It may be an ominous thump in the night, a ghostly visit from a long deceased relative, or a disembodied voice giving you a life-saving message. Many of us have had experiences like these, and most of us agree: we have no idea what the heck happened. Check out these Redditors’ most spine-tingling stories of decidedly unnatural occurrences—read them at night if you dare.
1. A Laugh From The Past
When my son was little he had what we called his “silly laugh.” It sounded a lot like a laugh my grandmother had. My grandmother’s laugh was because of a brain aneurysm. It paralyzed the left side of her body (including vocal chords and lips) and gave her a very distinct and odd-sounding laugh. My son never met my grandmother, as she had passed on even before I met my husband. As such, we didn’t think much of it—until one terrifying day.
My son was four, and my mother and I were going through some old photographs. My grandmother was in one of them. She was in her 20s in the picture. My son looked at the picture and said my grandmother’s name. He also said she was the lady who taught him how to do his "silly laugh." He’d never met her or seen the picture before.
2. Obituary Came Out Too Soon
I had a phase in my mid-teens when I would read the obituaries in the local newspaper. I saw a name that was familiar as it was the same as a family friend. It had his full first, middle, and last names. I didn't say anything to my parents since I figured they already knew. A few days later, my mom told me he passed and I said I knew since I saw his obit.
She said, "That’s impossible. It just happened last night in his sleep." I went back through the newspapers—my mom kept them for a week before throwing them out—but the obit wasn't there. When the real obit came out it had his first and last name but just his middle initial. This was almost 40 years ago and I still think about it.
3. Flipping Scary
I woke up to a weird feeling, and saw an opaque silhouette of a little boy standing on the other side of the apartment facing me. I turned on my light and it was gone, when I turned my light off I saw it again. I flipped the light back on and went over there to make sure there was nothing that could be causing a weird shadow.
There was nothing there that could have created that specific shape and it was standing in the pathway between my couch and wall so it couldn’t have been a shadow. I turned my light off again and it was there, flipped it back on and slept with the light on for the rest of the night. Couldn’t sleep without the light on for days.
4. Child Of The Corn
I was biking down a country road I used to live on, I think I was eight or nine, and on my way home. I suddenly saw this small humanoid looking being run across the road, from one crop field into a corn field. The only details I could make out, and I still vividly remember, was that it was completely covered in yellow, from neck to feet, and I think it has green on its head.
I told my mom about it and all she could come up with was something about cabbage patch kids. I never saw that thing again, but I still think about it from time to time.
5. Literal Nightmare Childbirth
It was early into my now-wife’s and my relationship, I had a terrible dream about her in childbirth. The dream was very vivid, and long. It was like I spent days in the hospital with her and everything was in a strange twilight. When it came time to deliver the baby things went very wrong and she and the baby ended up dying.
I woke up quite shaken, naturally, but brushed it off. I am a nurse and have had to deal with traumatic OB situations before, and I chalked it up to me dealing with that stress through a dream. Six years later and my wife is pregnant. I have forgotten the dream by now. I get a call late into the third trimester while I am on shift.
My wife is going to the emergency room for a bad blood pressure reading. I get off my shift and go to meet her there. As soon as I step into the room, I remember my dream. I’m also super shocked because It’s the same room as in the dream—but that’s not the spookiest part. It’s extra weird because the hospital we were at wasn't even built when I had the dream.
So when “show time” comes around, my wife gets ready to begin pushing and it's exactly the same scenario as my dream. Things start going poorly, but the doctor thinks delivery is still possible. At this point I finally freak out into full panic, and demand a C-section for my wife. I can tell the doctor wants to argue but I think my outburst made her step back and reassess the situation and she made the call for an emergency C-section.
It took 10 minutes for me to get taken back and as I'm in the OR I see my baby come out lifeless. They do everything they can and manage to resuscitate her. In the meantime my wife is doing poorly and they are scrambling to control her bleeding. I follow the baby out knowing there's really nothing I can do. The baby gets life flighted to another hospital.
Before we left I see my wife has stabilized and headed to the ICU. Both my wife and baby are critical but alive. Today they are both thriving and my baby is 16 months and just a tornado of energy. I don't know that they would be alive if not for that dream and it causing me to freak out and demand a change in plan.
6. Expiration Date
A few months after my husband had passed, I was watching TV in my living room. It was in the middle of the day, and I kept hearing this sound, like someone was jiggling their change around. It was loud, as if it were in the room with me. I paused my TV, yet the sound persisted. So I started to look around my home and when I got to the kitchen, I saw my husband standing there.
He was looking around, as if taking stock of my apartment. Oh, and he was jiggling change in one hand, while flipping a quarter in between his fingers with the other hand—something he did a lot when he was alive. He turned his head and saw me frozen, staring at him. The expression on his face was one I will never forget.
His eyes got HUGE and he kind of tilted his head forward, with the expression like, "You can SEE me??!!" I don't know how long we stared at each other for, but I turned away when I started to hear my cat ripping up the carpet again in the other room. When I turned back to my ex, he was gone. It's worth noting that he had only been deceased for a couple of months.
Some Romanian women I worked with told me that the dead stick around for three months before crossing over. I don't know about all that, but I know without a shadow of a doubt, what I saw that day.
7. He Gave A Hoot
The night before Thanksgiving three years ago, I was across the country at my parent’s place, driving back to theirs with my now-wife from a friend’s house. As we drew near, there was some type of bundle in the middle of the road. I stopped and pulled off to move it, and it turned out to be a Barred Owl that got clipped by a car.
Long story short, I spent the rest of that night getting the owl into a puppy cage, gave it some food and water, and the next day dropped it off at a wildlife rescue center. I got home the next week, all the way across the country. I stepped outside and there was a Barred Owl sitting on my fence watching me. It was gone by the time I got back. But now I know I'm straight with all owls.
8. Night Court
My buddy and I were playing tennis one night at some courts by my house. The lights usually went out at 11 o’clock, but for whatever reason that night they went off at a weird time, like 10:43 or something like that. Whatever, that was weird, we collected our stuff and started walking to my car about 500 feet from the courts.
Just then, my buddy’s mom pulls up right as we’re getting to my car. She looks super upset and yells at us, “Where have you been? I’ve been calling your cell and when it answered there was just some guy laughing, it didn’t sound like you.” That’s when my buddy checked his pockets and everything and realized he didn’t have his phone on him.
He told his mom to call his cell again and we could see it light up in the middle of the court we were playing on. It was by the net, but still definitely in between the single lines, not at all where we kept the rest of our stuff. He goes and gets it and only has the one missed call from his mom, the one she just made. Not the ones she was making earlier.
He asked if she called the right number and her call log showed three calls to his phone all that night. We can’t explain why the cell was on the court or what happened with the calls or what happened with the lights. It was surreal.
9. Knock, Knock, Knock
I went with my brother to see an old family property my mother had inherited in a really rural area. We were just looking about, it hadn't been lived in for decades. There was a bit of wind—it was a rainy day—and both me and my brother were inspecting the house until we started hearing a weird rhythmic knock coming from around the building.
It was just a knock at regular intervals—much like a clock sounds but a lot louder. My brother and I stepped out to look around, but the noise started sounding like it was getting further away from us. Finally, the noise just disappeared. We left shortly afterward. A couple of days went by, and I stopped by my mother's place to ask her something.
I asked her if she has any pictures of the original owner of the house, which was her grandfather, so my great-grandfather. She pulled out a picture. When I saw it, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The man had a wooden leg as a result of an injury. I told my mother all about it and it was like she was remembering him. She says that's exactly how it sounded when he walked on the porch.
10. Polite Ghost
A very nice old man and his wife used to live a few streets over from us. Well, she got very sick and his son flew in to help watch and care for her. A few weeks later she moved to hospice and later died. That same night, her husband and son drove home and they were talking about what to do for the funeral and the husband asked: "Do you think she'd want (some person) to attend?"
At that moment, they both said they heard the deceased woman’s voice in the back seat say, "No thank you".
11. Give Me A Sign
My father passed in 2000 in my parent's house. Years later, I was over pretty late one night after my mother had gone to sleep. I swear I could feel my father's presence, as I was right in the spot where he’d had his heart attack. Anyway, I thought to myself, "This is stupid. People don't leave essences behind, I'm not feeling anything."
So, I say out loud, "If this is really you, Dad, knock a box of cereal off the shelf onto the floor." I wanted to pick something I didn't think could happen by accident. I went into the kitchen and stared at the shelf with the cereal on it for a few minutes and nothing happened. Since it was almost midnight, I decided to sleep in my old bedroom.
I woke up the next morning and went downstairs and a box of cereal was laying on the floor. I said to my mother, "Did you knock that cereal onto the floor?" She said no, it was like that when she woke up.
12. Missed Call
One night I had a sudden urge to call a friend of mine. I’m in Canada and he was in Atlanta at the time. I didn’t call because I was out partying with friends. The next day I got the news when I woke up: my friend had taken his own life. I feel like I missed the chance to save a friend, but my Dad says it was him letting me know he was gone but was going to be okay.
I’m sorry I didn’t reach out, bud. I regret it all the time.
13. Lost At Sea
My uncle, my mother’s brother, was maybe 10 years older than her. Back in the 60s, he had a boat and used to take it from Florida to the Bahamas. It was a trip he had made many times. One day he left in the boat and vanished. A short time after, she was at work, and her phone rang. It was a woman. "Is this Carol?" "Yes." What she heard next was devastating.
The woman said: "I just wanted you to know that your brother died an honorable death." Then she hung up.
14. Phantom School Bus
I don't know if I'd call it supernatural, but it was freaky and I still don't understand. I was in the kitchen cleaning up and waiting for my kid's bus. I saw it pull up, and saw my son get off. He didn't come in, but he'd started playing around and, I assumed, hiding under the window to jump out at me and say boo, so I thought that's what he was doing. But I walked out and he wasn't there.
I called his name and looked around the house thinking he was hiding from me, but I couldn't find him. I circled the house calling for him, and the parent panic set in. It probably only lasted 90 seconds but it felt a lot longer. Then his bus pulled up and he got off.
15. Someone To Watch Over Me
I woke up one in the middle of the night and saw a man standing next to the bed staring at my girlfriend. He was slightly translucent and I figured it was just another sleep paralysis episode. I’d had them before so I knew the drill. So I just rolled over and went back to sleep. But wait a minute—I suddenly remembered that being able to move isn't part of sleep paralysis.
So, immediately my heart began to race. I realized that I needed to roll over and check what I’d seen. The person was still standing there, and he was still staring at my girlfriend. Then he slowly turned his head and made eye contact with me. He stared at me for a while before turning around and walking to the wall, slowly fading away with each step.
The next morning my girlfriend woke up looking really bad and said she had the worst night's sleep because she kept having the feeling that someone was watching her. Glad we no longer live in that house.
16. Check Your Brother
I was out with my parents, and it was late coming back home. At around 2:30 am we were at a traffic signal, a homeless guy came and knocked on the window of the seat where my mother was sitting. As she rolled down the window to give him money, he said something to her: "Check what is happening at your brother's house."
He then proceeded to take the money and walked away. Probably thinking that he was a bit crazy in the head, we didn't bother about it and went home. The next morning mom gets a call from her brother's wife. He’d had a heart attack. At exactly 2:30am.
17. Minivan Marvel
I was in my friend's mom's minivan. There were four of us, and we were just talking and laughing—then it suddenly got quiet for no good reason. At the exact same time, all four of us put our seat belts on in complete silence. Five minutes later, the van got T-boned. Luckily we were all fine and afterward were just standing around this smashed van.
We looked at each other and talked about how weird it was.
18. Carpet Diem
When I was a kid—maybe about 10 or 12. I was home alone while my mom was out doing errands. So, I was carrying a load of laundry upstairs. In our house, we have this weird carpet runner over our hardwood stairs that's only really attached at the top of the flight but otherwise not fitted or secured to each individual stair.
So naturally, I step on an air bubble of carpet with my vision obscured by the laundry and fall backward while bear hugging a bunch of blankets. I specifically remember thinking, "Well, I guess this is the end," while almost airborne with just my big toe left on the carpet. Suddenly, I felt it. There were two hands lifting me, one on either side of my shoulder blades.
The two hands gave me a firm shove that launched me back up on the step and diagonally against the stair rail. I assumed mom somehow silently came back early without announcing herself and turned around to thank her while still clinging to the railing, but no one was there. I scurried upstairs to put my things down while calling her name and walked the house afterward to check if any doors were unlocked or if her car was there.
I finally resorted to calling her cell where she told me she was hitting up a few more stores. It still feels like there's a presence on that stairwell—like someone's watching but in a protective way rather than sinisterly.
19. Dream Foretells Tragedy
I had a dream once about my high school best friend who had moved out of state and started a family. I hadn’t seen her or spoken to her in at least 10 years and had never met her child, except seeing pictures and posts on Facebook and commenting on them. In my dream I was walking down a street at night and out of nowhere her little girl appeared next to me.
I looked at the little girl and I asked her, “Where is your mama? Why are you by yourself?” I remember her taking me to some bushes near a random house on the street and finding my friend in bad shape—beaten up or something—on the ground and I remember running to the door of the random house screaming for help and to call for an ambulance.
This is all I can recall from the dream, but I think there may have been a little more. The next day, I woke up and thought to myself: man that was weird. Maybe I dreamt of her because we had just spoken a little in the comments of a Facebook post. I should send her a message. I go on about my day, go to work, get home later that day and sit on my couch and scroll through Facebook.
BAM. 1,000 posts—Rest In Peace, etc.—all of them tagged my friend and her daughter. I thought: What has happened? At that point there was no information as to what had happened, so I thought it must have been a car accident or something. Over the course of the next few weeks to months, more and more information came out and it was NOT an accident. It was murder: both my friend and her sweet baby.
This happened about five years ago. I still remember the main parts of the dream vividly. I still am a little horrified that I had this dream that night. When it was happening possibly. I haven’t been able to tell anyone else about it either because just thinking about it gives me chills.
20. Kid Stuns Detective
I was very young—probably seven or eight years old. My mother had gone to the store and left me alone—this is the early 1980s in a small town in Mississippi y’all, it was a different time. It had to be a Saturday morning because I was watching cartoons and I heard a knock on our front door. We didn’t have a window or a peephole since, again y’all, it's a small town in nowhere Mississippi.
So I opened the door and there’s an elderly man standing there, bleeding from the head. He was wearing these thick gold coke bottle glasses, a bright red short-sleeved shirt with a pocket protector, blue jeans, and a belt buckle that had “Eddie” engraved on it in big letters. He said he was in a car accident down the road, and if I could please call for help.
He said his wife was still trapped in the car. I told him to come and sit down on our couch, he did and I shut the door. I went into the kitchen and called our local emergency department and told them about the accident. When they asked where the accident happened, I realized I didn’t know so I yelled out to the man “What road did this happen on?” and I got no answer.
I told the operator to hold on, walked into the living room and the man was gone. I didn’t hear our squeaky door open so I knew he didn’t leave. Also there was an imprint on the couch from where he had been sitting. I looked in my bathroom to see if maybe he had gone in there to wash the blood off his head and he wasn’t there. I also looked in my bedroom and my mom’s bedroom, nothing. I guess he’d left.
When I came back to the phone I told the emergency operator that the old man was gone and I didn’t know he had left. I gave them my address and some officers and firefighters came to my house. I told them about what had happened, what the man had been wearing, everything. The officers searched the area and found nothing.
They talked to my neighbors who said they didn’t hear anything and didn’t see anyone matching the man’s description. By this time, my mom got back home. She was mad at me and I got in trouble for making a false emergency call. Months later, when I got off the school bus one afternoon, there were squad cars everywhere at my house.
A detective was waiting inside with my mom and he said he wanted to ask me some questions about the phone call that I’d made about the man asking for help a few months previously. So, I told him the story again, and gave him the man’s description. After I was done he just sat there staring at me with his mouth hanging open.
He thanked me for my time, told me I wasn’t in trouble, and they gave me an officer teddy bear. They talked to my mom for a bit and left. After they had been gone a few minutes my mom called me back into the dining room and sat me down at the table. That’s when I learned the disturbing truth. The detective had said that they’d found a car that had driven off the road less than a mile from our house and had found two bodies inside—one was thought to be male and the other female.
The car was completely destroyed and upside down, about 60 yards off the road in a very rural and heavily wooded area, which is why it took them so long to find them. The body thought to be male was wearing the exact same clothes I had described. Both of them were pinned inside the car upside down…and both were still wearing their seat belts. My family and friends treated me really weird for a long time.
21. Disappeared Between Cameras
I was working as night security for a small office at a sanitation plant. The building had a single entrance and you had to check in at the security station to get in or out. One night, a worker shows up and checks in saying he needs to take care of a few things and grab some stuff. So I check in his ID and flip a few lights for him, and then go back about my business.
Fast forward a few hours and my shift is about to end, I still haven't seen the guy come back. So, I go patrol the building to find him and literally can't find him anywhere. He's not in any of the areas I turned lights on for him, no other lights are on, and he's not in any other rooms. I stop by security to see if we just missed each other and he's trying to leave, but nobody is there.
I do a second patrol and still no signs. At this point, I went to check the cameras to see where he went, but he's not on a single camera except the one covering the entrance and security station. He turns down a hallway and never shows up on the next camera down said hall. At this point, I logged it as an incident, and got out right as the relief shift showed up.
Next day my boss calls me and says that the worker had been on vacation out of state for several days, and wouldn't be returning for several more. Nobody could offer any explanation as to what happened.
22. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
I live in a city and my brother lives in another city that is around 1,000 km away. He visits sometimes but not quite often. On an average of once every two years. One day around seven years ago, I was sleeping on the couch in the living room at my apartment. I woke up suddenly and my brother was sitting just beside me.
I was shocked and surprised and started greeting him and asking him about how he is doing and what a pleasant surprise it was. Next thing, I realized that this was a dream, as the doorbell was ringing which woke me. I went to open the door and guess what? It was my brother who came to surprise us! This literally had me speechless.
Don't have any explanation and I think sometimes you don't need to have one.
23. Big Black Coffin
When I was little, the woman that came to clean my house—I'll call her Mary—was also my babysitter while my parents were working. Usually, after she finished cleaning she would bring me to her house until my mom would come and pick me up. There, during the year, I got to know her whole family, among these was her husband, who I'll call Dave.
So Dave was a pretty cool guy. He was just the average older guy you would find in any rural town. He liked to drink with his friends at the bar, go hunting and he had a lot of good and interesting stories to tell me when I was a kid. After all these years that we spent together, he basically considered me as a grandson.
So, after knowing Dave for a few years I had a dream one night. In the dream, Mary was coming to my house to clean as she did every other week, but this time there was a big difference. In my living room, there was a closed black coffin. When I asked her what was in there she looked at me and said in a sad tone: "Dave is inside there.”
Now if that wasn't strange enough, I remember waking up later that night and feeling a presence to the side of my bed, and I distinctly remember having said, while still being half asleep: "Come on Dave, let me get back to sleep." The next morning when I woke up, my parents told me that Mary had called saying that Dave had died that night.
To this day I still haven't told anyone about it, and I am still a bit freaked out from the whole story.
24. Two Daughters, One Message
Four years ago, my daughter was sleepwalking. She walked into my room while my wife and I were asleep. She nudged me and said: “Dad isn't breathing.” I was like: “Honey I'm fine, I'm right here and I'm ok.” She replied with, “He won't wake up. Why won't dad wake up?” I told her that I was awake and I was talking to her. She then turned around and went back to bed. It was 2:11.
The next morning I was at work just talking and getting ready for the day at 8ish and my boss came over and informed us that one of our coworkers had passed in the night. We're talking about this and we asked how and when. My boss then told us he passed from a heart attack at around 2 AM. At this point, I have to sit down and try to remember when my daughter had come into our room saying everything she did.
At the time my deceased co-worker was remodeling his new home and his wife was staying at her mom's house. His daughter was staying with him as her school was closer to the new home and he could drop her off before coming to work. His daughter was sleeping in the bed with him, due to it being a new house and being a little scary at the time.
So, it turned out that it was the little girl that found her father after his heart attack. I still think about that today, but my daughter has no recollection of ever coming into the room that night. My daughter and his daughter had become good friends from playing softball together. All I could think of was that my daughter was somehow channeling to me what her friend was saying about her own dad.
My daughter was five at the time and my daughter and her remain friends but she no longer plays softball as that was their thing. She seems to be doing better after counseling and being the one that found him that night. My wife and his wife have remained friends too and she still struggles with it. Their son, on the other hand, has had severe problems and refused counseling.
25. Elevator To Heaven
My granddad passed when I was seven, but, per his own words, I was his absolute favorite—partially because I am the splitting image of his mother, even into adulthood. When I was 21, I was set to give birth to my first son. I was about to get into the elevator to L&D when a man came in saying that he was a volunteer and he'd help me and my husband find our way.
The elevator was very slow for some reason, but we spent the time talking about what a blessing children are and how they grow up so fast. Here's the thing: he looked and sounded exactly like my grandad—same stature, same blue-grey eyes, same faint Scottish-Canadian accent, same khakis, checked shirt, and sky blue cardigan.
Even spookier is that the nurses said they don't have any older male volunteers in that particular building. I don't really believe in ghosts, but I am absolutely certain granddad paid me a visit that night.
26. Hitchhiker Saves Life
I was back in Bangladesh and visiting my family. I got a driver to take me in an SUV to get to my family’s home since it was far away. The trip was two hours on a highway through a forest. I was sitting in the passenger seat and there was an old man walking down the highway. He was hitchhiking and the driver decided to pick him up.
The old man insisted on sitting in my seat and I obliged as he was an older man. He was wearing ethnic attire which isn’t peculiar around that area. He didn’t speak at all, and we didn’t ask him anything either. He just said to drop him off at the market ahead which would be in the town my house was in. About an hour down the drive, we had a terrible accident.
Our car collided with a bus. We were all shaken up and it took us a while to notice that the old man wasn’t anywhere. The passenger seat where he was sitting was very mangled up. We all got out and we looked around but we couldn’t find the old man that insisted on taking my seat anywhere. Stories like these aren’t rare, but I’ve never believed them—until now.
We all know the man sat in my seat and we all saw him. But he was nowhere to be found. He just vanished. No blood. I would say that he saved my life.
27. Friendly Hands
When I was 18 or 19 and still adjusting to life after high school, I remember being really lonely because all my friends had moved away to go to college and I was the only one who stayed in our hometown and went to community college. So I was also dealing with feeling less than everyone because I didn’t go to university right after high school—definitely don’t regret it now though.
I remember just wishing that I had a companion or a friend who would just be with me when I was feeling especially sad or lonely, and every time I had that thought, I would feel a hand. It would be on my shoulder or my back, occasionally my lower back and even my thigh once or twice, but there was definitely something there. I could feel the weight and the warmth of it.
It wasn’t really scary after the first few times, I got used to it eventually. It also didn’t feel malicious. It just felt like someone standing next to or behind me putting their hand on me to comfort me. I always felt a little better—like I wasn’t alone and everything was going to be okay. Eventually, I made some new friends and the loneliness went away, and eventually so did the hands.
I can still feel them occasionally when I’m driving alone at night and start to get creeped out by the dark and scary roads, or when I start to feel nervous about moving out of my childhood home next month. Sometimes I think it might be my great-grandpa, who died when I was five and is the only person I’ve known who has passed.
But I also like to think it could be someone who was just like me at some point, and is just trying to comfort me in the way they wanted to be comforted when they were in my shoes.
28. Pop Catches Pop
When my daughter was about 10, she joined a softball league and I taught her how to throw, hit, etc. I took her to a local Class AAA minor league game. I had never been to this stadium before —about 16,000 seats—and had ordered tickets online. The seats I got were down the 3rd baseline about as far away from home plate as you can get and still be in the stadium.
As the game progresses, she sees foul balls going into the stands and after a while asks if you can keep one if you catch it. I told her yes, and she said, “Catch me one, daddy. “I spent a few minutes explaining to her why that was very unlikely to happen where we were. As I’m finishing breaking her heart, I hear a bat crack.
I look up, and see a long, towering fly ball and knew immediately from my years playing baseball that this one was coming to me. All I had to do was stand up, raise my glove hand to my right ear—I’m a lefty—and that ball smacked perfectly in the webbing. The crowd cheered. Many years later, I still have the memory of my daughter’s face as I gave it to her.
When I think about all the factors that had to come together for that to happen—a lefty batter, the right pitch and swing, the badly selected seating, that I even found and brought my old glove—it affirmed my belief that there is a higher power who sometimes grants small miracles.
29. Heavy Breather
I was about 15 and trying to sleep but found that I was having an asthma attack. Late in the night, I started hearing a rhythmic breathing from the floor next to the bed. It wasn't scary, more comforting. And it wasn't me, because my breathing sounded way more messed up than that. It helped me calm down and get to sleep.
Even though I was still sick, I was able to get my hands on an inhaler in the morning. At the time I thought it was a friendly ghost. I later rationalized that maybe I was hearing a family member through the heating ducts. What I realized years later, when I had a dog, was that it had sounded exactly like a big dog sleeping next to the bed.
So now I'm 50/50 on whether a ghost dog came to visit me, or my own dog time-traveled back about ten years before she was born to comfort me.
30. Pop Goes The Shadow Person
One time I saw what I thought was a shadow figure dart across the upstairs hallway in my house late one night. I thought it may be a person, so I jumped up to the landing and went "gotcha!" and flipped on the light. And at that moment, the light glowed bright blue and burnt out with a pop. That is probably the most scared I have ever been in my life right there, and I can't really put my finger on what happened.
31. Haunted Restaurant
I saw a lot of weird things while I was working at The City Tavern in Old City Philadelphia—considered to be one of the most haunted buildings in the U.S. I’ve seen full dinner service, plates, utensils, glasses and all fly off the table we called "Big Round" in the middle of dinner service. Not sort of topple over, but full-on yeet off the table.
Personally I have witnessed this occur twice. One of the times being a slower dinner service with nobody seated at the round. It happened often enough that every server, and even a few customers, came to expect it from time to time. I'm sure there is a logical explanation for it occuring; maybe a really specific vibration from the subway was my best guess. Except the train doesn't go below the historic district.
When I was opening, the building would sometimes sound like many people were in it—even when we knew it was only a few of us there. The place is huge, and has lots of stairwells and dumbwaiters; so I guess it could be a trick of acoustics maybe. There were weird icy drafts outta nowhere, shifting furniture, etc. Every haunted house cliché seems to just naturally occur in the place
Ask anyone who ever worked there, the place is straight-up spooky at times. Sadly, Chef Walter Staib, the last proprietor, has had to close the place and it will not be reopening. This is only the second time the place has closed in its 250 year history.
32. Car Change Saves Lives
My mom had the premonition that my brother would not be safe when he was about to go on holiday. He and his girlfriend were going to drive to Italy in his girlfriend's car, which I can only describe as “a yellow cookie jar with wheels underneath.” My mom kept freaking out for a week, and the day before they left, she bought a secondhand VW golf.
I know this is not a big car, but it was way less tinfoil than his girlfriend’s car and had a decent cage construction, you know, German “Gründlichkeit.” So in this safer car, she hoped to send them on their way. My mom had to jump through hoops to get it insured in time, but the insurance agent could tell she was borderline crazy at that point.
It was Friday afternoon at 4:50—everything was about to close for the weekend—and she made sure it happened. They took the car on Saturday morning and went on their way. The telephone rang 10 hours later. They’d gotten pancaked in a traffic jam in Switzerland. The VW was totaled but my brother and his girlfriend didn’t have a scratch.
Mom felt bad when informing the insurance company the next Monday about what happened. She really wanted to let it slide and take the financial loss. “You can ask for too much, you know?” But as it wasn’t my brother’s fault, it got dealt with anyway. Needless to say, she still is a big fan of VW.
33. All In The Family
Back when we were living in South Africa we had moved into an apartment which we had bought. The moving in was actually quite eventful because a mother and her son were renting the place before and, although they had been notified, they decided to stay past the date that was given to them. Long story short, we moved in and started settling.
After putting us to bed, my mother decided to stay up and watch TV. As she was watching whatever show was on at the time, she glanced at our only plant in the house, which is a 1.5 m tall plant, and saw a man roughly the same height as the plant standing under one of its leaves. She was terrified and she got up and flicked the lights on. He wasn’t there.
Calling it a night, she goes to bed. The next day—or maybe two days later, I'm not sure on that detail—at breakfast, my brother, who was around 16 at the time, picked up a piece of bread, turned around to the plant, and said "Hey Michael! Want some?" laughing. My mother asks him who Michael is and he says Michael's "the guy standing under the plant at night."
Mind you my mother didn't say anything to anyone about 'Michael,' to not freak us out. My brother's best friend was also over that morning—we had basically unofficially adopted him—and my mother asks him if he sees Michael too, and he says yes. She then asks him to describe Michael and he gives a perfect description down to the whites of his eyes.
Michael apparently was a black young man around 1.4/1.5 m in height wearing plain black trousers, a white button down shirt, and a green vest. His skin tone was quite dark with a faint sheen to it. His eyes were also dark in color and the whites were tinted a bit yellow. He had a permanent smiling expression on his face that didn't reach his eyes.
Michael always stayed put where he was, never moving but following you with his eyes. One morning my mom woke up to my dad coming home. He’d bought this indoor circulating water thing and he moved the plant exactly opposite where it was and put that water thing there instead. My mother didn't say anything and that night Michael also moved with the plant.
Of course, after hearing this, I asked the next logical question that any sane person would ask. Why didn't she just throw away the plant? She said it never occurred to her. So yeah, that is the story of Michael, the benign smiling spirit that was a part of our family for some time.
34. Cryin’ Over You
When I was 22, I visited my grandma in her retirement home at Christmas. She was well, nothing out of the ordinary. A few days later I traveled to my then-boyfriend across the country. Two days after New Year's I woke up at 2 am crying. And I just couldn't stop. I wasn't really sad or overly emotional, but the tears just kept streaming down my face.
Nothing like that ever happened and I was kind of confused, as was my boyfriend. I fell back asleep a few hours later. Three days later I was informed that my grandma had passed that night at about 2 am. Due to the divorce of my parents, communication was difficult and we were only informed after the funeral. I don't believe in anything supernatural, but it's hard to wrap my head around, especially since nothing like this ever happened again.
35. Green Means Stop
I have many stories, but here's the first that popped into my head. I was driving home from work after picking up my baby late at night. Not many cars around out on the country roads. The one stoplight out there was red for me so I stopped. It turned green, but that’s when I heard it. I had a sudden voice or thought or whatever in my head saying don't go yet!
Nothing is coming. I'm still sitting at the green light. Right as I let off the brake, a semi comes flying through his red light. I was shook.
36. Elvis Hadn’t Left The Building
When I was in middle school my grandparents were in charge of the local theater group and were doing this musical show where people dressed up as old country stars and sang some songs. My grandma was the director and my grandpa was in charge of technical stuff like lights and sound. Well this particular showing was on Elvis Presley’s birthday and they had a little bit at the end where they sang happy birthday in all their costumes.
Well the show ends and they’re all doing the curtain call and I’m sitting in the back with my grandpa while he’s controlling the lights and sound when all the sudden “Happy Birthday” by the Beatles starts playing over the speakers. My grandpa looks confused and starts messing around with the sound machines and pressing buttons and dials.
My grandma runs back yelling at him as that wasn’t the song he was supposed to play. He then looks up and goes “That’s not me,” and my grandma says, “What do you mean it’s not you, switch it to the right song” and he looks so confused. My grandpa then says: “We don’t even have this song on CD for this play. This isn’t coming from our music.”
My grandma just turns around and leaves. The whole song plays and ends when the curtain closes. No one in the crowd really noticed and it seemed normal but still freaks me out. No clue where the music was coming from and we inspected the CD that all the music for the play was on and sure enough that song was not on it.
I still think the ghost of Elvis was there that night.
37. Night, Pops
Here's a story from when I was four or five years old. My grandmother was looking through old family photos and asking me who the people were. We got to a picture of my grandfather, and even though I’d never met him, she asked me who he was. Just as a joke I guess. My answer chilled her to the bone. I said, "Pop poppy Jim!”
She asked me how I knew that, I told her, "Oh, he comes and tucks me in and tells me he loves me sometimes after you go to bed."
38. The Cats Came Back
We had a kitten-producing cat when I was about six or seven years old. We knew it had kittens since it was pregnant for a while and then wasn't. We had no idea where the kittens were, which was an issue. I was curious about it and looked right at the cat, thinking to myself, "Where are your kittens?" but without saying anything, if that makes sense.
My imagination immediately went to the location. Our cat could jump into it from pillars on the side of the porch through some damaged boards right above our porch. I just knew they were around. I dashed over there, mounted the stone pillar, and peered through the gap in the boards. The kittens were right in front of me. I've never experienced another event like it in my entire life.
39. Closet Case
A couple of years ago my father's immediate family had a reunion in Minnesota. We stayed at a little cabin on a lake. Of course, sitting around the campfire my uncle was telling us all of his ghost stories which put me just a bit on edge. Later when I went back to my room to go to sleep, I flipped off the light switch, and immediately both closet doors popped fully open.
I literally lost my mind.
40. Deja Who?
I had a dream at age nine where I was walking through an alleyway with another boy—who I didn't know at the time—having a conversation about school grades or something. Two years later I met this boy, and it turned out he's a friend of my brother who's a year older than me, but it still didn't hit me yet that he was the one I was walking with in my dream.
Another three years pass, we are now in high school, and all three of us are walking through the usual alleyway that we passed through to get home. Then a conversation about school grades pops up and I get hit with the biggest realization and feeling of deja vu ever. I was reliving the dream that occurred five years prior.
My memory of that dream became very vivid at that moment. They thought I was a wizard predicting what they were gonna say a second before they spoke. This happened eight months ago, it was great.
41. Fast Food Ninja
I work at a fast food restaurant, and I was washing dishes. All of a sudden, one of my coworkers walks behind me, and I get a weird feeling of deja vu. He reached up above me to grab a few trays off of the drying rack, and at that moment, without even looking up, I instinctively put my hands out, and caught a stack of trays that were falling.
My coworker thought I was some kind of ninja, but it was only after this happened that I remembered a dream I'd had in which the same event had occurred.
42. Smile On Down
My cousin had struggled with depression his whole life, and a few years ago things came to a head. He was 100% convinced the only cure to his depression was to take his own life. We were close, so it hit pretty hard. After the funeral, my aunt told us that she had seen a helium-filled smiley face balloon kind of float in front of her, then stop.
She said the balloon just kinda sat there for a minute. Then it flew up and away, out of sight, on its own. When she told us this we kind of just brushed it off as a coincidence, but she kept telling us that it was happening to her over the next couple of weeks. We thought she was just recognizing patterns or something like that.
But then I was at a music festival a few months later and the exact same type of balloon, same color, and everything, floated through my campsite, and did the same thing where it stopped on its own, "stared" at me, then kind of bobbed and flew up and away. I'm not really a believer in ghosts and the like, but I'm convinced in some shape or form that was my cousin telling us that he was finally happy.
43. Tangled Up
One of the earliest clear memories I have is being at the fire station with my dad—he was a volunteer firefighter at the time—and one of his friends helping me spray my dad with a small fire hose. I've always had a distinct recollection of this friend of Dad's standing behind me, holding the hose, and me while I opened the nozzle.
When I was in my 20s, my dad was telling me that story, but according to him and my mother, there was nobody there with me. He said a couple of the guys were joking around asking if I wanted to spray dad with the hose. Later in the day, I wandered off and was messing with the hose before anyone noticed. My dad describes it as being a miracle that the hose didn't start flailing around and kill me.
I used to think of this as a guardian angel encounter but, I distinctly remember the guy who was helping me with that hose egging me on to spray dad. That seems like pretty un-angelic behavior.
44. Only The Shadow Knows
Back in 2010, my family and I lived in a home out in the woods. There were always weird things happening in that home. One day I was coming up the stairs from my basement and as I rounded the corner I saw a shadowy figure running up the stairs from the main floor to the top floor. I only saw it from the corner of my eye and the figure was gone in an instant.
Fast forward a couple of years, I have moved on to college and my parents decided they were going to sell the home to downsize. They had just finished repainting most of the walls and I asked my cousin if she could take a picture so I could see how the new walls looked. She took the picture in the back of our living room which just so happened to have the staircase to the right.
To my horror, in the picture, there was that same shadow I’d seen years prior. She was the only one in the home when the picture was taken and it looks like the shadow is looking right at you.
45. Missed It By A Hair
When my mother was a child, she had a bad habit of reading while walking to school. One day she was jerked to a stop by someone—she assumed it was her brother—pulling her ponytail hard enough to pull her back a couple of steps. She turned around to yell at whoever pulled her hair and no one was there, or for blocks behind her.
She turned back to step across the street and, just as she was about to walk, a car came out of nowhere. If she hadn’t turned to yell at the nonexistent hair puller, she would have been hit and probably lost her life.
46. Time Warp
A long time ago when I was in seventh grade, the teacher was talking to us and I, for some reason, started to think about what happens when we die. I was thinking about things like: Where do our memories go? Is there life afterward and if so what is it like? Then all of a sudden, after a lot of thinking, everything went completely black. Then, after what felt like just one second, I "woke up."
In reality I was actually "gone" for the last 10 minutes of class and I did not pass out. My classmates assured me that I was sitting up with my eyes still open and sitting normally and just listening to the teacher. Every time I remember it, it makes me wonder what really happened and makes me feel a bit uncomfortable at the same time.
47. Not His Final Destination
Many years ago, my parents had separated and my father was planning on taking a trip across the country to California. He was pretty excited about it. I talked to him the day before he left, wished him well, and told him I'd talk to him after he got to California. On the day of his trip, he called me and told me he decided at the last minute not to go.
He refused to really get into why. Just said he changed his mind. Seemed really odd for something that he had been planning for a couple of months—until I made a chilling realization later that night. I was sitting at my girlfriend's house and we're watching the news, and they reported that US Air Flight 1493—the flight my dad was supposed to be on—collided with another aircraft while landing in Los Angeles.
About 25% of the people on the flight were lost. It’s hard to know how my Dad would have made out, because it really depended on where you were sitting—front vs. back of the plane. It was several months before he finally made a disturbing confession. He told me that night before he was supposed to leave, he had an extremely vivid dream that he was in a fiery plane crash. So vivid that it scared him out of flying that day.
My dad is a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran who saw combat. I can only imagine how vivid the dream must have been to scare him out of getting on that plane that morning.
48. Half Human, Half What?
I grew up in a very rural area where there were mostly crop farms everywhere. About a mile from my parent’s house, there was this old abandoned farmhouse that all the area kids said was haunted. They would sneak into the house after dark, all the typical stupid kid stuff, but I believe there are things in this world better left alone and never went.
Years passed, and the house fell into disrepair and was eventually torn down, leaving only an old weathered barn. Well, I make a little side money selling photos of abandoned places, so I wanted to take a picture of the barn. I parked on the road and was walking up the drive, I made it about ten feet before I just could not walk any further.
My feet wouldn’t move forward, my adrenaline spiked and I burst into tears. So I turned back and ran to my car. I didn’t feel safe until I got past a nearby creek you have to cross to get there. I let it go, but my nightmare wasn’t over yet. A few months later, I had to drive by it, this time after having Christmas dinner with my parents.
As we drove by, I saw a creature standing in the drive. It reminded me of that disturbing Faun from Pan’s Labyrinth, just super tall with a wide head and horns or antlers, but the eyes were more on the side of the head. Again, adrenaline kicked in and I burst into tears, but I was trying to keep it together because I didn’t want to freak out my kids.
My husband asked if I was okay, I just said, “You saw that, right” He said yes. I asked if it was human. He replied, no. I refuse to drive that road ever again.
49. A Face In The Door
When I was growing up, my grandparents lived down the street from us and their house was always the gathering place. People came for a cup of coffee every day. On this day, an ambulance went roaring past their house. My dad had suffered some brain injuries a few years prior to this event, but had fully recovered and even gotten sober.
When she saw the ambulance, my grandmother had joked and said something along the lines of “I hope that’s not going to my son’s house.” My uncle was also in the kitchen at the time, probably drinking coffee. My uncle said, “Nah, your son is at the door.” He had seen my Dad looking through the window next to the door.
Earlier that day, I’d come home from work to find my Dad dead on the sofa. He was cold to the touch, but I still called emergency services and tried to resuscitate him in case there was ANY chance that I was wrong. This was the ambulance that had passed my grandparent’s house. Clearly, it was not my dad that my uncle had seen…or was it?
50. Synchronized Dreaming
I can’t fully explain it—and I’ll never forget it. My siblings and I all had the same dream on the same night a year ago. It was exactly one year after my mom had passed and we all had a dream about her. In the dream, she was in the same place and was speaking to us. She reassured us that she was okay and she was with her mom and my dead siblings and that her dad is in the bad place.
The next day we all realized we had the same dream. We even all independently drew a picture of the place we saw her and wrote down the name of the place it resembled. Most of my siblings took that as an actual message from my mom, but my youngest sister and I like to believe that we have all developed some freaky hive mind low-level telepathy.
Sources: Reddit,
