There are things in this life that just cannot be explained no matter how hard we try. From that feeling of being watched to bright lights shinning in through the living room, some events have no natural explanation. Ghosts, aliens, angels, sometimes paranormal activity just happens, and all we’re really left with is questions about the very reality we live in. Over at Reddit, people shared their 42 most terrifying and mystifying experiences with the paranormal.
1. Couch Surfing
It was my very first night in my very first apartment. I didn't have a bed yet at that point, so I slept on the couch in the living room. That night, I had a nightmare that someone with a knife was going down the hallway. Just as they got to the living room door, I woke up. I jumped in my car, spent one more night at my parents’.
Two months later, my roommate falls asleep on the very same couch. The next morning, he tells me about a dream he had about a guy coming down the hall with a knife, and just as he got to the door, my roommate woke up. A few months later, one of my friends asks if he can crash for a night. Sure, he can sleep on the couch.
The next morning, he says he had a weird dream. I said, "Guy coming down the hall with a knife?" My roommate added, "You woke up just as he got to the door?" Dude went palest shade of white I have ever seen.
2. Tea Time
I was working the counter late at night at Tim Hortons. I heard an older lady set down her china mug, and say, "Thanks, dear!" I turned around, and there was no one in the store. I'm okay with a regular ghost customer having one last cup.
3. Night Guest
I used to work the front desk at a "haunted" hotel. There was a room behind the front desk where you could sit when it was late and no one was in the lobby. There was a TV with the security cameras, including one on the front desk so you could see if anyone was out there. You could see the whole front desk, including the classic bell that people ring for service.
A coworker and I were sitting in the backroom, no one up front, and the bell rang. No one, NO ONE was out there. Over the next hour, the bell rang six or seven times, but only when we were in the back. I don't believe in ghosts, but fudge. This was a nice four-diamond old hotel that had huge ballrooms, and dining rooms that I had to walk through late at night when I was alone.
When I worked overnights after that as the only employee in the hotel, I would get freaked out, but never really saw anything else "supernatural."
4. Little Help?
I once heard a lady’s voice coming from my closet. The door was slightly opened, and I heard the voice say, “Help Me. I see you through the crack.” I was scared witless, but I also was curious, and wanted to help so, I opened the door and no one was there. I’ll never forget this, it still gives me goosebumps talking about it.
5. Ghostly Chase
I work nights at a hotel. I was setting up coffee one morning a few years back, and I see someone very tall in the kitchen. We make eye contact. Dude's wearing an olive green jacket and a pair of jeans. After a second, he lifts his legs at the knees and floats out the door. Now, if I were just seeing things, I'd have panicked.
I've hallucinated from exhaustion, and the stuff I see scares me. This was there. This was real. It must be a guest, or something, in an employee area. This has happened a couple of times. I take off running to catch this guy and tell him he is not permitted back there. No one is there, because of course not. The back is empty. I am alone.
I was still convinced for several minutes that this guy was just hiding from me, and he'd have to come out and I'd be able to talk to him. It was almost a full five minutes before I realized I was literally chasing a ghost.
6. A Ghost Named Bob
I live in a house from the 1950s—no one has passed on in it that I know of—my parents bought it in the 70s when they got married. That said, weird things happen occasionally. About five or six times a year, every door shakes in its frame, as if someone had grabbed the handle and was pulling and pushing as hard as they could manage, it even cracked the doorframe once or twice.
We have named whatever is doing this "Bob"—anything weird that happens is automatically Bob's fault. Well, in 2016, my younger sister got married—she moved across the country, so it wasn't a local event. I couldn't take a week off of work to attend, and our dog was in poor health... so I stayed home alone.
More weird stuff happened that week than any other I can recall—doors shaking, faucets turning themselves on and off, etc. The most notable thing, however, was when Bob apparently decided to help. I was out of soda, and drinks in general upstairs, and my family keeps most of the spare in our basement. Given all the weird stuff that was going on, I wasn't about to go downstairs.
I was browsing pizza delivery menus, when, all of a sudden, I heard a rather loud thump. I grabbed a baseball bat, left my bedroom...and somehow, the door to the basement was hanging wide open, and there were three 24-packs of soda on the kitchen table. That was a bit too much for me, so I decided to search the house.
No one in any bedroom, closet, OR the basement (Yes, I checked. Nothing weird going on down there, and I took my phone and had a finger hovering over the call button to dial 9-1-1 just in case a burglar had decided he wanted me to have some Diet Mountain Dew.) All the doors were still locked, the windows were secure, and I found no one.
I just called out "Thanks Bob!" and went back upstairs. I checked our carbon monoxide detectors as well, just in case... but still nothing. Thankfully, the remainder of the week was uneventful.
7. Little Bird Drops By
My mother's favorite animal was the hummingbird. Last year, shortly after my she passed away, a hummingbird came right up and looked at me as I was on my way to my car to go to work. Like a foot away, and just checked me out for a while and flew off to do hummingbird things. Once I got to my car, I broke down. Just sat there in the driver's seat and cried.
I'd like to think my mom was somehow checking up on me. I know it's silly, but for that moment I felt like she wasn't gone and she was still there watching over me.
8. You’re Not My Mom
When I was around 12 my mother had to go out of town for a bit, and she left me home alone for a few days (we lived close to relatives so it wasn't a big deal back then). She refused to give me a mobile phone, because she figured she could just call me on the landline if anything came up.
She told me the date when she'd be back, and that was that.
The date arrives, and I hear my mom knocking on the door downstairs, calling my name. My dog (who loved her) got excited when she heard her voice, and ran down ahead to greet her. She got to the door, freaked the heck out, and ran back upstairs to me. I refused to go down, and open the door. The phone started ringing, and the knocking stopped.
I picked up the phone to hear my mom say, "Hey, I'm sorry, I have to stay one more day here. I'll head home tomorrow."
9. Checking In
I've had many experiences since I was a kid, the one that freaked me out the most though actually happened just a few months ago. I'm only 16, I don’t like sleeping in my room, so I sleep on the couch in the living room—my choice and it's actually really comfy. I also suffer from insomnia, and have trouble staying asleep.
This being said, I’m normally awake when my dad gets up for work at four in the morning and will wish him a good day at work and such. One night, I was trying to sleep, but I woke up. Having gone through this many times I just kept my eyes shut. Then, I felt something that felt like a leg lean against the side of the couch, hover over me, and then I heard heavy and low breathing.
It was so loud, and sounded like a man, so I naturally assumed it was my dad. Since I thought he was trying to check if j was awake I whipped around to try and to scare him, but nothing was there. I was so confused that I kind of just sat there for a few moments thinking about what just happened.
10. Sleep Tight
It happened about nine years ago. I had been in bed for a bit, tossing and turning, trying to fall asleep. I know I was awake, and I know it wasn't sleep paralysis. I felt something heavy on my bed, and whatever it was moved around a bit, so I thought the cat was coming to sleep with me, which she had never done before.
I adjusted myself a bit, but didn't look, didn't want to scare her off. Then I felt a pressure between my ankles, like somebody had put their knee between my legs, and on the other on the other side, and was crawling up. As it got closer my sheets tightened around me, and went SUPER tight around my shoulders and neck.
When that happened, I heard a masculine voice whispering something but it wasn't any language I recognized. It filled me with pure terror though. Instinctively, I reached for a rosary that was on my bedside table, and instantly it went away. I sat up, and it took me about five minutes to realize the reason why the cat never slept with me.
It was because I always closed, and locked my bedroom door, which I had done that night. It took me about five years to force myself to stop sleeping with a rosary in my hand. I do have trauma in my past, which a couple people tried to use to explain my experience, but I was absolutely awake. I know it wasn't my imagination.
11. Just Dropping in to Say Hi
I was about 13 years old, sleeping over at my friend’s mom house. She lived in a duplex that the family lived in for 40+ years. She had a couple of kid-cousins over that weekend, so I didn’t think of it when I saw a small blonde boy in a striped tee shirt come around the corner and peek into the room we were hanging out in.
My friend asked me who I waved to, and I just said, oh of your little cousins. The next morning, we went to the other side of the duplex where her grandparents lived, and I saw a picture on the wall of the little blonde boy with the striped tee-shirt on, with “in memory of” written on it. I got a chill and asked her who it was.
She said, “Oh that’s my uncle, he got hit by a car right outside the house when he was seven, in the 80s. Why?” I told her that’s the exact little boy I saw outside your room last night, and she just responded with “Yeah, he likes to say hi to the family sometimes.”
12. Mom’s Taking Care of You
My mother passed when I was 22 years old. It was an accident and a shock. My husband and I went three states away to stay at her house for a bit to pack things up, and settle her estate. I have always had really bad problems with my sinuses. Well, the stress and everything got me sick, and I had a horrible sinus infection.
I had medicine but I couldn’t find it, so I was on the couch crying after looking everywhere for it. My husband was sitting next to me holding me. Then we looked over on the table where the bible was opened, and the meds were sitting on the bible. The bible had been there earlier. Closed. I remember sitting it there myself.
My husband started freaking out because on the page it was opened to a verse was underlined. It was the only one in the whole book underlined. It said, “and the grieving shall be comforted.” I usually would not put any credence in this. I was sick and a mess. My husband was not. He is a very level headed person when it comes to things like this.
Also, quite a few other things happened for a while after that. I like to think my mother was trying to help me cope. I really hope she finally found peace...I did.
13. Guardian Angel
I have had my life saved eight separate times by a spirit who looks like a guy wearing a bowler hat. Each time has been different, and surprisingly, I am not the only one who has seen him. One time, he woke up my father and told him to check the garage. My father found me in there, seizing and choking. If he hadn’t found me…
Another time, I fell asleep while driving. He turned the car sharply before we went off into a river. He also shook me awake before my two friends in the back seat, both asked who I had picked up. Those are the two times others have seen him.
14. Just Stay Calm
My ex-husband came to Australia when he was 11, from Ireland. He could swim but had never swum in the ocean. He and his brother got caught in a riptide, and didn't know what to do, so they struggled against it, which is not what you're supposed to do. They both got exhausted pretty quick, and we're far from shore, when someone grabbed them and swam with them back to shore.
But the person disappeared after. No one on the beach saw the person. He always said, he thought it was a guardian angel. He said the person filled him with calm, and he felt peaceful while being taken back to shore. I believe there are people looking after us sometimes.
15. Are You Afraid of the Dark?
I was babysitting for my ex’s niece when I was still with him, at their family home. His sister went out with friends that night, and my ex was working, so I was alone with the baby, and my ex’s youngest sister who was only two or so years younger than me. They lived out of the city on a dirt road, so they had a BUNCH of land.
Their kitchen had large, beautiful windows that almost went from floor to ceiling, and you could see over the land where the horses were, and some plains and stuff. During the day it was very serene-looking out the window because there were no neighbors and nothing you could see more miles except serene tranquility.
This setting changed at night. I was completely terrified of what all of this vast nothingness looked like during dark. I couldn’t see ANYTHING out there, but something could look in and see me. I distinctly remember getting a chill up my spine once the sun had set and shutting the curtains end to end that night I was babysitting.
Once it got later in the evening, and I was failing miserably at playing Morrowind on a terrible $300 ThinkPad laptop (I was not smart), I went into the kitchen to get a drink because it was time to take my meds. As soon as I stepped into the kitchen, I saw that the curtains were wide open. Not just a little bit, but end to end open.
I’ve got ADHD, but I would NOT have left those freaking curtains open, because their property genuinely scared the life out of me at night. The baby was asleep, and my ex’s sister didn’t leave my sight all night either so no one would have opened those curtains. IT HAUNTS ME DUDE. I think about it and get all woozy. I try to be rational but I still just can’t explain it.
16. No Smiles
This happened when I was 17 years old. It is part of our culture to celebrate the fourth night of a burial. My Aunty who had been close to us had passed away, and during the fourth night celebration, my siblings, baby nephew, and I didn't attend, so we stayed home. My mum had gone to the gathering but returned home late.
As soon as my mother walked into the house, my baby nephew started crying. When he finally settled down and had fallen back asleep, I began to feel uneasy. I had this bizarre feeling like I was being watched, and got really uncomfortable. My solution was to change the direction I was lying and turned to face the door.
The door to the room was left open, and guess who I saw standing there and staring directly at me? My aunt who we had buried four days earlier. She was not smiling at all.
17. She’s Here
My house used to be the largest on the lot before our town expanded. It was the largest because it was a funeral home. They sealed off the room with plaster walls where they would prepare the bodies though, underneath the carpet in my parent's room is a hatch too. I've seen plenty of things, heard plenty of things and friends or family have said things I have seen.
We have a spirit, ghost, whichever you want to call it that lives here named Abigail. She's a trickster, she likes to hide things, move things, open doors sometimes, or tease our dogs. Whenever my aunt comes to visit with her family small items tend to go missing. Items like her toothbrush that she set by the sink two minutes ago.
The things here, and there are a few, aren't as active anymore. Or maybe I don't see them or notice them much.
18. Good With Kids
Long story short, multiple people who are not friends with one another have been in my house and seen a mysterious woman in a blue dress and then told me about it later. I don't tell anyone else about it, not even my husband, because it doesn't bother anyone or anything. No big deal right? Anyway, I myself have seen her twice.
The first time it happened, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw her leaning over the baby's crib. I immediately sat up, and she just faded away. I felt crazy, because I didn't know anyone else had seen her at the time. The next day, I went to Walmart to get some stuff and some lady walks by me and says, "She likes the baby."
I stop and ask what she said, and she says, "The woman, in your house. She likes the baby." Low-key peed my pants and ran home.
19. Take the Wheel
I was once riding as a passenger in a car on a road trip. We were overtaking a truck on a two-lane road when another car started to overtake another truck, they were coming the other way. Just an error of judgment, maybe they didn't see us. Who knows. Not only was there was NOWHERE to go, there was also NO room on either side of the road.
It’s really strange. To this day I have no idea how we all fit on those two lanes (two cars, two trucks). Two trucks and a car? Maybe. But the four of us? Just no way. It was all over in a heartbeat as if nothing had happened, and we all continued our way. We stopped to catch our breath, and just couldn't believe what had just happened.
Later, we stopped for the night, and in the middle of the night the driver woke up all sweaty and panicking—he had a dream where someone in the dream told him he wasn't the one driving that moment. It was 20 years ago, and I still feel we're now on borrowed time every time I think of that day.
20. Not Your Guardian Angel
When I was growing up, my mom had a wicker, straw angel decoration. It was as big as I was as an eight-year-old kid, and for some reason I always hated it. It was creepy, yes, but I got a weird and bad feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I looked at it or had to pass by it, and I always felt like it was watching me almost.
When my parents divorced, my mom, of course, brought the angel with her when she moved out, and in our new house. There was a wall in the living room that had a rectangle cut out, so you could see through it, and my mom hung the thing up in there, so it was kinda just hanging in free space. With it being there, I swear to god it would just move on its own (there were no vents or anything near it to move it if the furnace came on).
One time, I was sitting on the stairs, (putting socks on or whatever) The stairs were across from the cut-out wall, with a set of two more stairs going down between them, and I would see the angel. It was still, then it just slowly turn around all the way to face me, and then stopped, becoming absolutely still. It freaked me out.
It happened on multiple occasions, but I don't know how to explain why or how it happened. I mean, it could have been an overactive imagination as a kid, but the turning around and just stopping is really weird. Call me a liar if you want, but I know what I saw.
21. Cursed Toy
I had a My Pet Monster that I swear to this day was haunted by something—I don’t know what. I loved the original movie, and my parents thought getting me the life-sized doll would be a good present... but from day one, I hated that thing. Its beady yellow eyes stared into my soul. I swear its eyes followed me around the room.
Because of this, I’d stick it in my closet facing away from me, and later I would find it turned around. Just typing this brings the chills back. It would fall out of my closet randomly, and it would appear it places I didn’t leave it. It all happened way too many times for me to dismiss it as an overactive child’s imagination.
22. Don’t Look
When I was younger, my mom bought this Virgin Mary statue that was about one foot, tall that she got from a thrift store. She put it on our dresser in mine and my sister’s room. We would ALWAYS find it turned around and facing the wall. We would constantly be turning it around to face us, but it would always end up being turned towards the wall.
We never caught it in the act turning, but everyone in the house swore that they weren’t doing it. All of us were so creeped out that we threw it away after a few months of having it.
23. Green Eyed Ghost
We were spending the night at my girlfriend's (now-wife) dorm, as we usually did, alternating between her building and mine. Suddenly, in the middle of the night (around 3 AM) , we both wake up at the same time for no apparent reason, both feeling really unsettled, scared even.
Both of us somehow have a very distinct feeling of there being someone else in the room, even though we can clearly see there's no one there.
It's a single room, and dorm rooms are very small. We calmed each other down and went back to bed. When we wake up in the morning, one picture on her fridge is now hanging upside down. More specifically, the only one containing an image of the two of us together. The weird thing about this is that the magnet is still on the bottom side of the picture.
It can't have been gravity and the picture is still in the EXACT same spot amidst all the other pictures. A few days later, we found out that a girl who lived in her room more than a decade before took her own life after a breakup with her boyfriend. When I think of this logically, it sounds like a silly story. But we both still very vividly remember this as scary as all get out, even though we've now been together for 12+ years.
24. Check the Rooms
This incident is actually still very vivid in my mind and in my memory. My family used to live in an apartment when I was in elementary school, and it was one of those apartments where you open the front door, and there are just stairs that lead to the rest of the apartment—keep this detail in mind, as it will be very important.
It was an open floor plan with the living room, and kitchen in view once you went up the stairs, and an opening to the hallway that led to two bedrooms on either side. My brother was in the corner on the computer playing games, and I was watching The Little Mermaid 2 on the TV along the same wall my brother’s computer was set up against.
I had a clear view of the hallway, and I remember seeing a silhouette of a woman run into the opening. She looked behind her, and then ran into the room I shared with my brother. I was eight at the time, and couldn’t exactly process the scene, so I just started freaking out because I thought a stranger had entered our room.
I screamed at my brother to check for an intruder, and he begrudging walked away from playing games to go check while I waited in the living room, scared out of my mind. He apparently searched everywhere, including our closet and under the bed, but couldn’t find anyone. However, I know what I saw. I’ll never forget it.
There’s no way that it was the shadow of someone outside because our apartment was elevated with no outside balcony, or walkway for someone to walk by. Our apartment also overlooked a one story house, so there was no way it was from an apartment across. the way. The only people home were my brother and me. This incident has lingered with me and still gives me chills today.
25. Wake Up!
A few years ago, I had been out of work for three months and had essentially given up hope. On top of that, I had been getting 20-30 spam calls per day, so I had turned off my phone. I was taking a post-lunch nap when I felt a hand grip my shoulder, and gently shake me awake. I heard a voice saying, "Answer your phone."
I staggered up, completely disoriented, but managed to go to my desk and turn on my phone before realizing what had happened. Around 15 minutes later, I got a call from a recruiter who had been given my name by a former co-worker. Went for the interview, aced it and I'm still at the job. I've had other weird experiences.
We live a couple of blocks from the city cemetery. I'm positive we have tourists coming through, but I don't know if they're lost, bored or trying to communicate.
26. The Dog Knows
I'm a big skeptic about this stuff, but I have one incident that I cannot explain. Normal weekday night, I was lying on the sofa watching whatever with the dog next to me. Next thing I know, my DVD player kind of slides forward, and tips over the edge of the shelf it was on. It was against the wall, it was a flat surface with no slope or leverage,
I jumped up thinking "what the heck," but soon forget about it, and carried on watching tv. Maybe five to ten minutes later, the dog jumps down off the sofa, and goes to the corner of the room, and starts staring at the ceiling just above the DVD player. Normally, he is a very responsive dog, and I only have to say his name once, and he comes running.
For the next 20-30 minutes, he would not even turn around to look at me. I called his name over, and over, and nothing from him at all, he was in a strange trance the whole time, and even me patting him, or getting a treat wouldn't snap him out of it. I started freaking out, and actually filmed him for the last few minutes before he snapped out of it, and came back to the sofa.
I thought it may have been some insects nest, or a spider or something, but any dog owner or expert can only guess what it was, it will bother me until the end of time.
27. Devil On My Shoulder
When I was a child, I would have sleep paralysis constantly. Every single time I would see a tall shadowy man at the side of my bed. He would talk to me, and tell me things that would happen the next day. He was always correct, even if they were awful things. At one point, he told me he was the devil, yet I shouldn't be scared of him.
Nights after that he got more distorted and horrifying. The last night I saw him, he told me I wouldn't wake up if I ever saw him again. Being seven years old, I was horrified. I ended up not sleeping and since that day, I haven't slept a full night. I'm still scared to this day, but I'm still alive, so yeah.
28. Dreams or Visions?
I used to have strange visions while I was asleep when I was a kid. They were always of some sort of horrifying event and always set in some faraway places. I just wrote them off as very realistic dreams, but then one night I had a vision about a plane crash. Two nights later, I saw that very same plane crash on the news.
Started to search for some of the other visions, and realized I had predicted an earthquake somewhere too. I didn't see that one confirmed at the time, because I barely watched any news, it basically was a big coincidence that I ever saw the plane crash thing. I couldn't confirm any of the others, but I do remember one of a dude getting offed in some possibly South American country—looking back, that is.
Had no idea back then, other than realizing it was some exotic place I've never been to. There were a couple of others that I've forgotten, or that are at least buried deep down in my brain. During the same time, I also had tons of deja vu, but of the kind where I'd know stuff, someone was about to say before they said it, because I remembered that particular conversation.
Sometimes, I even muttered the words with them just to convince myself that it wasn't my brain malfunctioning. I had read about deja vu being some quirk in the transition of memories from short to long term at that point.
29. Things That Go Bump in the Night
I sincerely think my mother’s house is haunted. Before I dive into my 18 plus years of experiences in that house, I have to preface this with the fact that the house only had two previous owners. It was built in the late 50s, sold to the next owners in the 70s, and left empty until my mother bought the house.
The house itself was kept up to date and clean by the second owners. It was a typical one-floor three-bedroom suburban house in a flyover state. We moved into the house when I was freshly six years old, and I remember being really excited to finally have my own room since I had always shared one with my single mother.
My mom bought me this really cool bunk bed that wasn't connected, so I could move around the bottom bunk however I pleased, but I, of course, was solely focused on that top bunk for the thrill of being so high up that I could nearly touch my ceiling. We had lived in that house barely a few months before my insomnia started.
I started waking up in the middle of the night for no reason. At first, I would just roll over onto my stomach, and hum to myself until I fell back asleep. After a few weeks of this, I just started to sit up straight in my bed for no reason and stare into the hallway outside my door. I need to note that in my mother’s house, there is the living room, kitchen, and dining room all connected to a long thin hallway that leads you to all the rooms.
The computer room is at the opening left of the hallway, next to that is my mother’s bedroom door, and across the hall of her door was our only bathroom. My room was at the dead-end of the hallway, so I like to have my door wide open, so when I went to bed to I could head my mom's TV shows in the living room while falling asleep.
Anyway, I would wake up and just stare into that hallway with a feeling that I was being watched. At the time, I didn't know that was what I was feeling, it is only now that I am only I can recognize the motivation behind my behavior. I remember for almost a year, night after night, waking up and staring into the dark hallway of my mother’s house until one night the head started showing.
It started out as just a roundish shadow that would come out of the wall between my mother's bedroom door, and the computer room bedroom door. It would slowly tilt forward like checking for a "coast clear?" and recede back into the wall. The first time I witnessed this, I thought I was dreaming or imagining things. As time went on the round shape started to peek its head out more, to the point a thinner longer shadow, looking like a neck, started to show up as well.
The new pattern was, it would peak the head out, and now look side to side down the hallway before disappearing again. At this point, I got scared and spent a long time refusing to sit up because I didn't want to see the shadow anymore. For a while, I stopped waking up and things were normal again for me. I completely forgot about those nights staring into the hallway for hours.
I don't know how old I was when I saw the shadow again, I know I was still little enough that my child's bunk bed still felt like California King. I had woken up, again, in the middle of the night. I assumed it was because I had to go to the bathroom so I sat up, ready to leave my bed when I saw it. This time it was a head, neck, and now an upper chest.
I froze in fear, scared that if I breathed too loud, or moved to quickly, it would turn to face me, and unfortunately, it did. The thing slowly, and I am not kidding, WALKED OUT OF my mother’s walls, turned to face me, and walked to my freaking door frame. The shadow just stood there as we had a staring contest for what I am sure was only a few minutes but it felt like forever.
I think normal kids would cry for their parents, but I knew my mom, I knew she would be upset, and tell me to not be stupid, monsters aren't real. I laid down, and went under my covers until the next morning, quietly crying until my fear dissipated. After that night, I started sleeping with my door closed. I also stopped cleaning up my floor before bed, and in opposition started covering my floor with toys in order to detour the shadow from being able to sneak around in my room.
I still woke up every night until I was about 11 or 12, but I never opened my door or left that room. Things went back to normal, and I convinced myself everything I went through as a little girl was made up. I imagined it all, and my insomnia was probably due to my ADHD medication my school convinced my mom to put me on.
I never saw the shadow again, but things started to get weird again once I was a teenager, and it got more violent the older I became. I want to preface this with someone I know is going to be a question as we dig into my teenage year’s portion. Why did I not just tell my mom? My mother is a lot of things; she is funny, outgoing, patient with my life decisions, and encouraging of all my interests.
The one thing my mom isn’t is open-minded to anything outside of nothingness. I don’t mean that in a snarky kind of way, I mean she truly believe in nothing. Life is nothing and death is even more so nothing. As a teenager, I was scared to try and have this conversation with her, as an adult who hasn’t been to that house in years I was given the answer I thought I would have received anyways. “It was probably the cats. It was nothing. You were a creative kid. Your friend was teasing you.”
During my freshmen year of high school, I started to wake up in the night again. Thankfully, I was no longer a little girl and now had a computer in my bedroom so instead of staring into the dark like a catatonic weirdo, I would just hop onto the internet for a few hours before going back to sleep. This worked out fine for me until around a month into my new nightly routine when one night I heard some muffled but loud sounds.
Like when someone screams into a pillow, but it sounded like words. I thought I had somehow woken up my mom so I quickly turned off the computer and got back into bed. Laying there, staring at my ceiling, I was able to focus on the sound and realized it sounded like voices, bickering with each other. What I mean by this is, one was deeper tone which would muffle along, and a higher tone would interject here or there, which would trigger a moment of silence between.
I assumed it was my neighbors fighting in their yard, which they were often wont to do, so I ignored it, and tried to go back to sleep. Unlike my childhood, this was not a nightly occurrence, more so on a bi-weekly rotation which kept me convinced until the following summer that it was just my trashy neighbors disturbing my sleep cycle.
On the first night of summer, I was staying up late watching some comedy central uncensored stand up for a comedian I can't even remember, but the point being I was young, edgy and restless so when I heard my "neighbors" arguing again I got fed up. I opened up our sliding glass door and went to yell at them to shut up from my own back yard, it wasn't until I got near our shared fence I noticed how silent it was outside.
Thinking I was such a bad chick they scurried inside just from the sound of me throwing open my back door, I went back inside annoyed, but feeling hopeful they would finally give me back my night’s peace. But the thing is, once I came back inside I could still hear the muffled voices going back and forth. More so curious at this point I turned off my television, stared up at my ceiling and followed the muffled voices.
I would walk from room and room, following them until they started sounding slightly clearer. I followed the sound all the way to the garage door. I need to note, my mother's garage is not a clean empty space, welcoming for visitors. It was a hoarder’s paradise to the point not even her cats could move around the piles of furniture, old computers, clothes, abandoned toys, and trash.
But even with this mile-high pile of junk, there is nowhere to even hide yourself. I cannot harp enough on the lack of room or space in this area. My first thought was to grab the largest knife my mom owned and fling open the door. When I did the voices stopped, and so I assumed somehow, someone was squatting in this filthy paradise.
Being a supreme dummy of the highest order, I decided to try and wade through the filth to kick out whoever was squatting in there. I made it as far as halfway into the garage until there was nowhere I could get good enough footing to continue, satisfied that I must be hearing things, I went back inside. For some reason, I honestly cannot remember now, my mom wasn’t around most nights that summer.
So my new normal was staying up late, waiting for the voices, and following them around the house. Some nights, they sounded loudest outside my mom’s room, some nights it was above my room, but more often than not it always led back to the garage. I cannot emphasize how many nights I would open that door, and search for any sign of someone in that nasty garage.
Our windows were painted shut, the car door was always hatch locked, and the side door leading to the space between houses had been nailed shut when we bought the place. I came up with a plan, I would ask the second biggest supreme dummy I knew, my best friend, to spend the night with me. My best friend, who we will call Beck, was the only person who knew what I had been doing going through with the muffled voices.
She was convinced it was ghosts, or demons, and wanted to cleanse my house. At this point, I was still convinced it was people squatting in my mom’s garage, and I just wanted her help kicking their butts out for good. We were prepared to stay up until late in the night, but for some reason, the muffled voices started up around 8 pm that night, a few hours after my mom said goodbye to us both and drove off.
I remember Beck hearing them first, and turning off my television. I remember her telling me something along the line of, “You weren’t kidding.” Next thing I knew, she darted off towards my garage like a beagle racing to catch a piece of bacon that has recently fallen from its master’s plate. Full force, her socks sliding on my mom’s tile floor, and practically falling into the door frame, I almost felt sorry for whoever was on the other side of that thing.
When she opened the door, the folding ladder for our attack was slightly opened, and before I could stop her Beck jumped up and yanked the thing open. I don’t really know what her plan was, but I felt very thankful, and much safer seeing how unbothered she was by this situation. I felt so safe in fact, that I pushed ahead of her to climb up into my attic.
Unlike the garage below, my mom kept that attic empty and clean. I think she had a fear of all her junk collapsing our ceiling. So I climbed the ladder, pop my head into the attic, and obviously, no one was in there. I yelled down to Beck that much, and asked her, if she was comfortable with it, to please try to look around the hoard for anyone hiding.
I knew if I could find something, a 7/11 cup, candy wrapper, lighter, any proof of someone squatting, I could call the authorities, and my mom wouldn’t get mad at me. I crawled further into the attic, making sure to keep my hands and knees on the beams so I wouldn’t fall through the pink insulation, and into my own home. I found nothing.
Sure, I was able to see through the vents into my room, my moms, the computer room, and even the living room but there was nothing going on up there. No signs of life. When I came back down, I found Beck almost cartoonishly, bobbing around the hoard, moving whatever she was strong enough to, in order to rattle some kind of response from anyone hiding.
We both left empty-handed, and more than a little freaked out. Beck decided it was serious enough that we needed to do something now about my ghosts, and I remember her pulling out a gas station incense, lighting it up and walking around my house waving it about while saying some kind of mantra about moving on with life.
She did this until the incense ran out, and promised me all my problems would be over, she was sure, she saw it on TV. We made a pizza in the oven and pretty much holed up in my bedroom, refusing to leave it for anything until we fell asleep. That was until we were woken up at 4 am to the sound of running. It was a loud banging sound coming from my ceiling, it sounded like someone running back and forth on my roof as hard as they could, from one end of the house to another.
Beck and I screamed, obviously from fright. Fright from being woken up in such a messed up way while we were sleeping, fright from how loud and fast the banging steps were, and fright because we knew this was messed up. This time, Beck wasn’t my confident or strong friend, facing the danger head-on. She was crying, and screaming in my bed, telling me to call 9-1-1, and I was pretty sure at this point, my neighbors probably would from the noise.
I told her we were safe, we were going to be okay, and I was going to find out what was going on. I left the room and had her lock my door behind me. My mom’s narrow hallway had never seemed so long, dark, and ominous as it did that night. I raced to my front door, unlocked it, and ran into the street to see if I could see whoever was running on my room, but I swear there was no one there.
I circled around my house trying to catch whoever it was. I even tried to open that blue door that leads to the space between my house and my neighbors. It was still nailed shut. All the windows were painted shut, and there was no way to get in or out but the front door. I went inside, and the sound of running had stopped, Beck opened my bedroom door for me, and told me everything stopped once I went outside.
We decided, being scared supreme dummies, to google protection spells against the evil spirit. The quickest, and “realist” spell we could find said to pour salt around us and chant the spell six times. So, we went into the kitchen, grabbed the big blue can of salt, and that’s when the pounding happened. It sounded like someone knocking as hard as they could on the garage door.
I wanted to open it, I was so angry and scared, I wanted to open it, and scream at whoever was messing with us to leave my house, but I couldn’t do it. Instead, I popped open the top of the salt and started throwing it like an idiot at the garage door while Beck scream cried the spell. We just kept doing it until I ran out of salt, and the pounding stopped.
Beck called her parents, said she couldn’t fall asleep and went home. I don’t blame her. I stayed up all night, too scared to sleep, searching for ways to protect my home from whatever god awful spirit was torturing me. Around the time the sun was rising, I decided it was safe, and went to broom all the salt off my mom’s floor.
I knew she would be mad, and I am not proud to admit that I put it all back in the blue tub. I am also not proud to admit I never used the salt, and wouldn’t eat the food she made with it even if it caused fights. That salt was tainted with more than the floor, and I didn’t want anything to do with it. I found a dumb home brew protection spell to keep spirits from leaving a contained area.
You would use red brick for like building houses, grind it up into a powder, and line it in your windows, doors, wherever. Every week I would use my allowance to buy a stupid dollar brick, break it down with a hammer into as much of a dust as I could. I would line the opening of the attic ladder, my garage doors leading into my house, outside all the windows of my house and my bedroom door.
I never heard the voices again since then. But every so often, I would head someone stomping over my room in the attic. I never went to go check the garage or the attic since I knew it was freaking empty, and it was just a spirit throwing a fit at me. I moved out my junior year for reasons other than the stomping sounds over my room, but I promised myself I would never stay the night at my mother’s house again.
But unfortunately, I did move in for a few months in my early twenties, and it taught me a lesson to not come back. Moving back to my mom’s house was the lowest point in my life. I was freshly twenty, working at some fast food, creamery, and grocery store three in one unstaffed hellhole meanwhile all my friends were in college making something of themselves.
I went back into the house knowing that something was wrong with it, and this time I was prepared to ignore it, hoping that maybe if I iced out whatever that thing was, it would leave me alone, like it apparently did with my family. For the first few months, it worked, nothing of interest happened at night, and if it did, I wouldn’t know because I started sleeping with headphones on.
If I woke up in the middle of the night, oh sorry too bad, I put my headphones back in my ears and played calming music. I got used to my home being normal, and nights being mundane, I thought my plan worked. I thought whatever it was decided to leave all together since I had joined my mother in her nothingness.
The house didn’t start to act up again until I started dating my boyfriend (my now husband, who will go by Justin). He lived in Europe, I lived in the states, but we were best friends, and make it work any way possible. When I would go to bed, I’d place my laptop on my nightstand facing me, say goodnight, and sleep with the video call going.
I know it sounds stupid, but we thought it was nice to somehow be able to sleep together like a normal couple. Normally, whenever I woke up I would roll over to face the laptop, say good morning and chitchat with Justin before I headed off to work. But this time no matter how many good mornings or hellos I would offer the man wouldn’t wake up.
It wasn’t until I typed a message into our chat that he woke up from the notification. I asked him if my microphone stopped working, but he told me, “No, I muted you last night because you left Netflix on or something on the laptop and I couldn’t fall asleep.” I remember brushing it off, apologizing for the noise, and moving on with our conversation before I left to my ice cream/burger slinging gig.
But as I walked to work, I couldn’t help but feel a pit in my stomach about the things that Justin had said. I only had our Skype opened on my laptop, and at this point there wasn’t even television in my room. There was hope in me, that since I didn’t acknowledge what it probably was that things would just continue on as normal.
But like the years before, that little occurrence was just whatever this was just cracking its knuckles before it started to see what it could really do. I started making a habit of muting my microphone after saying goodnight to Justin, I didn’t want to hear about him hearing anything. I didn’t want to give any attention to my tantrum monster and didn’t want to have to tell him about my past experiences.
Unfortunately, the thing had other plans. I remember the sound of my Skype call ringtone going off over, and over. At first, I thought I was just in the in-between dream state where you hear things, but that boop-boop was just so darn persistent, it fully woke me up. It was a call from Justin, so I assumed our connection probably dropped, and he just missed seeing me in all my drooling majestic glory.
I answered the call, put on my headphones, and gave him a sleepy hey. I talked to Justin last night before writing this, so I could be as factual as possible with our conversations, and his story which will come in the play at the end. Justin looked pretty calm, but before I could say anything, the man started bombarding me with questions. “Do you have a cat in your room?”
I said no, “Okay, I am going to tell you something and I hope you believe me.” I rolled my eyes at this one, waiting for whatever fantastical thread this man was going to spin into gold for me at 3 am. “I was just checking on you, on camera, not in a creepy way, but because, whatever, I saw you sleeping, and something was pulling your blanket off you.”
I remember laughing, and starting to tell him how stupid this joke was before I realized that I in fact did not have my blanket on me. I looked at the foot of my bed, and there it was, all crumpled up. I told him I must have got overheated, and kicked it off in the night but he was persistent that he saw something tug at it before fully pulling it off my body.
He told me, that is why the call ended, he couldn’t get my attention over the session, and spammed me with the call notifications. I brushed off the conversation quickly, pulled my blanket back up, and went to bed. I had the next day off work, so I decided to clean the house as a thank you to my mom for being so patient with my presence in her home.
I wasn’t on a video call that day because Justin was working earlier and longer than normal that day. In the kitchen of my mom’s house, above the sink, there is a window. The window has privacy shutters so you can look out at our front porch, but the outside cannot look in. I never really thought much of them since they came with the house.
The only time we ever really gave any attention to the stiff wooden things was when my mom one day decided to give them a fresh paint job. My last chore of the day was washing the dishes in the sink, and I got halfway through the huge pile before I caught the shadow of someone walking past my window to the front door.
I figured it was either mail drop off, or one of my neighborhood friends, so I turned off the sink, walked around to the front door and opened it. To no one’s surprise, there was no one there. I shrugged it off, and went back to finishing my dishes. Almost immediately I saw the figure standing in my porch walking back and forth like an impatient visitor.
I opened the privacy shutters so that I could get a good view of whoever was out there, and whatever was there instantly vanished. I am talking blink of an eye, the moment the shutters opened, nothing was there. I got scared, finished the rest of the dishes as quickly as possible, and calmly, but swiftly walked back to my room.
I locked the door behind me, and went to the one place I knew online full of other dumb kids who could help me solve my problem. I went to /x/ and gave a much shorter, green text version of what just happened. After being called a bunch of names, and being told to have intercourse with myself….and the figure, someone suggested I just start telling the thing to screw off.
Things like this fed on fear, so I needed to stop being such a baby, and show it who is boss. So, that became my new philosophy. If I heard anything, saw anything, I was going to tell the ghost where to shove it. It started to make a habit of walking around on my porch, like it was waiting for me, anytime I was alone in my kitchen.
The more times I saw it in daylight, the more human it looked. It was tall, so tall I never saw past the neck through my window. He was hefty in the way most farmers from the bible belt get once they reach retirement age. He had on a white shirt, tucked in, with blue faded pants, kept all together with these worn beige suspenders.
The next time I saw it, I was cooking myself lunch, and saw the man impatiently standing there, I promptly said out loud “You can leave my mother’s porch. I don’t care you’re there.” When I looked back the man was gone so I figured, hey this worked, I am definitely going to keep going on this path of being a brat right back.
Like all of our other encounters, we established a routine. I’d be in the kitchen, it would walk past the window, I would more aggressively tell it to leave, sometimes calling it a loser, and he would go. Even though the encounters were more frequent, they weren’t violent, or scary, so I counted it as a mild annoyance that would eventually fade once it didn’t get what it wanted from me.
This went on for about another four months until I announced to my mom that I was going to be going to Europe for a while to spend time with Justin. I was so happy, she was happy, and we spent that night making arrangements for my drop off, and eventual pick up from the airport. I took the week before leaving off of work so I could kick start my vacation early.
I was on a video call with Justin, it was around noon. We were talking in my living room while I was playing Donkey Kong 64. Out of nowhere, the vacuum in the dining room turns on. As I quickly left to turn the thing off, I could hear Justin asking if my mom came home early. I came back to my laptop to tell him no, and the next thing I heard was a loud banging sound.
I yelped loudly from fright, Justin asked something along the lines of “Was that a gunshot?” I go to the nearest window, which was in the dining room to look outside, and that’s when I see a massive hole in my mom’s dining room wall. It looked like some kid named Kyle got mad at their stepdad, and ravaged the darn thing.
I brought Justin (AKA Justin via the laptop) to show him the hole in the wall, and started freaking out, I told him my mom’s house was haunted, I wasn’t kidding, and look at this hole. She is going to kill me, I am going to be murdered by my mom, and I honestly started just crying from the anxiety of explaining this to her.
Justin calmed me down, asked me to explain everything, and so I told him everything. I figured that he would think I was crazy, and cancel our plans to meet up, but it was the opposite. He told me that he knew my mom’s house was weird. He said that he would see my pillows and covers be moved away from me or off my bed.
He would hear someone talking in the background at night, and all the times he was asking if I was home alone, it was because he swore he saw someone walking behind me. I remember getting defensive, telling him I was serious, and now was not the time to be a jerk about it. He promised me that he was being serious, but didn’t want to push the subject, and sound crazy himself.
I ended up telling my mom that her cats had been playing and slammed the vacuum into the wall, but I did offer to help pay for covering the hole in the wall. The hole still lives in her house to this day. We decided I was going to stay in my bedroom until I was leaving for the airport, which was only two days away at this point.
I kept my head low so I wouldn’t have to see anything, I kept my headphones on unless I had to go to the kitchen or bathroom, even then I tried to wait until someone was home so I wouldn’t be bothered. The plan worked until the night before I left. My flight was for 7 am, and I am one of those crazy people that like to be at the airport hours early, so I planned with my mom to be out of the house by four.
I was so excited to leave I stayed up throughout the night, watching television on a laptop in my bed. I was halfway through an episode of Swamp People when I felt something bounce onto the edge of my bed next to me. I figured it was one of my mother’s cat’s so I instinctually went to pet it, but there was nothing but air, then my mattress.
I turned to look at where the weight was, there was a face cast only in the glow of my laptop in the darkness. The head was at the height at my bed, like it was crouching on the floor only popping itself up, like a toddler would play peekaboo. I saw a long smile, dull almost grey teeth, dark orange eyes, and its skin was as black as the night.
It was black, and somehow shiny, like an onyx stone. It was somehow hard looking but thin. Like it was stretched as tight as possible over its own bones, you could see the freaking sharp shape of the cheekbone almost perfectly. The worst part though, is it was just looking up at me, smiling, like it was my freaking friend who just played a prank on me.
I was frozen freaking still, I didn’t scream, or cry, or tell it to screw off like I had many times before. I just stared at it until I had to blink, and when I did it just freaking popped out the air like it was never there. I turned on all the lights in my room, and just waited for my mom to come get me to leave for the airport.
I decided no matter what else happened in those next few hours, I wasn’t going to look up from this screen. I was just going to watch these people hunt alligators in peace. Thankfully, I was able to leave without any escalating. I honestly don’t know what the thing’s game plan was that night, but whatever it was didn’t work out.
But that was the last time I experienced anything in my mother’s house. When my trip was over, Justin flew back with me. We only lived with my mom for half a year while I paid for his lawyer in order to become an American citizen. We moved out for a lot of reasons, but the main one was apparently the house found someone it liked a lot better than me, and it wanted to go full force on the poor guy.
30. One Bad Room
This story seems like it's just made up or something, but it's real, it happened and is still happening as far as I know. I'm not kidding, nor embellishing anything. I think I'm forgetting some parts and I keep getting chills as bringing this up reminds me of how I felt and still feel. My grandmother’s house isn't super old or anything,
It's actually really nice, has been remodeled multiple times, and is in a really nice suburban area. Other than one room her house is fantastic. I agreed to watch her golden lab for a week, while she was out of town, and that dog refused to go into that room. If I went in there she would whine and shiver and stare at the corner of the room across from the door.
I had always been afraid of that room, but I hadn't been in there for so long that I assumed it was just some dumb kid fears I had made up. I grew up watching a ton of horror movies and had a well-developed imagination. So I didn't pay much attention to my younger self, I chose to stay in the bedroom because it was the middle of summer and it was the coolest room in the house I didn't really notice anything until I decided to sleep in there.
That night the room was super chilly and I felt someone sit at the end of the bed. I assumed it was the dog, but when I opened my eyes the dog was at the door staring and whining. I looked down and saw they bed rise as if someone sitting had stood up, and saw movement out of the corner of my eye like someone was ducking under the side of the bed.
I did what any rational person with decades of watching horror movies behind them would do. I walked out of the room, closed the door, and slept in the den. The next night I kept hearing noises in the room. Rustling, once it sounded like someone dropped an empty cardboard box. Throughout the day I would hear a random series of knocking from down the hall.
As night approached it happened more often. I decided I couldn't deal and took the dog to the park. When we got back everything was quiet and the dog was happily running around so I went out for dinner with a friend. I came home to chaos. The dog was rage barking and growling in the hall. I went up the stairs and looked.
She was foaming at the mouth, shivering, hackles raised, she had peed, she was enraged and terrified of something. I looked in from where I was, trying to follow her eyes and it hit me. The door had been closed when I left it the night before, now it was open, the lamps were on, and there was a super dark shadow up in the corner across from the door.
There was a pressure in the room, coming from the doorway. I still don't understand it. I just kind of froze until I heard something behind the door. The next part actually has me getting spooked as I write this. I looked at the crack between the door and jamb and saw white eyes looking at me for just a second before the whole thing seemed to end.
The dog suddenly calmed down and looked super confused, snorted a few times, and walked off like nothing had happened. I promptly closed the door, went to the garage and got some rope and tied the door handle of that room to the door handle of the room across the hall. Like any normal person would, right? When my grandmother got home she asked about the rope.
I told her a little about the room and all she said was "Yeah, sometimes that room is no good, better just stay out."
31. Reaching Out to the Other Side
I went on a late-night history tour of an old west prison, (supposedly haunted) and felt someone touch me on the shoulder. Looked behind me: the cell door and others on the tour, like about a few inches from me. Turn back around. I distinctly feel three fingers touching my shoulder. I then felt a presence behind me, like the kind you get when you walk past mannequins at clothes stores.
But there was no one there inside the cell. This all went within moments. The tour guide told me it’s the “friendly” cell. No one else on the tour experienced anything. But everyone all went inside that cell after I said what happened.
32. Let There Be Light
Okay so, one night, when I was six years old; I heard a voice calling my name. It was almost above a whisper, but not quite. It was weird because the voice didn't sound like a man or a woman, it was like both at the same time. Anyways, the voice sounded friendly. Me, being a dumb six-year-old, I grab my Toy Story flashlight and head downstairs.
I then see the brightest light I'd ever seen. It was like a brightness, that can't be seen by the human eyes. However, it didn't hurt to look at. The light slowly transformed into a human-like figure, but still just as bright as before. My jaw dropped and I was stuck where I was. I then ran upstairs and closed the door.
My parents asked my why I was awake and I told them about it. And they were just like, "okay, now go to bed." They probably didn't believe me.
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33. Infestation
I lived in this haunted house in North Hollywood, lots of different stuff happened there, but the worst of it all was one morning my entire family woke up and the entire bottom floor was covered in maggots. I’m talking like 900+ square feet covered in maggots you could see very clearly from the second story bannister.
We had no flies in the house prior to this and we kept it extremely clean. I remember sitting on the balcony/hallway with my little brother just scared because no one knew how they got there.
34. Black Wear
When I was a kid, I had slept in my room, and I saw a lady wearing a black outfit was looking at me behind a window curtain. She just smiled at me. I was paralyzed with fear and wasn't able to scream. I had seen her about three times in different places in my house, just standing and smiling at me. I wasn't able to do anything, but after I just ran to my parents and screaming, crying, and telling them what had just happened.
Since then, I haven't seen her again!
35. Let Us In
I work alone overnight cleaning a restaurant. There have been quite a few scares, but I'd say the most paranormal was when I heard pleading at the back door one night. It was short and to the point. A woman's voice my name, and a man’s voice said "Let us in." I went to look out the window that was attached to the door, and no one was there.
As I turned to go back to work, it sounded like something slammed into the door. Knocked my butt to the floor, and I scrambled up running to safety. I had the managers look at the recording that morning when they came in, and said they saw nothing. This is only one example of a lot of weird stuff that goes on there.
36. Playing Pranks
When I was 13-14, there was a wreck that took the life of a friend that I played basketball with, and hurt about four others during the summer. I remember being severely affected by this, since this is the first tragedy I dealt with. I was crying in my room one night, and I felt something sit on my legs. I could see an outline even. And I was terrified.
I heard, “it’s ok, it’s ok.” I always assumed it was the girl visiting to try and ease the pain everyone was dealing with. A while later, I was sitting in my room doing homework, Had to be in the fall after the accident, my tv spazzed out. I looked up and the tv was being changed to 00 (my basketball number) over, and over again.
The remote was on the other side of the room, with nothing on top of it. After this happened, I began seeing a person in all white walking through my house. Never straight on, but in the peripheral. If you were in my living room, you could see to the left how she/he would walk through my kitchen.
A friend saw the figure once thinking my dad was home. Never a mean spirit. But a prankster. I remember losing things and finding it places that didn’t make sense. Years later, probably 10 or so, my boyfriend (who later became my husband) visited my parents’ house. We had just arrived and ran to the subway. He used his wallet, left subway, and then couldn’t find his wallet.
We went back to subway, but they didn’t have it. It was weird. We went back home, and he found it in the bottom of his suitcase.
37. Haunted Vacation
So, I was about seven, or eight at the time, and my family was on vacation in Missouri at the time. We decided to make a day trip to a little town called Villisca Iowa, home of the Villisca axe murder house. It was the site of an entire family and one of the children’s friends being brutally slain with an axe one night, I believe that the killer is still unknown.
We wanted to visit this nice little house, as we were getting ready to leave, me and my father wanted to check the upstairs out. We were in the attic of the house, when there was nobody around, both me and my father heard a small child’s voice whispering from behind us. Needless to say we were both amazed yet, a little bit freaked out, so we hastily made our way back outside.
38. Smell the Roses
This isn’t creepy, but it’s kind of cool. My mother split, and transplanted a rosebush from my grandfather’s farm about 40 years ago. It took, but never bloomed. At that point, she only kept it because it grew into the fence nicely, and kept us kids from climbing it. My grandfather passed onabout five years after she transplanted it, and that spring it bloomed red roses.
A few years after that my grandmother passed on, and the spring after it bloomed white roses. These are the only two years it has ever bloomed.
39. Watchful Eye
We used to live in a battered women's and children's shelter when I was young, because my father was looking for us (it was an ugly divorce, Alabama gave him custody, mom took us to Washington). One night, I looked in the mirror, and saw a hairy demon looking back at me. I screamed, and cried, and ran to get my mom who assured me it was a normal mirror.
But that night, a kind looking man, that I can only describe as a ghost, appeared at the end of my bed. He was there all night, but gone when I woke up in the morning. Then, the next night, and the next night. He was there every night for four months. We never talked, he never moved. Just stood guard. Then, one night he woke me up from my sleep.
I'll never forget how surprised I was, because I'd never seen him move or talk. He said, "He's coming. Get out now." So we packed up the car, and left to a hotel for the night. The next morning, we went back to find out someone had broken in and gone room to room looking for someone. I never saw him again after that.
40. Last One Left
My grandmother suffered from heart problems, and her dementia got way worse after my father passed on, as they were very close. After a few years of staying in a nursing home, she could just remember who we were, but that was about it. If you came and ate breakfast with her, she would have forgotten the entire event by lunch.
Anyway, one night we get a call that my uncle who lived in the next state over had taken his own life. We waited a few days until a "good day" when she was more mentally stable to visit Granny and break the news. We get there and start some small talk, but before we get to the subject at hand she says, deadpan, "Well I guess Jeff (her youngest) is the only one left."
We ask her about it, and she tells us that Terry (the son we came to talk about) had shot himself. Mind you, he lived in a different state, and none of the family back home had any of the details yet, and had no idea how he had done the deed, just that he had passed on. We ask a little bit more, and she basically told us that Uncle Terry had called her a few nights ago, and told her "he had just shot himself in the head."
We later (nearly a month) learned that he did in fact shoot himself in the head. So... Either my uncle's ghost has better phone service than I do (scary), or he was still conscious immediately afterwards and was able to make a call (horrifying), or he called her just before ending himself to say goodbye (absolutely depressing) and she interpreted it wrong but managed to remember it all the same.
41. Nobody’s Home
I was babysitting my little sister while my grandparents were out of town (we lived with our grandparents) when we hear my grandparents’ bedroom door open. I grabbed the only weapon I had, a mini Yankees baseball bat, and was just sitting with my sister quietly in my room. We heard someone walk down the hall to the kitchen when I called my uncle to come check on us.
This whole time, I wasn't completely convinced that what I was hearing was real, so ten minutes later he arrives and comes in through our front gate (we had a large outdoor courtyard). He comes and searches the house. We go into our grandparents’ bedroom. Their sliding glass door to the courtyard was open, and the chair in front of it was pushed forward, propping up the blinds.
So, someone had clearly entered the house, but my uncle searched the house, and no one was there. We assumed whoever it was had probably left when he heard someone come, so my uncle left. After that, my sister and I were in the kitchen eating some food when the doorknob to the garage door starts rattling, first softly then harder (the knob was broken and is almost impossible to use).
I grabbed my sister, ran out the front gate, got in my car and left. I have never been so scared in my life.
42. Hello From the Other Side
When I was a student, I got called in to a stroke patient. She had coded and they were doing CPR. They worked for 45 minutes, but she didn't make it. They cleaned her up, and called on the family to say goodbye. By the time the family was on their way, she had been both brain dead and without a pulse for more than 45 minutes.
Blood had filled her brain, and she was completely grey and started to smell. Suddenly, she sat up and called for her family. The nurses rushed to get monitors and equipment back on her. Started working on her again, she stabilized, said goodbye to her family, and promptly perished a second time.
43. Smile and Say Cheese!
Back in 2014, I was sleeping over at my cousin’s house for New Year’s eve. It was just my three cousins, my brother, and myself. We all decided to sleep in the same bedroom for the night, as we had just become old enough to stay at home on our own and our parents were staying out all night, so we were a little nervous. My point here is that we were all 100% certain that we were the only people in the house that night, and we all slept in the same place together.
I woke up the next morning and was getting in the car to leave, when I just happened to take a look at the camera roll on my phone from the previous night. To my absolute horror, I discovered that there were five photos of all of us sleeping. Every single person who was there was in the photos, fast asleep, so there was no way that any of us could have taken them ourselves. My aunt showed the photos to the landlord shortly after, and he had no explanation. To this day, nobody has any idea who took them—or how. My friends have even accused me of making the whole thing up.
44. Picture Perfect
I’m convinced the house I lived in during my freshman year of college was haunted. I also swear that all of this is 100% true. I don’t talk about it, because it sounds ridiculous, but it happened, and I can’t explain it. The house was 120 years old. My room had a door to the attic that I kept locked. I had four other roommates who all swear they weren’t screwing with me.
I was lying in bed one day, and I heard a super loud crash behind the door of the attic. I grabbed my big male roommate, and we opened the door together. At the bottom of the steps (there were six, awkwardly shallow steps leading up to a bunch of that pink foam stuff, and your typical attic) there was an old painting of some lady.
We were creeped the frick out. Nobody had ever seen the painting before, let alone gone into the creepy attic. We put the painting in the corner of the attic where it COULD NOT fall, and didn’t think about it again. A few months later I heard the same crash. I figured I dreamed or imagined it. Again, I opened the door and found the painting sitting there.
This time I moved the painting into the basement. There were some shelves, and I just threw it in the back of the top shelf. A couple more months went by. Yet again, late one night, I heard the crash from behind the attic door. I thought to myself “no freaking way.” Grabbed my roommate again, and opened the door. THERE IT FREAKING WAS.
That gosh darn painting was sitting at the bottom of the steps again. I don’t understand how. I kept the door to my room locked as well as the door to the attic. My roommates couldn’t have gotten in there to play a prank. I truly don’t understand it. After the third time, we took the painting out to the fire pit, and burned it.
Thankfully, all the creepy stuff stopped there. I moved the frick out of that house as soon as the lease was up. I can’t explain what happened, I just know it was creepy as heck and you could not convince me to go back there.
45. What’s That Name Again?
When my son was about three and a half years old we were driving home at night with him, and his seven-year-old brother in the back seat. As we approached an area of the road across from my older son’s former babysitter’s house, my younger son clearly blurted out the name, “Ashley.” Ashley was the name of the babysitter, and she had passed on the year before in a car accident.
My younger son had never met her, and neither son knew that she had lived nearby because she always drove over to our home to babysit. When I asked my younger son what he said, he once again repeated the name Ashley, and when I asked him why he said that he said “Raven” told him to. Raven was his favorite stuffed animal.
My wife and I were stunned and cannot explain what happened.
Sources: Reddit,
