There are certain things in life that just defy all logic. No, I’m not talking about how people can eat pineapple on pizza. Over the years, we may have experiences that are so eerie and terrifying that they haunt us for years and can’t be explained. These Redditors came together to share their stories of the mysterious incidents that have stuck with them to this day—and they’re utterly bone-chilling.
1. Stigmata
I was in high school and a group of classmates, our teacher, and I were exploring an abandoned mental hospital. It was broad daylight, but I saw nothing scary. Honestly, the building felt sad to me. We left and as we're walking down the street, a classmate says, “Hey, there's blood on your leg.” And indeed, there was blood down the side of my right leg and on my sock.
I stopped at a public restroom and washed my leg. It was unblemished. I hadn't bumped into something and gotten even the tiniest scrape or cut. There was no reason at all for blood to have run down my leg and dried there—unless it came from inside the abandoned building.
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2. Second Chance
My dad passed on when I was 15. A few days before, he had called me and left a voice mail that just said he was trying to make sure I still needed a ride somewhere and that he loved me. A year later, a few days before the anniversary of his passing, my phone buzzed. It said that I had a voice mail. I knew I hadn't missed a call, because I was using my phone when it popped up.
When I listened to it, I burst into tears. It was that voice mail from a year ago. It was crazy because I had been super upset some months previously. I used to listen to that voicemail to hear him say he loved me again, but one day my mailbox automatically deleted it because it was too old. It’s like he gave it back to me, so I could record it and keep it forever.
3. Not-So-Shaggy Dog Story
One night, I came home from a date at about 11 pm. The house was dark and I didn’t switch on any lights ‘cause I know my way around. I went straight to the bathroom, and on my way back down the corridor, I bumped into my dog, a Shar-Pei. He is as big as my mid-thigh. I told my boy I love him and he should be sleeping, but good boy for checking on his mom.
I open my bedroom door, which was almost entirely closed, and switch on the light at the same time—only to see him on my bed, sleeping. He lifted his head when the light came on to look at me. I would've heard him or felt him move past me if he beat me to the bedroom from the corridor. I was alone. What bumped into me?
4. Farewell To Arms
It was about 1973. I went to work like any other day. I got out of the car and walked to the entrance. On the way, I saluted Warrant Officer Fardy, as I always did. But this time, there was something different. That day, he was in uniform, but he usually wore civilian clothes. He waved me on and said he'd be in the office in a minute.
I got to my office, expecting to be the first one there. I always got there first because I was the lowest ranking guy in the office and had to make the coffee. I was surprised that the chief, a captain, and his senior sergeant were already in the office. The captain asked me to sit down at my desk. I thought I was in trouble. He said he had some bad news—but what he told me truly made my blood run cold.
He said that Warrant Officer Fardy had been in a head-on collision at 3 am that morning and hadn’t made it. I protested, saying that I had just seen him outside in the parking lot. The captain said he and the sergeant had identified the body just an hour earlier. I still can’t explain it.
5. Following In Your Footsteps
I had just moved into a new house. One day, I was downstairs when I heard what sounded like furniture moving around upstairs, I go up to investigate but no sounds, nothing is moved. I go back downstairs and it starts again, I go back up; nothing. This went on for about an hour; I almost called law enforcement because I was positive someone was in my home.
I ended up calling a friend and kept them on speaker phone while I searched the attic and any other place something, maybe an animal, could be hiding, but I never found anything. I gave up my search and went to bed. I thought it was over but then, things got even creepier. That night I had a dream that I was driving to work in the rain and fog and crashed.
In the dream, someone approached me and asked: "Are you ready to move on?" and at that moment, I woke up. At the time, I was working midshift, so around 10 PM that same day I get in the car on a foggy and rainy night and make my way into work without any issue. The building I worked in had security cameras all over. It being so late, I was the only person coming in.
When I get inside, my co-worker asked me a bone-chilling question. They told me they’d seen me come in on the cameras and were wondering who I’d come in with. I was alone but she swore someone followed me inside. It was a very unnerving 12 hours to say the least.
6. Don’t You Forget About Me
It’s weird how we can just accept it when really strange and terrifying things happen to us. My grandmother, or gran, passed on in our family home when I was 16. Her room was directly above our dining room. When she was alive, she'd been fond of sitting for hours in her rocking chair while watching TV. In the months after she passed, I kept hearing the floorboards in her room creaking whenever I was downstairs in the dining room.
It was like she was still there rocking away in her chair. We had double-glazed windows, so it was definitely not the wind. On one occasion, I was in the shower and the bathroom door blew open and I heard someone calling my name. My gran used to come into the bathroom to use the toilet whenever I was showering when she'd been alive.
Again, there was no wind so there was no explanation for the door suddenly opening by itself. On another occasion, I'd been talking to my stepmother about my gran when all of a sudden a photo fell down from a cabinet in the dining room. That photo had been secured with blue tack and had been standing for over 15 years.
It was like my gran was there listening to us and wanted us to know she was there. Despite all that happening, I always just carried on as if nothing terrifying was happening and never actually told my parents about the weird stuff that happened when they left me alone at home.
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7. Tuesday’s Gone
One time, I went to sleep Monday night and woke up Wednesday morning. Everyone I asked about it told me that I had done my routine on Tuesday perfectly normally, gotten out of bed, washed up, ate breakfast, went to school, attended classes, played video games for a few hours, are dinner, then went back to sleep. But I remember absolutely none of it. It doesn’t make any sense.
8. Coming Attractions
I once had a weird dream about these two men and a woman at a waterpark. They were walking forward, so my POV was behind them. The woman only had one leg so she had one arm wrapped on one man’s shoulder and her other arm wrapped on the other man’s shoulder. I realized that it was a bit strange but I thought nothing of it.
Fast forward a few months later. I went to El Salvador with my family and we went to a waterpark. At this waterpark, I see those exact same people in the same POV I had seen in my dream—but that wasn’t the weirdest part. The whole world went black and I only saw those people; There was a black bar on the top and a black bar on the bottom, like on a movie screen.
I only saw them and no one else. I have no clue why it occurred, and no one believes me when I tell the story.
9. Gone Girl
I live in a beach town and one of my friends had just got back to her parents’ house for the summer, so I went over to hang out for a little while. Since it wasn’t late when I went to go home, I figured I’d take the long way home to drive along the bay for the view of the stars and the lights of the ships waiting to go up the river.
When I got to the road that runs along the bay, I realized I wasn’t going to see anything because heavy fog had rolled in which is super common in the spring. This road is a 25mph road with the beach and trails over the dunes on the left, and houses on the right. I was driving along the road with pretty bad visibility with how foggy and dark it was.
All of a sudden from my left, I see a figure coming up the dune and towards the road. I slammed on my brakes hard enough to skid a little, because I thought it was someone coming off the beach to go to a house across the road and I didn’t want to hit them. I’ll never forget what I saw. It had the shape of a woman in a long dress…but there were no facial features.
When it got to the middle of the road, the figure just floated up at an angle and disappeared. There wasn’t a beach access trail where I saw it and I can’t figure out any logical explanation for the way it hovered and took off. I stopped and watched it until it disappeared, trying to figure it out. It freaked me out pretty bad honestly, and even 5-6 years later I still can picture the way it moved like it was yesterday.
10. Not-So-Private Investigator
My sophomore year of high school, I took a different bus to hang out with my friend for a bit before going home since they were nearby. I started walking home, eventually getting to my street before turning into my neighborhood. I was just walking on the sidewalk when I noticed a blonde woman sitting in a gray car with her window rolled down on the other side of the street, facing me.
At first, I didn’t think anything of it. I’m a very observant person so I tend to look around a lot when I’m walking. I glance back over and I notice she has a big camera with a big lens on it, which she is clearly pointing at me and is following me with it as I walk in her direction. I see her take a flash photo of me, put the camera down, then roll up her window and drive around the corner.
I tried to walk along where she drove to see if she was hanging around the corner, but she was gone. It’s been maybe 10 years and I still think about it.
11. Truth In Dadvertising
My father and I have a pretty easygoing relationship. We love to joke with each other. One day, I saw him walk out of his room and go to the bathroom. I remember waving hello, and he waved back with a smile. Moments later, I see him walk out of his room AGAIN, and I tell him, “Dad, I literally just saw you walk to the bathroom a few seconds ago.”
As I mentioned the easygoing relationship, he must have thought I was joking, and replied, “Yep, I have now unlocked teleportation abilities.” Obviously, I knew that this was impossible. For some reason, though, I never talked about it. All I know is that I saw something go from one place to another, and it interacted with me. Maybe he was telling the truth!
12. Better Late Than Never
I'm a 9-1-1 dispatcher about 5:30 one morning I took a call from a lady saying she thought she was having a heart attack. After getting her address, and all the normal questions, I ask her if she wants me to stay on the phone with her till the ambulance gets there, but she declined, saying she still had to get dressed because the chest pain woke her up and she was still in her nightclothes.
From the time I answered the call till the ambulance arrived there was 17 minutes, as it was. A rural area. The ambulance gets to the scene and almost immediately called for a deputy, saying the patient is deceased. Now, I just talked to the lady and she wasn't having a lot of difficulty breathing at the time of the call or anything, so I'm kind of shocked.
I send my deputy and ask him, because I'm thinking that she must have just passed on, and the EMS crew didn't want to work on her because it was almost time to go home. The deputy got back to me, and his answer was devastating. He said that she had been gone for a couple of hours at least. So, I wonder, was there initially someone else in the house who woke up to find her, and called us pretending to be her before leaving?
Did someone come to visit (at 5:30 am), only to find her, call us saying they were there, and leave? Did her ghost just want her body found? I'm clueless, but have had this type of thing happen a handful of times in my 30+ years of dispatching.
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13. Caught In The Act
In 1988, my wife and I were renting a refurbished house that was part log cabin from the 1700s. I was on the john in the bathroom when I heard three very loud knocks on the wall beneath the bathroom window. I looked out the window and there was nothing. 30 seconds later, it happened again, and again, nothing outside.
Later, my wife and I decide to plant some stuff beneath the bathroom window outside. When we dug about four inches down, we hit a concrete slab. It turns out the bathroom used to be the front door to the log house. Spooky as heck.
14. An Otherworldly Symphony
About 20 years ago, I lived in a super cute apartment that was next to a creek. The master bedroom had French doors that led to a deck that went all the way to the creek bed. The bedroom my five-year-old daughter was in also overlooked the creek. One night I was woken up by a super bright light and strange music that sounded like a calliope, but electronic.
I got out of bed and looked out, and I saw several little silver creatures wading in the creek. It was the strangest thing, but somehow very peaceful and while I was startled, this feeling of calm came over me and I felt like they were watching me back. I stood there for a minute and then went back to sleep. When I woke up the next day, there was nothing there, and no evidence that anything had been.
I was convinced I just had a crazy dream. I never spoke to anyone about it because it was so strange, it couldn’t possibly have been real. Two years ago…give or take…I went away for the weekend with my now-adult daughter and we were reminiscing about different things and that apartment came up. Then she told me something that rocked me to my core.
She says, “the weirdest thing happened there one night…” and told me about the “silver clowns” in the creek that played “merry-go-round music.” She didn’t tell me at the time because she didn’t think that they were scary. What the heck?
15. Jekyll & Hyde Act
An uncle who I was very close to passed on. He had been estranged from his wife for years, living on and off the streets. Sometimes I allowed him to stay with me for weeks at a time. He was a hoot and the kids and I loved him. After he passed, I started feeling a certain heaviness in my home. While it was somewhat discomforting, it didn't scare me because it didn't feel malevolent, if that makes any sense.
But then everything changed. As the weeks went by, weird stuff started happening. I'd get whiffs of cigarette smoke even though no one smoked in the house, and I’d hear someone walk around. One night, I woke up and my chest felt constricted and tight. Once again, I felt that same heaviness in my room, the feeling of being watched.
There was this overwhelming scent of Old Spice cologne and this really, evil, awful presence. I'm not religious, but I prayed and l slept in my kids' room that night with a night light on. It took me a long time to fall asleep, I was so scared. At the risk of sounding nutty, I do believe that that was my uncle this whole time. He was a chainsmoker and wore Old Spice, even though we used to tease him about wearing old man's cologne.
What I can't explain is, if that was him, then why that awful, evil feeling from him...or whatever that was? I never used to believe in the paranormal, but I do now.
16. The Elephant In The Room
We bought our house a few years back. Fixer-upper, old city house in what is now a “bad neighborhood,” but was nice back in the day. Bought from the boomer nephew who inherited it from his blind aunt. Fire sale. The same price people pay for a new car, not even a nice one. It’s a three-bedroom with an addition, on a corner lot. An absolute steal.
Upstairs, there was a sealed room. When we got it open, we saw that it was the size of a very large walk-in closet, low sloped ceiling on one side, and a toilet (hooked up) on one end. This space is filled with a nest-looking pile of junk: newspapers, old blankets, old toys. Next to the toilet on the small DIY platform, there was a faded blue toy elephant, very old, from the 70s or earlier, clearly deliberately placed facing the door.
The lock to the room is on the outside. We just said “nope” and sealed it back up. Didn’t touch a thing. It’s right above my office. I finish up in my office and go to bed before 10 every night, because that’s when I start hearing footsteps above me. Hey, it’s better than having to pay rent.
17. The Longest Trip Of All
Was delivering newspapers on my paper route when a long-time customer pulled his car next to me and asked me to just give him his daily newspaper now because he was going on a long trip. I handed him his newspaper then skipped his house as I continued my route. The next day I was collecting the weekly fees—you used to have to go collect the money back then, no internet payment yet—and I went to his house to collect my fee.
His wife answers and promptly complains that I missed her house on my deliveries the day before. I explained to her that her husband pulled up next to me, I told her what he said and that I gave him the paper. She started crying, told me that he had passed on a couple of weeks ago and it was obviously not possible that I spoke with her husband the day before.
I know what I saw and nearly 30 years later I still think about that situation. I have no way to logically explain what happened and it still gives me the creeps.
18. The Answer Is “Yes”
Many years ago, my best friend and I were in a café, just wasting time. We saw a man watching us through this mirror that was hanging on a wall across from us. Something about this man was so bone-chilling, so creepy, that our “gut” immediately kicked in and we both looked at each other, and acknowledged how off this man was.
He continued to watch us, so we left the cafe and joked about on our walk home, we were about 16 and just brushed it off. About a week later, this man comes into my work, his face and whole presence are unforgettable. I texted my best friend and informed her that he was at my work, yet again, staring at me without ever looking away.
He was pretending to browse the store’s inventory, but obviously intended on not buying anything. He stared & stared. I told a co-worker and walked away for a bit. Strange, but it’s small community and you see people everywhere. Side note, both my best friend and I have lived in this community for most our lives and had never seen this man before.
Alright, fast forward to a few weeks later and we are at a store late one evening in a completely different part of the city. We are browsing and the man is there, at this shop that we hardly visit, late, and he was there. He walks in the downstairs entrance and looks directly up at us, as we were looking over the upstairs railing.
We nervously giggle and shout profanities, in disbelief this really off-putting man is here, it was crazy. We told our other friends we were with and we immediately left. A little later, he returned to my place of work, spooking me just as much as he did the first time I saw him. My co-worker and manager told me to go upstairs and pretend to do something to not be around him.
But then he immediately followed me upstairs. My manager followed him, as he is aware of the situation and my strange sightings of this man. He hastily walked up to the desk I was behind and before my manager could pull him away from me and ask him to leave the store, he looked right at me and says “Can I ask you something? Do I make you uncomfortable?”
I don’t know what it was, but something took over my body. I was filled with dread and fear and immediately started crying. I have NEVER had anything like this happen to me. This man had never talked to me before, just looked at my friend and I really intently. My manager tells him he needs to go now and never come back.
The thing is, everyone immediately picked up on the very strange, creepy, uncomfortable “energy” he put out. My co-worker had no idea what he looked like as I had never explained, and he immediately pointed him out when he entered our work and asked if that was him. Everyone agreed something was very, very off.
Our HR woman asked that I be walked to my car if I was getting off work late from that point on. I wish I could convey with better and more descriptive words what kind of feeling this man put off. My best friend and I still discuss it, it was nine years ago.
19. Goodbye Stranger
I was driving down a dark highway in Alabama with my fiancé when two white orbs, about 3-5 inches in diameter, came through the upper right side of my windshield and out through the roof. I thought I lost my mind, but she looked equally as shocked as I did, and she described the exact same thing. But the whole terrifying experience didn’t stop there.
We were still in a bit of a shock a couple of minutes later when we came upon an SUV flipped upside down. A lone law enforcement officer waved us around the wreck. No one was in the car, so we guessed the EMTs already came. We can’t shake the feeling that maybe the two orbs were two people who lost their lives in that accident.
20. Lighting Strikes Twice
When I was in high school I used to work at a movie theater. One night while doing a theater check I stopped and looked at one of my managers and told her that we were going to get hit by lightning. Maybe 10-15 seconds later lightning struck. We had to and evacuate because we lost power. Didn't get the power turned back on till the next afternoon.
21. Subter-Fugue
When I was in the Forces, I once lost an entire week. It was just gone. Saturday through Friday...nothing. Perfectly blank. I didn't even realize I'd lost it until some friends and I were eating and they were like, "Hey, where were you yesterday? We didn't see you." I opened my mouth to answer, and then closed it when I realized I had no idea.
I had no idea where I was, what I'd eaten, who I'd talked to, nothing. Then, I realized that the last thing I could remember was filling out some paperwork the previous Friday. It was a little bit terrifying, so I began to investigate. I checked my internet history and apparently I read through a couple of books. I couldn't remember a single thing about them.
I also looked through my schedule and the past week of texts with my supervisor to see if that would jog something—nada. I did eventually recover one memory from that week, and it chills me to the bone. All I ever remembered was a flash of myself walking out of a room, but it was in third-person, like I was watching from outside my body.
It was seriously the weirdest thing.
22. Two Against One
I was driving at night after a football game as a high school student. My younger sister was in the passenger seat and my friend was in the middle back seat, leaning forward to chat with us. We were dropping my friend off before heading home and driving down a pretty dark road to get there. We lived in a rural area, so there were no street lights.
All of a sudden, my sister and friend both gasp. I immediately stepped on the brakes, thinking they must have seen a deer or something. They were both in shock, and when I asked them what they say, their answer sent a chill down my spine. They asked me if I had just seen “that old man who flashed up in the middle of the road and then disappeared.”
Here’s the thing: I had my eyes on the road, but I hadn’t seen anything. They were both so shocked and had the exact same reaction. My friend was so scared that he didn’t even want to get out of the car at his house.
23. Always Looks Twice Before Crossing
One time I was walking home along a route I take frequently, which crosses a busy street. The crosswalk was counting down and was about to turn so I broke into a jog to cross the street before it hit zero. When I was two steps into the street I blinked and I was back on the curb and the crosswalk had just turned to a walk symbol like it hadn't just been counting down.
I then crossed the street like normal. No idea what happened, I cross there all the time and it hasn't happened again.
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24. Shell Shock
I had an experience where I came upon a really bad three-car accident early one morning before anyone had responded. It was so bad that at first I thought it had to be some kind of staged accident like they do to warn teens about reckless driving and show them the wreckage. There was debris all over the road, and a guy obviously already long gone in a car up against the side rail.
There was a girl lying face down with a horrible compound fracture to one arm that was already pooling blood. I knew not to try and move her so I held her other hand, the one that wasn’t fractured, and told her not to move, that there had been an accident but help was on the way. By that time, other people had stopped and I could hear the sirens off in the distance.
There are no words that can capture what happened next. I struggle to tell this part because I can’t convey it nearly as incredible as it was. As I was holding her hand suddenly I felt what I can only describe as feeling like an electric ball about the size of a softball, it was very warm and tingling, kind of like when you touch your tongue to a battery, but way more intense.
It pressed itself into my palm from hers with a solid pressure, I didn’t see anything but I felt something I’ve never felt before or since. It moved up my arm very deliberately and I could feel it pass onto my shoulder up the side of my neck and then rise into the air above my head and it was gone. As it left, I suddenly not only felt completely calm, but knew that she was gone and there was nothing more I could do for her, but that somehow that was okay.
I checked for her pulse and there was none. I calmly walked back to my car, and that was it. I traveled that road regularly and had left extra early that morning to get a jump on paperwork. It made me question a lot of things.
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25. Kissing That House Goodbye
When I was about six years old, I lived in an old house that was just opposite the village church. I'd never had any other experiences in this house and I never would again, but I woke up in the middle of the night because I could hear someone walking across my room very slowly like they didn't want to be heard. Now, my mum often worked late and would come and say goodnight when I was asleep, but she'd have the hall light on or her room light on so she could see.
This night was totally dark. The footsteps came right up to the side of my bed and stopped, so after about 30 seconds, I started to relax because it’s an old house and stuff creaks. And then, I got kissed on the left side of my cheek. And I screamed. My mum woke up and came storming in asking what was going on and was I okay, so I tried to explain.
We moved a year later and she won't talk about it, but it leads me to believe that wasn't the only thing that happened.
26. Sleepmunching
A couple of weeks ago I was staying the night in a hotel with my sister and niece. We went to bed in a king bed, with my niece between me and my sister. I woke up multiple times because it was too hot—I don’t think any of us had the blankets over us after just a couple of hours. I woke up at 1:30 am to what sounded like my niece shuffling around outside of the bed.
Eventually, she started eating some ice from the ice pail to cool down, and while I was awake, I decided to finally get up and turn on the AC. So, I got up, slugged over to the AC on my side of the bed, turned it on, and laid back down—only to make a chilling realization. My niece and sister were both sound asleep. I was so spooked.
I practically held my breath for five minutes absolutely convinced someone was in the room with us before I decided to get up and check the room with my flashlight. But, I didn't find anything. I want to blame it on the grogginess, but the ice munching was undeniable.
27. Movers And Shakers
One night I woke up slightly and reached out to use the wall to push myself onto my other side and I half fell out of bed. My bed was 4 feet from the wall, where it was usually flush against it. I slept in the living room for a week, but it never did happen again
28. Don’t Cry U.F.O.
When I was a teen, I was playing in the snow with friends, building tunnels behind my parents’ house. There were five of us and it was about dusk. As we were playing, some object with multicolored lights flew in and hovered off to our north about 50 feet away. I ran on the porch and called for my mother. As I waited, I looked over the railing.
We all were just frozen, looking at the strange object. What seemed like five minutes passed with no sign of my mom. It abruptly flew off as I went to call for my mom again—but that’s not the weirdest part. She yelled to me that she wasn’t going to come back and look if we were going to hide again. We hadn’t hidden at all.
We were there in plain view, standing out in the open. No one talked about it after, but it is burned in my memory 25 years later.
29. Dropping In To Drop Out
When I was in summer school, I went to see the school nurse for something. She looked at me in surprise, and said, "Why are you still here?" I was confused, so I asked her what she meant. She said, "You were here about 20 minutes ago and said you were going to stop coming to summer school. We had a whole conversation about it, but you insisted on leaving. Now you're back. What's going on?" I was stunned, as I'd been in class all along.
30. The Power Of Suggestion
I came home from work late at night and when I walked in the house, Amazon Alexa started naming off funeral homes unprompted. No thanks!
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31. Your First Mistake Was Ouija Board In The Woods
I visited family in a small town one year and we decided to use the Ouija board in the woods. The area was sparsely populated and there were large areas of unlit woods. We went back into a section where there was an opening surrounded by trees and a small family plot. Five of the headstones had the same last names and each had a pinwheel, there was little to no wind that night.
After a bit of unsuccessful Ouija boarding illuminated by truck headlights and flashlights, my cousin started shouting for me to come over. He said that he had asked if anyone was there to give a sign. The pinwheel on the largest headstone was spinning wildly, and did so for roughly another twenty seconds. The other pinwheels never moved and it came to a sudden stop and didn't move again.
Even if you blow on a pinwheel as hard as you can, it spins fast for an instant and stops spinning period soon after. This pinwheel was rapidly spinning without being messed with for at least 30 seconds. Strange and unexplained.
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32. Pay With The Beat Of The Drum
The Drums. For context, I'm part Native American but hardly look it, my great-grandfather was full-blooded but we don't really have much connection to that ancestry since he was put into foster care in his youth and records from that time regarding Native Americans are...not great. Six years ago I was very sick. My housemate at the time checked up on me a few times and forced some orange juice down my throat, but for the most part I lay in bed sweating and hallucinating.
I was out for 10 full days and lost 15 lbs. in that time. I definitely should have gone to the hospital, but luckily ended up pulling through on my own. When I saw my mom a few weeks later, I was talking about the different hallucinations I had, like how my pillows and blankets were in a battle with each other over my body, swimming through syrup, and such—until I got to the drums.
There were a few times at my worst that I had heard deep drums playing, what sounded like 5-10 at a time. My mom’s reaction was terrifying. She turned white as a sheet when I mentioned it. She said that she had never told me about the drums, but she had heard them too, as had her mother, only when they were deathly ill.
In looking up the phenomenon it seems like there's some connection between the sound of drums and heartbeats and healing in the tribe we are related to (Ojibwe), but we can't really explain it. Coincidence? Ancestral memories? I'm an atheist (and anti-theist even) but part of me believes that I was on the verge of passing on, and either the drums were the indication of how close I got or something pulling me back from the brink. Either way I'm not eager to hear them again anytime soon.
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33. I Always Feel Like…Somebody’s Watching Me
I grew up on a fairly isolated farm, with a wood that came up to the barn on one side and acres of fields between us and any neighbor. Every night when I'd finish chores, I'd shut off the barn light and close the door. The only light would be from a dim porch light about 40 yards from the barn, and, if it wasn't too overcast or foggy, the moon and stars.
Anyway, every night I'd FEEL something staring at me from around the corner of the barn. I somehow knew it had red eyes, and was about 10 feet off the ground. I could feel evil coming from it, and I'd always run to the house as fast as I could, certain it was right behind me. I didn't know what it was, and as terrified as I was, I never told anyone about it.
My parents had a habit of dismissing stuff like that, and even as a kid I didn't want to be seen as a “sissy crybaby,” which is definitely what my dad would have called me. With time I kinda got over it, and figured it was an overactive imagination combined with too many Goosebumps stories that caused it. That is, until about eight years later.
I'm sitting around swapping spooky stories with my friend, who basically grew up on the farm. She said that as soon as the lights were off in the barn, she felt something scary and evil staring at her from...the same corner of the barn. I asked a few questions, and yes, she felt it was about 10 feet off the ground, and even though she never actually saw whatever it was, she was sure it had red eyes.
I was freaking out, and it got worse when I asked my siblings if they had ever been scared by anything near the barn. I was careful not to ask leading questions, and EVERY. SINGLE ONE. of them said the same thing. There was a scary thing that would stare from the corner of the barn when they'd turn off the light. I know it was just a feeling that we all grew out of...but how likely is it that we all felt the same thing from the same place?
34. Sleepfolding
When I was about 10 years old, I fell asleep under the covers. I woke in the middle of the night to find the covers off…but they were neatly folded and placed just above my pillow. I'll never understand this, and my best explanation is that I did it while sleepwalking. The problem is that I was young enough that I’d never folded my sheets before.
I did not have muscle memory for it, and that I have no history of sleepwalking before or after this night.
35. Nevermind!
I got home really late from a trip, about two in the morning. I had to park on a dimly lit side street to get to my place. As a single female in her late 20s, I call someone when I have to walk alone in the dark like that. I call my dad, who is in a different time zone and three hours behind. He knows the drill, and we’re just chatting.
As I’m walking up the hill to my condo building, there’s a cluster of small trees and shrubs across the street where a fence ends and a bank parking lot begins. Two shady-looking guys come out. At first, I thought they were out for a smoke. They then started walking toward me. Not toward another building or car, right toward me.
They then separate and one is on either side of me, which felt like I was being surrounded. As this happens, I tell my dad, which they can both hear from where they are, “I have two guys coming toward me, I think you need to call 9-1-1.” As soon as that happened they made a 90-degree turn and headed down the street. I still think about it often.
I still don’t know whether it was all in my head or not, but that was a terrifying experience. Since that time, I’ve parked in the lot that’s well lit. It really scared some sense into me. Scared my poor dad as well.
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36. Jeremy Spoke
My much-loved brother-in-law Jeremy lost his life in a horrific car accident. A year later, on the first anniversary of the accident, my husband was cooking dinner when he got a phone call. When he checked the caller ID, he was stunned. It was from Jeremy’s phone, even though the phone has been destroyed in the crash.
My husband started shaking, getting weak, and sank onto the floor. He could not pick it up. He knows it was his brother’s way of letting him know he loved him and that it was going to be ok. It really unsettles me, but it actually brought him a lot of peace and healing in his grief.
37.A Visit For The Visitors
I was about 20 years old and my husband and I were staying with his friends in West Palm Beach, FL. In the middle of the night, my husband screamed. I opened my eyes and there was a dark figure of a man standing at the foot of the bed. He stood at my husband's feet. I screamed and leapt out of the bed hitting the wall light switch.
Then, all of a sudden, the figure disappeared and our friends were banging on the door. It was very strange that we both saw the exact same thing.
38. Nine Lives And Even More Friends
I didn’t want a cat, I am a dog person. I had a dog, but my stepbrother started feeding this stray cat that was hanging around my condo. Eventually, the cat and I became best buds. I brought him with me as I moved around, eventually moving in with my now-wife and her two cats at her house. A couple of years go by, her two old cats pass on, I bury them in the yard before they stink up the place.
No drama, just nice end of life passing. Now it’s just this cat, me, my wife, and my deceased mom’s old chihuahua. It’s a nice neighborhood of quiet working families in South Florida. The cat starts to develop a weird cough, it persists, I take him to the vet. They inform me that they can’t help him, and he should be put down, it will only get worse.
I can’t do it. He seems healthy, eats good, is still active, but the cough does get worse, and he starts struggling to breathe. I try to prepare myself for the inevitable. He continues like nothing is wrong. He would sit on the armrest of any chair I sat in, sleep on the bed by my head, just staying near me all the time. But finally, I can't deny it anymore. His breathing is getting bad, with long moments of him gasping for breath.
I don’t want him to suffer, I call the vet and set the appointment, it’s getting dark. Now the crazy part. I take him in the backyard to a favorite spot. We sit for a few minutes saying goodbye, my wife leaves us, just me, and him, and a couple of shots of whiskey to settle my nerves. But then, he jumps up and takes off. We are looking everywhere, can’t find him, he’s gone.
A couple of hours later I’m out back still looking, I don’t want him to spend his final moments alone. My wife calls me on my cell and says that a strange cat is at the front door, and is trying to get in the house. I’m confused, I don’t think I’ve ever noticed another cat in the neighborhood. I start walking inside and I see my cat lying in the flower bed in a nice little nest of leaves.
I pick him up, he’s calm, and we start to go inside when my wife, now coming out the back door to get me, yells there’s another strange cat at the back door also trying to get in the house. To get to the back door, you need to go through the screen room, past the pool, through the sliding glass doors to the sunroom.
As I walk up holding my cat, it just watches us go by as I creep past it to get in the house. My wife and I are both in our 40s, calm in an emergency, seen it all kind of people who always think there’s a logical explanation for everything. I put my cat on the couch and go out the front door, and sure enough, there is a different strange cat trying to get in the front door.
As I look around, there are about three or four other cats around the yard at a distance watching also. I go back inside, the cat at the back door is clawing at the glass to get in, the one at the front is making strange noises, my cat is still sitting on the couch struggling to breathe. We are freaked out. It’s been a long night, we lock the doors and go to sleep.
I spring awake at about 4 am and look for my cat who had a rough night, I find him in my closet curled up on some clothes, not doing good. I get dressed, let my wife say goodbye. I take him to the emergency vet, it’s about 5:30 am. They quietly give him the needle, and he slowly stops gasping for breath while lying peacefully in my arms.
I returned home, all the other cats were gone. We have not seen any of those other cats before or since. A few days go by, and I mention to my neighbor that our cat passed. Her husband comes out and tells me that night he had noticed all the cats suddenly around their house, and their indoor cat was behaving strange, and wanted to get outside.
I have been with a number of animals, and a few people when they passed, never have I experienced anything as strange, or creepy as that night of cats.
39. Blink And You’ll Miss Them
I found out that a car matching my car's description had license plates stolen, so I went out to check mine. I found my car, sans license plate in the back, and decided to check the cars around me. They also had license plates removed. But then I noticed there were no indications any license plates had ever been there before. It was just smooth.
In my head, oddly, I thought, "Were there license plates on back bumpers? No, of course not! How silly!" Then I blinked and the license plates were back, mine too. Not only that, the sky was brighter and sound louder. Either I hypnotized myself, or because I went out expecting my license plate to be gone, I briefly entered a universe where there were no back license plates.
Pexels
40. Where Everybody Knows Your Name
I dreamed about a pub, it was all wooden with a nautical theme. The dream was very vivid and I remember it to this day. Years and years later, I visited a friend who had gone to live in a town that I had never visited before. One night we went to this pub and it was exactly the same as in my dream—apart from the nautical theme, and the cloakroom was now a seating area.
I mentioned this to my friend, and he said up until recently they had life buoys and anchors all over the wall but took them down to refurbish, which is when they also moved tables into the cloakroom. But that’s not the craziest part. I went to the bar and a guy greeted me like he knew me. I must have looked blank so he explained: "I've seen in you in here before."
41. Hungry Like The Void
I came home from school one day and I was unpacking my bag. I accidentally dropped a sandwich that I hadn’t eaten earlier out from my bag and when I bent down to get it, it was gone. I looked all over that floor and no sandwich. It just disappeared into thin air. To this day, I believe that sandwich went to the underworld.
42. Never Break The Chain
I was probably around 6 or 7 at the time, in Turin, Italy with my family. My mother, my sister, and I were at the train station, about to go visit friends in Rome. My mom wanted to call her friend, just to let her know our train would be a few hours late. She takes us to a payphone and tells my sister to hold her hand as she keeps an eye on our suitcases. I was supposed to hold my sister's hand.
Out of the blue, as my mother's on the phone, a tall man grabs my hand and starts walking—or, to be fair, more like pulling—me away from my sister. He starts asking me questions like if I had a lot of friends at school. I was too shocked and young and naïve to understand what was really going on. Panic started kicking in.
For some unexplainable reason, I started focusing on answering his questions. Then, a few feet away from the main entrance of the station, I feel a strong yank on my other hand. It’s my mother. I've never heard her scream so loud in my whole life. The man literally ran away as fast as speed itself. I could only keep staring at him disappearing in the distance as I heard my mother cry and beg for forgiveness, while hugging me as tight as she ever had before.
I look back and I see my sister pointing her small index finger at me, like she's petrified, with tears in her eyes. She was still so young she could barely speak, but she was repeating my name. I don't know if she saved my life, or where I would've ended up if I had left with that man, but I definitely owe her everything.
And as for my mom, whenever she hugged me after that, she always waited for me to let go first—she never broke the contact before I did.
43. I Command You
One night, the door to my room started creaking open, like a half-inch at a time. If I would look right at the door and it would stop, but when I'd look at the book I was reading and then look back up it would be just a bit more open. Finally, it was almost wide enough for someone to walk through, so I said, “STOP IT” in as commanding a voice as I could muster.
It stopped mid-creak. I was almost too scared to go to sleep that night. I know for a fact that no one in my family was home that night.
44. Church Ain’t Out Til They Quit Singing
My middle school has this sort of fair or festival every year called Karnawal—think like carnival, it's actually pronounced like that. It's on the campus grounds. That school is a Catholic school, so there's a church on campus too, and the church is pretty much always unlocked for people who want to go in a pray and all that.
One night during Karnawal, my boyfriend and one of his friends were hanging out with me and they decided they wanted to check out the church. We went in and they started looking around, completely creeped out. I walked into the main part, with the aisles leading up to the altar, and was confused as heck to see someone sitting in there.
But then I realized something. I recognized him. The blue overalls, the glasses, the pen in his pocket. There, sitting in the pew my family has always sat in, was my grandpa, who had passed on three or four years before.
45. Bad Timing
So one day I was upstairs in the bathroom, sitting on yonder ol' throne, just minding my business while I did my business. A few feet across from me was a metal towel rack, it stood almost as tall as me. I live in a pretty isolated little rural town and for a long time our power grid was a bit iffy. Every time it rained or the wind blew connections cut out, power flickered, and ancient transformers exploded.
It's mercifully better now, probably because over the last five years all the old transformers did in fact explode and got replaced. But during those semi-frequent power outages I kept a flashlight with a magnet on it hanging from the stand just in case. Well, this afternoon, that flashlight leaped off of the stand, falling at my feet.
Now, please try to envision this: I'm sitting there in one of the more vulnerable positions a person can find themselves in, I'm alone in the house, and this flashlight jumped, not fell, from the stand. It arched in the air between the stand and my feet. Things that simply fall don't arch in the air. Nothing else happened. No disembodied voices growling sinister things at me.
No hazy apparitions wandering about. No other closet door swinging or pot banging such as you would expect from rural cow town folks...just silence. It was the creepiest freaking moment of my life as I sat there waiting for...something else, I guess, to happen. I finished up, picked up the flashlight to put it back where it belonged, and went back downstairs.
I'm only a little embarrassed to admit I was afraid I'd hear something walking down behind me after that. But no, all's quiet. That was years ago. I have no idea how that could have happened.
46. A Wrinkle In Time
My friends and I were walking home at night, we were all 15ish. We took our usual route through the graveyard. It was a large graveyard with a starlit main path running top to bottom. There were side paths too. We took a side path and walked towards the top. As we neared the top, we had to walk across to the main path.
At that moment, those of us at the front of the group noticed a woman who was dressed in layers of clothing that looked very old. She appeared elderly, her movement was strange and labored. She was walking towards the top gate, within 2 meters of it. Our side path was far enough away that someone walking on the main path would not notice you.
We all stopped, and I said we better not scare this woman. We all commented on her weird appearance. We could not see her face. Suddenly, she bolts and turns around in a swift movement and runs back down the main path. The sudden change in movement did not fit the way she had previously been moving. Then, she just vanished.
She was totally gone. We got to the path, and there was no sign of her. I do not believe in the supernatural, but this experience still sits with me 15 years on. My friends will still bring it up sometimes too. There were never any homeless people in the area, and her fashion style resembled something from the 17th century.
We never saw anything else like it any other time that we walked through the graveyard. The anachronistic appearance, strange movement, and her sudden disappearance are what we all found the strangest.
47. The Upside Down
A long time ago, when I was a just a kid, I was staying over at a friend’s house one night. In the middle of the night, I woke up to what sounded like someone walking around in the attic above us. I thought nothing more of it and went back to sleep. The next morning when I woke up, I was greeted by a truly terrifying sight.
On his ceiling, there were footprints in a perfect circle around the lightbulb. It was as if someone had been walking around on the ceiling upside down, around the light fixture. I showed it to him and he just shrugged. He said he thought his house was haunted, but it didn’t bother him. I couldn’t believe it. That was 30 years ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday.
48. The Watcher
I went to work and afterward was heading back home in the evening on my regular commute on the bus. As I was standing, a girl I had never met before ended up standing next to me and was on her phone. I looked up to check what stop the bus was at and I ended up seeing what the girl was looking at on her phone. She was shorter than me, and I saw her phone out of the corner of my eye.
I’ll never forget the feeling of terror that washed over me. It turned out to be a video of me on my way to work that morning. Same position in the bus, clothes, headphone model, spot on. It had some kind of caption which I couldn't make out but at the time I was barely processing everything before I realized I had to get off at my stop.
I wanted to bring it up to her but it was a Snapchat, which deletes afterward. I couldn't think of a way to approach her about it without looking like a crazy person. Somehow, somebody took a video of me in the morning, sent it to somebody else, who ended up next to me and played the video of me. I thought of some potential theories, but don't think I'll ever get a solid answer.
Unsplash
49. The Call Is Coming From Inside The Pool
I worked as a night auditor at an old hotel. One night at around 2am, I got a phone call from the pool room, which was supposed to be closed. I picked up the phone to answer and all I heard was very heavy breathing. I hung up the phone to check the cameras, and all the lights are on in the pool room. So I go down the hallway to kick out whoever it is in there.
As I get close to the glass door, it’s so cold that I can see my breath, the door is completely fogged over, and all the lights are out. I open the door and the light above me comes on, because they’re motion sensor lights. I am looking around but I don't see anything. Then the light comes on across the pool from me, but again, nothing is there.
Then every light in a path begins to light up around one side of the pool as if something is walking towards me. I ran out of there so fast and locked myself in my manager's office and stayed until sunrise—but the worst was yet to come. I had played it off in my head as insects causing the motion sensor lights to go off.
I was telling my manager about my whole spooky experience, thinking he would get a good laugh. When I told him about the phone call from the pool, he didn't laugh at all. He asked me if I was 100% positive the caller ID said the pool room, and I said yeah. Then he told me there hasn't been a phone in the pool room for 30 years.
I told him there was no way, because that would be impossible. I knew what I saw on the call display. He told me to go look for myself. I looked and there was no phone. I didn't believe in the supernatural at all before that. But to this day, no matter how many ways I try to rationalize it, I just can't. It is completely unexplainable.
50. Missing In Action
This isn’t about ghosts or anything, but I still think about it every day. My best friend vanished in like fourth or fifth grade. Her whole family just up and left without warning. Months later, I got a phone call from her, saying that she missed me and she was safe but wasn't allowed to give me any details. I’ll never forget what I overheard next.
It was the sound of someone coming into the room, and she quickly hung up. To this day I have no freaking clue what happened. Every now and then I try to find her on social media—no luck.
Sources: Reddit,
