after we first moved in, when some money I had laid on my bedside table suddenly went missing inexplicably.
My significant other didn't take it, the dogs didn't eat it, it hadn't fallen under or behind the table as far as we could tell. It was just there one minute and gone the next, without a trace. I ended up finding the money several months later, when unpacking a box from our former apartment. The box was still sealed with packing tape, and the money was in the middle of the pile of papers and other stuff in the box.
Again, this sealed box was from our former apartment, where we had lived before moving into this house, yet money that had gone missing after we moved into this house was somehow buried deep within it, protected by many layers of tape. And for those of you wondering how I know it was the same money, nice try. I know it was the same money because of the order of the bills and the way it was folded, neither of which was usual for me.
A coworker had paid me back for something and done it that way, so I hadn’t had any other pile of cash folded that way at any other point that I could remember. And it was the exact same amount that had gone missing from the table, too. That was the first sign that something wasn’t 100% normal in this house. But it certainly wouldn’t be the last…
The second incident involved the ceiling fan reversing. The thing straight up stopped and started turning the other way while I was watching. Not like slowed down, either, but stopped completely in its own tracks. Then, I "saw" the ghost one night. My significant other swears that I must have been dreaming, but I know that I was wide awake.
When I saw him, he was hanging a hat on a coat stand in the hallway (where we don't normally have one). And he looked right at me. I could see him clearly. He seemed to sort of glow or be illuminated from a light somewhere nearby. And I can describe him in detail to this day, right down to the fashions he wore, his mustache, and even his tired but kind eyes. Somehow, I also knew his name.
His spirit seems to have somehow telepathically informed my mind that his name is Phillip. Since then, he sometimes makes mischief. My dogs seem to see him at times, too, and he occasionally has fun playing with their ball, even in the backyard. He makes winds, plays with the fan, and even leaves footprints from time to time.
If he's annoying or frightening us, we just firmly say: "Phillip, please STOP that!" And he always does. I don't mind him. I sort of like him, actually. He does not seem to have any bad intentions of any kind. I have looked for records and clues about who he might have been during his lifetime. But as best as I can piece together, he appears to have rented a room here during the Great Depression, so they weren’t really keeping any paper records that I can take a look at.
70. A Familiar Face
I've always wanted to share this story, but I’ve never had a good opportunity to do so until now. I used to work the intensive care unit night shift back in my service days. For those who have never experienced one, you should know that hospitals are always creepy at night. But that never really bothered me—until one terrifying night.
I had a patient that was on the outs, and we were expecting for him to pass that night during our shift based on how his condition was looking. The rooms in our ICU had glass partitions and curtains, so you could see the patient next door. This is about 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning, and while I'm in the next room over, something on the periphery suddenly catches my eye.
There is a man leaning over the bed, and his face is just inches away from the one in the bed. I'm looking on in disbelief, and I eventually realize that this second face is the same person as the one in the bed, and he is literally staring at his own body in the bed. Thinking I'm losing it, I come around the partition to see if it's a coworker in there, and no one is in the room.
Maybe an hour or so later, the fellow died. To this day, I can't really explain that experience naturally, no matter what way I try and look at it.
71. The Ghostly House Guest
We think that the house that we currently live in is haunted. The previous owners left because the father and son passed in a plane crash, and we’ve been thinking the son is haunting us. One day, while talking about him haunting us, his mother called, seconds after we said his name. Other instances have occurred where doors have shut and televisions turned on or off randomly.
My cousin was in our shower and heard heavy breathing, yet nobody was in there but her. I have been in the same shower and heard someone yell, but in the tone of a whisper, the word “death.” Again, nobody else but me. My dog has awoken in the middle of the night and stared out my window at the trees and not moving, except for a trembling lip.
One time, I was trying to sleep and I heard a screeching/scratching sound that was almost deafening. I then got an impression to close my eyes and not open them until morning. The sound stopped. The next morning, I found out I was the only one to hear it.
72. A Comforting Presence
I know it's strange. Sometimes I'll see figures of my parents doing things outside. It's most commonly my dad cooking on the barbecue and I'll often see him out of the corner of my eye. But when I inquire into it, he'll disappear. Sometimes, it'll just be a black figure or shadowy animal running across the front of my house that I'll see from the corner of my eye.
But, those are probably actually squirrels or the crows who love my backyard for some reason. The thing with these shadow figures is that they make me feel safe, comfortable, and a little happy.
73. You Light Up My Life
This story is about the only time in my life that I have ever experienced something unexplainable and had another person there to back me up so I didn't feel crazy. The fact that it was my girlfriend who confirms what we saw really drives it home for me, because I know that she is the person who would take the first chance she gets to call me crazy for any reason.
Me and her would occasionally go outside to look at the stars and, on this particular night, instead of driving out somewhere, we were lazy and just laid on a blanket on my back patio in Southern Pennsylvania. The night was super clear and it was during the summer. As usual, we were there for about an hour and didn't see any shooting stars. Then it happened.
This one light appeared. In the night sky, it looked about the size and brightness of a star, maybe slightly bigger like when you can see a planet. It seemed like it was more orangey or yellow than the typical white star you’ll see in the sky, but whatever it was it was clearly very far away. At first, I thought we had finally seen a shooting star and could go back inside feeling satisfied, because the bugs were starting to bite.
Now, imagine laying on your back, and picture the following. The object started from behind the dogwood tree by my patio in my upper left field of view. My feet were facing away from the house and I would have to tilt my head back looking upside down at the house to see it. From there, it moved slowly to the center of the sky.
Then it stopped. A complete stop. And then, before I could even process this development, it suddenly changed directions at a breakneck speed and went across the dome of the sky toward the horizon back behind the dogwood. We each said nothing. Seconds later, it was back, moving crazy fast. And then it stopped cold again, before making a 90-degree turn.
At this point, it went very slow. And then it accelerated insanely fast. And then it stopped again. It just kept doing this over and over again in random combinations and orders. It moved so unnaturally. The sudden extreme changes in speed and direction scared me, if I’m being fully honest. I had never seen anything like it before.
There is nothing on earth that moves like that. It wasn't a firefly or a bug in our face or a searchlight or anything like that. Its actions were way too irregular to be any of those. It was up there with the stars. It ripped across the dome of the sky toward varying points in the horizon, then would be out of sight for a while and then come back.
It just kept coming back. Finally, we broke the silence. We turned to each other wide-eyed and I said something along the lines of: "Umm, do you see what I see?" She just replied: "Yeah. Wanna go inside?" To which I replied: "Yes, please!" And then we spent the rest of the night racking our brains and trying to make some sense out of whatever the heck we had just seen.
For the record, neither of us were under the influence of any kind of substance, nor have we ever been. We saw this light. It was there. And it was waaay up there. None of this is in question, as far as either of us are concerned. If you saw the perspective of how far away it was, and how unrealistically it moved around, it would send chills down your spine like the ones I get from typing this story out and remembering all the details of the incident.
I hear lots of stories about strange lights that people see in the sky, but I have yet to hear one that fits precisely with the object that I witnessed that night. Has anyone else out there ever seen something like this? Any time I hear about someone else who had a UFO sighting now, I immediately want to compare notes with them. I would give anything to know what that thing was.
74. A Way To Show Appreciation
Growing up, my grandparents lived in a very small town of about 500 people. My mom tells me a story about how my grandpa's late mother used to sing at the local church. The story goes that one time, after she passed, grandpa went to church and saw her floating around the rafters. Apparently, this happens whenever a member of the family plays music/sings in the church and it's the ghost's way of showing appreciation.
One time after hearing this story, the whole family goes to church. Grandpa stares in awe at the ceiling the whole time. I was too afraid to look up, but I swear I heard something moving in the rafters and felt a weight like there was something above me. I don't know if it was my nerves telling me what I wanted to hear, but that church gives me a creepy vibe anytime I drive past it.
75. I Saw The Light
I'm a non-believer in anything supernatural or paranormal, but no one else in my family shares this point of view with me. In fact, many of them are very big believers in the supernatural nature of various weird things that they’ve experienced in their lives. A lot of their stories I’ve just chalked up to sleep paralysis, etc. But this particular one is my mother's .
As far as how it plays out in my head, I cannot think of any logical, natural explanation of any kind. The story goes like this. When my mother was about 13 or 14 years old, she lived in Thailand with her family. They lived in an apartment building on the seventh or eighth floor. She was playing on a Ouija board with her brother and two other Americans in the evening, so the sun was still out and there were people walking out on the streets near her building.
Obviously, when engaged in this kind of activity, people naturally start asking about their thoughts on ghosts, demons, and what have you. After a while of scaring themselves with their own ideas, a red glowing orb, like some kind of strange entity, becomes visible and starts to float in through the seventh-story window. This catches everyone’s attention, to say the least.
This mysterious thing hovers in the middle of the room for half a minute or so, and then disappears entirely. All of them practically poop their pants from fear, and ran out of the room to where the adults were. As often happens, the adults sensed nothing wrong and thought they were all just lying or imagining things. And that was the end of that.
To this day, more than forty years later, neither of the witnesses relent at all about what they saw. Not even a little bit of doubt in their voices when the topic comes up. I see my uncle regularly, and he has the exact same story as my mother. Down to every last little detail. It makes no sense to me, but I simply can't believe it was a demon or Satan or some stupid thing like that.
But I honestly can't think of any rational idea that could explain away what would cause something like that. So alas, I am stuck in the unenviable position of having to wonder about it for the rest of my life, probably with no clear answers coming at any point in the foreseeable future.
76. Where Could Mom Be?
When I was a kid, I was drawing in the kitchen. I saw my mom outside getting the dry laundry back from the ropes, so I decided to spend some time with her. She came inside and passed me, so I stood up from the chair and followed her. I was almost running, so sometimes I had to slow down to not bump on her back. She went to my parent's bedroom, on the second floor.
I found it weird because usually, she puts the dry clothes in a room on the first floor. I then go into the bedroom and...She is nowhere. I look for her, but...It's just a room. Nothing more. I came back confused and I saw her in the first-floor room, already ironing the clothes. She just smiled at me and asked what I was doing. I stared for a while, said "nothing," and just stayed with her. Thinking about this 20 years later is unsettling.
77. Run For Your Life
When I was a lot younger than I am now, I once went over to a buddy’s house for a little sleepover party. His mom came down randomly while we were chilling and one thing led to another, and before we knew it we were into a full-blown conversation with her about a whole bunch of random topics. At one point during the conversation, she started telling me about some freaky stuff that has allegedly happened to the family over the last couple of years.
My buddy Justin's younger sister has some kind of mental handicap, though I’m not sure exactly what the nature of it is. When his mom was telling us stories, she would just giggle in the background and keep looking behind us. His mom told us a story of how one night their fire alarm went off randomly in the middle of the night and the doors were all opening and closing by themselves.
Once this commotion all stopped, they found a picture of her father face down on the ground. The frame was completely smashed to pieces, even though no other pictures had fallen off the wall. Later, they found out a horrific truth. That night her father had just died in his sleep unexpectedly. Later that night, after I heard that story and another about how my buddy had always complained about a man appearing at the end of his bed, I was freaked the heck out.
There were three of us total in the room after his mom had left us to try and go to sleep after hearing those stories. Yea, like that was going to be possible! He had a pull-out couch and we set everything up for bed. One extra mattress was going to be on the floor and the second would be on the pullout. My friend Kyle was freaking out, standing against a bookshelf and looking toward the open basement.
Meanwhile, me and my friend were looking beside him at the TV, trying to convince him to lay down and take it easy. He kept saying “Screw that, I wanna see if some ghost is coming!” He had his blanket wrapped around him, just staring out blankly to see if anything spooky would happen. Me and my other friend eventually got fed up and we were like “Screw it, let’s go to sleep.”
Just as I got up to turn the light out, I leaned over the edge of the bed and reached out to turn the switch. And before I hit the light, something happened that I still can’t explain. The TV suddenly shut itself off and the lights turned out by themselves. It scared the absolute heck out of me. I immediately jumped back into bed and I saw what looked like my friend with the blanket run into the darkness.
At the same time, my other buddy just grabbed me and screamed. Then, as things calmed down a bit, I said to my other friend, “Where the heck did Kyle (the friend with the blanket) run off to?” It finally hit me that he had just run out of the room in someone else’s house and never come back. But before either one of us can even process the question, all of a sudden Kyle comes out from under the bed.
He claims that all he did was hit the ground when the lights went off, and that he had never run out of the room. But that’s not what I saw. I told them I swear on my life that I saw someone in a white sheet type of thing run out of the room towards the darkness. And I still stand by that statement to this day. As you can probably guess, they were both pretty freaked out at this point, and I was pretty freaked out too.
And I could not leave the basement at this point because the exit was in the path of whatever ran away, so I just kept the TV on for the rest of the night and never went to sleep. My friend’s younger sister claimed to have a name for the ghost. Apparently, to her it was a little girl named Jodie. Just goes to show that this sort of thing really was a fairly frequent occurrence for the people who lived in that house.
78. Ghosts Pee Too
I went to use the bathroom at work and when I entered, there was no one in there. The bathroom has four urinals and four stalls, one handicap, and I did not see any feet in any of the stalls. I took up my normal spot inside one stall and was doing my business, when I heard the sound of someone peeing into one of the urinals...but no one had entered the bathroom.
The door is heavy and loud when it closes, so I would've heard someone entering. After a normal amount of time, the peeing stopped, and I heard a few footsteps. But, the door never opened. When I finished up, I did a cursory look and there was no one in the bathroom. It's a ridiculous story, but I definitely heard a pee ghost.
79. Who Played Who?
My brother and I were once watching a horror movie at around midnight. Around halfway through, the unmistakable noise of a deep sigh came from where my brother was sitting. I took it as nothing, but I did look over at him because I assumed it was him being bored of the movie or something. When I saw that he looked over at me at the same time, we knew neither of us had made the noise, but we both heard it.
We paused the movie, rewinded it a few times, and replayed the last 30 seconds a few times to try to see if the sound we heard had come from the movie. After being unsuccessful, we laughed it off and finished our movie. Later that night, while on completely opposite sides of the house, I heard the same noise again. A deep sigh—this time, originating from behind me. Now I start panicking.
I ran upstairs without even looking towards the source. I found my brother who was just looking at me as if he was waiting for me to tell him what had just happened. It turns out he heard the same noise upstairs at the same time that I heard it downstairs. We tried recreating it without luck. We experienced it again a few weeks after that, but this time we were both in separate rooms from each other and both came out of the rooms at the same time after hearing movement downstairs.
It sounded like small bare feet on a hardwood floor. We both stood there for a good 30 minutes while the sounds continued for at least 10 of those 30 minutes. Finally, sometime after that, I had a solo experience where I was downstairs late at night and heard the same sigh noise along with the same bare feet noise behind me. Needless to say, I got out of there and went to bed.
It has been quite some time since either of us experienced anything, but he and I firmly believe it was paranormal in some way.
80. Woken Ahead Of Time
At the time I was around 14, I’d asked my dad to wake me up early that morning at about five because I had some work to get done. That morning, I was woken up, and I flung my legs over the side of my bed. I felt a tug on both of them, what I thought at the time was just my dad trying to get me to hurry up. I reached over to pick up my phone and turned it on. It was 3:30 in the morning, and I looked over at the black figure I had assumed was my dad—it was gone.
81. Skeletons In The Closet
I have only had one potential paranormal, supernatural, or unexplainable experience in my entire life. And I truly never expected to hear myself say that. I am quite a stereotypical skeptical type of person in a lot of ways, but this incident has always left me wondering. And to this day, I still have no logical explanation for what I experienced that day.
So here goes. My first ever overseas holiday was to Vietnam. I went for two weeks and I would later return and stay for a year. I loved the place. Anyway, on my first visit, I was about a week and a half into the trip when my tour guide (who has since become a very good friend of mine, and remains one to this day) offered for me and my friends to have dinner at his house.
We agreed to take him up on this offer, and we had an amazing meal that gave us some real insight into Vietnamese life and the culture of the country. His house consisted of a total of three rooms. There was a bedroom that doubled as a living room, there was a laundry room with a toilet at the side of it, and there was a storage room off to the side.
Now, an important detail to be aware of before I go on any further is that this house only had one door. It was in his bedroom/living room. And the house had a total of three windows, one in the bathroom and two in his living room. The storage room had none. No doors. No windows. This is the full truth and we are 100 percent certain about that.
Anyway, back to the main story. So we have just finished dinner and are talking, when all of a sudden I hear a series of strange noises. There were very clear footstep noises coming from his storage room. And when I say that they were very clear, I mean so clear that there could be no doubt whatsoever in any of our minds that someone was in there.
My friends and the owner of the house heard it too. The house owner was kind of surprised, as you could imagine, but he kept his cool. He gets up and starts talking in Vietnamese. He calls out in the general direction of the storage room: "Hello? Who is that? What are you doing here? Please come out and identify yourself." We all watched intently, in intense fear and suspense.
But as soon as my friend said all that, the footsteps disappeared. A few seconds later, my friend decided to check things out more thoroughly. He walks into the storage room and we all follow closely behind him. We were in central Hanoi, so I was worried that it may have been an intruder and that this situation could quickly be getting dangerous. I proceeded with a lot of caution.
Anyway, we go into the room and there is no one there. Nothing. No sign of anything at all. It is then that I am reminded that there are no entry or exit points to or from this room except the one that we are standing in and had never taken our eyes off for even a second since hearing the initial sounds. To get into or out of the storage room, you most certainly would have had to walk right past us during the meal.
So we discuss this amongst ourselves and, the more clear it becomes for us that what we just thought we witnessed is completely impossible, the more we start to get a little concerned. We are all male, so eventually, this discussion turns into your typical macho nonsense and silly joking around. We continue chilling out and he plays us his favorite records.
Somehow, we managed to shrug it off and chalk it all up to some kind of misunderstanding. Amazingly, we were able to forget about it for a while and just continue on trying to enjoy our evening. That is, until my friend started to put his records on to play for us. At around this time, we suddenly all hear the sounds again.
And this time, it is past the point of undeniable. It is so obvious and so darn clear that we all spring up and get ready for a fight of some kind. The owner runs outside and gets his neighbors, who were all chilling in the street. He explains to them what was going on, and they come running in to try and help confront whoever or whatever is in there.
So here we are. Three Australians very far away from home and scared out of our minds, along with about five Vietnamese people who we’ve never seen before but look ready for the battle of the century. We gather around the entrance to the storage room and the noises are still going on, very clearly there for everyone to witness and hear.
At this point, the footsteps have picked up the pace a little bit and sound as if someone is jogging on the spot quite briskly. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Over and over again. The neighbors can't believe it as we whisper to them that this is the second time it has happened during the course of the evening. We count to three and run in all together.
When we got inside, we immediately noticed that the cupboard door was now wide open and the contents of it were strewn around all over the floor. But nothing else. No animals, no people, nothing. We were all overwhelmed with fear. Even the neighbors who had just joined us were bouncing around in shock. Every single one of us knew that something was in there and now it was gone without a trace or an explanation.
And we all knew beyond any doubt that something was terribly wrong and not normal about this whole situation. So we decide we can’t just leave the room again and ignore it. We absolutely tear this tiny storage room apart, leaving no stone unturned. We check the two cupboards. Nothing. I check the boxes in the room. Nothing.
We look at the ceiling. Nothing. There was nothing to be found. This was a room no bigger than your average bathroom’s size. There were no windows and no doors leading outside. If someone was in there, they would have literally had to squeeze past us in order to leave the house. No matter how hard we tried, we were unable to find anything unusual in the room or come up with any logical explanation for the noises or the mess that we had witnessed.
Jump forward a few years and my good friend the tour guide has now left that place, gotten married, and became a father. We still to this day occasionally talk about this incident, and we still have no idea what the heck happened back there. It was by far the strangest thing that I have ever witnessed in my entire life. I still vividly remember running in and seeing his cupboard open and spewed into the ground and thinking "Holy heck, it's on for young and old!"
82. The Drums Keep Thumping
I was camping in the middle of nowhere. Around two in the morning, I hear distant native drumming. I look around, but can't see anything. But, it keeps getting louder and louder and LOUDER. Soon, it sounds like there is a huge group of people banging on these drums all around me! I freaked the heck out, ran in the dark towards my car, jumped in, turned the lights on, and saw NO ONE. So, I took off, all at around 2:30 in the morning.
83. Putting On Brave Faces
My family has a ranch in California that has an apple orchard attached to it. When I’d stay there to visit family, my cousin would always tell me stories of things that have happened there since my last stay. There were ghost sightings, voices...the usual stuff. I took it all with a grain of salt because, well, as a kid your mind will play tricks on you, especially at one in the morning in a dark and empty orchard.
The common story was about a demon that haunted the orchard and would chase you till you left the orchard. One night, I was outside a little after midnight, staring out into the orchard when my cousin and her friend came out to meet me dressed up. They were saying how they think it’s absolute garbage and are going to go spend the night in the orchard.
They invited me, but I told them, “No, thank you, and be careful as there are wild animals in there.” 40 minutes later, I see them come bolting back out and into the house rambling about the giant bat that chased them. For the rest of the night, we heard what sounded like dog paws on wood floors, the closest thing I could pin it to, on the ceiling the rest of the night.
When the sun came up, it sounded like whatever the animal was ran off the side and landed pretty heavily on the ground. I never visited them again.
84. Who Moved The Furniture?
When I was about seven or eight, I was playing in a large closet with two girls. My dad and their dad were best friends and they were hanging out so I was there. They came up and told us they were walking to the store, probably for drinks. They told us to stay there and they left. At some point, one of us tried to leave the closet and the door was blocked.
We started freaking out and screaming. When our dads came back, they made a seriously chilling discovery. Someone had blocked the door with a dresser. They were gone probably for 10 minutes. I remember the fear in their faces, so it wasn't them. Nothing was missing and we have no idea what happened to this day.
85. Someone Wanted To Lend A Hand
I once saw a disembodied hand waving at me from my bedroom window. It totally scared me and I ran to the living room, where I was semi-expecting the perpetrator to come through the front door to laugh at me. It never happened. To this day, I'm still uncertain as to the origin of this floating hand.
86. A Perfect Score
My grandma's sister used to get beat up by her husband. My grandma looked him in the eyes and said something so disturbing, it’s impossible to forget. She told him: "He who hits his wife will lose his arm." Two weeks later, he blew his arm off in a freak hunting accident. Also, when she was a kid, she was walking with her father and they saw a friend in the street.
As they were approaching him, a crow landed on the friend's head. My grandma looked up at her dad and said his life would be over soon. The friend died that very night, in his sleep. I know it's not exactly a ghost story, but it's pretty darn paranormal if you ask me…
87. A Guardian Angel
When I was little, I was crawling to a dresser and playing with the bottom before I felt my legs being pulled away from it. It totally scared me, but now I realize the dresser could have fallen on me if I had messed with it more. Maybe the spirit just didn’t want me to get hurt really badly, so it pulled on my legs away from it so nothing bad would happen. Also, thanks to whoever it was that passed on.
88. Not In My House, You Don’t!
The guy who bought my late grandfather's house turned out to be the son of one of my grandfather's least favorite people in the entire world. This is not to be taken lightly, as my grandfather liked practically everyone he ever met. I have no idea what he thought of this guy’s son, or what he would think of him living in the place he used to call home.
Anyway, a few weeks after the guy moved in, he called my uncle all upset because he thought he was being haunted by my grandfather. He'd been hearing strange noises from the rafters and in the attic. My uncle, who could barely contain his laughter, told the guy that the house was built in the 1600s and has had a mouse problem for years.
He then suggested that the fellow either go get a cat or call an exterminator, whichever he prefers. And that was the end of that. He called an exterminator, and presumably, the problem was solved as he never mentioned it to us again. But deep down, I'd still like to think that it was all Grandad, and that he is currently looking down and laughing his butt off.
89. Lost And Found
I was driving down a road and someone ran a stop sign. It totaled my car. Officers came and took all the information. The next day, I go to get a rental car and they ask for my driver's license. It was nowhere in my wallet. I think, “Well maybe it's in my totaled car.” I went to where they towed it and searched the car, but found nothing. It got weirder from there.
I called the officer from the accident and asked if he forgot to give it back. He says no, he handed it back to me. So, I take everything out of my wallet. There was nothing. Even my wife went through it. So, I get my information together and go to the motor vehicle center to get a replacement. I got everything done and they handed me my replacement license.
I opened up my wallet to put it away and there is my original license where I always keep it. But, I know I checked there as the first thing. I still can't figure out where it was or how it got back in my wallet.
90. It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! It’s...
I’m a pilot. One time, I was flying my plane like any other day and I suddenly saw this bright orange glowing thing hovering over the trees. It was kind of bouncing around like if you had a ball on an elastic string and you just bounced it around and what not. Anyways, since my course would have brought me near it, I asked Air Traffic Control if they saw anything on their radar, to which they said no.
They asked me what I saw, so I described it and they said they weren’t showing anything and were not aware of any activity in the area that could explain it. The thing shot straight up and disappeared, so I told them it was gone. They asked me if I wanted to file a UFO report, to which I said heck no. I joked that it was probably just a weather balloon, then I continued on my way.
I know it wasn’t a balloon, but I don’t want the FAA questioning my sanity for claiming to have seen a UFO. What freaks me out is that we as humans know so very little about the ocean, but relative to us, the ocean is still pretty finite. What is behind the blue sky we see above us is practically infinite, and we know even less about it than we do about the water. Really makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
91. Unexpected Mind Control
One time, I was in my basement watching TV, and I looked at the TV and thought to myself, “I wish I could turn it off without getting up to get the remote or hit the power button.” Suddenly the TV just shut off. I freaked out and ran upstairs. It turned out that the TV had broken and we had to throw it away.
92. From A Former Life
I had a flashback to a former life. I was trapped in the hold of a wooden ship that was sinking in the ocean. It was freezing and I could hear crew members yelling faintly above me. The walls were wet and covered in grime, and I knew I wasn’t going to get out. It was incredibly real, and nothing like it has ever happened before or since.
93. Through Time And Travel
I was driving at night on an unfamiliar forested road during a thick fog, just outside of Vancouver, Canada. Suddenly, we were going through an “old-timey” town with tin sign advertisements for 1920s type products with similar era buildings. Then, we drove under a sign saying, "You Are Now Leaving the United States." Seeing as I didn't think we had entered the States, it was quite unsettling.
94. Let’s Lock The Door And Throw Away The Key
About a year ago, I was at my dad's house taking care of the dog for the week because he had gone camping with some friends and my sister. Meanwhile, my wife was also away. She had gone to Colombia to visit her family for a month. My in-laws asked me to take care of their dog while they were gone, and I of course said yes.
So there I am, first night alone at my dad's house with two dogs who had been playing together all day. I decide to go to bed around 10:00 in the evening, so I go to lock the front and back doors. I make sure that every door in the house except for my bedroom door is closed, and I go to sleep. At about 12:00, I suddenly hear the dogs freaking out.
They’re barking and whining like mad, so I jump out of bed and go to check on them. On my way downstairs, I make a seriously terrifying discovery. The back door is unlocked and open. I look down at the dogs and they are both staring at the basement door, whining and growling while laying in a puddle of their own pee. I see that the basement door is open.
So I get the emergency number ready to be called on my phone, and I go downstairs. I search around for a while, not even sure what I am looking for. Until I decide to go back upstairs and clean off the dogs. At maybe 1:00 in the morning, the dogs are finally clean and no longer focused on the basement, so I make sure the basement door is latched and I go back upstairs after double-checking that the back door is locked as well. I thought it was over—but it was just the start of my ordeal.
At about 2:00, I once again hear the dogs barking and freaking out, so I run downstairs. Once again, I see the back door wide open. The basement door is wide open too, but this time both dogs are staring out the window and looking into the backyard. So this time, I do not bother to go downstairs. I just close the door, and then I run to the back door and I close it and lock it as hard and as fast as I can.
I then went back upstairs and did not sleep for the rest of the night. But both dogs slept on the bed with me. After about a week, my dad gets home and I ask him if we can watch his home security cameras for that first night I was there. I had to wait for him to get home because I had no clue how to work it, but he had no objections.
As we are watching the footage, I am just looking to see if anything or anyone even went near the house during the night. Oddly enough, there was nothing. The only weird thing is that at around 12:00 and 2:00, the back door randomly flings open with nothing going in or out. But the scary part is that from a different camera in the house, we can clearly see me lock the back doors every single time.
We have had no issues with the lock any other day before or since then. No idea what happened there…
95. The Holiday Horrors
We had an Elf on the Shelf as a kid. I walked downstairs and it was in the same spot as the previous day, in a little glass candle box that had a latch on it. Being small, I assumed the poor thing was locked in there overnight, so I opened the door and went upstairs to tell my parents. They were both asleep when I got up there, and the only other person in the house was my baby brother.
After I told them our elf was trapped, I walked back downstairs and it was on the chandelier. At the time I thought, “Well duh, he's alive.” Now, I am terrified of the thing. I sometimes wonder if I imagined it.
96. The Unforeseen Pet
The first apartment my wife and I lived in had a ghost cat. We’d both see it quite often run into or out of a room or by a door in our peripherals. It wasn’t our cat being elusive either, because she’d be next to us already or in a different room completely asleep in a window sill. I think even our cat played with it a couple times. It was friendly though, so we got used to it.
97. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
My story may not be scary, but it’s definitely freaky and unforgettable. It has to do with my identical twin brother. He was living with my dad in the DC area and I was living on the other side of the country. At about 1:00 in the morning, I had the most vivid dream, where I was freezing cold and looking up at the stars, and something was very wrong.
I somehow knew it was my brother. The dream shook me so much that I felt I was wide awake, and scared. Oh well, just a dream. I'll watch some TV to calm down and go back to sleep. The next morning, I see that my dad is calling me. So when I answer, I have no idea what possessed me, but I say, “Dad, before you say anything, I know something happened with my brother.”
He told me that my brother ate a bottle of Ativan and washed it down with a lot of hard drinks. They found him in his underwear on the hood of his car looking upwards. Remember, in my dream, I was freezing and looking up at the stars. Luckily, they found him in time to save his life (which he eventually took years later, tragically). But there is no way to explain the dream and the connection I felt with him that night.
98. The Unwanted Visitor
We bought a house in the Fairmount section of Philly. Our front steps faced Eastern State Penitentiary. I never thought much of the fact, but there were so many times unexplained stuff would happen at the house. We eventually had kids, and it scared the heck out of them too. There were doors opening and closing randomly at three in the morning.
One time, our large kitchen window just completely shattered. So many times, I would wake because I swore I heard someone walking up our long stairway. At first, it was easy to ignore because I don't believe in the paranormal. But then there was the night that it happened. That night, a drugged-up lady somehow got into our house and when I heard the noise, I went down to see and this lady looked like a zombie. She was screaming at me about her husband and kids. It was somewhat traumatizing. We ended up moving two years ago after eight years of it.
99. Check The Cameras
I used to work as an assistant in an old mansion that was converted into an art museum in New England. The basement and old kitchen quarters were turned into the museum shop with back wings being more smaller galleries. The servants' staircase opened into a very narrow hallway that led towards the back rooms of the basement, or to the front of the shop...all beneath ground level.
The stairs were kept locked from everyone except staff and the only way to the basement was to enter from the outside courtyard through a door that was right beside the shop counter. In front of the counter was an old TV mounted in the upper corner that showed security cameras to the back galleries, but the camera switched only when motion was detected in the area.
It's a late winter night. I’m staying late doing homework while the owners are in New York. The only other person in the building should be the house manager who I know is working on the fourth floor. I am hanging out at the shop counter in the basement when I hear some noise in the back galleries. I assume it's a patron who was making their way out but no one comes out from the hallway.
So, I call down to the back that the museum is closed, and I'd be happy to show them out the back way. There was no answer, but then the security camera started switching to different empty galleries. Only slightly on edge, I pick up the phone to call my manager when, on the opposite of the shop counter, a revolving card stand full of classic postcards starts slowly turning.
I think the look on my face was more surprising than anything else. It was a heavy, old stand, and it takes some force to get it going, but when the turning of the stand abruptly stopped and began going the other direction, I noped right out of there.
100. The Disappearing Stranger
A family friend of mine and her sister were once walking their dogs through a huge empty field, and they noticed an older-looking man coming towards them on an even older-looking bike, wearing clothes from what seemed to be the 1930s. He looked right at them, smiled, and said "Good morning ladies." They just smiled and nodded as he passed them.
They both turned to look around at him no less than 30 seconds later, to see no sign at all of him. It was very odd.
101. Howdy, Stranger
I was driving away from a gas station. Out of nowhere, a guy in a suit comes running up to my minivan and starts yanking the door. As if he knew me, he began pleading, "C’mon, LET ME IN." Luckily my doors were locked, and I asked him who the heck he was through my window. He looked genuinely surprised that I wouldn't let him in.
After I refused again, his facial expression inverted; as if he just realized something horrible. He let go of my car, said something to the effect of "You're one of them, aren't you?" Then he ran away behind the gas station and into the woods. Full suit and tie, nice shoes, extremely frantic in nature, zero explanation. The look in that man's eyes was pure terror when I didn't let him in.
102. The Lady In The Hall
When my son was not even three years old yet, he came to my room and kept telling me "the lady" was in his and his sister's room. I was half asleep and dismissed it, and told him to snuggle up in my bed with me. So he got in my bed, but every few minutes he kept waking me up to tell me about "the lady." Then he says she is at my bedroom door.
In an effort to show him there is no lady and we should just go back to sleep, I pick him up and walk him in the dark out of my room. We stand in the hall and I say, "See, there is no lady." His reaction terrified me. He points his finger down the hall where there is nothing to see at all and says, "Mama she’s right there. That's the lady! And this is HER house."
Nothing, not even a shadow where he was pointing. I kind of just tried not to show he was freaking me out and said, "Okay, she must be a nice lady" and took him back to my bed where he promptly fell asleep and I stayed awake for hours thinking this "lady" in my 100-plus-year-old apartment must be hanging out and watching me sleep.
103. Turning A New Leaf
One New Year’s Eve just after all my parent’s friends had gone home, we heard rapid knocking at the door. There was a woman in a pink and white coat who was shivering and stammering in Spanish. My dad, who’s fluent, began calming her down while taking her into the house. My mom came to his side, and then reached out to touch the woman's jacket.
When she lifted her hand, she had a horrifying revelation...She realized that the jacket wasn't actually multi-colored. The pink was blood, and she was shivering from the shock of a broken arm. My dad had calmed her down enough to get her to tell us what happened while my mom called the emergency number. She said that she and her brother had hit an ice patch.
It happened a mile away on a steep hill, and they went over the bank to the bottom. My dad and I grabbed our coats to go find the car. When we found it, my dad went down the hill first after firmly telling me to stay where I was. Being a stupid teen, I went down after a few minutes and when the car came into view, I learned why he’d told me to wait.
The car was wrapped around a tree, and the poor guy’s head was twisted all the way around. That sight still haunts me to this day whenever I drive on cold nights.
104. The Undiscovered Photographer
A few years ago, I was home alone with my sister and my parents and siblings went out for about six hours. we were sitting at the TV watching Dr. Phil when we heard a lock being fiddled with. All our doors were locked, so I was confused. I checked the house and found nothing. The next night, I was in my room walking around in booty shorts and a sports bra.
I heard a click sound. I thought nothing of it and laid on my bed facing the window. Then, I heard another click. I put on a t-shirt and I went to my window to slam it shut. When I glanced outside anxiously, I froze with horror at what I saw. A guy with a camera was hiding and he bolted. I screamed for my dad and he went after the guy. Eventually, the dude was caught.
It turns out he had multiple pictures of me over the course of two months of me sleeping, showering, and changing along with multiple pictures of other underage girls. So of course, he was incarcerated. That was by far the creepiest experience. I'm 17 now and I still get a pit in my stomach when I tell the story and I always feel watched
105. Who’s At The Door?
One night, I was waiting for my boyfriend to get home from work. He was due any minute. I was sitting on the couch in the living room and had a clear view of the front door. I saw the front doorknob start to rattle and our new puppy started losing her mind. I just took a couple of minutes to calm her down, figuring my boyfriend would make it inside before I managed to get her out of my way.
But oddly, the door didn't open. I figured maybe my boyfriend was struggling with his tool bag and other work stuff, so after I got the puppy calmed down, I opened the front door. No one was there. I thought maybe he went back to his truck, so I shut the door and waited for him. Several minutes passed. I called him and asked, "Hey, where'd you go?" He asked me what I meant.
"Weren't you just here? You tried to open the door?" He said he'd gotten caught up talking to his mom as he'd swung by his parent's house, and he was still about 15 minutes out. I was creeped out but chalked it up to my intoxicated neighbor trying to get into the wrong apartment again. The next day, I found out a shocking development—another neighbor down the street had opened their door to someone and got tied up and robbed at gunpoint.
I don't know if it was the same person at my door. I don't know if that would have happened to me, as I had a habit of just opening the door without checking the peephole. I was really naive. But, I was really grateful that my puppy kept me from opening the door immediately and really grateful that my boyfriend had gotten me in the habit of locking the front door when I'm home.
106. The Others
My mom and older sister describe how I used to randomly start crying and asking where my mom was, even when she was right in front of me. When my mother would try to comfort me by saying she was right there, I would shout for my other mom. I would then describe this person, who apparently always held a bloody hammer. They said it scared them out of their wits, but one day when I was two years old, they tried to ask me about it and I couldn't remember anything.
107. Kids Know More Than They Let on
My mom told me this story the other day and it freaked me out. When my oldest sister was little, like 3 years old, she asked my then-pregnant aunt to pick her up to hold her. My mom said she was like "She can't pick you up, honey, she has a baby in her tummy." And then my little sister was like "That baby is dead!" My mom freaked out, but my aunt and grandma were fine and were telling my mom it was all good, she was just a toddler and didn't know what she was saying.
Well, lo and behold my aunt goes to the doctor the next day for a routine pregnancy checkup, and the baby was dead. Give me the willies just thinking about it.
108. Home (Almost) Alone
Once, my brother and I were sleeping, and my dad had just left for work. A little while after, someone entered the house and told the dog to be quiet. I didn't recognize the voice. I was 100% sure it was a burglar who thought the house was empty as my dad had just left. I sneaked into my brother's room, shaking with fear, woke him up, and told him that a stranger had just entered the house. He called the authorities on the spot.
Two tiny minutes later (we were impressed!) two official cars and four law officials were at the door of our house. Oh, how uneasy was my dad when they called him and he had to tell them he had come back because he had forgotten something and pretended to have a "funny voice" or something for no reason whatsoever. It was about 15 years ago and my brother and I still (jokingly) blame each other for it.