Ever felt a hand on the shoulder in an empty room, or had a disturbing premonition that came true? There are some experiences in this life that simply can’t be explained, leaving us to ask ourselves if we believe in the paranormal. These Redditors came together to share the chilling moments that they can’t quite figure out—read on if you dare.
1. Stuck In A Time Loop
When I was around 11 years old, I woke up in the middle of the night. What I saw made my blood run cold. There was a younger version of myself digging around in my toy chest. I was so confused and was just watching him for a moment, until it realized I was watching him. At that moment he turned to face me and started sprinting toward my bed. I hid under the covers.
Eventually, I worked up the nerve to peek out from under my blanket, and there “he” was, back at my toy chest looking around. Until he sensed I was looking at him, then he would run toward my bed. I repeated this at least 10 times before I just hid under my blanket for the remainder of the night. I know it wasn’t a dream because it happened three nights in a row.
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2. History Repeats Itself
I grew up in a two-story house that was built in the 1920s or so. Our neighbor told us the story, as she grew up in a house a block away, and it happened when she was in school. Apparently in the 1950s or 1960s, a school teacher lived in the house. After her family had left that morning, she was in one of the bedrooms and shot herself, falling into the hallway.
So going forward about 20 or 30 years, my mom would stay up late watching TV, and would sometimes hear a loud noise coming from upstairs. Her description was terrifying. She described it as someone falling out of bed, or a picture falling off the wall, or something like that.
She'd go upstairs and check on me, my sister, and my dad, and we'd all be asleep in our rooms, nothing would be out of order. And then, when I was probably 16 or 17 or so, I was up at 2 or 3 am watching TV, and I heard a loud thud noise, like a body hitting the floor. I didn't imagine it, because my cat had been startled, too.
My sister didn't live in the house anymore, and I'm pretty confident it wasn't my parents falling out of bed or anything. So I picked up the cat, went up the stairwell, past the room where the lady shot herself, went into my room and closed the door.
3. You Asked For It
I was at my grandmother’s house one time, just chilling on the couch on my phone, laptop, or something. There was this stone plate in a stand on top of my grandma’s TV that had a bible verse on it: "Be still and know that I am God". My grandma was in the kitchen with a neighbor chatting about "demons" and some of their paranormal experiences that they had.
Out of nowhere, the room got cold and this rock plate "falls" out of its stand, onto the carpet, and breaks perfectly in half. I have a picture of the plate somewhere, and the stand it was in. No way it could have randomly fallen as it was leaned back into the stand on one of those fat TVs.
4. Home Alone
I live with my parents and was home alone one day. I had just gotten off of work and was taking my standard post-work bathroom break. It was maybe 12 in the afternoon and neither of my parents got home from work until at least 3:30-4 pm. Since I was alone, I was there with the door open when I heard my laundry room door open.
My laundry room door connects to the garage, so I figured one of my parents got home early and came in through the garage door. I closed the bathroom door slightly and yelled "Hello" but didn't get a response. I yelled hello again but no response. It was at this point I came to a spine-tingling realization.
I hadn't heard any footsteps come into the house yet. We have old wood floors that creak really loud whenever you walk on them so it's always obvious when anybody is walking anywhere in the house. I finish and get up to see who's home. As I'm standing up, I hear the laundry room door slam closed.
I walk towards the laundry room and into the garage since I would catch whichever parent was home leaving the driveway. I open the laundry room door and the garage is shut and the light turned off. Our garage light stays on for 15 minutes after someone has opened the door before turning off.
I was really freaked out now so I lock the door and go into my room to watch YouTube videos. As I'm loading up a video, I hear the door that connects to my patio from my parents' bathroom open then close twice. I grabbed a fork (the only "weapon" near me at the time) and crept around the corner to see who was there. Nothing. Nobody.
I waited outside their bedroom door for about 15 minutes in hopes of catching a burglar sneaking out from the closet but no results came up. I freaked out, ran into my room and watched my door, just listening for anything else spooky going on. Nothing else happened and I still don't have a reasonable explanation for it to this day.
5. Knock-Knock
There is a pattern in my life that I have premonitions, or contact, regarding trauma or the passing of loved ones. I had a friend who lived 2,500 miles away. He had an incurable brain tumor, but was hospitalized for something somewhat-unrelated. It was a grave situation, and I knew that he was in trouble.
However, my life was too hectic to give it 100% of my mental energy. I was consumed with work and my own life. Facebook well-wishes and prayers were sent and I expected him to recover and go back home. A night or two later, I awoke from a night-terror as well as sleep paralysis. That's when the unimaginable started happening.
There was a loud noise that sounded like someone was pounding on the front door. "Knock, knock, knock”! It was what you would expect from a SWAT team, before they crashed in. That sent me into a state of semi-lucidity, and I entered into a waking dream. In this dream, I fixated on my bedroom door, waiting for the intruder(s) to burst in.
The door slowly cracked, and a giant, meaty, hand squeezed through the opening. My heart was pounding, and I was in fear of cardiac arrest. I knew that I was dreaming; but it felt so intensely real that my body reacted accordingly. The dark figure's shadow filled the entire doorway, and the hand (for better lack of a description) "waved" at me like a small child would wave.
I was both terrified and comforted if that makes any sense, at all. Here was this huge monster who was both scaring me and trying to console me at the same time. Upon awakening, in the morning, I described this to my husband. I rarely have sleep paralysis, and it almost always corresponds to some specific event. I almost knew what was going to happen next.
I made coffee and went online. Sure enough, I found that my friend had passed in the night. During the exact time that I had the dream, he was semi-conscious, and his family described how he was holding up his hand and waving at them from his hospital bed.
My friend was a giant man; and (in retrospect) the huge shadow and large, meaty hand were exactly the size that would have been his. Now comes the kicker. A few weeks later, I went back through our messages and found one where (two years earlier) I had invited him and his wife to come visit and stay with us.
His reply was "Some night you will wake up to a knock, knock, knock on your door”!
6. Who’s There?
Four years ago at college, I was sitting at my desk doing some work. I was living with my now ex-girlfriend at the time on the second floor of a house that was split in half. The other side was already being rented out. So I was in a room at the very end of the hall. In this certain room, it’s very hard to hear the door opening downstairs as well as anyone coming upstairs.
At the time I was currently home alone while my ex was in class. While I’m working I feel like I’m being watched or that someone is standing behind me...it was creepy, so I turned around just to make sure my ex wasn’t trying to scare me. Turns out there was nothing there.
A little while later I got the same feeling and I swear I heard footsteps almost running down the hall to the far end where I’m currently sitting. So again thinking it was my ex, I turn around—and see a ghostly white face over my right shoulder.
To this day I have no idea what or who it was. I thought it was possibly my grandmother who passed on in 2009. It was the creepiest thing I’ve ever experienced and I’ll never forget it.
7. Father Knows Best
My grandfather passed when my mom was in her early years of high school. I obviously never met him nor do I really know anything about him. She doesn’t really speak of him much. She and her best friend Ann were leaving a party when they were in their late teens and were about to walk a half hour home when they got offered a lift by a car full of guys they knew.
They accepted as it was late and got the in overloaded car. A few minutes after they started driving, mom and Ann realized these guys had been drinking, but it wasn’t so unacceptable back then so they didn’t think much of it. A few minutes go by and mom swears on her life she heard a male voice saying “get out of the car, you will die”.
It was calm but there was such urgency in the voice, she screamed at them to pull over. Mom said she had this overwhelming feeling of dread and fear and that she could hardly breathe, she felt like she was literally drowning. She got out of the car and almost dragged Ann out with her.
Ann didn’t want to walk home so they were arguing for a little while before she reluctantly went with her. The guys went on their way. They walked the rest of the way home. The next day, we got a terrifying call. We learned that my mom’s good friends had swerved off the road, rolled an embankment, and crashed into a lake.
It was all five guys from the car. They all perished in the accident—some of drowning and some from the impact. Mom and Ann weren’t wearing seatbelts, so they would have been goners for sure. She believes it was her dad who told her to get out. She has never felt anything like that feeling she had since.
8. Level Up
My mom finds quarters everywhere. For years she’s always sworn that someone was leaving her quarters. Last year her hair dresser had a “medium party”, where she invited a bunch of ladies to her house and had a medium come and see who she could contact. Well, apparently my great grandmother and my great aunt had come through.
The medium told my mom that her aunt (my great aunt) started leaving her quarters because she stopped picking up the pennies she left for her.
9. Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em
Me and my buddy were playing SNES in my room, when suddenly the most bizarre thing happened. The room filled with thick and hazy smoke. The smell of nicotine was overpowering and we were both really confused, as nobody in my family ever smoked and we lived in a detached house, so it couldn't have been the neighbors either.
The smoke hung around for about a minute, then it cleared and vanished as suddenly as it had arrived. Later that afternoon, we found out that my friend’s mom had used a Ouija board to contact her father who had lost his battle with lung cancer the year before.
Apparently he smoked 60 a day and always smelled. She was unable to contact him that day, but that's the only explanation I have for the weirdness.
10. No Such Thing As A Free Ride
My friends called me one night to go to a basketball game at the Civic Center. My buddy was driving and he and I had a rule between all of our friends that I always rode in front in his vehicle and he always rode in front in mine. I went out to the car to get in—and that’s when I felt a chill down my spine.
Something was just telling me not to go. It was like I physically couldn't get in the vehicle. My other friend had already got out of the front seat and got in the back with my other friend to give me my seat. They gave me flack but I eventually didn't go. Something just physically would not let me in the car. It was like I was frozen with fear or something. It turned out I was all too right to be scared.
On their way home from the game that night they lost control of the vehicle because it was pouring rain and they slid sideways underneath an 18-wheeler trailer that was loaded down with flooring tile. All three of my friends were severely injured considering they were driving a Chevy Cavalier and the 18-wheeler literally drove over top of the vehicle. This all occurred around midnight.
All three of my friends suffered serious lifelong injuries . The one who was sitting where I should have been eventually took his own life due to his constant pain from the accident. I still wonder today if I would have lost my life that night, and why I didn't get in the car because I had nothing better to do that night, no work the next day, and the tickets were free.
11. Don’t Drag Me Down
I was around nine or 10 at the time this story happened. My best friend and I had been riding our bikes, just being kids and screwing off. We lived in one of those older towns that are filled with older homes and kind of compacted, so the roads turn to dirt and fields pretty quick.
We were maybe five or six blocks from my house when we found a new road to explore and we followed it down. We passed a church, took an L-turn and were basically out of town and into the country in a few feet. We could see an old bridge a ways down, so we took off to check it out.
The ride from the turn to the bridge was a little less than a 1/2 a mile. As we get closer and closer to the bridge, I start to notice something is wrong with it. It's an old metal and concrete bridge, the metal is painted red but it's peeling pretty badly, and the whole thing is leaning heavily to the left.
There are two big piles of rock blocking each side of the bridge, and we stop our bikes at the first one. It's really quiet. I immediately want to leave this place, hated being there from the start. My friend calls me a chicken and gets off her bike and climbs the first rock pile.
I refuse to leave my bike, even when she spots an armadillo and chases it. As she hits the rock pile on the other side of this bridge, it's like she suddenly senses what I do. She slowly turns, and she is pale, saying we need to leave. I don't argue, just wait for her to get back, because I'm not leaving her and we take off.
The whole ride to the bridge was easy, our wheels glided like they were on the pavement, not gravel. But it all quickly changed. The ride back is like trying to pedal through thick mud. We are both standing up to pedal harder, and it feels like we are just creeping along.
We stop about 100 feet away to catch our breath and look back, and there's this huge light, like a mini sun, hanging above the bridge. I'm freaking out, and I look at my friend in a do you see this way, and she looks back terrified, and whimpers go, go, go. Neither of us waits, we jump back on the pedals and pedal for all we're worth.
We make it almost back to the turn, and this section of the road is lined with trees for a good bit. I can see something black flashing between the trees right behind us. We hear a vehicle, and think adults, so we're safe, at least safe enough to stop for air. We stop and see this truck pulling down a drive and onto the road.
About a second later we forget about the truck. There is now a red rectangle of light, like a tail light gliding about seven feet off the road left to right between trees on either side of the road. We are both watching this as the truck pulls up in front of it and stops, and I thought maybe the people in the truck had seen it too.
They probably didn't, because after waiting a good minute for our idiot selves to move out of the road, they honked at us. That honk was all we needed to get back to pedaling home. We never really went exploring too much after that and spent the rest of the day in the house. But that wasn't the end of the story.
I was telling the story later on in my late teens, and one of the people in the group was familiar with the road. They had lived on the road not far from the bridge, and weird things would happen in their house. They explained to me that the bridge leads to a drunkard’s house.
One night this guy is headed home completely sloshed and misses the bridge, hitting the edge and flying into the over-full creek below. They search for a few weeks and eventually recover his truck, but he's never found. It felt like we almost got dragged in by his spirit. It's one of the creepiest things that's happened to me.
12. A Watched Pot Never Boils
My favorite city to visit is Savannah, GA, so after I graduated college, my parents took me there for a long weekend to celebrate. My mother loves to watch those Ghost Hunter shows and with Savannah being one of the most haunted cities, she was super excited.
We stayed at the Marshall House, which is one of the oldest hotels in the city. It also happened to be a yellow fever hospital at one point in its long history. We ended up getting a suite with a bedroom separated via French doors to a living room with a fireplace and a pull out couch where I slept.
Night one, I'm getting my bed ready and mother dearest comes in and puts one of those flashlights that you see the ghost hunt people using all the time, because it's very easy to turn on and off, on the mantel of the fireplace facing me. I said oh heck no. She thought it was the funniest thing.
Fast forward to morning and no flashlight, thank the lord. But apparently dad got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and when he walked out of the bathroom, he had to close the boudoir door so he could make his way back to bed. He laid down, thought about it, then it dawned on him.
He wouldn't have been able to get in the bathroom if the door to the boudoir was open to begin with. Mother was so excited that we could actually be in a haunted room. Our last full day there, we had breakfast delivered to the room so we could eat on the balcony on the rocking chairs.
I had finished my food so I came back inside, sat on the couch and started reading either brochures or a magazine or something. The ceilings were high and there was a ceiling fan with three lights on it, but since we got there only one of the bulbs worked, so we just supplemented with the table lamps, no big. I hadn't turned on the lamp yet when dad walked inside.
He told me to turn on the lamp so I can see better, and as I started reaching for the lamp, both of the other light bulbs in the ceiling fan turned on. At this point mother is getting mad because nothing has happened to her yet and the flashlight has yet to turn on. So she's talking to whatever is in the room trying to provoke it.
I probably could have done without that. We go to bed that last night, and the stupid flashlight is still on the mantel. My parents shut the French doors, I put the flashlight in my purse because I was over it. Big mistake. I fell asleep, but woke up at some point in the night to what sounded like someone getting up from the chair in the room.
The way the room was set up, the pull-out couch was on the same wall as the door that opened up to the hallway, the fireplace was to my left and the chair was near the lower left corner of the bed. Then I hear what sounds like heavy boots slowly walk from the chair, around my bed, towards the door, then I heard a "clink" on the side table in between the bed and the door.
I was not about to open my eyes and see some type of Confederate-era soldier standing next to my bed. My eyes were glued shut and I just remember thinking that if anything touches me, I'm out. What was probably two seconds but felt like two minutes passed before I heard the boots walk down the hallway away from our door.
At this point my heart is beating out of its chest. I waited a few minutes before I got enough courage to unfurl from the blankets—eyes closed still—and reach for the lamp. When I did open my eyes, nothing. And nothing on the side table. I didn't sleep the rest of the night. And my mother was angry that nothing happened to her on this trip.
13. The Guinea Pig
When I was younger, my sister started getting into witchcraft and demons. I shared a room with her and slowly I watched her change from someone so down to earth to a person on the verge on insanity. I feel like she was possessed for the duration of my childhood. I mean, she began making her own Ouija boards.
When it first started out, I began having some crazy dreams. Her attitude towards me and my family also changed. She tried to kill my parents by lighting their room on fire and she'd often times hurt me. She'd speak gibberish in her sleep and laugh. Sometimes it was weird, but things really began to get freaky when she started wanting blood for her rituals.
That's where I came in. My parents worked a lot so she usually babysat me. So when my parents would leave she'd conduct her rituals in our bedroom, where she'd cut me, smear my blood on her weird board and light her candles then stuff me in the closet. Mind you, I was a young child so the dark already scared me enough. But then came the worst thing.
I started hearing whispering. It was coming from all around me in the closet and I could feel like breathing down my back and I remember crying and banging on the closet because I had started seeing things. My sister didn't let me out until I was gasping for air, it was as if something was strangling me.
From then on I heard voices and continued to see things. I hardly slept at night because I'd continue to hear these voices until the point where I could see literal shadows over my bed. It didn't stop until she moved out.
14. Pick One
My husband was friends with a “gypsy”. We were hanging out one night and he suggested we do the Ouija thing. I had done it once before with a friend at another friend's house and got surprisingly accurate answers to questions that neither of us could have known in advance. But this was a few years later.
This time, he just wrote the letters and yes and no on pieces of paper and we turned an ordinary drinking glass upside down and put two fingers each on it and asked questions. We were in our 20s. We were asking if the spirit believed in God. It said yes, God is love. We weren't Christians.
We asked all kinds of stupid stuff but then started bugging the spirit to tell us if it was good or evil. That’s when things took a dark turn. The glass started making small circles very quickly then flew across the room and smashed on the wall. We all ran out as fast as we could.
I honestly cannot see how the gypsy might have caused the glass to shoot as far as it did with two fingers on top of it. Years later, I asked if he had done it himself and he insisted that it wasn't him.
15. The Man In Black
I went on holiday to Wales in 2012 with seven friends. Five of my friends went to this club that was really expensive to get in, and being a poor student, myself and two others decided to go on the beach. Our apartments faced the beach and we had steps going down to our apartment, but you could also get to it from the back by walking down an alleyway with a sensor light that lit up when you walked down it.
We get to this alley and I start freaking out and feeling scared to the point of almost crying. We walk down the alley onto the beach. No one seems to be around. We walk down the beach seeing no one, and I still feel a bit freaked out. I look up after walking for a few seconds and see this black opaque figure in the alley we had just walked down with its arms stuck out to its sides.
I'm freaked out but try to keep my cool. It looks as though it's about seven feet tall and we're far away from it so it would be taller close up. I go “what IS that” and run along to the beach to the left and into the dock where there are street lamps, because I'm that terrified. My friends follow and my skeptical friend asks what I'm doing, thinking I'm being crazy.
Before I can speak, it got ten times scarier. My other friend says “did you not see that black figure”? Skeptical friend, who started running a couple of seconds after me and looked up at the alley, says he did not see anything in the alley after we told him what we saw, and tries to come up with answers. He says, could it have been an ill person (which is why they looked so weird)?
Obviously we don't know, but my other friend and I both saw it and were freaked out. It was freakishly tall, seemed sinister, and had a black, opaque look to it. We saw no one and heard no one when walking down the alley. I go back to the apartment—eight of us were sharing two apartments—and make them wait til 2 am until the others come back.
For the next couple of days I feel freaked out sleeping in the room I share with another friend and feel like something is watching me from the corner, although that could be because I was freaked out from this experience. Two days later we are on the beach and I need to go to the bathroom.
I'm shy and don't want people barging in, so I take all three keys to our apartment and check no one needs to go in, saying I'll be five minutes. I go in with the keys in a pocket and go to the bathroom. Before this, I had been playing a trick on a friend as the toilet light switch was in the hallway outside the bathroom, and I had been turning it off when she was in there (I was immature).
I was on the toilet and suddenly all the lights went off, both in the bathroom and in the hall; I could see through the crack under the door that the hall light was off. I heard laughter and footsteps and assumed I had left a key and my friends were playing a prank on me.
I still felt afraid when my phone went off. I looked down and almost screamed. I saw I had texts from my friends begging me to let them in. I washed my hands and opened the bathroom door, terrified but still telling myself that it was a prank. I went into the hallway and all the lights were indeed off.
I went into the living room where the main door was and saw all of my friends there outside waiting for me and looking puzzled. When I asked later why they came, they said they felt that they should come back. I checked my pockets and I had all three keys, and when asking the neighbors I found out they had not had a power cut.
The light switch next to the bathroom had also been switched down, so it seemed as though this entity had been watching me play this prank on my friend, and had copied it. I saw the black figure again down a different alleyway near some caves on the beach. But wasn't even close to over, either.
We then went on a ghost walk and were told about a mayor that was hanged in the area. Me and the friend who had seen the figure just stared at each other at this point, and the ghost walk leader said “Wow, have you seen it”? That could have been her trying to make the ghost walk scarier and this figure didn't really look hanged, if that makes sense. But still.
We got back from the ghost walk to find that our friends had started a food fight between apartments. They ran onto the beach but some went around the front and some went around the back and down the alleyway where I first saw this figure. I ran behind them...and suddenly saw the figure ahead of me.
But it wasn't in the alleyway I had first seen it in or the second one. It was at a different angle and was on the side road ahead instead of down the first alleyway, which would have been to the right. I stopped and ran back to the apartment. The next day I made our friend drive some of us down these roads where these alleys and side roads were.
I wanted to make sure there were no statues or anything that looked like this figure that I could have mistaken for him. On the last day of the holiday we went into the other apartment our friends were in, which wasn't where I had had my occurrences e.g. with the lights going off, but it was next to the alley where I first saw this figure.
The kettle was unplugged for a phone charger to go in, and was taken off the kettle stand that kettles use to boil on. It boiled by itself, all while not plugged in or the stand.
16. The Tooth Fairy
I still have this one experience burned into my memory from when I was around seven or eight. I woke up in the middle of the night to find my mother standing over my bed. Only, she was a bit blurry and kind of glowing pink. Once I realized she was there I asked if she could get me a glass of water.
I then remember turning to look at my glowing balloon Winnie The Pooh nightlight to look for the cup that was usually next to my bed. I turned back to hand it to her, but she was still standing there, motionless. So I asked again... "Mom!? Can I have a cup of water”?
But she continued to just stand there, staring at me. That’s when I knew something was very wrong. I started to shout. "Mom?...MOM! MOOOOM”! Well, in burst my Mom from my bedroom door wearing a long one-size-fits all Garfield sleep tee. "What!? What’s wrong!”?
Just as she burst through my door, the pink glowing version of my mom faded from her head down to under my bed. It also just so happened that I had lost a tooth that very same day. So in my little mind…I had just witnessed…the tooth fairy! To cement my claim, the dollar bill the "tooth fairy" had left me was found deep under my bed.
I told everyone I knew that I had seen the elusive legend! It wasn't till years later that I realized the chilling truth. I was retelling the story when I realized that the tooth fairy only happened to look like my mother because it was actually my grandmother who had passed long before I was born.
She also looks a lot like my mom. So once I put it all together, there was no doubt that the figure looked exactly like images I've seen of her later in my life. To top this all off, when my daughter was around four, she told me that sometimes she'd wake up to see Nana (as in my mom) watching her sleep. Yup…still doing that.
17. A Sign From The Other Side
I was 17 at the time, and my grandma was given a few months to live. I was pretty busy with working at a local restaurant as a prep cook, along with normal "senior in high school stuff". Anyway, my grandma was diagnosed with cancer sometime around August. I'm not going to lie, I was scared to see her.
She was amazing—always brought us cookies on birthdays, would show up randomly when she lived an hour away. She was such an amazing person but my dumb self couldn't muster up the courage to go see her in that state. So one morning I go into work, it's a Saturday and I'm doing my normal work duties, cutting onion rings or whatever—and I felt this odd tingling in my body.
The next thing I know I'm watching myself working, I'm literally a foot or two behind myself watching myself work. This happened for what felt like hours, but was only about 10 minutes. As I'm watching myself work, my boss comes up to me and I snap back into my body.
He's shaking me because I was as pale as a ghost and not responding to anyone. They wanted to call 9-1-1. I came to and said I just wasn't feeling good and they let me sit down for a while and then go home. I don't remember the drive home, I don't remember going to bed.
The next thing I know, my brother is shaking me awake telling me that my grandma passed. I was the only one in the entire family, of her eight kids and dozens of grandkids, who didn't go see her. I know for a fact that was her saying goodbye to me. And since that day I believe in something more.
Unsplash, Ekaterina Shakharova
18. Child Prodigy
When my son was four years old, I decided to play a game with him to teach him about math and probability. I picked up a dice and asked him to guess the number it would land on. "Three" he said. I rolled and it landed on a three. Ok, beginner's luck, let's do it again. "One" I rolled again and it landed on a one. Lucky, but not too weird. But it kept getting creepier.
He proceeded to guess correctly a further 15 times before I called my ex-wife into the room. Needless to say, the effect stopped the moment someone else was watching. I've thought a lot about it since and it simply should not have happened. The odds are around 17 trillion to one.
If you repeated this experiment 10 times a day, every day, from now until the sun burned out in five billion years you'd expect it to happen about once. This doesn't sound scary on its own, but ever since it happened I've had this off feeling, like something's wrong with the universe that this even happened.
Mathematics says it shouldn't have. If math is wrong, what else is wrong? Is the world I'm living in even real? It was like some force peering out from behind the veil and sticking a middle finger up, letting me know that no matter how well I think I understand the world around me I never really will. Randomness could strike at any time. There's no way of preparing for it.
Before you ask: yes, I tried to get him to pick my lottery numbers. No, it didn't work.
19. A Friendly Tip
About a year ago, I was out riding my motorcycle on this long rural highway. There wasn't nothing around but farmland and a few cars here and there. I saw this old country store/gas station and decided to stop in and rest a bit. I'm standing there having a smoke and having a drink when this dude on a Harley Shovelhead rolls up with long stringy hair and dressed like he's straight out of Easy Rider.
He yells over the motor "Your back tire looks low, better check it out!” Then he just rides off. Now, this guy was pretty memorable not just because of how he looked but also he wasn't wearing a helmet which struck me as odd due to the fact my state has had a helmet law for decades.
I started looking at my rear tire and sure enough I could hear a hiss and found a small hole. My guess is I picked up a nail and it just came out. So I walk inside the store to see if they have any plugs for my tire. I go up to the cashier to pay for my stuff. Then I noticed the oddest thing. This dude’s picture is hanging on the wall behind the counter.
I'm staring at this old picture and I'm certain it's him so I ask the cashier, "Hey, the guy in that picture, you know him? I'm pretty sure he just saved my life. He rode up just now and told me that my rear tire looked low, and he was right. If I'd rode out of here it would've went flat with me tearing down the road at 70mph. That would've been bad”.
She looked at me all bug-eyed and said "Yeah, that's my father. He's been gone almost 50 years”. I started laughing, not taking it seriously, and said "Guess it was a ghost! How'd he die?" Her words made me tingle all over. She said "It was an accident on his motorcycle. He lost control and hit a tree. They said it looked like his tire went flat. Oh and you ain't the first person that's said they seen him".
I wasn't laughing at this point and I asked her "What kind of bike did he ride”?. "A 66 Harley Shovelhead".
20. That’s About Enough
Anyway, I grew up in a house that was built in the 1800s. It was always creepy, especially since it was in a state of restoration/remodel most of the time I lived there. I hated having to move around that house at night, but only a few weird occurrences stick out.
A couple of times I thought I saw someone in our foyer, but it was always out of the corner of my eye. Example: My brother had one of those Playskool basketball hoops in the foyer and I could swear I saw another little boy playing basketball with him, but as soon as I stopped to look, it was just my brother playing alone.
Another time, I woke up to hear the bath tub running. My alarm clock said it was 1 am, so it seemed weird that someone would be running a bath. I walked in and no one was in the bathroom...just the cat staring at the running water. And no, he wouldn’t have turned on the water. The mechanism is too complicated for a cat, plus he HATED the bathtub.
Another night, I woke up and had to pee. It took some convincing, because as I said before I hated moving around the house in the dark. I finally got up and as I walked into the hall, I saw a man walking away from me and THROUGH the closed door to my parents’ room. I just held it the rest of the night...no way could I sleep after that.
One night I was home alone, chatting on AIM with my dog at my feet. All of the downstairs rooms have huge pocket doors leading to the foyer, and my back was to the pocket doors. I didn’t have the TV or radio on, and that’s when I heard it. A child’s voice called for my dog from the foyer.
He had an unusual name, inspired by a popular children’s book, so it’s a pretty distinctive thing to hear. His ears perked up, and he stared out at the pocket doors but stayed by my feet. I did NOT turn around until my family got home. Last thing: One night as I was falling asleep, my bedside lamp turned on by itself. I peaced out and slept with my mom like a little wuss.
21. Who Said That?
I was serving in the forces and we were in the desert posted up for a target. I saw some guys loading suspicious packages in the back of a small truck. None of the guys were the ones that I was looking for. My spotter suddenly said “let’s go LET”S GO”! Now this guy was pretty steady no matter what, so I snatch up my things and start running behind him.
Suddenly, there was a huge explosion where that truck was. I asked what he saw that scared him and he looked at me weird and said "You said run, so I ran". I never said anything, but our nest was covered in shrapnel when we looked back.
22. Somebody Save Me
One night when I was about 26, I was sleeping with the laptop on and a movie was playing. Usually I'm a heavy sleeper and deep dreamer, not lucid usually, but just deep in there. I remember waking up to the glow of the laptop screen with nothing on.
For reference, I was also raised up pretty Catholic. Demons and Satan are real to us. The idea of being persecuted for eternity in the afterlife is terrifying to me. Anyway, I wake up and I can't move. All I can remember is a shadowy figure with horns standing over me and just glaring with a look of intense, soul-devouring hatred.
This thing hated me with a darkness that I KNEW would make me die in my bed if I let it. There's not a real description I can give, other than it was humanish figure without a shirt, and vaguely bull-type horns. The kind that curl forward. Its eyes were human, not a particular color, just glaring at me like I was a piece of trash.
The face and other details were covered by the fact that it was dark and it was standing in the shadowy area where the light of the laptop meets actual darkness. It seemed like several minutes, but it must've been just a few seconds. It took literally everything I had, I mean just minutes of me thinking of this one thing to do, but after struggling with the mental effort I made myself lift my arm and do the sign of the cross.
I must've crossed myself dozens of times while looking at the thing by my bed. In my mind I had prayed to Jesus to save me, saying the Lord's Prayer and Hail Marys and just general "help me oh God help me”. Finally I sort of, woke up...my eyes were open, I knew, but it felt like I just sort of opened them again.
Maybe I blinked or whatever, but I sat up and thought long and hard about what happened. Part of me to this day thinks it was a night terror. And I believe it. But another part of me thinks, "What if…" Did I really get saved that night?
23. Wrong Time, Wrong Place
I woke up from sleeping to head to the shower in my bathroom, as it was time for school. Everything happened so quickly. As I was in the shower, a noise so loud erupted and the door felt it was being kicked in by SWAT team. It felt as if I now had 10 cups of coffee in my system, and adrenaline was just pumping through my body.
At that point, I noticed the towel rack was pulled right off the wooden door. The screws where warm when I touched it from the friction. I open the door and there was silence in the house. Now, my family sleeps in the three rooms right beside the bathroom. But nobody woke up, not even my dad who can hear a mouse pass his bed.
I have to figure out why and how this happened. The noise alone sounded as if it wasn't from this dimension. But that’s not all. As I got back to bed, I realized it was 1:30 am...and I just randomly went to the shower thinking it was time for school. I never told my parents, as it would have scared the bejeesus of them.
24. There’s An App For That
I used to work as a host for a restaurant. After working there for a while I became amazing friends with almost all of the waiters/cook staff. I had just graduated high school and since it was during the summer I didn't have anything I had to do. So one night at closing during the week, one of the cook staff suggests we go to this old graveyard.
Mind you this is in California, and this graveyard was not as old as other parts of the country, but it was late 1800s old. It contained the remains of the settling family that actually founded our first school system in that town. As teenagers wanting to do something besides the same old “drink at a friend’s house” or “kick back” thing, we all agreed to do it, and made preparations to meet at one of my co-worker’s houses.
We all met at around 10, as during the week the restaurant closed at 9. There were around 11 of us and we all began to make preparations for the hike to this spot, which was in the Angeles National Forest, not too far from us. Now, I remembered my sister telling me about this thing called an “Emp”.
She says it uses the electromagnetic waves and radio frequencies to talk to spirits and you can ask questions and get answers back. She also said she had downloaded one from her phone and it worked. I know, sounds corny and cheesy. Well, I never really believed in ghosts but I wanted to give it a try to confirm what I had thought: ghosts don’t exist.
I tell my group of co-workers about it and one of them downloads an app claiming to be able to talk to spirits on his phone. We all laughed and made jokes about it and thought nothing of it. We finally take off and head down to the forest, which was a good 30-minute drive on a single lane road.
After reaching the spot we get to the graveyard, which looked unkempt. There’s an oak tree there, because the family loved oak trees. As a kid who grew up in the valley you knew this because each one of their schools, all of which were elementary schools, had oak trees in the yard.
Well, imagine being there at 11 at night, no light source but our phones. Totally silent, no animals making noises. Frogs aren’t making noises, same with the crickets. We talk silently and look at the graves to see the names of the people and dates. I then decided to use the app. At first the women in the group were hesitant because they were scared.
I admit I was a bit nervous, but hey! Ghosts can’t be real. So we start the app and have a debate about who should ask the questions first and of course everyone pointed at me because I was the one who wanted to have the stupid thing in the first place. So I began shouting out stupid questions like “Hello? Anyone there”? No response.
Another question “Where are you”? Not even 10 seconds pass. I’m still freaked out when I think of what happened next. The app responds with a robotic “Oak Tree”. We are totally silent, thinking maybe it has some geolocation thing installed, but the graveyard wasn’t on Google Maps because really only locals know about it.
I continued, determined but slightly shaken, to ask questions, “Who are you”? and the app would answer in the same robotic tone “John”. Of course, the next thing you know a girl screams. She points at the gravestone we are next to and sure enough the name “John” was on the stone. That’s not even the weirdest part or creepiest.
After she screamed everyone began to talk loudly saying to stop doing it or you’re faking it, etc. Then out of nowhere the robotic voice goes “RUDE”. Silence followed. Everyone was scared, even the guys who had to act tough in front of their girlfriends they brought. We decide to stop with the app and pray, then leave the place.
After reaching our car we noticed something behind us in the distance. At this point you could see the silhouette of the oak tree, all plunged into darkness. But next to it was a white mist barely discernible to the eye. We ran, ran faster than we could before, to our cars. We got in and were doing like 80 out of there.
I don’t know what to think of this experience because I have never had anything like it before, and I might add I used this same app on an abandoned house we thought was haunted before going there and nothing happened. We all stopped ghost hunting or doing creepy things after that, but yeah.
That was probably the creepiest thing that’s happened to me. I don’t really believe in ghosts but, I still don’t know what happened that night.
25. Get Out And Stay Out
When I was younger I used to be terrified of the guest room in my house. I hated being near it or even looking at it while the door was open. Once, my mom was in there folding laundry because the bed was the only place we had to stack clothes. I was in the room with her because she was making me help her.
She left the room for a minute or two to go get more clothes to fold. As I was standing there, I suddenly felt like something was watching me. Then I heard a voice yell in my ear, “get out”. I don’t remember what I did next, but as a grew older I eventually grew out of the fear of this room.
About a year ago, I decided that I wanted to move my bedroom to this room since I liked the paint a lot more and there were holes in the wall of my old room. I almost immediately regretted it. I am fully convinced that something does not want me in that room. I’ve heard voices call my name, the electricity suddenly go out, but only in that room, and numerous other things happen.
The one that scares me the most, though, is the door. Sometimes at night when I’m sleeping, the door will open itself. It started out as just creeping open slowly, slow enough that I thought I just hadn’t closed the door all the way. But one night, it slammed open hard enough to break the door stopper and put a hole in my wall.
Whatever is in my house doesn’t want me in that room with the door shut, and I don’t know why. I even got home one day and noticed that it looked like someone had used a crowbar to pull out part of the door frame, which now gets in the way when I’m closing the door, making it harder to shut.
26. Don’t Go Into The Woods
I was in the Army at the time. I was supposed to meet my unit in a parking lot on-base, right next to some woods, for some training. I woke up early, at 3:30 am, to beat the traffic. I parked and passed out. I was awoken by the sounds of children playing. For a moment I was really confused.
I looked around and realized where I was, and that it was still super early, like 4:30 am. I thought I must've dreamt it. I fell asleep again for a few minutes, and once again, a child's scream and some laughing awoke me. I realized it was coming from the woods. I listened hard and caught a few more sounds of voices and laughter, I was definitely wide awake at this point.
I stared and saw no lights. I checked a map and saw that there were no houses in that direction at all, it was just forest. I don't know what was going on but to this day, being near these particular woods makes me very uneasy. I don't see how there could have been an actual group of children playing in the pitch-black woods with no lights at 4 am, on a base, not near housing.
27. Breaking The Silence
I've had a few brushes with the paranormal throughout my life, but this is the encounter that had me the most frightened. I was sitting up in bed, watching YouTube before my brain switched off for sleep, when I heard three very definite knocks on the wall behind me.
Knowing everyone in my household was in bed—I would have heard them getting up as my house is relatively small and quite creaky—I froze in fear for what felt like five minutes or so, listening intently for any other noises. All that followed was complete silence. I got up to check I wasn't being fooled with by my family, or even by a burglar.
I found everyone sound asleep, no signs of forced entry. The really odd thing about these knocks though is this. The wall is solid stone/concrete at least four inches thick, so no chance of it just being creaky wood, and the wall is above the bottom of the stairs, so you'd have to be eight feet tall to stand there and knock where I heard it.
I had heard about this phenomena being quite a common occurrence in especially haunted places, with some interpreting it as a "mockery of the holy trinity" by "malicious spirits". But my house isn't particularly haunted, nothing weirder than an empty Coke can jumping off of a desk on its own has happened in years by this point.
28. Intruder Alert
I was babysitting my brother’s little kid while my brother and his girlfriend were at the movies. My brother bought a baby monitor, and they had gotten these little cameras for a fantastic price. He went all about and bought 16. They were mostly to observe what their personal zoo (two dogs, three cats, a rat, two rabbits, two weasels, a hedgehog, an ermine and a squirrel) were up to when they were not around.
He once simply let his laptop camera run, and what he filmed was beyond hilarious, so he bought so many cameras so as not to miss anything. Two of these cameras where in the kid's room, as well as a baby monitor. He was five at the time I believe, so technically a toddler monitor guess. The kid was fast asleep in bed while I enjoyed a movie.
Suddenly I think I hear something over the toddler monitor, and I make the volume louder. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I can hear a voice saying :"Pssst, if he wakes up, we are busted". At first I thought maybe one of the neighbor kids, but that voice was way too high. So I opened the laptop to look on the cameras.
There are two in his room. Both are on the ceiling, so you could pretty much see the whole room. I look but do not really see anything, at least not right away. Then it hits me. One corner is darker than it should be, like there is a really dark shade there.
I up the brightness of the monitor and can see two shapes. They looked like kids, but they were way too small to be the neighbor kids. While I decide how to catch or scare them, I suddenly see something that scared me. One of them looks toward the cameras, and his eyes where really glowing (like green glowsticks, with the same brightness and color), and it did not look like normal eyes at all.
I get freaked and take the baseball bat out of the umbrella stand, and sneak towards the room. I silently open the door, and I am greeted by a really shrill mix of scream and hiss from these two creatures. The two things looked at me and bared their teeth. They had a lot of them, and they were extremely spiky, like needles, but much thicker at the bottom.
I am so scared I cannot move. In that moment, they suddenly turn around and jump out of the open window. And when I say jumped, I mean they easily jumped two meters through the room from standing still, and they hit the window exactly. After a few seconds I can finally react, run to the window, and close it.
The kid, thank goodness, slept through the whole ordeal. We later looked at the footage, my brother and me, but could not identify in anyway what these things where. But we could confirm what I had seen: those crazy teeth as well as the glowing eyes, which had no pupils or anything, just two glowing orbs.
My brother and his girlfriend where justifiably scared, and the kid never slept again with open windows, but we never saw or heard anything like this ever again.
29. You Remind Me Of Someone…
When I was a kid, from about four to six years old, I had an imaginary friend. His name was John Crossen. I would see him as a little blonde boy about my age. This went on for a while and my parents thought it was cute. It actually probably went on for a few years.
It came to the point where my parents would refer to him and kid me about him. I'm sure they thought it was cute. We would play games and talk and do whatever normal kids would do. I do remember in my mind's eye he was always impeccably dressed. Literally a suit and tie. One of those old fashioned suits with short pants and a ribbon tie.
He seemed to be a bit older than me, but he never said how old. For a long time things were fun...and cute...and typical for a little kid. I had bunk beds. The top was his, the bottom was mine. He also had this very strange “power” when he was around.
My dad used to yell at me a lot. If dad was yelling at me and John was there, he would smile and indicate that I should watch him. He would blink his eyes tight and long, and my angry dad...would be gone. He would leave the room. No memory of the issue. I really loved that. Then it happened.
I remember we went camping. It was in the Rocky Mountains and very beautiful. Especially at night. One night something happened. The Milky Way was stretched across the sky. This is when "John" revealed himself. He asked me if I wanted to see what he really looked like? This confused me. I thought I knew what he looked like.
He asked again. “Do you want to see what I really look like?” He told me to look up at the mountains. Then he/it began to rise from behind the mountains. This giant, grinning distorted Pinocchio-looking thing began to rise from behind the mountain. It really scared me. It grinned at me. It was him. It was John showing me what he looked like.
This distorted clown-like golem marionette. I was freaked out. I wanted to be anywhere but there. Eventually, we went home, and I stopped playing with my imaginary friend. I told my parents I wasn't playing with John anymore. I really didn't tell them why. I told him he was gone and wasn't coming back.
Now, my parents managed the apartment building we lived in. About two weeks after the camping trip, we had a new person move into the building. Here comes the nearly unbelievable part. His name was John Crossen. They wanted me to meet him because they thought it was a funny coincidence. I didn't want to.
I couldn't explain why, but I protested and argued with them. I had no desire to meet this man. Eventually they could tell I was scared and stopped pushing. Obviously we were all freaked out a bit.
30. Living Rent-Free
My roommate and I are convinced we have a third roommate now. We've lived in another apartment that had really thin walls and floors, but our current place is nice. The only time I've heard our neighbors is when the kid above jumps up and down so his full weight slams down.
The first occurrence we remember was when my roommate told me she'd been watching TV in her room when she heard me yell something down the hallway. She figured the dog had gotten in trouble or something, but then she heard me call her name. Thinking I needed help, she walked down the hall to my room, just to find my dog asleep on the bed.
I had been gone for a few hours running errands and she had no idea I wasn’t home. My own experience happened one evening after making dinner. I was eating in my room, watching TV, when I heard the front door close, a couple of footsteps, then my roommate’s bedroom door creak open and close.
I walked over to see if she wanted some dinner, but her bedroom door was open and she was gone. I sent her a quick text asking if she had come home and then left really quick. She said she had still been at work and wouldn’t be home for more than an hour. But it didn’t end there.
My little sister had slept over, and while I was finishing up work (I work from home) she went to watch TV on the living room couch. She suddenly came back into my room, blanket wrapped around her and a frightened look on her face. She'd been laying on the couch playing games on her phone when someone pushed a corner of the couch.
I'd shrugged it off thinking she probably fell asleep and her body jerked/twitched, right? But when I looked at the couch with her, you could see a mark in the carpet where the corner of it had moved where she felt. This was an old, heavy couch, it takes a lot to move it around. Unfortunately, our third roommate doesn’t help pay rent.
31. A Call From The Other Side
A couple of years ago I was asleep at home having a dream where I was on a train looking for a friend of mine. In the dream I had exhausted everyplace to look, and for whatever reason I was adamant I needed to talk to him immediately. In the dream I ran into my friend’s father and I asked about my friend's location, as he was nowhere to be found.
At this point, I get a phone call from my friend wanting to know why I had called his father. To be clear, I do not have his father’s phone number, never have, and my phone showed no placed calls in the history. My friend had been with his dad and recognized my number as his dad didn't have me as a contact either.
We compared notes the next day. His father’s phone showed the call in the history of his phone as well. To this date, we just shrug it off as a freak occurrence.
32. A Shared Scare
When I was really little, I shared a room with my younger brother, bunk bed style. One night we had just started to go to sleep. Back then our mother left the door open with the hallway light on. Our room was directly next to the staircase and that night I distinctly remembered hearing the stairs creak like they always did when someone was climbing. We had an old house so I was used to the noises it made.
Then, a silhouette appeared in the doorway. I remember thinking at the time that it was my older brother. Until, that is, it turned terrifying. Whatever the shadow was started to growl this low gravely rattle. At this time my brother had woken up and both of us started to uncomfortably laugh, though I was less and less sure it was my older brother trying to scare us.
Then it got scarier. The growl started to build and get louder and both of us freaked and started crying and wailing and whatever it was went back down the stairs as my mother and older brother came from their rooms, which were further down the hallway from the stairs. I thought for the longest time it was just a bad dream.
A few years ago I mentioned the experience to my younger brother and i saw all the blood drain from his face. He thought it was a dream too.
33. Listen Up
I came home from work late one night, probably from working second shift. It would have been around midnight. I park on the street next to my house and walk around to the front, which faces a different street. As I am doing this, an old rusty pickup slowly cruises past me heading toward where I had parked.
I recognized the truck as one used by guys who are often knocking on doors asking for handouts or money or junk to recycle. Creepy people, and not because they want help but because they are creepy. If you looked up photos of people likely to be killers, they might be on the photo lineups.
So I am crossing my front yard at this point with my back to where I had parked and where that pickup truck had gone past me. Suddenly in my head, in my brain, in my whole body, I hear the loudest sound I have ever heard and it's a voice saying "TURN AROUND NOW”! in both a level of volume and intensity I have never heard before or since.
It was a command. Not a request. An order. And the authority behind it was unlike anything I know. Just typing this has me in tears. There just isn't any way I know to put into words how powerful this command was and also how it felt like the merest fragment of a dust mite's lost dandruff of the power behind it. I can't even describe the contrast properly.
So of course I turned around. I witnessed a scene I'd rather forget. One of the guys from this junk truck had come out of that truck and was sneaking up behind me. I had heard nothing. I was so focused on things to do once I got in my house, I just heard nothing. He was 10 feet away when I turned.
In the loudest voice I myself have ever made, I said "STOP”! and he froze and stood there. Then he turned and ran back to the pickup truck and they left. Then like it was no big deal, I went into the house. My mom was living with me at the time and was in the room closest to where all this happened.
She didn't hear anybody say "Turn around now!" nor my yell of "Stop". Nobody heard a thing. I didn't think anything of it until years later when I suddenly remembered hearing that "Turn around now!” and recalled all of it. None of it makes sense to me. I'm not deeply religious. I don't know why anyone or anything would care about me turning around or not or would want to warn me. But whatever this was, it happened.
34. Ghost Train
After a date, I took the last train home. It was very late, cold, and windy and I was the only one at the station. In the distance I heard rumbling on the tracks. I looked for my train but did not see it yet. The rumbling got louder, I saw the trees around the tracks shake and it was coming towards me fast.
I still didn’t see lights from the train but it got close. The rumbling became insanely loud. I stood right next to the tracks trying to see what it was, and saw movement but no shapes. It reached the station and sucked in the snow from both the roofs, so basically a wind/snow vortex raced towards me perfectly over the tracks about the size of a train.
It hit me and blew my coat open and my shirt out of my pants, covered me with snow and I was instantly frozen. After it hit me it was gone. I stood there amazed, heard the rumbling again but this time it was the real train, and took it home. I told a guy from school the next day and he said his best friend took his own life there, so that was kinda creepy.
It could have been some strange wind or something, but it felt unreal.
35. Fire Drill
It was a Saturday afternoon during summer and I wasn’t due home until dark. In the middle of my turn at Metroid or whatever we were playing, I just handed my friend the controller and said, “I need to go home”. I had an absolutely terrible feeling. I hopped on my four-wheeler and barreled the two miles or so of woodland trails that lead back to my house
My folks had 32 acres in a fairly rural area, but little of it was developed for anything As I came down the dirt drive toward the house, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The field adjacent to our house was engulfed in flames, about five acres of switch grass, scrub oak, and pines. I ran into the house and found my dad napping in one room and my mom asleep in another.
“THE FIELD IS ON FIRE”! Dad and I grabbed shovels and mom called the fire department. The day before, dad and I had burned a large brush pile, and even though we spent hours soaking the ash heap, a couple coals must have been deep down and still hot, fanned by the high winds on the day of the fire.
The wind was blowing the fire across the field toward the neighboring house, which was for sale. While dad and I stood in its front yard fighting back flames, a realtor and prospective buyers stood in the window and watched as the possible destruction of the home grow closer. In the end, all that was lost was a trampoline and some of our fruit trees, but it definitely sticks out to me as a “what made me go home?” moment.
Had I not, I may have lost my parents and burned down countless acres of forest as well as at least one neighbor’s home.
36. Don’t Make The Same Mistakes I Did
My grandad used to stay with us when I was little. This was the mid/late 90s at the time. He was rather "young" to be a grandparent (late 30s/early 40s) but he would always play with me, read to me, teach me songs...that sort of thing. We didn't see him any more after we moved. I was only little, so I guessed that time/money/travel or whatever was the reason.
When I was 11, we had to do a family tree for homework. That's when I learned the chilling truth. It turned out that my grandad, who I thought stayed with us, had actually perished in the conflict in Zimbabwe when he was in the army in the late 70s, when my dad was a baby.
I guess that I must have been seeing his ghost when I was little, which terrified me when I found out. However, as I've gotten older, I've realized how nice it actually was that I was able to see him. A few years ago, I was going to join the army instead of going to college. Just as I was about send off my application form online, my computer shut down.
The two other times I've tried to apply something has stopped me from being able to. The internet has stopped working and shut off, and my car broke down on the way to the assessment centre when I was due for my medical, so I missed the test. I guess he doesn't want the same thing to happen to me.
37. Cuckoo!
My great-grandmother had this house in Mississippi full of cuckoo clocks. Like, she was a collector and had roughly 25-30 of them in the living room alone. She also collected old bottles, hundreds of them in the attic from the early 1900s. That part is not important other than to give you context that she liked to collect things and wasn't crazy.
The one thing she was particular about was having strangers in the house. She hated it. If she didn't already know you, you'd get promptly brow beaten by this angry 90-year-old lady until you left. I saw it happen to solicitors a few times. Well, when she passed, whoever bought the house from the estate turned it into a B&B.
The running joke was that we bet she was turning over in her grave at all those strangers sleeping in her house. The clocks and the rest of her stuff went to people in the family. So, we're watching the local news one night and see that the house, now B&B, caught fire and burned down overnight. When they interviewed the visibly shaken new owner, he said he heard a bunch of cuckoo clocks go off right before the house caught fire.
38. A Helping Hand
It's about 11:30 pm. I'm the only one awake at my girlfriend's house. Secluded. In the woods. I notice her dog is barking out the back window at something, but it's dark. I don't think much of it, but it is a little odd for this time of night. I happen to look up and see the moon looking particularly nice, so I grab some binoculars and go to the door to get her dog's collar—but it's not there.
I ask him, "Where's you collar? Where's your collar, boy”? Feeling a little guilty, I go out without him. I walk about 30 to 40 yards into the field and look at the moon through the binoculars. It looks amazing. There was so much detail through the binoculars. Then, I remember the dog back in the house, and I put the binoculars down.
I look over to the porch and I kind of scan the house. That's when I see it. Someone (a human-like figure) in a blue parka-looking, hooded overcoat is walking from my girlfriend's kitchen into the hallway toward the office. Slowly. Deliberately. I know no one else is awake, so I run to the house.
Nothing. Even the dog is calmly laying on the couch. The hair is standing up on the back of my neck, and I have this feeling like I'm not alone. I check every room, every closet, everywhere in the house. No one. I calm myself down and decide to try to let the dog out again, so I go downstairs to ask my girl where the dog's collar is.
She sleepily says, "It's in the office”. I just about screamed. Was the figure showing me where the collar was? Was he answering my question, “Where is the collar”? I go get the collar. Out loud I say, “Thank you”.
39. The Screaming Bridge
There's a bridge near where I grew up in the sticks of Tennessee that is notorious for screaming at people at night. The screams aren't audible to the houses nearby and supposedly you have to sit on the actual bridge to hear it at all, though I personally haven't tested it or anything.
The common explanation is that it's a bobcat that lives under the bridge, but people have checked with dogs and such and never find signs of any. Well, some friends and myself had heard this story for years all growing up but never tested it. One night after a few drinks we get up the notion we're going to go test the thing.
So five guys pile into a beat up car and we drive down and park on the bridge. This is 1:30 am or so and it's completely silent out. We sat there for a good 45 minutes and nothing happened. We had the windows down and had started debating whether or not it was all lies. Suddenly, we shut our mouths. The scream happened.
We had the lights off and there was a moon so you could see pretty well and there for sure wasn't anything outside the car, but it was loud and it sounded just like a woman with particularly powerful lungs having her skin ripped off right outside the window on the rear passenger side that faced off the edge of the bridge.
Now, I've heard bobcats in heat while hunting and they do like a scream-scream-scream kind of thing. It's hard to describe but they do it in little repeating bursts. This was a good 3-4 second extended scream at incredible volume. We tore out of there like a demon was chasing us. Which it might have been.
A couple of miles down the road, we finally stopped and actually processed what happened. My adrenaline was going so badly and I was so scared I was just shaking uncontrollably. One of my friends had actually peed himself, which I'd never seen anyone actually do. One friend immediately left the car and vomited.
To give what I think was a good frame of reference for how actually terrifying this was, my friend whose car we were in wasn't even mad at the friend that peed all over his seat. It was insane. To this day I have no explanation for it.
40. Busted
Let me start by saying that my house is old, very old. Like 1755 colonial old. All of my friends were always terrified of my house and a couple have been scared out before, but never while I was there. I was always able to brush off the possibility of these occurrences being paranormal because I had to live in this house and if I actually thought ghosts lived there I'd go crazy—until that fateful night.
Because my house was so old we had a shed, a garage, and a barn. The barn is pretty run down, and probably 100 feet down my driveway past my house, relatively deep on the property. Past that is 32 acres of deep dark and scary new England woods, pretty isolated. I ended up using this as a chill spot when I got older, found some beat up couches on the street, and set them up around an old table.
So I'm down there having a little smoke with my friends the summer after I graduated high school, and we hear these footsteps. My driveway is cobblestone so there's a pretty unmistakable crunch of somebody walking toward us. Now we have some paraphernalia on the table, so we're like "AHHH, it's my dad!" We try to hide everything but to no avail.
The footsteps get closer and the extremely heavy barn door just slams shut, like, slams hard. Meanwhile I'm freaking out. I'm thinking my dad just came down and busted us, I'm in so much trouble, yadda yadda. But my friend who was looking toward the door the whole time said he saw nothing, only heard the footsteps.
I didn't believe him, I had to run back up to the house and like hint at it with my dad to see if he was trying to psych us out and if it actually was him. But he sounded so clueless about the whole thing I had no choice but to believe him, even though it took me a while. The wind could have closed the door. But I’ll never know where that unmistakable sound of footsteps on gravel actually came from.
41. Live, Laugh, Loathe
I had just moved to Colorado and was talking to my long-distance boyfriend on the phone. The second I ended the call, my speakers blasted a cacophonous, unearthly rhythm that affected my heart somehow. Along with the sound came the most disturbing feeling. Like I was going to die. It was insane. It was like I just knew I was going to die.
Within a few seconds of the static beat ending, my phone rang again. It was my boyfriend: "I know this is going to sound strange but when I hung up I felt as though I needed to pray for you. Are you okay”? I told him about the static beat from my speakers that had affected my heart’s rhythm, that I was scared for my life, and I knew logically that I had no reason to be.
We prayed over the phone. I made sure my speakers were off (they had been before), I double checked windows and doors were locked with him on the line, and eventually and hesitantly I ended the call. Then, the same thing happened. The same strange, otherworldly noise came through my speakers once the call disconnected.
It was kind of like static but there's really no words to describe it. My heart started missing beats, then galloping, then missing again. I was having a hard time breathing. That's when I caught the reflection in the mirror across the hall. I could see myself sitting on my bed, and I could see the other side of the doorway in the hall. But that wasn't all I saw.
I saw this thing...like, hulking around the corner, trying to sneak into my room. I want to say its edges were made of smoke, but that's not right. It was like looking into a hole in reality. The edges were blurred, malformed, constantly changing like some element I have never seen.
Anyway, it sensed I could see it or something, and it looked at me through the reflection in the mirror. They say it's impossible for a human being to imagine nothing. We have to imagine darkness or space or time or something, since we don't know what nothing is. But holy moly, did I see nothing for the first time looking into this thing’s eyes.
Nothing has no descriptive words other than "nothing". If I had to choose a color it looked like I would say white/clear but it's not right. I don't think I was supposed to see the thing. It fled down the hallway with a blast of static releasing through my speakers.
Afterward, my eyes immediately landed on this foreign writing decoration I had bought that day. It was supposed to say live, love, laugh in a foreign language I cannot read. I immediately knew there was something wrong with it. I tore it off of my wall and threw it out my window.
The feeling that I was going to die was immediately lifted. I got that thing out of my backyard the next day and tossed it. I have never experienced anything so powerful as that since, but I have had a lot of minor experiences since then. I don't mess with Ouija boards or open those kinds of doors. Those doors are meant to stay firmly shut.
42. Not My Problem
I grew up in an old farmhouse where my grandfather had also been born and raised. The house was originally constructed in 1858. I remember hearing stories of how "things" had occupied there off and on throughout the years. My parents' friends stayed overnight one evening on the living room floor.
In the morning they were speaking to my mother about how they had both witnessed what appeared to be a man in like 1700s attire, in the early morning hours, lurking around the bottom of the staircase. My mother asked my grandfather about this (as I was later told) as he might have some insight into this activity as the house had been a part of his entire life.
She said after asking him about such things, his reaction freaked us out. He "turned white and refused to discuss the topic". I had my own experiences in that house growing up there from the age of four and living there until 2001. The craziest thing I ever experienced? My girlfriend at the time (whom I later married) was living with me in the house, early 1998.
Our bedroom was on the second floor. To get a feel for this place, the floor plan of this house was very strange as there was no hallway between rooms. In order to reach the furthest room from the stairs, you had to go through every other room to get there. The closet in our bedroom always made me feel very uneasy, even at a young age.
Mind you, I lived a rather sheltered young life. No crazy movies. Never went to theme parks. Was and still am very connected to nature. In any case, one evening my girlfriend and I were sleeping in this room. At precisely 3:20 am I awoke from a deep sleep for no reason whatsoever.
I began to turn over in the bed to get more comfortable when I realized there was something next to the bed, on her side. I was against the wall. The next few moments felt like an eternity as I gazed upwards in the very dark room, finding that myself and her were not alone. A cloaked figure, face hidden by a hood stood over my girlfriend, looking down at her.
I was awestruck with fear and confused about how to handle something like this situation occurring before me. After approximately a millisecond I came to the proper conclusion that whatever was going on did not involve me. I turned away from what was happening, slowly pulled the blankets over my head and immediately went back to sleep.
43. “This Is Where I’m Buried”
When I was in middle school, my mom and I lived in a normal first-floor apartment. We had lived there for about a year when one night I had a dream that started a couple weeks of strange experiences. In this first dream, I had a little girl who was probably eight-ish visit me in my room. When I saw her, it made me want to vomit.
This girl's face and head was stapled together, like Chucky. She went over to my bed and pulled out a black box, opened it and said "This is where I'm buried". I woke up kind of freaked out and not knowing what to do with the dream. So a couple of days pass and it's after school, and I'm home alone going to the bathroom.
All of a sudden, I hear a little girl's voice right next to my ear real quickly say "Logan," which caused me to run right into the living room and turn on the TV. After this experience, about a week later I had another dream to where this girl came to me again and showed me an old black and white photo, from late 1880s or so.
In this photo there was a dad, a mom, a younger brother, her, and a dog. Again I didn't know what to think of this dream so it slipped to the back of my mind. Well, about a week later I was home alone again after school when I hear a loud knock on the door. I thought it was just my mom needing help with groceries, but when I went to open the door there was this pure black shadow that blocked out all of the sunlight behind it, and was about as tall as the girl from the dream.
As soon as I opened the door though, the shadow teleported to the end of the apartment walkway and just stood there. It felt like it was smiling a kind of menacing smile, like it was saying I could hurt you but I won't. I slammed the door so hard and so fast after that. That was the last paranormal experience I had at that house, and it was the most vivid of my life.
44. Destroy The Evidence
I am an extremely skeptical person, but I've always been interested in researching the paranormal. I have been to a few allegedly EXTREMELY haunted locations, but have never had a true "experience". I had put together a basic toolkit that consisted of a GoPro, an infrared thermal laser, a Nikon DSLR, a digital voice recorder (digital chosen over tape to eliminate mechanical noise), and a friend of mine had a laser field projector and a "spirit box" (I hated that thing) that he would bring with him.
I looked up some of the most haunted places in Oregon, and not once did I have any sort of experience that couldn't be immediately explained. I had begun volunteering to help with tours of the Portland Underground, otherwise known as the Shanghai Tunnels. Because of this, I was allowed to bring in recording devices, visit sections of tunnel not open to the general public, and I had access to the tunnels between tours where I could investigate alone.
On one particular night, we had made use of all the tools mentioned. It's pretty much impossible to identify "orbs" with still pictures down there because of all the dust and dirt you stir up simply by moving. If the bars above are closed, the tunnels are totally silent. The place IS creepy on its own merits.
My buddy tried to get something out of his spirit box, had the laser field set up, and while it was quiet I attempted to catch something on my voice recorder. All the while, my GoPro is running and recording. He swore he saw something in front of us that I didn't see. I told him "if there was something there, the GoPro will have caught it”.
I never found out. After we quit that night, I got in my car, closed the door, put my DSLR in its bag, took the GoPro off the strap, placed it in my center console along with my voice recorder and thermometer, then drove straight home. When I got home, the GoPro was gone. I tore the car apart looking for it and was never able to recover it. I think if ever I had proof, it would have been on that SD card.
45. The Exorcism
This happened one summer in Mexico in a small ranch/village. I saw a girl get "possessed" once. She fainted and I caught her, we put her to bed and started acting weird. She was crying and didn't want to open her eyes because she would see little demons or something. Her dad was murdered when she was young and she kept insisting he wanted her to go with him and said she could see him giving her his hand.
Four grown men struggled to keep her from raising her hand to "grab" her dad's. This went on for a few days with people constantly by her side—but there was one thing that seriously freaked me out. She started speaking English, which she didn't even know. She was also adamant that her crush was going come from work and that she had to take good care of their baby. She didn't have kids.
I forgot how she calmed down, but she ended up leaving to her mother's house in the city where she got better to the point where they felt she was okay to go home to her grandmother's house. As soon as she goes in the room she was in, she burst out running and just kept going and going and going. She left for good.
She ended up coming to the US with family and never really looked back. To this day I don’t know if she just had a mental breakdown or what…but mental breakdowns don't teach you languages you don't speak or make you way stronger than you should be.
46. Location Is Everything
When I was around six or seven we had a cat that had kittens. We knew it had kittens because it was pregnant and then it wasn't anymore. The problem was that we had no idea where the kittens were. I was wondering about it and looked right at the cat and sort of thought in my mind "Where are your kittens”? but without using words if that makes any sense.
Immediately the location came into my mind. It was through some broken boards just above our porch that our cat could jump into from pillars on the side of the porch. I KNEW that they were there. I walked straight over there, climbed onto the stone pillar and looked through the hole in the boards.
The kittens were right there. I've never had a similar experience again in my life.
47. It Follows
Four years ago, I moved into my first apartment. It was a small studio with no bedroom door. It was the first time I've ever lived on my own and I brought my two cats with me. I had a long mirror hanging on my closet door. Many nights I felt like something dark was in the mirror and was watching me.
I kept telling myself that it was in my mind and this was the first time living on my own and I was just trying to get used to things. The sight and feeling happened most nights. But things escalated very quickly. One day I was sitting on my couch and heard a rustling noise and looked over at my trashcan.
It was a swing lid and I watched it swing to the right, then to the left and then it stopped. I walked over to inspect. No vent air was hitting it, both cats were in the bedroom and there wasn't any trash inside. I thought it was strange but pushed it out of my mind.
A couple of months later, a friend and her three-year-old daughter came over and we hung out on my patio. Her daughter kept going in and out of my apartment, shutting the sliding glass door behind her each time. After a while, she ran to the glass door in a panic and opened it, jumped out and slammed it shut.
Then she threw a rock at the glass door. We asked her what was wrong and what scared her. We asked her if the cats scared her or a spider. Her reply was so disturbing, it’s unforgettable. She simply said: "ghost". I was stunned. I hadn't told anyone what was going on before this. After a while, things started to happen more and more.
My cats would fight on my bed or be doing something on my bed and then would all of a sudden stop and look at the top left corner of my bedroom simultaneously. It would ALWAYS be the left corner. I always checked to see if it was a bug or dust or anything else and it wasn't. They would be facing the opposite direction and then both turn and look at that corner.
One day I went into my bedroom to get a winter headband from my closet. I looked at my bed before walking into the closet and for some reason made a mental note that my bed was made and nothing but two pillows were on it. I'm normally a messy person. I walked in my closet knowing the headband was there because I saw it the day before.
I couldn't find it and said screw it, I'll just wear the hat I found. I turned and walked out of the closet and draping off the side of the bed right in front of the closet door was my headband. As time went on, I became more and more freaked out. I started sleeping with the bathroom light on. I woke up one night and experience something that haunts me to this day.
First, I felt two very light footprints at the end of my bed. I looked around and saw one cat fast asleep in the cat tree in the corner and the other fast asleep next to my pillow. Out of the corner of my eye I see the corner of my comforter flip up. Then all of a sudden it felt like a large hand grabbed the right side of my face and I felt like I was spinning and felt sick and kept trying to force my eyes open but I couldn't.
It had to have been for 15 seconds but it felt longer. Finally I was able to open my eyes and the spinning and ill feeling stopped. Shortly after I felt two light footprints at the end of my bed again. Things would happen and then nothing for a couple of months. One night I woke up and saw my hair brush and night cream slam onto the ground.
At first I thought it was my older cat because she liked to knock things over to wake me up. I kept calling her name and my younger cat walked in from the living room to inspect what was going on. I kept calling my older cat’s name and peered into the living room and saw her, and she wouldn't come into the room. She looked scared.
To further explain why it wouldn't be anything else, my bathroom countertop had a round curb that went upwards so something couldn't easily slide off. I had also closed the vent in my bathroom because it would get hot air on to my hair products. After some time, I rented a bigger apartment in that complex.
I went to the first one to clean the bathroom and was there by myself. A figure walked past the door. After moving into my second apartment, I thought my nightmare was over—I was so wrong. The realization that I was being followed by the spirit came to light. It knocked on my door and without realizing it, I let it in.
Thus more things have happened and now living in a townhouse, it still appears every so often.
48. Every Rose Has Its Thorn
Growing up, my family and I lived in an old carriage barn-nursery that was built late sixties and early seventies by two men. One was a bachelor who eventually sold us the place and the other was a single dad. Well, apparently while building the place, the dad had a heart attack and didn’t make it.
I should also mention that the area this place was built in was known for finding Native American artifacts; arrow heads, pottery shards, etc. Many years later, 2001, my family buys the place. From the get go, spooky things occur. I was seven at the time and I would sleep walk, occasionally waking my parents up and telling them there was a man in the house.
Things that were in cupboards before we all went to sleep would be on the counter in the morning or in the sink as though they'd just been used. Well one winter morning, I'm like 11 or 12, I wake up super cold. I apparently walked outside the house in the middle of the night and into the rose garden, ending up under a Lady Banks rose that hadn't been doing very well.
My face and hands were all scratched up like I'd been pulling at the bush. I pick myself up and go back inside. Later that day my mom tells me she wants me to transplant the exact bush to a place with more sun, maybe that'll help it. So I go down to the garden and begin digging up the bush, being careful of the roots and all as I dig around it.
Eventually I hear the noise of metal shearing on metal. I think ugh, mom and dad are going to be angry I broke an irrigation pipe. I reach down into the hole I dug and feel a sharp corner. I dig a little more and find a slightly rusted metal box with a lock on it. Buried treasure, my over active mind assumed.
I smack the box open and inside is a sheaf of paper wrapped in a sandwich baggie. I read them out loud. That’s when I learned the heartbreaking truth. It was a "goodbye" note written by the girl whose father had the heart attack while building the place. Apparently in her teens, she was so distraught at losing her father and the prospect of having to live with her mother’s family that she took her own life.
After that day, I never had visions of a man coming to me in my sleep again. I stopped sleep waking too.
49. Hush Little Baby…
My wife and I were living at my Grandma’s house and we had the entire upstairs. We were in the master bedroom and our three-month-old daughter was in a front bedroom across the hall from us. We had one of those new fancy baby monitors that has the breathing sensor and all that. Honestly, if our daughter turned wrong this stupid thing went off, but we kept on with it as we were new parents.
One night while trying to go to sleep, my wife and I were lying in bed talking about the weeks’ happenings. Basically just chatting till we got tired enough to go to sleep. We finally stopped talking and were ready to sleep so we turned up the baby monitor so it would be loud enough to wake us if the alarm sounded, or if our daughter started crying for one reason or another.
As I lay there trying to nod off, I heard a bone-chilling sound. It was breathing over the monitor—but adult breathing. It was kind of distorted, like bad reception. So I would listen more carefully to be sure it wasn’t malfunctioning. I heard my daughter moving around, and that came through clear. After a bit, I figured it was just some interference with the monitor.
However, a few moments later I heard clear as day over the monitor an older woman’s voice saying ”Shhhh, it’s ok”. In a very soft and almost comforting tone. However, being a new father living where we did, I freaked out. I leapt out of bed, thinking that someone is in my daughter’s room about to abduct her or something.
I ran through the hall and burst into her room. Her room was near pitch black but for the little toy thing we had on her crib. It would give a constant soft glow, and if there was noise, be it a kick or crying, it would turn on and move and play soft music. That was on in the middle of its song, but my daughter appeared sound asleep and no one was in the room.
Figuring I must have dreamt the voice, I walked over to pick up my daughter to comfort her. When I picked her up, I noticed she was very, very warm. I checked her temperature and it was a dangerous 103 degrees. Now, before we put her to bed she was fine, only three hours had passed since then which probably means her temperature would have continued rising throughout the night…had something not made me go in there.
My wife and I can only conclude to this day that the ghost of the old woman that we are pretty sure is in my grandma’s house was the one who got me in there. My grandma’s house is over 110 years old and holds a lot of history. So, to this day we are thankful to this ghost or happening, or whatever you want to call it, and are quite certain that whatever it was, it saved our child’s life.
50. Never Use A Ouija Board
My sister and her friends were going through that Ouija board phase way back when. A girl in our school had recently been murdered, and they decided it would be a good idea to try and contact her. It was actually a horrific idea. The board kept spelling out "S-A-D, S-A-D'', over and over.
At this point in time, the assailant was not known. They asked about who it was or how they could find this person. There was some mention of a white knitted jumper of sorts, and they also received a mobile number. One of the girls dialed the number, and it rang. Someone answered, she asked who it was. It was someone local. Later, we learned the chilling truth.
That person eventually turned out to be the brother of the culprit. I actually ended up in court having to testify over this case later on because I was out that night with a few friends and had seen the accused over the course of the evening. I guess my testimony put him in those locations at specific times.
I also happened to notice he was wearing different clothes later in the night…one item was a white knitted jumper. When I was on the stand, that jumper was held in front of me as bagged evidence, and I was asked if I recognized it. I will never forget that.
Sources: Reddit,
