Everyone's had an experience that seems so unbelievable on the surface that you can barely accept that it happened...even though it happened to you! The truth is definitely stranger than fiction—and these stories are proof.
1. Hands Off!
I was camping and woke up to something pressing in on the tent down by my feet. I watched as the pressing shook the whole side of the tent and moved up from my feet to my hip. That’s when I made a disturbing realization. Whatever was pushing in on me was a human hand; I could clearly see the fingers outlined. I immediately took stock of everyone in my tent and all present and accounted for.
I jumped up out of my cot. I was the only one who saw it. Everyone else told me to go back to bed saying it was just a deer or something. I spent a good hour trying to convince myself I hadn’t seen a hand.
2. Get A Lick Of This
I was waiting to get the tube on the London Underground. One had just pulled up, but we decided it was too busy, and we waited for the next one. There was a woman who kept staring at me with intense eye contact. She got on the crowded train and continued to stare. She turned to face the man next to her, whose back was turned. I could never have predicted what she did next.
She then, unbeknownst to him, licked his giant afro while maintaining eye contact with me. The doors closed and the tube went away. People think it's too random to be true, but the memory is burnt into my brain.
3. Gone, Baby, Gone
On a day out with my dad when I was little, I was playing in the park with a girl the same age as me. I didn’t know her, but she was on her own. We left after an hour or so, leaving the girl on her own. Again, my dad asked her where her parents were. Later on that night, there was a big story on the news that gave me chills—it was about a girl who had been abducted, and all my family members kept asking me questions about this little girl.
It went right over my head at the time, being about five years old. 40 years later, I still think about her.
4. Not Just A Dream
I had a weird memory from my childhood about my mom beating some old lady with a bat, like a small one from a baseball stadium. A man came up to her and she picked up a big blade that must have come from the old lady. She cursed a threat at him, but I don’t remember what she said. She NEVER curses. The man then threw over the keys to her car. I recognized them because they had a He-Man keychain, which was the prized possession that I gave her for Mother’s Day.
I asked her about this when I was 15 years old because I dream about it on occasion. It turns out, the whole situation was much darker than I initially thought—My grandparents on my dad’s side had tried to abduct me. I was missing from my other grandma's yard, so she drove to their house on suspicion that I was there. When she was searching for me, my grandfather had gotten her keys to trap her there.
I had managed to get to the car on my own before my mom realized I was even there. The windows were always open on her Gremlin, so I likely climbed up. I was yelling out of the window that I was ready to go. Apparently, I wasn’t even two yet. They still try to contact me via Facebook on occasion. I just block whatever account they send it with. I always send the same message to them because they are staunch Catholics.
“God is punishing you for your sins. He doesn’t forgive you, and neither do we.” I am an atheist. Maybe I should tell them that just to really get at them?
5. Weathering The Storm
When I was 15, I had a kitten I named Storm. She was a rescue. I cared for her, but after a month or so, she fell ill. We were poor and had no money for a vet. I nursed her back to health in the best way I could, but after three days, her health collapsed. I knew she wasn’t going to make it, and I stayed by her side, whispering, "It's okay", repeatedly. I was hugging her when I felt her twitch for one last time.
I cried and cried. My dad tried to calm me down, but he eventually let me be, saying that he'll be in the other room if I needed him. I don't know how long I wailed and screamed while hugging my lifeless cat. Emotions started to mix in my head and then nothing. I'm not sure if I passed out or what, but I woke up in my bed and it was morning.
My mom was preparing breakfast and greeted me cheerfully. I wasn't in the mood for it. I asked, "Where's Storm"? Her reply knocked me off my feet. She cheerfully said, “She's just there”. At that point, I was almost annoyed and insulted. My cat was gone, I’d passed out crying over it, and my mom was all giddy. I was about to lose it when, suddenly, Storm appeared, meowing. She brushed against my leg.
I learned it was Saturday again. The coming Sunday was when Storm started showing symptoms. I told my parents this, how Storm eventually died, and how I "went back", and they did not believe me. But this time, I was prepared for what would happen. Eventually, Storm did fall sick just like I envisioned. Except this time, I did my best to take her to the vet. I borrowed money from my uncle and Storm was given proper care.
She survived the day she was supposed to pass, and she got better. However, a week after her supposed death day, she fell ill again. Sadly, this time was different. It all happened so fast. In less than 24 hours, she passed—in my arms—again—the same way I first lost her. I tried my best to make what happened to happen again, but I never got back again. To this day I've only told my wife this.
6. Seasick
This is the story of how a creepy encounter with a scary man at a harbor café saved me from something even more terrifying. It was autumn of 1994 in Sweden, and I was 19 years old. At the time, my dad had been working for almost six months abroad, and I was planning a surprise visit. My dad and I have always been close, because I am an only child and my mother passed from cancer when I was still a baby.
We were a tiny little family, but my dad made up for it by being the most awesome parent ever. Now that I wasn’t a little kid anymore, I appreciated that more and more. So, I had booked the ticket and was ready to go. I thought it was gonna be great fun to surprise him with a visit. However, I had to take the ferry to get there.
I decided to have coffee at a nearby café since I was early, and they hadn’t started letting people onto the ferry just yet. At the café, there were a lot of truck drivers and I soon realized I was the only woman there. One man, a 40-ish bloke with ice blue eyes and tattoos all over, was eyeing me from across the room.
Something about him made my skin crawl. I got up to leave, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. To my utter horror, he followed. I asked myself, “What do I do now?" This was before everyone owned a cell phone. I decided to try and look busy and so that he would leave me alone. I pulled out my ticket and tried to look like I was reading it carefully.
He suddenly snatched the ticket from my hand and said, “I’m on the same boat. I’ll have hours of your company then, how lovely”. His voice was an absurd combination of jovial flattery and hidden hostility. I felt very strongly that if I got on that boat with this man who now knew my booking details, I’d be in grave danger.
I can’t explain why the feeling was so overwhelming, but it was. I decided there and then to not get on the boat. The ticket had been cheap anyway, so I could get on the next boat instead. I hid in the ladies’ room until I knew the ferry had left and then I went to rebook my ticket. The story could have ended here, but it doesn’t.
I was right in the assumption that getting on that ferry would have been unbelievably dangerous. Have you figured it out yet? The date was September 28, 1994, and the name of the ship was MS Estonia. That cold night, she sank in the Baltic Sea, taking 852 people with her. To this day, it was the worst ferry catastrophe to strike Sweden.
I still recall that day with horror and wonder what would have happened if that creepy man had not taken an interest in me. If I had not listened to my instinct and gotten on board instead of waiting for the next boat, would I have been among the survivors? Or would my dad have seen my name on the list of lives lost in the Baltic Sea?
7. Caught In The Nick Of Time
When I was 15 years old, I was babysitting for my parent's friends. I was looking after this little girl. We were watching some kids' movies in the living room. This little girl was full of energy, so she was jumping on the couch during the movie. I thought it would be better to let her spend her energy then, so bedtime would be easier.
I sat next to her during the movie just in case she stumbled or fell. Everything was going fine until the moment I decided to get up to go to the bathroom. When I shifted my weight getting up, I double jumped her trampoline style, so she got much more air. The couch was right next to a staircase going into the basement. The railing was just behind us, leading to a 15–20 feet drop right to the bottom of the basement stairs.
She got thrown right over the railing head first into the drop. I threw myself at her and caught her ankle at the last second. I pulled her back onto the couch and sat her down, asking her if she was okay. She just smiled at me and continued to watch the movie, seemingly unfazed by the fact that she almost bit it. She probably didn't realize the danger she was in at that moment. Sometimes I still think about what would have happened if I hadn't caught her.
8. The Beach House
When I was about eight years old, my family rented a house close to the beach. We were supposed to stay there for a week. The drive wasn't very long but as an eight-year-old, by the time we got there, I really had to feed the porcelain stallion a brown bone. We pulled into the driveway and were met by the middle-aged woman who owned the house.
She showed us the place and told us about the town and what to do, etc. My first instinct was to find the bathroom. So, I asked her, and she told me it was the second door on the right after the kitchen. I went inside and opened the bathroom door to an older guy just standing there looking at me. I kinda ducked my head down, said “sorry”, and went back outside.
They noticed I was back pretty fast, and I told them there was someone in the bathroom already. That's when it got weird. The lady looked at me confused and said there was no one else in the house. I explained that I definitely saw someone in that bathroom. After searching the house, we found no evidence of anyone else being there.
After a while, the lady told us her dad had owned the house and lived there, but he’d recently passed. She inherited the house and wasn't sure what to do with it, so she had started renting it out. I’m pretty sure her dad was the dude I saw in the bathroom.
9. The Love For A Pet
My worst memory is when my neighbor's dog ambushed my dog. I must've been 10 when this happened. I was home alone and I heard my dog yelping outside. I went to see what was wrong and I found the neighbor's dog on top of mine. I freaked out and called animal control. The neighbor’s dog had gotten into our yard before, so we knew the number.
Animal control stopped by and started asking questions. The lady point-blank asked me how the other dog was hurting my dog. Being 10 and not knowing any better, I leaned over my dog from behind and told her “Like this, but Cooper, the other dog, was growing." The animal control lady nodded, wrote some stuff down, and drove away. Looking back, I realize I had just embarrassed myself big time—those dogs were clearly getting it on.
But I was 10, and Dandy, my dog, was 14 at the time. I was so scared that she was hurt.
10. The Reading Nook
When I was around 16, my rapidly-growing family finally moved from the house I had spent my entire life in. As you would expect, we spent a lot of time fondly remembering things we used to do in the house as we were packing everything up. At some point, I decided to go into the downstairs closet with a flashlight and read.
Reading in the closet was something I used to do when I was younger to get some peace and quiet. Now, this is one of those deep closets that goes under the stairs. It went back around two meters and then had a left turn into a very low, maybe meter-high space. This space was largely occupied by a mountain of old blankets and stuffed animals.
Of course, that was the fluffiest spot to sit and read. About an hour in, I shifted a little to get comfortable and I heard a low, slow, warped, hoarse voice say, "You always make me happy". I flipped my lid, hit my head on the low ceiling, and practically broke the door down getting out. After hyperventilating and explaining to my family why there was no color left on my face, I went back to see what it was.
It was my stuffed Little Bear from when I was three or four years old. I’d happened to lean on it just right to press his belly. When I pressed his stomach again though…nothing. This poor bear I hadn't played with since I was a toddler used the last of its power—used its dying breath—to tell me I made it happy. You make me happy too, Little Bear…when you're not making me pee myself.
11. Telepathic Teacher
My high school teacher was into spirituality, apparitions, telepathy, etc. One day in class, she said we would play a game. She wrote the name of one of the students on a piece of paper and put it on her desk upside down. She said, “The person whose name is written here will stand up without any hint from me”. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, I was convinced it was me, I stood up...I couldn't believe it.
My name was on the piece of paper. I do not believe in any of this stuff and have wondered for years how it could have happened. Did she know us so well that she could predict who would lose patience or who would imagine their name was written? Or was it some plot to mess with my head?
I never saw the paper, but a bunch of other students did. A few people in class accused me of conspiring with her or that she gave me some sort of sign, but none of that was true.
12. Say “Cheese!”
I was 15 years old. I had just got home from work, so I went to my bedroom to change out of my work clothes and get ready for bed. I was in the middle of undressing when I looked to my bedroom window to catch my reflection...and what I saw made me scream. I saw a man's face. I dropped to the floor and turned off the lights. Still watching the window, I scrambled to get dressed.
The face was gone, but I was still watching. Then...a camera. No face, just a camera pointed at me sitting on the floor. I bolted from my room and told my mom and brother. My brother went outside, and our ladder from the backyard was lying there, but there was nobody around. I couldn't sleep for a year after that. I’d just lie there staring at that window.
13. Man Down
Back when I worked the night shift as a security guard, I would experience mild hallucinations due to my poor sleep schedule. One night, I was doing my patrol and I started feeling particularly out of it. I kept getting those flashes of movement in the corner of my eye, but I was convinced it was just my brain screwing up.
At the site I was working, there was a large warehouse filled with chemical waste. There was only one light on in it. As I was going along, I saw a pale shape on the ground and quickly recognized it as a body. My adrenaline spiked and I nearly passed out. My mind blanked and it took a second for me to regain my senses.
Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a CPR dummy the workers left out for training.
14. Man In The Window
I woke up from a bad dream and went to sleep beside my parents in their room. On the way to their bedroom, I had to pass the front door which had a big window next to it. What I saw made my blood run cold—two guys were trying to break in and when they saw me, they knocked on the window to get my attention, motioning for me to unlock the door.
My mom said it was a dream, but to this day, the image of those two guys at our front window is as real as any childhood memory I have. This happened over 40 years ago.
15. Taken By Surprise
I was swimming by myself in the Gulf in fairly clear water about 10–15 feet deep. I was about 200–300 yards from shore, and there was no one within 100 yards of me in the water. My parents and sister were on the beach watching me. With how clear and calm the water was, I’d occasionally go under, let out all my air, and just sit on the sandy bottom.
I can open my eyes for short intervals in salt water, so I’d look around for a bit once I settled on the bottom. During one of those drops, I bumped into something. My blood ran cold. A giant, dark blob took up nearly my entire field of vision when I opened my eyes. At first, I thought it was an alligator, and I was a goner, but it turned out to be an equally startled manatee. I had no idea they could swim that fast. Most people don’t believe me, but it was one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had.
Flickr, U.S. Geological Survey
16. Dumb Luck
When I was a kid, my family would watch the Texas lottery drawing after the nightly news. I remember sitting there, and for some reason, I started saying numbers, trying to guess what the balls were going to be before they called them out. I guessed all the numbers correctly before they were announced. My family was freaked out that I did that.
They laughed about it and joked that I would pick numbers for their tickets from then on. I recalled the story at a family get-together years later, and none of them remembered that moment, but I do.
17. Can’t Make It Home
I had to be eight years old or so, coming back from a week-long camping trip the school provided. Well, on the return, we were stuck in traffic for what seemed like ages and I had to go #2 really badly. Imagine an eight-year-old holding on for dear life, white-knuckled to his seat as we pulled into the parking lot of the school.
The teacher told us to wait until our turn to get up and go, but I wasn't having any of that, so the moment the doors opened, I bolted. I heard my parents yell for me, I heard the teachers yell for me, and my friends were laughing as I ran. None of it mattered—I was eight years old and had a thunder down under ready to explode at a moment's notice.
I vividly recall the bathroom door as I rushed towards it, thinking I just made it—but I was so, so wrong. I threw my entire weight behind me as I smashed into it, and immediately, I shrieked in pain. Who knew the school locked the bathroom doors after hours? As I crumpled to the ground in a heap, my bowels seized the moment and led the charge. Someone picked me up, then immediately dropped me. That didn't help either.
18. Sneaking Around
Officer here. I was dispatched to a house at about 1 am for a prowler. We got there and spoke to the residents. Long story short, they saw two people wearing masks in the yard across the street. It was like two weeks past Halloween, so it seemed believable. We checked the area and didn’t see anything. It's worth noting the residents didn't seem inebriated or crazy at all. We had no clue what we were in for...
Sometimes you'll get a similar call and get there to find the resident strung out and seeing things. However, back to the story. An hour later, we got called back. This time, we had our dispatcher on the phone with them while we were surrounding the area. About five of us were in a perfect position when dispatch told us they could still see the prowlers in the next yard.
We started to move in. Dispatch said the residents saw the two prowlers wave and move into the shed. Guess where I was? That's right, next to the shed. I gave verbal commands, banged on the door. There was nothing. I thought, “Screw it, fine. I'll come in after you”. I got the doors open and I couldn't believe my eyes. It was...empty. I even thought to check for a trap door. Nothing.
It was raised about four inches, so there wasn’t even a possibility of a door leading out. I checked the area again and found nothing. I talked to the residents. They said as I was moving in on the shed, the two prowlers had put their finger to their lips, giving the “shhhh” sign, and then they both waved.
They had walked into the shed as I was next to it. We went over every possibility trying to come up with an explanation. If the caller was just screwing with us, they had no prior history of it. I'm not much of a believer in paranormal stuff but I can still appreciate a situation where I cannot logically explain what just happened.
19. Identity Crisis
I had a job interview in a town I had never been to before. I got lost and decided to park my car and walk up to a random stranger, some old man I had never seen before. I asked him where I could find the business I was looking for. He politely told me where to find it. That’s when things got weird. He then said, “You’re welcome”, and addressed me by my first and last name.
I had never told him my first or last name, just asked for directions. I was dumbfounded, and he just chuckled and walked off into some store. I have an uncommon name, there's no way you can even guess it.
20. Lesson Learned
I remember having a friend in high school whose parents were practically absent for most of his childhood. We used to make jokes about how jealous we were that he got to do whatever he wanted. He could sleepover at anyone's house any day of the week, and he never had a curfew. We got close and I started coming over to his house, which was filthy, to say the least.
All the food was microwaveable or non-perishable junk foods. They had a turtle tank in the kitchen between the sink and the stove, the dishes were always stacked, and there was trash everywhere. My friend would jump at any opportunity to stay at our houses whenever our parents allowed it, but I had to stop after a while because my friend didn’t clean up after himself often.
Things came to a head one day when he left bread crumbs all over our couch. My mom was furious: “He should know better, what would his parents think?” “Well mom, I don't think they’d think much.” I proceeded to explain the conditions of his house. My mother was shocked and insisted he sleepover whenever he needed, but only if I made sure he learned to clean up after himself and was well-fed.
21. A Fruitless Romance
I was visiting my hometown and decided to pick up my old high school friend and take him to dinner and a drink to catch up. He was kind of stressed and told me that his ex, with whom he had broken up with over two years prior, had been stalking him and harassing him. I drove him home afterward, and it started to drizzle.
As I dropped him off at his house, we both noticed a bag tied to my side view mirror. It had likely been attached when we were at the restaurant. We opened it to see a bad photo of a tree, taken at night with flash. There was a brief letter, obviously written from his ex. It said: "I buried our first love letter under this tree years ago. This tree is growing from our love”.
I made sure my friend got into his house alright and got the heck out of there.
22. Always On My Mind
In the summer of 1987, I was in a bar in a little village in New York outside the gates of West Point. It was the middle of the week, and it was just me and the bartender. Willie Nelson walked in, sat down on a barstool, and drank with us for a couple of hours. He was at the very height of his popularity. I had just read his autobiography a few weeks before, and he was my favorite singer. I’m chatty, but I was tongue-tied that day. No one believed me afterward. I suspect no one believes me today either.
23. Like Mother, Like Son
My mom had anger issues. When she got mad, she'd deal with her frustration in the most psychotic way—by slamming her head on the wall. I thought that was a reasonable way to deal with frustration until I tried it myself and it really hurt…go figure. So, I stopped doing that, but I would punch walls fairly regularly hard enough to break a bone or put holes clean through the wall.
24. Listen Up
I was hiking down a trail with my dog in remote northern Wisconsin, when I just got a weird feeling. At the exact same time, the hackles on my dog went straight up and he began acting really anxious. I then came into a clearing in the woods, and got hit with what I can only describe as a soundwave.
It was like someone was blasting a subwoofer right next to me but there was nothing around. The nearest road was maybe a mile away. Something told me to get the heck out of there. So, I quickly turned around and hiked as quickly as possible the rest of the way back. I didn't hear that bass sound after I left the clearing but for a while, I still felt like something was following me.
25. Stop The Music!
When I was at university staying in residence, I was putting a CD back in its case when I dropped it. The CD landed, not on the top, not on the shiny bottom, but on its SIDE, then continued to roll towards the open door, whereupon it took a sharp right. It then continued in a perfectly straight line 40 feet down the corridor, where it finally ended, shiny side down, in a pool of barf someone had thrown up the night before.
26. Fighting Through It
My worst memory was when my uncle was withdrawing from his substance addiction. He was always the fun, loud, and crazy uncle. I was around 10 years old and my mom and I were coming home from somewhere, but when we pulled up, he was sitting outside and said he needed a place to stay. My mom had to work the next day so she said no, but I hung out with him for a while outside the house.
Then, the worst happened—I could tell he didn't feel well because he was dry heaving. It was terrifying. I asked him if I should call for help and he said that he'd be okay. Unfortunately, he ended up passing from liver failure as a result of his refusal to receive medical help.
27. Sweet Dreams
15 years ago, I had a seasonal job with the US Forest Service in western Colorado for the summer. I was living in an old ranger station by myself. One night, I had a dream that someone was walking around the cabin while I was in bed. That wasn't the most chilling part. When I woke up that morning, the front door was wide open. For the rest of the summer, I slept with a weapon close by.
28. Bad Priorities
I was about four years old at the time. My family was having a BBQ and we had a few family members over. Naturally, everyone was occupied with the preparations and getting stuff ready. I was hungry, so my mother nuked a corn dog to keep me satisfied until the food was done. I was also too young to really help, so I got bored and started balancing around the lip of our pool.
It’s important to note that our pool had been broken for months and had a few feet of algae-ridden water at the bottom. It was also full of tadpoles. Of course, after some time, I slipped and fell in. Mid-fall, all I could think was, "No, not my corn dog!" I raised my corn dog up and laid face down floating in the water. At that moment, I was stunned—I didn't know what to do.
I began to drown with one arm raised. My oldest sister heard the splash and came running out and screamed, "OMG, OMG! Let me get my bathing suit on!" and proceeded to run back into the house. My brother jumped in, fully clothed, and saved me. My corn dog was dry as a whistle. My sister came charging out in a black one-piece a minute later.
29. Artificial Intelligence
It was the mid-90s. My brother and I were probably about seven and five, respectively. We used to wake up every weekend and play computer games before my parents woke up. One day, we turned on the computer and got an eerie message that was directed to us. It said: "Hello, Kid A and Kid B. This is your computer talking and I. AM. ALIVEEEEEE. Do not run and tell your parents, they cannot help you now!!!"
Turns out my dad had programmed the computer to say that upon start up.
30. Emergency!
I volunteered as an EMT in a small village just outside New York City as a senior in high school and my first few years of college. This night, we were on-call for not only our town but the surrounding two villages, who were out of service. One of the villages wasn’t exactly the best neighborhood. Now, generally we always had an officer on every scene we went to just because they could always get there faster.
This time around, though, in this bordering village, there was a fire on the other side of town and some sort of investigation elsewhere. Basically, the department’s resources were stretched thin. A call came in for a 25-year-old male with a facial wound at a private residence. They told us that the patient was in the backyard.
We were dispatched and told that there were no officers available and no Advanced Life Support available. It was just me and my driver. While that was standard in most agencies, it still felt very unnerving to me. So, we got on-scene and it was an apartment building with an open yard in the back that we could drive onto.
My driver pulled onto the field and he saw the patient sitting in the shadows as though he was hiding. Something felt off and that feeling prompted me to hit the flood lights on the ambulance, illuminating most of the yard. The moment the lights came on, we saw about seven other men with tire irons and baseball bats standing in what was once pitch blackness.
My driver hit it in reverse, and we got the heck out of there. I got on the radio and called for immediate assistance. Turns out those guys were planning on jumping us, taking the narcotics from the ambulance, and taking the rig for a joy ride. To this day, I fear what would have happened if we had just walked up to the patient.
31. Great Minds Think Alike
My dad picked me up, and we went about 20 miles out to the countryside. He was visiting a friend who had a river running through his property. My dad wanted to talk to the guy about fishing. The guy also had a little shop selling knickknacks and ornaments. My dad is one of the stingiest people alive; he never buys anything. I BEGGED him to let me choose a gift.
He allowed me just one, and I chose a small blue-ish Viking statue. It was half a set, but I definitely wasn’t allowed to buy the female Viking, just the one. What happened next left me in shock.
When I got home, my mom said she had gone for a drive that day with her partner, stopped at a tiny gift shop, and bought a female Viking statue. It was the other half of the set.
32. Sad And Loved
When I was around six years old, I used to walk my grandma upstairs every time we visited her house. She said she liked holding my hand. When I went to her room, she’d always compliment my shirts and say things like, “What’s this on your shirt here called?” I’d say something like, “Oh that’s Winnie the Pooh,” or whatever character I was wearing.
She’d go on to tell me stories about the character or talk a bit about it. Then, when I was 16, she hit me with shattering truth—she’d been blind for years. She’d ask me to hold her hand up the stairs so that I could help guide her to her room. She’d ask what was on my shirt because she could feel a pattern on it. I don't know why, but that kind of made me feel both sad and very loved.
She couldn’t see anymore but she never wanted to let me worry about it and still managed to compliment what I was wearing all the time. She passed on while I was still very young, but those memories stuck like glue.
33. The Hunter
Our two normally placid black Labradors woke me up by making an awful growly barking sound I'd never heard them make. There was real aggression and fear in the bark. My bedroom was on the ground floor, and we lived in the countryside with a huge common and woods out back of the house. I went into the kitchen, and the dogs were glaring at the back door and making a big fuss.
This made my hair stand on end and their obvious terror communicated itself to me. I grabbed a flashlight and steeled myself. Thinking that it might have been an intruder, I armed myself with a fire poker and then opened the back door. It was pitch dark and as I opened the door, both dogs shied away and ran into the other room.
I poked my head and the flashlight out the back door. Just for a split-second, I saw the reflective eyes of a really large creature somewhere up the garden, maybe ten meters away. They blinked as the creature turned away and disappeared into the darkness. There is literally nothing in England that can account for this.
I slammed the door shut and me and the dogs slept in my bedroom, half terrified. Shortly after that, I learned another dark truth. The local paper featured an article about some unexplained sheep deaths on a farm that was a couple kilometers away from ours. They had been ripped to shreds, and it looked as if a large predator had gotten them.
34. In Charge Of Saving My Dog
I let my dog outside one night while my husband was at work. The house we used to rent didn’t have lights in the backyard, so I would shine a flashlight through the living room windows into the yard when he went out. I was standing there watching my dog, and he suddenly stopped and was staring at something. I whipped the flashlight in the direction he was looking.
Less than 10 feet from him was a grizzly bear staring down my dog, with only a flimsy chicken wire fence between them. My mind quickly flashed to our safe upstairs, and I knew I didn’t have enough time to get up there. So, I came up with a ridiculous plan. I ran outside towards the bear, stomping, waving my arms to look big, and blinding the bear with the flashlight. I yelled in the deepest and loudest voice I could muster, “Go away, bear! Leave him alone! Get out of here”!
The bear was shaken and just darted off into the darkness. I ran down to my dog, scooped him up, threw him inside, and locked the door. In the same month, someone else in town had their dog killed by a bear when they let them outside at night. I’ve stopped telling people this story because no one believes I would actually charge at a bear, or they think I’m insane, but I love my dog.
35. It Wasn’t A Dream
Back in the fifth grade, I remember that I always felt as though I was going to die. I thought that life was a dream of mine, and I constantly tested if it was. My teachers would always call my parents about my odd behavior, and they were shocked to discover what I was up to. I would never swallow my own saliva, and I have no idea why. Then, one time, a kid brought in treats, and I threw mine away because I thought he poisoned it. I also twisted my hair because of stress-related issues.
I was a really paranoid kid around that time, and I'm sure my teacher thought I was crazy.
36. Order Up
Old men are creepy sometimes. I worked at my local Dairy Queen for about three and a half years. I loved it there, but the customers were too much sometimes. And I’m not sure how they got away with it, but they only hired girls. My first year there, I was 16 and had just finished with training. One of my first customers was an old man with his wife.
She ordered and looked to him, suggesting that it was his turn. I asked politely, "What can I get for you, sir?" He said, "I'll take two of you young girls to go please", and then he winked. It made my skin crawl.
37. The Gamble That Paid Off
Years ago, when I was in my mid-20s, a friend asked me to spend Thanksgiving with her in Laughlin, Nevada because she had no one else to hang out with. Since I was a single guy with no other plans, I made the long drive there. Late one night, I was the total amateur at the dice table and started rolling dice with a really cute girl. I was way outta my league.
I had lots of drinks, was winning big, and was having a great time. She really knew what she was doing, placing bets I had never even heard of. One thing led to another, and I ended up back in her room. The next morning, we were having breakfast, and she showed me her pictures in Playboy magazine. We said our goodbyes and I never saw her again.
It was the only one-night stand I ever had in my life. I was just your average ordinary-looking guy who had slept with a Playmate. I only told a few people, but they didn't believe me, so I decided to mostly keep it to myself. I don't blame anyone for not believing because it sounds like the most made-up ego-boosting guy story ever.
38. A Family Secret
I went to a friend's house on the weekend to play video games at the age of about 10. We had a good time and played a lot of games on the PS2. His mom came upstairs from the basement to ask if we wanted food. I turned around and said, "Yes, please," and before I could finish saying please I noticed she had a black eye. I asked my friend what happened to his mom's face, and his reply gave me shivers: "I can't say."
10-year-old me just said, "Oh, okay," and we proceeded to play video games. I didn't realize until I was about 19 this happened.
39. Never Alone
I live in the country, and it is weird how BOTH my dogs will key in on something and run to a place in the yard, focused, driven, hackles up, and snarling...and there is absolutely nothing there. Nothing! And they aren't looking down or digging, they look up. A few weeks later, it will happen again, in a different area of the property.
I’ve been here for years now and even the new dogs do it. Something is here with us.
40. Sink Or Swim
It was the Fourth of July. I agreed to swim with my younger cousins. They were ecstatic that a “big kid” agreed to swim with them. I jumped into the pool and they immediately all dog-piled on top of me. They were pushing me down in their excitement, and I was trying to get to the surface. That’s when things got scary. I remember blacking out for a second and then thinking, “I’m not dying in a swimming pool”.
I did the only thing I could think of at the time. I went against my instincts and dove deeper into the deep end and eventually got out from underneath my cousins and pulled myself out of the pool. My parents, aunts, and uncles were around the pool and didn’t see anything. They insist it didn’t happen because they would have seen it.
41. I Can Still Picture It
When I was five or six, I lived in a complex with eight units. One day, my dad asked me to jump through one of the unit's bathroom windows, run through the house, and open the front door. I didn’t really want to, as there was an old lady who lived there and I thought I’d get in trouble if I got caught. Anyway, off I went through the window and I made my way to the front door.
As I got to the lounge room, I was met with the creepiest sight—she was on the lounge chair, slumped, with her eyes opened looking straight at me. It scared the heck out of me. It was creepy, but I more so remember thinking I had been caught breaking into her house. Anyway, I opened the front door and ran past my parents and neighbors straight home.
The ambulance came not long after, but it didn’t really click what was going on. I later realized in my teens that she had passed. Apparently, she had been gone for a few days. Everyone in the complex was worried about her, so they used me to get into the house to check on her welfare. Over 30 years later, I can still picture it.
42. Family Reunion
My eight-year-old self was sitting in the dining room, drawing at the kitchen table. I heard what sounded exactly like my mother speak to me: "Hello, Ryan”. I turned to my left expecting to see my mother. It was something much worse. Instead, a full-body shadow person is standing there about three meters away from me in my kitchen. I sat in shock looking at it for about 10 seconds.
The shadow person then turned to its left and walked into the wall. I stood up and walked the opposite direction, into the living room where my brother was doing homework. He asked me what was wrong. I said, “I saw a ghost”. He asked, "Is that what called your name?" It is very notable that I never told my brother it said my name.
To give some backstory to who this shadow person may have been, my grandmother passed from lung cancer about eight months before that incident. She had the same voice as my mother. She also cared for me when I was a baby, but I never knew her well. In her terminal stages of her life, I went and saw her with my family. She looked incredibly bad.
My only remembrance of my grandmother is when she was dying. The one thing I have found truly odd about the experience is how much power it would have taken to manifest herself and speak. And out of any message to tell me using that much power, she said “hello” to me? It's just so weird.
43. He Lived To Tell The Tale
It was around 1995. My father and his friend went to buy a 9mm Makarov-styled gun at a flea market. Afterward, they came home to the student flat. They were preparing to sell something, so my dad hid the 9mm under the bed and went to take a shower. After the shower, he reached under the bed to grab the thing—not realizing he was in grave danger. That was when his friend struck him with a hammer—twice.
The hammer’s head broke off, and his "friend" went for the head to finish off my wounded father. Still fully conscious, my dad grabbed the 9mm and aimed it at him, but with the nerves of steel, he didn’t fire. Instead, my father got in a taxi with a bloody white robe and headed toward the hospital. He lived to tell the tale.
44. Cherish The Moments
As a kid, my parents were split up. I’d visit my dad on certain days and go to my mom's on other days since they didn’t live far apart. One day, I really didn’t want to stay at my dad's house. As a kid, I was an ignorant person and I didn’t enjoy spending time at my dad's as much as my mom's. I had more stuff to do over at her place, so I preferred it.
One day, I completely protested staying at my dad's and had a tantrum for about two hours, saying how I wanted to go home. My dad's reaction caught me off guard. I didn't really acknowledge it at the time, but he was crying. He isn’t an emotional person, and although he was a nice man, he wasn’t overly cheerful or portrayed much emotion. So, looking back at it, this was really bad.
He did end up taking me home late at night and I got yelled at by my mom, not from him. It was never mentioned again. He passed in 2017, probably two years after what happened here. Ever since I started remembering times like this where I sometimes absolutely hated going up to his house. I hold a lot of regrets because I didn’t cherish the moments with someone who I wouldn’t have a lot of time with.
45. Curious Casper
I'm rather rural, like an hour from even a supermarket. A few months ago, I was in my recliner, trying to sleep. My eyes popped open, only to see a solid black figure standing just off the corner of the chair. It bent over at the waist and turned its neck funny. It was like it was trying to get a good look at me at eye level.
I panicked a bit and all I could do was yell, "What, what, WHAT!" And then it disappeared. Part of me thought I must have been dreaming. But then I realized that my German Shepherd was hiding underneath the foot of the recliner, which was something he had never done in his six years. He did that for the next few weeks.
46. Going In Circles
I was meeting some friends for dinner after work one night. We agreed to meet at a specific time, and as I was leaving work, I made note of the time. I knew I would be arriving late because of my regular commute time, which was around half an hour. I took my usual route to their place, which was a straight path. 20 minutes went by, and I should almost have been there when I noticed the road was looking a little unfamiliar.
I tried reading street signs and decided to take the next turn I came across. I followed the road for an extra 10 minutes and ended up on the main road. It was the same road that led from my work to my friend’s place, that I thought I was on. From where I was, my commute time was around 20 minutes. I didn’t make any turns while I was driving, and have no idea how I ended up there. My friends were convinced I probably just drove on auto-pilot or fell asleep at the wheel.
47. Framed For It
One of my worst memories is when I got framed for something I absolutely didn’t do. The act, in question, was absolutely horrific. Some kid threw a stone at a woman walking past the school and told the Headmaster it was me. I got suspended for it, of course. The only reason he believed the other kid is because I had thrown a stone at a car driving past a couple of weeks prior.
48. Wrong Number
I was camping alone in the middle of the plains in North Dakota. A storm blew in and I was stuck in my tent under some trees and got a super strange feeling. I had two phones on me at the time. One had internet and was for navigating and the other was just for cell reception. All of a sudden, one of the phones starting ringing.
I looked at the caller ID. The call was coming from my other phone, which was closed and in my hand.
49. Vision Impossible
One time when I was around 10 years old, I woke up in the morning before everyone else in my family and went out into the living room. From the living room, I could see my younger brother— my only sibling—sitting at the dining room table with his back to me. It looked like he was drawing or coloring on a piece of paper. I asked him something to the effect of, “Good morning, what are you doing”?
He just kept drawing with his back to me. For a split second, I walked past a part of a column that was in between the dining room area and the kitchen. In the short moment that I passed the column and looked at him again from the other side, he was gone. I felt a chill down my spine. The paper and crayons were still there. I paused for a moment, confused, said his name out loud questioningly, then got spooked and ran to my parents’ bedroom.
They were both completely asleep, and my brother was fast asleep next to them. He’d had a nightmare and slept with them that night. The way the house was set up, it wouldn’t really have been feasible for him to slip past me, then quickly pretend to be asleep in my parents' room. My parents have never really believed me or thought it was part of a dream, and my brother swears to this day he wasn’t in the dining room that morning.
50. Never Again
When I was about 10, my dad offered to buy me candy. He stopped at a store to run in, even though we had a long drive back. I asked where the candy was and he said it was in the bag in the back, but that he’d get it for me when we got home since he was driving. I said, “It’s okay, I can reach it.” As I reached for it, he reacted in the most unexpected way—he slapped me and yelled that I could wait until I got home.
My father had never hit me before that and never did again. The most confusing part to me was the look of utter sadness and shock on his face after the fact. My dad was a drinker and he passed before my 18th birthday. It wasn’t until I was older that I understood he had bought a bottle of booze and forgot to place it in its own bag. There was never any candy.
51. All Stuffed Up
My scariest moment happened last night. I picked up a nasty cold last week when I was visiting Boston. I've been all coughy and phlegmy and mucusy and gross. Sleeping is obviously difficult. My spouse says that I coughed for hours even though I thought I had been soundly asleep, so I've been sleeping in the other room.
Last night, I woke up in the middle of the night, completely unable to breathe. Not like "my nose is stuffed up, breathing is difficult" but "I'm literally choking and zero air is moving through my body and my brain is beginning to starve for oxygen”. My guess is I rolled onto my back and my respiratory system got blocked with mucus or something.
I stood up and still couldn't breathe. I ran to the main bedroom and dropped onto all fours and still, not a single molecule of air was moving into or out of my body. I was there for what felt like an eternity. It felt like I was underwater, or someone was strangling me, and I was completely incapable of taking a single breath.
Finally, after probably 45 seconds, the phlegm or whatever moved just a little bit and I was able to draw in a tiny amount of air and begin coughing. I was in full-on tears and thought I was going to die right there. All I could think about was my dear childhood friend who passed last year in his sleep with what seemed like a simple flu.
He was only 37, and I thought that I was about to follow him to an early grave because of a stupid cold. I can't imagine what would have happened if I had been 60 or 80 or whatever and had that experience. Or if I’d just been unhealthy from lifestyle or some other disease. I might not have been able to write this post this morning.
52. Greetings From Beyond
I was chilling in a windowless room with my aunt's dog, when the shadow of a man with a large belly walked slowly across the wall 3–4 feet away from me towards the door and vanished. I know I wasn't crazy because the dog's head was following it too. I refused to go back to my aunt's house after that. She said that it was normal and that it was her deceased relatives coming to say hi every now and then.
53. Far From Normal
My dad had a rare type of cancer that affected the bones in his face and jaw. When I was five years old, he had a tumor the size of a softball removed from one cheek. They removed his cheekbone, bottom jaw, nerves, lymph nodes...basically everything. He survived, but the worst was yet to come—that's because the surgeon did a horrible job with the skin graft and spaced the stitches way too far apart.
A couple of weeks after his first operation, the wound got infected. I remember my mom and I were coming home after school one day and it was unusual to see that my dad was also home that early. He was getting out of his car as we were pulling up to the house, and the stitches on his face had started to rip open, but he tried to hide it from us as he ran into the house.
That was just one of the many horrible things that happened while my dad was sick. Being a kid and witnessing that level of gore so frequently desensitized me to it. I didn't realize how bad it was growing up in a household with a mangled parent until I was much older. Seeing the stitches on his face rip open like that was not part of a normal childhood at all.
54. Mockingbird
I used to own five acres of land with a cow field as my only neighbor on all sides. I’ve always sung these really silly songs to my pups. One is the nursery rhyme “Daisy, Daisy”. I sing the songs inside my house, mostly, because my dogs are indoor dogs. Anyway, one crisp fall evening, I was inside my house alone with my windows open.
I heard a faint, low whistle. It was the “Daisy, Daisy” tune, whistled slowly and deliberately. At the end of the verse, the whistling stopped. I was too scared to look outside. I’ll never know what caused that noise.
55. Lost In Space?
I was driving with a friend to another friend’s house. We had driven there several times at night before, but this one time something really weird happened. We were very aware of the area as my friend’s house was by the beach, beside a road with palm trees. It always took us about 20 minutes to get there. Suddenly, we reached a roundabout we had never seen before.
We were really confused. We drove a few more minutes before turning back and after 45 minutes, we finally saw our friend’s house. We arrived all freaked out about what had happened and to this day we have no explanation. A few days later we drove again and everything went fine; we made it there in the regular 20 minutes. It was as if we got “lost in space”.
56. Close Call
When I was around five years old, I was out shopping with my mom when a man grabbed my hand and walked out of the shop with me. I didn't realize it wasn't my mom at first, but the moment I didn't recognize him, I tried to pull away. Then, I went absolutely limp. He looked down at me and said something like, "Come on Tommy, your mom's been looking everywhere for you." Suddenly, my mom came to the rescue and he apologized.
He said he thought I was his nephew, and he immediately left. Looking back, he was definitely a kidnapper who was trying to take me to his van or something. I distinctly remember the entire shop full of people stopping and staring, and later, the person working there allowed me to have a toy for free. I think it was his way of making me feel better, though I had no idea what had happened at the time.
57. A Cry For Help
One night, about ten months ago, there was a pretty heavy snowstorm in my area. All of the roads were closed, and a curfew was issued for everybody except emergency medical personnel. I had been shoveling snow for most of the day and was exhausted come nightfall. I didn't have the energy to do much of anything besides eat dinner and lay down.
I fired up some original Star Trek and began to doze off. A couple of hours later, around 1 am, I heard the sound of a door rattling and a slight whisper saying my name. I sat up a bit and realized it was coming from my parents' room and became fainter as time passed. After 10 minutes or so, I gathered up the courage to see what the heck was going on.
With a cruddy folding knife in hand, I peaked out into the hallway and didn’t see anything. The noise was still coming from the room next door, and the rattling became more rushed as I approached. Cautiously, I opened the door and snuck inside. It was pitch black and I couldn’t see anything. My eyes were taking entirely too long to adjust to the darkness.
I was shuffling forward when, suddenly, something grabbed and pulled on my leg. At this point, I was so freaked out that I jumped back. As the whispers continued, it got so much more terrifying. I recognized my dad's voice. He was asking me for help. Turns out he had a stroke while walking to use the bathroom around 1 am that night. After he fell, he was able to use his left foot to rattle the door to his bathroom.
My mom had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room and wasn't around to help or hear him. I was able to grab the house phone and called emergency services. Despite the weather, officers and an ambulance arrived within 10 minutes. That was the scariest night of my life. Before going into surgery, the doctors told us there wasn't much hope for my dad.
He had a hemorrhagic stroke and there was a massive amount of bleeding. Fast forward 10 months, and my old man was cognitively the same, just paralyzed on his right side. He had every infection under the sun while in the hospital, but he staved them off and is still with us today. He was my best friend before the incident, and my hero after.
58. Bad News Bear
When I was five years old, I went with my dad, my uncle, and my grandad on a camping trip. One morning, the family at the neighboring tent lot left out their breakfast on the picnic table and went on a hike. So, a bear came by, jumped on the table, and started eating it. I, being five, tried to go and pet the bear until my dad grabbed me. I was about 10 feet from it—but that’s not the funniest part.
Eventually, someone came and chased it off, and the bear jumped off the side of a cliff and rode down the side of the mountain like a slide.
59. Young And Oblivious
When I was five, my dad would take me to the park on Sundays. Sometimes, he would then take me to this woman's house nearby. They would sit me in front of the TV and put on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before heading upstairs. It's only now that I'm older that I realize the sad truth. I never made the connection that they were having an affair because I didn't know what that was.
My mother eventually left him when I was older. I think about it now and again how oblivious I was.
60. Stranger Danger
When I was 16 in the mid-90s, I got in a fight with an acquaintance while a whole bunch of us were hanging out at his house. It was a stupid fight, and I can't remember what it was about, but I decided “Screw it, I’m going home”. I lived a few miles away, but I didn't have a car and since it was 2 am, there were no buses.
Even so, I was determined to walk home…in the middle of the night, through a not-as-safe-as-it-seems neighborhood, as a tiny 16-year-old girl. I think, in hindsight, my friends either didn't believe I was going to do it or were too startled by the sudden argument to realize what I was doing. I left the house and started hoofing it.
About mile out, the suburban housing neighborhood melted into a main street, with highway access. I started to notice a greyish minivan following me. It would follow me, pass me, turn a corner, and about three blocks later, it would do the same thing. It was really obvious what the minivan was doing.
I crossed over to the other side of the street, so that I was walking the opposite of traffic flow and no car could come up behind me. It kept doing it, on the other side of the street. About another mile later, there was a 24-hour convenience store. Its lights were bright, but the parking lot was a bit empty.
I immediately crossed the parking lot and went to head inside. Just before I got to the doors, the minivan that had been following me pulled up into one of the parking spots. A guy called out from the driver side and said, "I don't want you to walk over here, just stay there and listen. I just wanted to let you know what I was doing”.
The guy continued, “I saw you walking a while back, but I also saw a dark car that was following you. A couple of times you went to turn around, or stopped, so it started following you down a parallel side street. When I saw it, I started to follow you both, just to make sure you were safe. Go inside the store and call someone to come pick you up, please. I haven't seen the car since you headed across the lot".
He waited until I was inside the store, and then pulled away. I didn't have anyone to call, so I just let the night cashier know what was going on and hung out with her for about an hour and a half. Then I finished the walk home. I've never forgotten the incident, or that man, whoever he was. During the walk, I never saw the dark car he mentioned, but I've always been convinced he saved my life that night.
61. Rest Stop Reverie
When I was about 12, I fell asleep on a road trip for a while. Before waking up, I was dreaming we were going into a rest stop that had a nice pond area for walking and a vending machine that had Fruitopia. I woke up, and we were still driving but my dad declared he was taking the next exit. Ten minutes later, it was the exact exit in my dream.
62. Behind Closed Doors
I was in the basement of my friend's place with his dad and sister. Without warning and for no reason I can remember, his dad did the most despicable thing—he grabbed my friend and his sister by their necks, thrust them up into the air, and pinned them against the wall. I had no idea what to do. He let them go and I thought…maybe I should go home now. I don’t think I even told my parents when I got home.
63. Intruder Alert!
I was out of town on business and my security camera went off in the middle of the night. I checked it and saw a blurry white light moving erratically in the bottom left corner of the screen. Now, I was half asleep in a hotel hundreds of miles away from home and I don't believe in ghosts, so my first thought was that someone was shining a flashlight in the house to case it.
Not knowing what else to do and not wanting to call the authorities and look foolish, I used the two-way sound on the camera to yell, "Get away from the house, I'm calling the police!" The moving light didn't seem to react to that, so I just sat there in my hotel room, watching it until it stopped. The next night it happened again. And then again, the night after.
I showed the footage to my colleagues, and they were convinced that it was a ghost. I asked the pet sitter to look around the house for footprints in the snow, but there was nothing there. I finally got home, and nothing was out of place. But then I had an unsettling realization. I had to sleep in the house with the weird moving light.
So, when the sun went down, I was desperately trying to figure out what it was. Two days later, I did. It had been a very bad winter and I had taken the Internet’s advice and thrown panty hose filled with rock salt up into my gutters to prevent ice dams. The string hanging down from one of them had an ice crystal on it.
That little ice crystal was blowing in the breeze and reflecting the driveway lights back into the house. So, it’s absolutely not creepy at all. But when you're away from home and see a floating orb in your house, it will give one the willies for sure.
64. The Almighty Dollar
My dog was put down in the summer of 2020. I fell into a deep depression and couldn’t get out. I was getting baked every day and had a minimum of three tall cans after work alone. In February 2021, I had a three-hour-long phone call with an old friend. We spent a lot of time catching up, and I opened up about the loss of my dog. He too had put his dog down a couple of years prior, so we both started gushing about the pain of processing the grief.
At one point I gave an analogy. I said, “I just feel empty, like nothing matters. I could be walking down the street, see a $5 bill, and not even stop to pick it up”. My friend agreed. The phone call went on for a little while longer until he had to go. That same evening, I went grocery shopping.
While I was in the grocery store, I started to feel heavy in my chest.
My heart rate started to speed up, and I had to do some deep breathing to avoid a panic attack. Once I calmed down, I finished my grocery shopping, then started walking home. I’d always walk the same way, but this time I had to pee. I walked to the opposite end of the parking lot to go behind a snow bank. After I was done, I decided to keep walking in that direction to make my way home.
While on that walk, I saw something that left me shocked. It was a $5 bill on the sidewalk. I immediately thought of my conversation earlier that day. So, I picked it up, snapped a pic, and sent it to my friend with a caption that said, look what I found. My friend replied in disbelief. I took that $5 bill as a sign from my dog telling me to move on. I went home that night and bawled my eyes out until the next day.
My depression wasn’t magically gone, but it was a big turning point. I re-entered therapy the following month, left my meaningless job a couple of months later, entered a new relationship in the fall after being single for five years, and moved into a better apartment at the end of 2021. I’ve told the story to some people and pretty much everyone thinks I’m exaggerating.
65. Silver Linings
When I was five or six years old, my mom used to never want to get out of bed and just kept saying she was sick. Finally, my stepdad took her to a hospital where she stayed for nearly a month. I thought it was so cool that her hospital let her do arts and crafts all the time. I remember telling her that I wished I could go to the hospital and draw all day.
She sat me down and told me that she hoped I would never get sick as she did, but that if I did, there'd be nothing wrong with needing help to get better, even if I had to go somewhere for a little while to do it. It wasn't until I was probably 12 or 13 and didn't want to get out of bed myself that it clicked. The truth was hard to swallow—the hospital she had gone to was a mental health hospital.
But because of her, I never feel ashamed about needing therapy when things get bad, or even just to maintain a healthy mindset.
66. Bed Buddies
I've had multiple times when I’ve woken up in the middle of the night and was sure I could see a figure in my room until I turned on my bedside light. Usually this scares me a bit but my most memorable one was waking up thinking I saw some short figure at the end of my bloody bed. I said, “Screw off, I'm trying to sleep".
Then, I returned to burying my face into the comfort of my pillow. It seems like it worked—it hasn’t sat on my bed since.
67. The Eye Of The Storm
When I was a kid, I was living in a little house with my mother, my godmother, my little sister, and my godmother's three kids down the street from my grandparents. I was the oldest kid, and was largely responsible for the other children. One day, there was a bad storm that knocked the power out. So, I got all the other kids to hold hands and walked them down to the grandparents' house, so we were with adults. Sometime later, my mom and godmother come rushing into the house, crying for help, saying the kids were locked in the house.
They said they could hear the little ones crying for them, but they couldn’t get the door open, and the older kids weren't answering! They were both just sobbing as I came around the corner, trying to figure out what was happening. My godmother's mother was like, "What do you mean, the kids have been here since the power went out”. My mother and godmother are still really unsettled by this memory 25 years later.
68. The Harmful Aftermath
My worst memory ever was my mom pouring hair gel on the sunburn on my back. I thought it was normal, and that it was supposed to help. I realized later that she had a disturbing motive— she literally tortured me on purpose. It made a thick film all over my back and every movement I made would pull all my skin, causing the worst pain ever.
69. If Walls Could Talk
I was sitting in our office room, home alone. I was 19 and typing a paper for one of my college classes. The office room used to be my sister’s room before she moved out, so a lot of her decorations were still there. She had a photo of a mountain range, an oval-shaped mirror, and three different signs that read "faith", "hope", and "love".
Suddenly, I got random chills. That happened a lot because it was pretty cold. But this time it was different. As soon as I got the chills, everything in the room hanging on the walls fell off simultaneously. That really freaked me out, but it got worse. I got up and walked out of the room only to notice EVERYTHING hanging on the walls in the house had fallen.
All the pictures in the living room and other rooms, all the trophies from little league sports in my room, and even a stand that held candles. I wasn't sure what to do. I picked up all the stuff and hung it back up, which actually took me around 15-20 minutes. Then I drove to campus to finish my paper. I never told my parents.
70. If Pigs Could Fly
There was a toy pig an old couple gave to me and my roommates. Sometimes we would throw it at each other. One day, it disappeared. I knew we had thrown it in the corner of my bedroom, but it was gone. A few days later, we found it on the top shelf in the kitchen. I was the only one who could reach that high. Over the next month or two, that toy pig would keep disappearing and reappearing in random places.
We all blamed it on each other—until one day it disappeared from the front room again. My friends and I had all gone to the store. When we came back, it was on the sidewalk in front of our house. After I left, one of my roommates threw it away because he thought it was haunted.
71. Rock Bottom
My dad got laid off from a job and we started to struggle financially for a year or so. He woke up early every morning to make breakfast for us all before school and cleaned the house while doing side jobs just so we would never know we were struggling. Here's the kicker, though—apparently, he would always say he couldn’t get a job because he was always “overqualified.” Now that I'm older, I'm skeptical of that.
72. Let Me In
I was eight years old, in VERY rural Appalachia. I was sitting on my couch with my dad around 9 pm in winter, with freshly fallen snow. We were watching, of all things, Sightings, an old 90s show about alien encounters that scared the heck out of me. At some point through the show, we heard a KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK on the window.
Keep in mind it’s pitch-black outside, so whatever was knocking could see us, but we couldn’t see them. Dad told me to sit right there with the telephone beside me, and he ran outside with a mag light to go see what it was. He locked the door behind him, and he had explicit instructions to call the authorities if he didn’t come back in five minutes.
I was terrified. Dad went around the house. When he came back in, he downplayed the whole thing, and said it must have been an animal. But directly after all of this, he took the phone into the other room and called his best friend to come up and investigate. He thought I was zoned out watching TV, but I was listening.
He said, “I’m telling you, there was a knock like someone was knocking on the window to be let in, but there were no footprints”. It’s still scary and I’m in my late 30s now.
73. A Visit To The North Pole
I was shopping at a thrift store with my three little ones, and we went to a Chinese place after. This kind couple was talking to us, and they told us about their neighbor’s house and how they decorated it inside and out for Christmas. I got the address and directions from them and set off for it. We found the house lit up, and parked, and were greeted by an older man outside who said to give him a minute to see if Santa was home.
We waited on the porch, and Mrs. Clause came out and got us. My older children, who were four and two, were given candy canes and a tour of the house. Every room had a theme and multiple Christmas trees. There were dolls and trains and decorations in every square inch of the massive place—they must have spent thousands.
I didn’t have a camera with me that day, and our phones didn’t have a camera back then, so I have no proof it happened, except for the hazy memories of my oldest. My hubby thought I had lost my mind when I got home and told him.
74. The Darndest Thing
There was this conversation I had with my grandma when she was explaining to me she had a miscarriage after her last child. I was only nine years old, and I made an incredibly tactless comment—I said it was for the best because my mom, aunt, and uncle were troublemakers, so it was better for her. She got extremely mad with me and I was so confused at the time. I didn’t realize how messed up it actually was.
75. The Playful Poltergeist
My aunt and uncle moved into a 19th-century home in a small town in Maine a few years back. It was like something from Stephen King. Their neighbors warned them about previous paranormal incidents. Since they moved in, many more incidents have taken place. These incidents include but are not limited to an in-your-face chocolate smell in the kitchen when no one had been cooking and random items appearing in places they shouldn't be.
My aunt was a retired school administrator, and she had a filing cabinet full of old documents in the basement. One night, while I was visiting, a binder from that filing cabinet was underneath my bed when I woke up. The filing cabinet was in the very back of their storage space and would have required someone to scramble over camping equipment, old furniture, etc, to get to it.
Sometimes there were unexplained banging noises, but the most memorable incident for me was when my uncle noticed that his medication went missing. My aunt yelled to the "ghost" that his medication was important and was the one thing that was not to be played with. They later found his pill bottles standing upright underneath the bed.
Since they were standing upright, they couldn't have rolled underneath. The pills never went missing again. The ghost has not really done anything harmful and from what I have heard can even be described as playful. We have affectionately dubbed the presence "Gracie the Ghost".
76. A Long Way From Home
When I was a first grader, the principal let me walk to my grandparents' house because it was 7 PM and no one had come for me. When my mom finally came and she couldn't find me at the kindergarten doors like before, so she went to my grandparents' to look for me. However, by the time I got there, there was no one home, so I walked about 6 km (4 miles) to our apartment complex. Meanwhile, my mom had gone back to the school.
Since there was no one home, again, I decided, "I know the way to mom's workplace", and walked 15 km (9 miles) to the mall complex where my mom worked as a dental assistant. What happened on the way there was seriously disturbing. A car flipped over right in front of me after getting struck at full speed and hit the traffic light while I was crossing. I shrugged and went to her workplace, but it was closed. My friend happened to be there because his mom happened to have business in the area.
His mom came out and used an early cell phone to call the landline at my grandmother's where she happened to finally be again. They had an Amber Alert out for me, and apparently, I'm the reason the elementary schools in my area don't let kids out for any reason until a guardian picks them up now. I am now employed by that school board as a teacher.
77. Finding His Way
When I was a kid, I ended up in a chat room with someone who also claimed to also be a kid. He claimed to be 14 or 13 years old; I can't quite remember the exact age. Well, he gave me this phone number and told me that if his voice sounded really deep, it's just because he has a deep voice for his age.
While still in the chatroom, he also tried to find out where I lived. Thankfully, I didn't tell him even though I did know my address by heart at that point...I just didn't feel like telling him. I told him I'd give him a call in a few minutes, then I logged off and proceeded to grab the house phone to call the number.
I don't know if I entered the number wrong or what, but the voice I heard was incredibly strange—this automated message came up and asked if I wanted to accept some charges for the call. If there was one thing I knew, it was that if I had any money charged to the house, I would have gotten a good whooping, so I hung up on that call pretty quickly.
I never wanted to call another number that someone gave me online again. It wasn't until a few years ago that I realized he was an online predator, trying to find his way to a very young child.
78. Questionable Circumstances
One of the most unsettling incidents in my life would be during family dinner when I was about eight years old. My mom suddenly came out with the most terrifying sentences of my life. ''It took me months to get your father's blood stains out of the wall. The smell of his body was terrible and really clung, too''. She then gazed off into the distance, utterly unaware of how shocking such a remark would be.
My dad took his life not long after they split up. He did it in the kitchen of our flat while we were staying at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Someone, presumably my dad, also turned the thermostat up to the max before he passed. He wasn't found for several weeks either. So, yeah, I can imagine it was quite a horrific scene.
My impression was that mom was psychologically damaged by going through that, and as a result, she lost any sense of what was appropriate to share with a child. Sometimes I do wonder if there was foul play and that's why the thermostat was cranked to the max. It could also explain why no one bothered to check on a man who was known to be going through a rough time and alone in a house, not going to work, and had failed to show up for his psych appointments for three weeks.
At the least, it was neglectful. Sometimes it's hard hugging my mom when I have suspicions that she had a greater role in my dad’s demise than she will ever admit to. I know how clever and scheming she can be. But I will never know for sure. And I know how hurtful and angry I get when someone thinks they know that I'm guilty of something and I know I'm innocent. So, I try to keep it buried.
79. Bobbing For Breaths
When we were kids, we were at my uncle’s vacation home. I was in the swimming pool, on an inflatable boat with floaters around my arms, playing. At some point, I was like, “I don’t need the floaters anymore”, so I removed them. I was playing in the boat, and then it flipped over, and I fell into the water underneath the boat so nobody could really see me.
I wasn’t drowning because my dad taught me never to be afraid of water and if something like that happened, I should take the air I can, empty my lungs underwater, touch the bottom of the pool, push up, and get more air until I can reach the edge. At the same time, my younger brother, who was four years old, and had long, beautiful curly blonde hair, was having a story of his own.
He found a lighter on a table and was playing with it, and at some point, his hair caught on fire. In a panic, my uncle grabbed him, and because he was next to the pool, threw him in the water, and jumped to pick him up. When he got out of the water with my brother in his arms, my mom asked where I was. He turned around, saw the boat flipped, and every couple of seconds, my head was bumping into it, so he knew where I was. Nobody believed this story, and it’s my favorite memory of my uncle.
80. A Bad Sleep
A horrible memory of mine was when I walked in on my mom having an anxiety attack in her sleep. I think she was having a really bad dream. She had her eyes wide open and was crying, yet she didn't wake up when I nudged her. She took rattling breaths. After a few moments, my brother came in and she woke up.
We ended up rushing her to the hospital because she had a spinal procedure and was only two days out of the hospital. The truth of her condition was shocking—apparently, the operation had been botched earlier and the device that was put in her wasn't properly cleaned, so she contracted a very severe form of meningitis. If we waited to go until the morning, which is what she wanted to do when she woke up, she definitely would've passed.
81. The Observer
When I was in high school, I was home alone one night during the winter and I was upstairs on the computer. I was talking to someone on AOL Instant Messenger when I specifically remember having an uneasy feeling and telling the person I was messaging that I felt like someone was in the house, or that I was being watched.
I went downstairs and peeked around the corner. Our back door that went into our sunroom was wide open. It was about 10 degrees out and no one else was there, but that door was open. I freaked out and ran to the kitchen and got a big knife. I started screaming stuff like I knew someone was there, like, "I see you! I called the authorities!"
I walked through the house in a way that no one could get out past me without me seeing—or so I thought. After I cleared the house, I assumed maybe the door hadn’t been latched and a draft pushed it open or something. I got over it pretty quick. But later that night, about five houses down, it turns out a woman was tied up in her bedroom by a man who threatened to kill her.
I don't remember the specifics, but she somehow escaped and called the authorities. The guy was never caught. I still have no idea if anyone was in my house that same night, but it's an awfully weird coincidence if not.
82. Under The Spell Of Santeria
One side of my family is into Santeria, and they were having a party for Santa Barbara which they did every year. It was like a friends and family BBQ thing where, at some point, the side who’s into that stuff will do “rituals” while the other side who’s pretty skeptical of it, just did party things. The ritual part started, and my dad began making fun of it.
He tried to “join” by smoking with that group but was being disrespectful about it. When he finished his stogie, his whole demeanor changed, and he started talking weirdly and demanding food like he was possessed. He started going through all the food and even grabbed a whole pineapple and started eating it without peeling or anything.
His whole face started to get messed up, and the group started praying and doing their ritual stuff to get the “spirit” to go away. My dad then “came back” and his face was normal. He doesn’t remember anything and believes he just fainted. When people tell him what happened, he doesn’t believe it and just thinks everyone’s just pranking him.
Everyone that I tell that story thinks I’m full of beans, but I saw it. And quite frankly, it wasn’t the only weird thing that happened at one of those parties, but the most shocking that I’ve ever witnessed. I had nightmares about it for months afterward.
83. Forever Traumatized
I was 10 or 11 at a church camp that had kids from multiple different churches. I had a crush on this girl whom I knew from previous camps and everyone knew that I liked her. She was the daughter of the camp nurse who is part of a well-connected family within the denomination, which to a kid means nothing...I just really liked this girl. She had no interest in me.
I don’t know who allowed this to happen, but it's very, very, messed up. Anyway, there was this “competition” where you write a letter to your crush and whoever wins gets a “date” with them. I had a chaperone help me, and they read mine in front of the whole camp of around 400 kids. I ended up winning.
I don’t remember if any other poems were even read. They took me to the stage along with the girl. I sat next to her and she slid far away from me, understandably. Here’s what really got to me...That evening, I was so excited. I tried to look my best and that’s when things got really bad. My “friends” all took me to the cafeteria.
They were wearing handmade security shirts and were armed with super soakers. They made me put on a shirt that said something shameful written on it. Then, I got anxious during the walk. When I got there, it was a candlelit table. The girl was not amused and everyone was staring. I sat down and then said something to the girl.
That's when I got squirted by my “friends.” Everyone laughed and I just lost it. I ran back to my bunk and started bawling. Looking back, it seemed like a whole plot to shame me into not expressing my feelings for a girl. Now that I’m a father, I would be furious if this happened to my child. Needless to say, religion is no longer a part of my life and this is a big reason why.
84. Into The Void
One time, in high school, my pencil fell off my desk and disappeared. I kid you not. I am as sure as I can be that no one quickly grabbed it as a joke. I think I would have seen and the people around me weren't really like that anyway. I checked in a wide radius around my desk thinking it could have caught an odd bounce off the eraser. Nope.
I watched it roll lazily off the side of my desk and immediately leaned over to retrieve it, and...it was gone. I went from annoyed to perplexed to slightly troubled over the course of the next half hour, checking for it every few minutes but coming up empty. I have since come to the conclusion that the matrix gobbled it up.
85. All Shook Up
One summer when I was a teenager, I went to visit the family that babysat me when I was growing up. I spent a month with them out in California, living on a Christian foundation that I’m not certain exists any longer. It was beautiful, and the scent of jasmine hung in the air memorably. Throughout the month, we tried to hit up as many tourist things as we could.
We went to the beach, shopping, In-N-Out Burger, Mann’s Theatre, Disneyland, the Glendale Galleria, etc. The last weekend I was there, we went to Universal Studios. I remember we took a tram ride for a park tour and saw the Psycho house on the lot. Afterward, we did the infamous earthquake ride. While we were in line, the mom said, “I wish we could have a real earthquake while you’re here, just a little one, so you could see what it’s like”. Big mistake.
The next morning at 4:57 AM, I woke up and my bed felt like it was rolling all around the room as if someone put wheels on it. I don’t remember being scared, just wildly confused. It was an earthquake, alright—the Landers earthquake that was a 7.3 magnitude. A few hours later, that previous day’s wish didn’t disappoint. The Big Bear earthquake occurred with a magnitude of 6.5.
I remember hearing a news anchor say that it was the first time in recorded history that such large earthquakes had happened on separate fault lines on the same day. I don’t know if that was true or not, but it stuck with me. No one back home, aside from family, believed this story, but it happened. My mom was really freaked out and glad that I was coming home soon. It was all a wild coincidence.
86. Yes, That Actually Happened
When I was four or five years old and my sister was eight or nine, we were playing in the yard in front of our house when suddenly, a hooded motorcyclist stopped in front of the driveway and didn't move for a while. He just stood there. Moments later, he made a shocking move—he took out a firearm and pointed it at us. I ran for cover, but my sister stayed in the yard and kept jumping rope because she didn't want to show him she was scared.
I was so scared for her. Fortunately, the motorcyclist drove on again. The interesting thing is that my sister and I both forgot about it for a few years after that, and we both thought it was just a dream, until at some point I told her about it. To my surprise, I found out that she could remember it too–and it actually happened.
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87. Sweet Dreams
In high school, I had a friend. We'll call him “John” for these purposes. Me and John played football together and we would always get extra lifting sessions in at the high school gym. We remained friends after high school and even worked together for a bit. He ended up getting into selling pills and our relationship deteriorated to the point that we were no longer speaking.
Fast forward a few years later and I had this dream. In my dream, I was back at my high school gym lifting weights with John. We were just chatting about random stuff, having a good time and then he suddenly said that he had to go. I told him I didn’t want him to leave because I wanted to keep hanging out and I missed him.
He told me that he was really sorry, but he had to leave. I said, "Okay, see you later", and he replied with a nod and a "See you". I woke up to an eerie miracle. First, it was the sound of my phone ringing. I saw that it was my mom and answered it. She told me that John had passed the night before and asked if I was okay and said some other mom stuff.
She had heard from John’s mom who called in saying that John’s siblings would not be at school the rest of the week because of his passing. My mom was a secretary at the school they went to. I can't help but think that something paranormal had happened to allow me to make peace with and say goodbye to my friend. It was nice to get some bit of closure.
88. Right On Target
I was at Target. This location had three parking lot floors and three floors inside—the main ground floor, the middle floor, and the roof floor. I had parked my car on the second floor, right next to a blue Subaru Forester. I went inside and did a little shopping for a couple of things. I finished paying and took the elevator to the second floor.
I got to the spot where I had parked, and my car wasn't there. Instead, there was a white Mini Cooper—but that’s not the weird part. The blue Subaru Forester I had parked next to was still there, right next to the parking space I clearly remember parking in. I started thinking to myself for a few seconds, and decided to take the stairs to the third floor, thinking that perhaps I had misread the sign and parked there.
I looked around, and I didn't see my car anywhere! I went back to the stairs, and I walked down with my bags back to the second floor because I could’ve sworn I had parked right there. At that point, I didn’t know if I was losing my mind or if my car had been taken. I looked around again to where the blue Forester was, and there it was—my red Sentra parked right where I had left it.
I honestly have no answers as to what could have happened, but to this day I make sure I park on the ground level as close to other cars as possible to prevent my car from vanishing or me entering different dimensions. None of my relatives believe me, and I’m too afraid to tell my friends about this because they’ll think I’m really starting to go cuckoo.
89. Just Need The Proof
This feels strange to think about to this day because I still believe it to be true, but nobody else in my family does. I had only just started walking and I remember throwing a teddy bear back and forth with my grandmother, who was pretty ill at the time. I could never catch it because I lacked hand-eye coordination, so she would throw it a little short, and I kept throwing short as well because I wasn't very strong.
I had just started practicing walking, but couldn't fully walk yet. Whenever I would throw the bear way off course, I would get up to try and walk to it, but I kept stumbling, so she would always go and get it for us. Now, my grandmother passed when I was about a few months old, so everyone in my family swore this never happened.
They said that even if I somehow remembered something from that early of an age, there is no way it happened because by the time I started to walk, my grandma was too ill to walk herself. But the creepy part about all this? I vividly remember my aunt taking a picture of us on our really old film camera while we were playing with that bear, but I could never physically find the photograph.
I hadn't gone back to my home country for a few years, but I went back to visit when I was 11. We were going through old albums and it was there. My aunt swears she never took that picture. Everyone in my family I've asked swears they never took it either. The picture is me and my grandmother sitting across the living room floor, with that same teddy bear, both of us looking at the camera with her holding the bear out as if she was about to throw it.
My aunt, or whoever took the photo, caught us by surprise, so we both looked at the camera. It wasn't on my mind as we were leaving, so I didn't think to take it back. I wish I did. I was maybe a one-year-old in the photo and did not look like I could walk at all, so I'm not surprised my grandma didn't even let me try. The memory is so clear in my head and to have everyone tell me it didn't happen is just off-putting.
90. A Comforting Touch
My friend passed in a car accident, and they towed the car pretty early in the day. We were teens so we thought we should go and collect all her things that were ejected from the car when she hit the tree. After about a half hour, I was overwhelmed and just sat down and started crying. I had my two friends with me cleaning stuff up, and they just let me get it out for a bit.
Someone started rubbing my shoulders in the deepest massage I have ever had, and it was really helping me get control of myself and relaxing me. I let them rub for a few minutes and then I put my hand on theirs to let them know I was appreciative. There was no hand, just my shoulder. I turned around to say thank you to whoever it was, and there was nobody.
I looked up at the car and my two friends were standing there talking about something. But SOMETHING had been TOUCHING me! I ran to the car and asked my friends if it was them. They looked at me like I was crazy. I made everyone get in the car super fast and we left. I think a spirit was comforting me in my loss. I am grateful and freaked out by it. I can still remember how it felt, and it's been 22 years.
91. Bridge Over Troubled Water
In 1994, I was in traffic on a bridge that was being rebuilt. I was heading to my second job and thought I had properly timed the lane getting replaced. I got it all wrong, and the traffic backed up for miles in both directions. A gigantic crane picked up cement sections, swung them around, and lowered them into place. A worker stood on the slabs held tightly to the support cables, and hand gestured directions to the crane operator. What I saw next was horrific.
At some point, the crane shook viciously, and the man on the slab fell to the cement below. He didn't move. By the time the worker's lifeless body was removed, I was hours late. I had no cell phone back then. By the time I got to work, I was immediately summoned and reprimanded. I told them what I saw. Since I worked in radio news, I figured the powers that be would be glad I inadvertently witnessed a story. I was ordered to find another way to work or find another job.
92. Intruder Alert
A guy tried to abduct our neighbor's baby over a $20 debt. We lived in navy housing in Charleston, South Carolina when I was a kid and this was in the '80s. We were at the neighbor's house, and he owed someone else in the neighborhood $20. While we were all in the living room, we were suddenly startled by a bone-chilling sound—we heard glass shattering from the baby room.
The baby cried and everyone rushed down, but the guy was gone before we got there. The guy apparently tried to pry open a locked window with a putty blade and he put pressure on the frame, causing the glass to shatter. The dude left the putty blade and the note he'd written on the window sill when he took off. The baby was fine. I heard the grown-ups talk about knowing exactly who it was.
I also remember them deciding not to call the law enforcement officers and to go deal with it in person.
93. When Lightning Strikes
When I was 6 years old, I was visiting my aunt’s very large property in Arizona. It was basically farmland, and she had built a large practice arena for her horses in the middle of a large pecan grove. Being an idiot kid, one of my favorite things to do was to try and walk the perimeter rails—like a tightrope—without falling. After about 10 minutes, it started to rain. That’s when it happened.
At some point there was a flash and a loud noise that was ABRUPTLY cut off, followed by me waking up a few feet away with my ears ringing. I looked up, and the fence had a portion of blackened, twisted metal. I ran inside and found my mother and aunt and yelled, “Hey guys I think I got struck by lightning”! They replied, “That’s nice honey”. They didn’t believe me at all. They found the damaged fence later and chalked it up to something else.
94. Ronald McSecrets
This one time when I was little, my dad woke me up at like 2 am said "Get ready, we're going to McDonald's.” I was so confused and kept asking why, but he wouldn't answer anything besides, "because" or "to have fun.” The rest of my family—my two brothers, my sister, and my mom—didn't come with us and they were still asleep when we left.
The play place was closed, and we just kind of sat there for an hour or so eating, then went back home. To this day, I still have NO idea why he frantically needed me out of the house, and he swears he doesn't remember that happening, but the whole thing was SO weird that I kept the toy that I got from the Happy Meal to remember it by, and I still have it to this day…
It's my only proof of this weird freaking night that my dad (almost scarily) hurried me to McDonald’s at 2 am. I have two guesses why. First, my sister pooped the bed and they were worried I'd make fun of her. Or maybe they somehow noticed something like rats in my room? Were they worried I wouldn't be able to sleep if I knew that there were rats and they needed an hour or so to get them out???
Either way, a very strange night that my dad refuses to tell me the truth about, which only makes me think it's something much worse. Like. I'm 23 now. If he said "Yeah, your sister pooped the bed and we didn't want you to know," I'd have been like cool, nice, good thinking. But he REFUSES to believe that it happened at all. WHAT HAPPENED.
95. A Relaxing Vacation
I met this guy. We vibed right away and started hooking up within a day or two. This guy swept me off my feet and I couldn't help but think, “Yes! FINALLY, a real man.” Then, one day he said to me: “I know this house we could go stay at for the weekend if you’re interested.” Sounds great, right? But then we got there and he said he forgot his key...so he proceeded to get a crowbar.
That freaked me out, so I asked him to explain exactly whose house we were at. He assured me that it was his dad’s summer house and he definitely had permission to use it. I ignored my gut instinct and decided I was probably just freaking out for nothing and overreacting. We stayed there for about four days, with no more issues.
I slept in the master bedroom, showered there, made food in the kitchen, the works. When we left, this guy said, “Look what I got.” He proceeded to show me jewelry and some credit cards from the house. I was starting to truly panic now. As naïve as I was, I still thought it was his dad’s house and he was just having a rebellious moment.
And that’s when he fessed up. I realized that I’d just helped him burglarize this home. It wasn't even his dad's house; it was his mom's ex-boyfriend’s house, and let me tell you—they did NOT give him permission to be there. His stepdad even had a restraining order on him for a similar incident a few years before.
So fast forward a few weeks—I got pulled over and snatched out of my car for having been involved in this whole thing because these people had rightfully pressed charges. I ended up narrowly avoiding doing serious time.
96. Coming In Handy
This happened when I was around five years old, but I remember everything like it happened yesterday. We had gone to a funeral for my mom's cousin in another town a couple of hours out. We got to the house and my mom went to see her aunt. She gave her condolences and I followed, holding her hand. I guess during the hugging and crying, my mom let go of my hand.
I started looking for her hand but not really looking up, just keeping my hand out for her to grab it while calling her name. There were a lot of people and the house was small, so I could only see the people standing around me. A couple of minutes later, I found her. Or so I thought, because she took my hand and started walking towards the door to leave.
I thought to myself as I was putting on my shoes that it seemed weird to come such a long way just to be here for five minutes. That thought led me to look up at the lady holding my hand. I instantly realized it wasn’t my mom. I have no idea where the woman was planning on taking me. I jolted my hand away from her and ran towards the room I had lost my mom at.
97. Who Took Them?
I went out for a few drinks with friends one Saturday night, left the bar, and went back to my apartment where I live alone. I got into bed and fell asleep. The next morning, my friend sent me a message on WhatsApp saying, "Send me the photos from last night." I opened my phone, and started screaming. After the photos from that night, there were at least 20 pictures of me sleeping.
In the background of the photos, there’s a shadow of someone on the wall, clearly holding up my phone taking pictures all dated and timed during the time I would have been asleep.
98. Mystery Man
I worked in McDonald's before I went to university. There was this one man who came through the drive-thru—he was in his late 30s and was clearly a farmer from the look of his vehicle and his dog in the back. He was always pretty quiet, but I remember a couple of times that he tried to make nice small talk. When I worked on New Year's, he asked me how things were and said I should be out having fun my age.
I remember thinking he always seemed really lonely or sad when he drove through since he'd always try to carry a conversation with me. I felt bad having to be quick with him because he just seemed like he wanted someone to talk to. Long story short, he drove through one day and asked if my last name was what he thought it was. After a sideways glance from my manager, I said it was.
He looked really sad and took his hat off. Then he said something that shocked me to my core. He told me that he was my dad. My biological mother didn't know who my dad was, so it was possible. My manager let me go on break to speak with him. He then explained that he slept with my mother around the time that she got pregnant, and he was only 16. He was really apologetic and also seemed ashamed of what he did.
He told me he was sorry he didn't seek me out. He was from a town about an hour's drive away, so that was a part of it. And no one ever showed up to tell him he was a dad or anything. I told him I was happy with my life, but I still gave him my number and told him to give me a ring sometime. So yeah, that's how I met my dad. My biological dad, I should say.
After a few years when I heard from my biological mother again, she agreed that he was who she thought the father was. We went out for coffee three or four times, but we didn't have much to talk about. He and I never really maintained contact—the last time we spoke, he told me he'd been diagnosed with MS. He had a couple of sons, but I was his only daughter and he said that he was grateful we had met.
99. What Actually Happened?
I was a director of one of the largest museums in the United States and walked out on stage to give a pretty controversial presentation. I was already pretty nervous. That's when a loud bang reverberates from the center of my head.
I don’t feel my body drop but I can tell I’ve hit the floor, my vision blurs and turns red, and in the three seconds after the bang, I conclude that I’ve been shot and have seconds to live.
I’m a very large man and as I’m fading out, I see my friend, the museum nurse trying to pull me up. I was in shock and the pain didn’t really faze me, but wow did it hurt. It was indescribable agony. I accepted very calmly that my nurse friend’s face was the last thing I’d ever see and then I faded out.
I woke up four hours later in a hospital after an emergency surgery. Turns out, I hadn’t been shot after all! I somehow had an abscessed wisdom tooth that had become highly infected, and the abscess exploded upwards into my head, splitting the tooth from tip to jaw and breaking my left maxilla. It erupted with such force that my eyes bled, and the pain knocked me out.
While I was out, my wisdom tooth was pulled without anesthetic and the infection drained. I get phantom twitches just thinking about it.
100. Acting Up
My sister and her husband had just had their first child a few months prior. My brother-in-law was working the graveyard shift at his job while my sister stayed home taking care of my nephew. Around 2 am, she heard loud knocking on her back door. She went to go check it out and saw a lady banging on the door, asking for my sister to let her in.
The lady told my sister that her husband had just beat her down the street and was looking for her. My sister was hesitant to let her in since she had a newborn in the house and didn't want to interfere. She told the lady that the best she could do was call the authorities for her. This is where my sister got suspicious. The lady told my sister to not call them and to let her in.
She went to get her phone and called the authorities. When she went back to the door, the lady was gone. The officers arrived a few minutes later and they told my sister that the same situation had happened a few streets down. Apparently, the couple would do this act to get into people's homes.
I'm sure this is very common but having it almost happen to my sister and my nephew just creeps me out. It’s some real Clockwork Orange stuff.
101. Heal Thyself
When I was young, I had hot oil spill over the whole right-hand side of my body. It burned the daylights out of me. I was blind in one eye and covered in patches for weeks. One day my mom took me to the hospital to get my dressings changed, and the doctor told her I would likely have to have plastic surgery and skin grafts as it wasn't healing.
When he went to change my dressings, there was not a single mark on me. I had completely healed, and my eyesight was normal. No one believes the story, so I just don't tell it anymore.
Sources: Reddit, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
