Sometimes, things happen that we just cannot explain. And oftentimes, we are aware that it’s not just our imagination playing a trick on us. Whether it’s ghosts, aliens, or something else, these Reddit users have seen (and heard) it all. Keep reading for their creepiest paranormal experiences.
1. The Protector
We used to live in a shelter for battered women and children when I was young because my father was looking for us (ugly divorce, Alabama gave him custody, mom took us to WA). 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’s not the creepiest part.
But that night, a kind-looking man, whom 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. He was there every night for four months. We never talked and he never moved, just stood guard. Then, one night, he woke me up from my sleep, and I'll never forget how surprised I was.
I'd never seen him move or talk. He said, "He's coming. Get out now". So, we packed up the car and left for 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 the ghost again after that. I believe he was there as a sort of guardian angel.
2. Same Ghost, Different Day
One morning, my wife told me about a creepy floating head she saw at night while laying in bed. However, she never actually described what he looked like. So, when I had the same experience, two weeks later, I was excited to share it with her. We went back and forth describing the ghost, sharing as much detail as we could.
Finally, my wife shared that her ghost had a beard and I was relieved to say that mine had no facial hair at all. However, her face went pale. She confessed to testing my story. Her floating head, in fact, had no facial hair either. Our descriptions matched 100%. My wife and I never really believed in ghosts, until we both saw the same one.
3. Spooky Scratches
When I was a young teenager, my father and my stepmother had just gotten married. This forced me and my little brother to move into her home and share the same bedroom for quite some time. My stepmother's mom had died where I slept for most of my childhood. The spooky part happened one night when I got off of my computer and I was going to bed.
I had laid there for maybe ten minutes when I started hearing scratching at my closet door. I figured it was a mouse and went to sleep. I go to get dressed in the morning and made a disturbing discovery. I opened my closet door to see very, very long scratches down the inside of the door. They were deep scratches. It wasn’t in one area, either. It was wavy from the top of the door to the bottom. Both hands…ten lines. That’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me.
4. Is It Too Late To Say Sorry?
This happened on Christmas Eve in 1986. My aunt and uncle lived in Havre, Montana. He worked overnights on the railroad, and he didn't come home Christmas morning to his family. Railroad officials eventually showed up to my aunt’s home to tell her that my uncle had been crushed between the couplings of a train.
Our family gathered at my aunt’s house. My aunt kept answering the ringing phone, and getting very upset, yelling and swearing. This was very out of character for her. She told us that someone was impersonating my uncle somehow, calling in his voice and saying, "I'm sorry". We thought that she was imagining it, so we started answering the phone instead.
We all got the same message, "I'm sorry" in my uncle’s voice, repeating over and over. Now, my uncle kept a small apartment in another town, to sleep in during work stretches when he couldn't come home. The railroad was attempting to prove that illicit substances were involved to avoid a large lawsuit. So, they had his apartment sealed while they investigated.
Meanwhile, we had the authorities and phone company look into who was calling with this heartless prank. It was coming from his apartment. His sealed apartment. Eventually, we were able to access his apartment. His answering machine had his home number programmed. It seemed his apartment phone was calling home, and the first part of his recorded message "I'm sorry, I can't come to the phone" was playing to his home phone. It stopped after three days.
5. The Voice
My dad and I were living in a house that was built in 1910. The basement was extremely creepy and had no lights. There was a space about three-feet high between the doorway and the first step. That space went directly under the house. I was on a weird sleep schedule, so I was usually up until 4:00 AM or so. On a nightly basis, I would walk past the basement door and see it open just a crack.
Of course, my cat would be missing, undoubtedly in the basement. I would have to step all the way down to that first step, squat down, and stare into the void under the house to coax her out. Once she got close, I would have to stick my arms in to grab her and leap out. One night, I was recording vocal/acoustic tracks for a cover song in a room near the basement door.
I was the only one home. When I played it back in my headphones, it said, "I would breathe my last…" then I heard a man’s voice say the last word with me, "breath". I replayed it several times, and it was definitely there. I immediately got out of there and as I passed the basement door, I saw that it was open a crack.
I figured my cat was down there again. Hopped down, scared as ever, looked under the house and called her. She was a Siamese and her coat was kind of cream-colored. I saw something light moving around about three feet into the void. I was reaching in to grab her and I felt a cold draft hit my face. Right as that happened, I looked up to see my cat come to the doorway from the kitchen to see what I was doing! I grabbed that cat and sprinted out of there.
6. The Real Ghost Hunters
About seven or eight years ago, I was really into the paranormal but was never able to find a group of people who shared my interest enough to investigate with me. I did manage to make one friend through an acquaintance, however, and she and I would spend hours talking about our favorite show, Ghost Hunters, and the paranormal in general.
Eventually, we got around to talking about her own experiences and how she believed her house was haunted. We would talk a lot about how she thought there was a presence in her house and eventually she decided to do an EVP session. She said she was unable to make out what she had recorded and insisted there was a voice in the time frame. So, I asked her to send me the raw audio file.
I forgot which software I was using at the time, but I remember it had a great audio timeline feature that showed you rises in the sound. Upon listening to the spots she insisted she heard something, I could only decipher what I thought was a loud crackle. Nothing definitive. What I did notice though was a small bump in the otherwise very straight silent air in the audio timeline.
After cranking up the treble, I heard something that to this day freaks me out. When my friend set her recorder down, she announced in a very clear voice that she is "leaving the room" and the device was there for the ghost to interact with. Five to seven seconds after she left the room, there was a very, very faint female voice that asked, "You don't want to see me"?
On the audio timeline, it is a fraction of a second and incredibly eerie like someone sped it up. I still have the file on an old hard drive. I have it edited down to the exact spot. Man, I forgot about this until now and now I can't sleep from the excitement of remembering how bizarre it was. She never did another EVP session again because it scared her so much.
7. Drawn To Life
There I was, bored in the combat zone (Iraq), drawing a picture. It was of the scenery, which consisted of a few hills, some grass, and a tree stump. On the stump, I decided to draw a creature, humanoid, like a pigmy werewolf, four feet tall, with claws and teeth. The commander showed up, called us in for a mission, and I put away my drawing.
Weeks later, we were in an abandoned base, staying in some new buildings, with no windows, doors, or anything, just the concrete bones, and openings for the installation of these things. Every night, we have to set up a watch. It takes the whole platoon to cover the building, minus a few per floor. I was a reinforcement, sitting in an empty room, in the dark.
After a while, I noticed that I'm not alone, I looked up. What I saw made my blood run cold. The thing I drew was sitting on the ceiling, staring at me. I stared back, gripping my M-249, waiting for something to happen, when my team leader came in, asking if I'm okay. As I tell him yes, he walked over to one of the holes where the window would be, looked out, turned back, and asked, "Did you see that"?
Later, near the Iran border, we stayed at another abandoned base. I had just gotten off a guard shift, came back into my room, and my buddy was in there, staring at the ceiling, I looked up, and there it was…again. "What is that"? My buddy asked. Just then, our squad leader came in, asking what we were doing. We explained, but it was gone again. Never saw it in the country again.
Fast forward several years, I got injured in Iraq from faulty equipment, got a medical discharge, and got on with my life. One day, I was in a bookstore, and I found this book on demons. I flipped through it, and there it was…the same thing I drew, the same thing I saw, twice, preceding a personal injury that plagues me to this day.
8. Ghost On Command
When I was in second grade, I woke up one summer night, in the middle of the night, to a woman floating through my window into my bedroom. Oddly, I wasn't scared. I just sat up and asked, "What are you doing here"? I remember she answered me, but the next morning, I couldn't remember what she said or even what her voice sounded like.
I couldn't even remember what she looked like. So I said to her, in true 8-year-old fashion, "Well, you better get going because my dad might wake up and then he'll be mad". She slipped out of my already cracked-open bedroom door and I went back to sleep. Sounds like sleep paralysis, right? Wrong. The next day I was really excited that I had my own fairy godmother and I named her Crystal.
I thought in my head, "Please come back! Come back and wake me up at dawn so we can talk"! I kid you not, the next morning, just as it was getting light outside, I heard someone whispering my name. I realized that this was real, and she was a ghost. I froze. I stayed as still as I could, not even able to breathe, and just prayed as hard as I could "Go away go away go away".
I could feel her right by my head. Okay, it happened once, so it’s just a coincidence, right? Nope. Every time I would get brave and say out loud to her, before going to bed in my room, "Okay, come. This time, I swear I won't get scared". She would come, whispering my name, and I would be so scared and never open my eyes.
So, at this point I'm thinking, it still could be night terrors, right? I mean, our eyes have receptors sensitive to light that wake us up, thus causing me to wake up at dawn and hallucinate this. Here's where it gets real. The next summer, I told a friend that this is going on. She didn’t believe me, so she told me to ask the ghost to come tonight.
We were sleeping in the same tent and my friend wanted to see for herself. At dawn, I heard the ghost, calling my name and my friend’s name! We stayed still, she left, and we both sit up and my friend heard her too. She freaked out and told her parents later that day, sobbing, I got in trouble for telling ghost stories. I angrily said out loud, "I got in trouble because of you, and I never want to see you ever again"! And I haven't seen her since.
9. Even The Dog Saw It
When I was in elementary school, I shared a queen size bed with my older sister, and our family dog (a mutt that looked like a short-haired version of Lassie) would sleep at the foot of our bed every night. When I was about 6 years old, I woke up one night around midnight. What I saw chilled me to the bone. There was a dark figure standing at the foot of the bed. The figure was entirely in black without any eyes or a face.
I tried to wake my sister up, but she rolled over to go back to sleep. My sister must have accidentally kicked the dog, because the dog woke up and raised her head and started growling at the figure at the foot of the bed. The growling then woke my sister up and she saw the figure and started screaming. When my parents came into the room and turned the light on, nothing was there. To this day, both my sister and I are adamant that we saw a ghost or other demon in our room. We know we aren't crazy because the dog saw it, too.
10. Return Of The Ex
I saw my deceased ex-husband in my kitchen. I was watching TV in my living room (in the middle of the day) and kept hearing this sound, like someone was jiggling their change around. And 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 the room and when I got to the kitchen, I saw him 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. That was something he did a lot when he was alive. He turned his head and saw me frozen, staring at him. I would never forget the expression on his face.
His eyes got huge and he kind of tilted his head forward, with an expression as if to say, "You can see me"?! I don't how long we stared at each 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 gone for a couple of months.
11. A Visit From Grandma
I was 23 at the time, living about seven to eight hours away from my family while in university. One night, I abruptly woke up in the middle of the night from a force physically moving me off my bed, toward the foot of the bed. What was even weirder was that I was already covered in sweat and felt like I was mid-anxiety attack. Needless to say, I was extremely disturbed and had trouble sleeping for the remainder of the night.
Fast forward to the morning, I finally dozed off, but was woken up by my phone ringing. On the other side was my dad telling me that my grandmother lost her life last night. After hearing that, it is not something that scares me. In fact, I find it rather soothing that possibly she was just coming to say goodbye and as a new spirit, was unaware of how she could still affect me in the physical plane.
12. Loss of Lisa
When I was growing up, I was tight with the daughter of my dad's cousin. Her name was Lisa. We grew much closer as teenagers, too close really. Anyway, we wised up a little and went our separate ways when it was time for college. A few years passed and I had moved on. One night, I got up to use the washroom. I didn’t bother to turn on the lights.
I was washing my hands and glanced in the mirror. There she was. Lisa was standing in the doorway behind me. I heard the echo of her voice. She told me that she still loved me and always would. She then turned and walked out of sight. I stood holding onto the sink for a moment. My heart was pounding in my chest. I calmed myself down.
I decided it had to have been a dream or my imagination. I tried to go back to bed. My pillow smelled like her. She could have been in the room seconds ago. I lay back down and as I drifted off to sleep, I felt her warm, familiar presence against my back. The next morning, there was no sign of her. No scent, no indent in the covers.
I wrote it off as a dream. I got a call from my mom later that day. She told me Lisa had passed on a few days earlier. She had been killed by her boyfriend. He got angry and he hit her and that was that. I guess she stopped by to see me one last time. To say goodbye before she moved on.
13. Pete, The Friendly Ghost
I lived in a haunted apartment. It was two rooms, but one of the rooms was locked, and I didn't have the key. So, I only had one small room as kitchen, dining room and bedroom, and a porch. There were two especially freaky events that occurred. One night, my girlfriend slept over, and she woke up in the middle of the night.
She said she saw the bathroom door open and a shadowy figure standing in the bathroom, staring at her. The bathroom was right across from the locked room. Another time, I was jerked awake by the fire alarm going off, just blaring, but when I went to unplug it, the alarm stopped and no other alarm in the building was going off.
A lot of the things that happened could have been just my neighbors, but the way they happened was, well, weird. I would hear knocking. It sounded like someone tapping a spoon on a counter, and it was coming from the downstairs apartment. It could have been my neighbor, but I'm not sure why she would do that every couple of minutes for hours on end, or in the middle of the night.
I would also hear knocking on the walls, it sounded like someone tapping their way up the wall, like they were looking for a stud. I would also hear this weird moaning or howling that I couldn't trace the source of. Again, it could have been a neighbor's dog, but it didn't sound like it was coming from her apartment. The apartment across from me had three tenants in a year.
I had, I think, a unique way of coping. I named the ghost Pete, after a previous tenant's mail I would get from time to time, and I tried talking to him. I would basically treat him like a roommate I wasn't friends with. My girlfriend was much more freaked out by the situation than me and basically stopped coming over after a few months, so I wasn't there much anyway.
When I was there, I felt that talking to Pete made the atmosphere of the whole place much more friendly. I also left out a sheet of paper with "Pete's Notes" written on it, and told him if he had any problems, just write them down.
14. The Haunted Gumball Machine
One time, in the middle of the night, I was sleeping. I heard a sound like someone was taking a paperclip from my desk and throwing it against the wall and it was bouncing across the desk. I woke up to this noise, turned on the light right by my bed as I sat up. I looked over and saw nothing. It was weird. As I was ready to lay back down, my 20-pound steel gumball machine fell from the shelf over my bed.
It landed directly onto my pillow where my head was not 30 seconds earlier. I flipped out and scrambled out of my bed, as I'm totally taken by surprise. As I stood up, I felt something under my feet. It was a paperclip. I put the murderous gumball machine on the floor, the paperclip back on my desk and crawled into the safety of my comforter. Nothing like that happened again.
Flickr, Shahadat Rahman Shemul
15. Singing Spirits
I had just gotten done working out in my basement and was too lazy to go upstairs and use my normal shower, so I decided to use the one in the basement. As I was shampooing my hair, I heard a horrifying sound. It was a little girl singing outside of the bathroom door (mind you, I was home alone). I turned the water off and called out to see if anyone was down there and it stopped. I put the water back on and was rinsing off when it started up again. This time, it just sounded like humming. I ran upstairs with shampoo still in my hair and never used that shower again.
16. Mysterious Composer
Growing up, my older brother had a computer program that he used to compose piano music on. I remember I was reading in the living room when I heard the most beautiful violin melody I have ever heard. I listened to the whole thing, which was several minutes long. I walked down the hallway to compliment my brother on his masterpiece when I realized my brother was not using the computer, and I was home alone.
17. The Student’s Spirit
I was home last year during a break from university with a friend. We decided to go see a friend in a different city in his university. It was a small city with rivers, hills, and forests. At night, we decided to go in a nearby forest to smoke and drink by a river, but still being on the main road. So, we were standing with our car parked and I was drinking.
It was about 11:00 at night and completely dark, with no lights or people for several kilometers. We had been standing there for about an hour when a guy who looked like he was about 25 years old came out of the trees and came up to me. He told me that this place is not safe at night and that we should go away from there.
My friend who used to study there heard me talking to someone and started walking towards me but stopped in his tracks. His face turned white and he told me to get in the car and that we are going. I told the guy thanks and goodbye and turned the car around. For 10 minutes, my friend didn't talk and when we were out of the forest, he finally broke his silence.
He told me that the guy who was talking to me was a boy from his university who lost his life on the same road two years back in an accident. We were so scared that we didn't go home that night and spent the rest of the night getting high at a nearby river. That probably wasn’t the best idea, but nothing happened to us after that.
18. Ghost On The Mountain
When I was ten, I was at my best friend’s house. His name was Tyler and his family lived in a very nice house on a mountain in Georgia. Tyler always told me about the scary stuff happening at his house. Things like how he would see eyes, his TV would turn off while watching it, he would hear drilling sounds and doors opening up—all the classic ghost stuff. I never believed him until this one time.
We were in his hot tub together for like an hour when suddenly, I felt the most overwhelming feeling to get out. At that exact moment, Tyler looked at me and said, "We need to get out now". There was fear in his voice. We jumped out, dried off and went inside pretty fast. As we went in, Tyler locked the door and checked it to ensure that it was locked. So, we started going toward the big movie area that's near the back door to watch Napoleon Dynamite.
Out of nowhere, we were both hit by that fear again. We smelled something that was like a rotting animal. The DVD rack fell over and all the movies fly off. At the same time, the back door flew open. Needless to say, we went upstairs to the other movie room and made a fort out beanbags and chairs to defend ourselves from the paranormal enemy. From that moment on, I believed in ghosts.
19. Ghastly Guest
I worked at a hotel. A guy called from #421 asking for a 6:00 AM wake-up call. I punched it in. No big deal. His name didn't populate on my caller ID. I looked up the room. It was empty. Being young and lazy, I decided to leave it. Twenty minutes later, I got a phone call from the same room! It was a woman this time. She wanted a wake-up call at 6:30 AM.
I changed the wake-up time. I was a little freaked out. But sometimes, glitches happen in the computer or phone. I radioed my Guest Services guy. He was a 17-year-old kid, who looked like a young Gabriel Iglesias. So, I said, "Hey Carlos, can you do a room check? I keep getting calls from #421". He goes into super detective mode. He was whispering play-by-play updates over the walkie-talkie.
It was pretty hilarious because I got him a little scared. He reached the door and opened it. Then, I heard a shriek. He yelled, "The curtains dude! The curtains are moving"! I was trying so hard not to laugh over the radio. Okay, well if the room was empty, it must be a glitch. As soon as he locked that door, I got a phone call from #421. It was a different man than the first. He asked, "Can I get a wake-up call for 6:00AM"? I set it. Whatever, Mr. Ghost.
20. Haunted Room
When I was 11, my family moved to a very old house (it was built in the 1890s, I think) in a different state. The first night there, I didn't have many of my things unpacked yet and the TV wasn't hooked up, so I dragged out my keyboard and started to play. As I was playing some terrible song I learned in music class, a chill went down my neck.
I looked over to the window on the other side of the room and saw my reflection…and an old woman standing over me with her hands clasped in front of her. I left quickly to go downstairs, screaming to my mom. Of course, it was dismissed, since I was just a kid. Over the seven years I lived in that house, I saw her three more times. Once was on the stairs, slowly descending and staring at me.
The other two times were in the spare room next to mine, hiding in a rack of clothes in the corner. Every single night, I would hear the threshold creak, then footsteps going around my bed, to the dressing room, and then back out. A few nights, I woke up to a cold breath on my face. I came to find out a woman perished in that room in the 1960s, but the room she usually stayed in was mine.
Freepik, h9images
21. A Pinch of Salt
I grew up in a Victorian house built in 1887, so I've experienced some things, mostly explainable by drafty wooden floorboards or the heating system making noises. I can't, however, explain what happened to me when I was about ten years old. I was bringing a snack back from the kitchen to the living room where my mom and I were watching TV together.
When I walked through the dining room, I saw something move out of the corner of my eye and I froze. We had these wood-turning salt and pepper shakers that you had to turn to crunch the sea salt to come out of. It was floating, in the air above the table, crunching salt onto the floor. I remember like it was yesterday.
22. Ouija Gone Wrong
When I was probably eight years old, I was playing with a Ouija board with my older sister (who was probably about 12 years old at the time) and our dad's girlfriend's son, who was maybe my sister's age or slightly older. My sister and I both recalled the same story, so it wasn't just my imagination playing tricks on me.
We had the board on the bed and were trying to contact some spirits, basic Ouija stuff, so we were all chanting, "Contact us, contact us, contact us," over and over. Well, it was shortly after Halloween that this happened, so we had a bucket of candy on the dresser across from the bed. It wasn't near the edge, no one was near it, and there was no open window to create a draft or anything like that (either way, it was still a full and heavy bucket).
Right at the exact same moment, the lights flickered off so it was pitch black, and the bucket of candy just tipped right off the dresser. Again, all three of us were sitting on the bed nowhere near the dresser and I had a view of everyone, so no one was around to do it. I ran screaming out of that room to find my dad, accusing him of turning off the lights from the breaker, but he had no clue what I was talking about.
23. Real-Life Burning Man
This happened to my sister’s friend but involved the house I grew up in. The only reason I believe this is because my mom told me and she doesn’t lie. She told me a few times how she has seen an old man in our house. Not only was he old, but he was burnt up. His skin was melted. She says he looks at her and kind of disappears into the cabinets.
My brother has also seen him. One night, I was reading in the living room. My sister and friend were in her room, and my parents were in theirs. I heard a loud scream. My parents opened their door. I got up from the living room and we all went to my sister’s room. My sister’s friend was in my sister’s lap, sobbing.
My dad, thinking it was some teen girl being moody, went right back to his room. My mom went into my sister’s room and shut the door, I went to the kitchen to make a snack. About a half hour later, my sister, her friend, and my mom came out of my sister’s room. My sister’s friend’s face was red and swollen. She had her backpack and she and my sister left, I guess my sister took her home.
My mom came in the kitchen and I asked what happened. My sister’s friend was reading a magazine on the edge of my sister’s bed. She happened to look up down the hall and that's when she said she saw an old man, half crawling, half dragging both legs, coming down the hallway. She said his face was melted and his eyes were black. She never came over again. I have yet to see this man, but have heard creepy things happen in that house. And sometimes, when I walk into an empty room, it smells as if a match was just lit.
24. Whose Home Is It, Anyway?
When my son was three years old, he told my wife and me that we had a ghost in the house we just bought. When we asked more about it, my son went on to describe a little old man named George. He assured us George was nice. The next day, the elderly neighbor came over and saw some renovating we had done. What he told us next sent chills down my spine.
He said, "George would love what you’ve done to the house. He lived here for 50 years until his passing". My wife and I were stunned! We’ve lived here happily with George for over 20 years now.
25. Visit From The Ex
This is about the night my ex-boyfriend passed on. On New Year’s Day, I was having a nap in the spare room. My ex-boyfriend came in. I remember it so clearly. He woke me up and sat at the edge of my bed. I don't remember him talking, but he cuddled up to me. In my dream, I thought that was weird that he was there, but I was really tired and confused, so I went back to sleep. When I woke up, he wasn’t there.
I had a phone call from his brother that he had passed on. So, I had a dream in a dream and a visitation, from someone I didn't know who had passed. It's given me loads to think about the afterlife. It's pretty curious. I got a goodbye and I'm grateful. I miss him. Most people who hear that story think I'm crazy, and I am okay with that.
26. Dreaming Of You
When I was a teen, my mom and I went on vacation together at a resort. We were halfway through our vacation at this point. I fell asleep but woke up at 1:00 AM very suddenly. I immediately had this deep and dreadful feeling that someone was in our room. I can’t even begin to explain this feeling, but I was absolutely terrified.
I was able to move, but I was way too scared to get up and check the rest of the room out. We were in a foreign country, just my mom and I. I stared at the front door being certain that someone would either walk in or walk out. I have no clue how much time passed, but my focus eventually shifted to the other side—AKA the balcony door.
I calmed down a bit by this point, but I was certain someone was in our room, and I was too scared to go back to bed. I stared at the balcony door until the sun rose and promptly passed out because I felt safe. I remember it being such an intense gaze, like laser-sharp focus. I woke up the next morning, extremely weirded out by the dread and fear I felt last night, and also exhausted.
On our way to breakfast, my mom and I stopped by the pay phone. She called her business partner to ask how the last few days went by. I could see the shock creep on her face. Long story short: while I was freaking out about an intruder, my mom had a dream that her business partner’s ex-husband was on our balcony and saying some menacing things about his ex-wife to my mom.
My mom was confused about the dream because she had only met this guy about two times and just assumed it was a random dream. In the dream, he was saying that he’s gone now and she was asking him if he moved to a different state or country. When she called her business partner, he told her that the ex-husband had taken his life the night before. My mom was in complete shock about her dream, as was I. I told my mom about my experience and she said we can never talk about it again.
27. The Recording
Back when I was a cool young kid, some friends and I wanted to do paranormal investigations. So, we did what all cool young kids did. We took an audio (tape) recorder, and hit up the local graveyard after dark. On this particular fall night, we were walking around and I saw a little toy excavator at the foot of a child's headstone, I picked it up.
I thought, "Man, that's sad to see a small child’s grave". Then, I put it back and started walking away. I started getting a super weird feeling that someone was walking up behind me, but all my friends were ahead of me. Then, out of nowhere, the leaves started shuffling behind me and I got pushed. I told everyone I had been pushed by something.
I marked the time so we could review our audio recording later. When we got back home, we went over the recording and you could hear a kid laughing when I got pushed. It was wild. I still get the chills thinking about it. I really wish we still had that old recording. There was definitely no one aside from us in the graveyard that night.
28. Loading…Sky
Back when I was in college, four of my friends and I were driving to the mall when we suddenly noticed a big black square in the sky. I asked if anyone else saw it and they all said yes, We still don't know what it was. It looked like a part of the sky didn't load in or something. I still think about it on a regular basis, literally the strangest and most unexplainable thing I've ever seen.
29. Leaving This World
I don't know if this counts as paranormal, but when I was a kid, I had a dream of an old neighbor knocking on my window and saying that she is leaving this world. Two or three days later, she passed on due to old age.
30. Levitating Couch
This happened when I was six or seven years old (back in the 90s). Every Saturday morning, I tried to get up early enough to watch Dragon Ball Z. We didn’t have cable and it came on at 5:30 in the morning. Anyways, one morning, I happened to get up somewhat on time and grabbed my Sonic the Hedgehog sleeping bag,
I went downstairs while everyone else was still sleeping. I turned the corner from the stairs and looked into the living room when all of the sudden, the couch at the far end lifted entirely from one side about five feet in the air and came crashing down. I immediately assumed my dad was working on it or something.
I felt this large pit in my stomach of shock and fear, almost paralyzing. I just quietly turned around and quickly went upstairs. I went into my parents’ room and woke up my mom. "Mom, mom. The couch just lifted up". She was too tired to care and just told me to hop in bed with them. To this day, I have no idea what happened.
31. Footsteps In The Dark
In the house I lived in as a young child, I would hear people walking around and conversations in which I could never make out what was being said. But, I could tell out of the four different voices that one was deeper and more controlling. I was left home alone a lot as both my parents worked full-time.
When I was in my teens, we moved to a new state and in the new home, it was more of the same. I could hear conversations in the upstairs rooms that was empty. That progressed to the sounds of footsteps that got heavier as the years went on. Doors would open and slam on their own. I would wake up to the sensation of someone blowing in my ear or on my face.
I moved out when I was 16. At 17, I came back to my apartment with my roommate. It was just him and I. From the bedroom area just above us, it sounded like someone jumped off his bed and, with heavy feet, ran from his room, slammed the door shut, and faded to nothing. He moved out two weeks later.
32. Ouija Games
I was 14 or 15 when I discovered what a Ouija board was. I asked my mom about it and she laughed and knew that our neighbor had one. So, my friends and I went and got it. It was an older one from the 60s or 70s, not just the generic toy ones. Anyways, we played it that night. To our surprise, it worked. But it was not a nice ghost.
The next morning, I told my mom all about it and how it worked, and she abruptly snatched the board, and banned me from ever playing again. Like a typical kid, I searched the house, found the board, and snuck it over to a friend’s house the next night. I don’t remember the specifics of how that game went that night, but it was a nice ghost.
I remembered that it was able to answer intimate questions that not everyone playing would’ve known. It was also able to tell us how many fingers someone had behind their back who was standing in the corner of the room. Overall, it was a pleasant experience. Then, one buddy and I returned to my house that night, and right before I was about to hit the lights to go to sleep, I received a text message. When I read it, I was horrified.
The message read, "It was great speaking with you tonight, but it’s best we go our separate ways. Your mother doesn’t want it. Have a great life :)". Immediately, I thought it was a prank, so I called the number, and it didn’t exist. There was not a direct voicemail, just a non-existent number. I don’t think I slept that night.
33. Star-Crossed Lovers
I spent the night at my aunt’s house when I was four or five. I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a lady in a wedding gown walking on the porch. I just went back to bed. When I was older, I told my mom about it and she said she saw a groom walking on that same porch one night.
34. Paranormal Activity
I went to bed and woke up at 3:00 AM. I heard the TV in the other room and got up to shut it off. I woke up again at 5:00 AM. The TV was still on, so I got up to shut it off. I woke up at 8:00 AM, and the TV was still on, but now on another channel. It was a show about the paranormal. That spooked me a little. I don't know how it happened, but it never happened again.
35. Creak, Creak
One day, I went to sleep at around 2:00 AM and as soon as I laid down, the floor started creaking as if someone was walking around. I quickly got up to turn on the lights, but as soon as I stood up, it stopped. After a minute of me just being confused as ever, I turned off the lights and laid down in my bed again. But, as soon as I did that, it started again.
This became a cycle of me turning on and off the lights and the creaking starting and stopping accordingly for about 15 minutes. I even checked if it was because I was laying in my bed, by using my phone as a light, and as soon as the room got lit up, it stopped. I still have no idea what was causing the creaking. Not the first time I have experienced some paranormal stuff in this house.
36. The Caped Visitor
I went to sleep one night. I brushed my hair while in bed, as I always do. Then, I turned off the light, put my head on the pillow and I immediately heard a voice calling, "Shirley". It was a voice that I cannot even imagine now. I remembered it was distinctive, deep, and powerful, but my brain cannot replicate it. I turned and next to me, I saw a man in black armor and a cape draped over his shoulders, riding a black horse.
I had just turned off the light, so I wasn't used to the darkness at all, but I could see him, darker than pitch black. I was stunned. I couldn't react to tell him that my name is not Shirley (and that's not even a common name in my country). After a couple of seconds, he just moved on, disappearing into the darkness. I never saw anything like that again.
37. The Essay From Nowhere
So, I used to hear noises as if someone was using my computer at night. Clicks and clacks of the keyboard and mouse, sounds of moving the mouse, shuffling noises, and occasionally a few muttered words that I could make out. But, my computer was never on, and no one was there. And so, I just put it up to me imagining things.
I asked my parents and my dad said he heard that too, and that it was just our house being old. But then, I heard this thing mutter something about printing. The next day, at the printer, there’s a printout of an essay I wrote in 3rd grade, but with the name blacked out completely and the year changed to 1968 instead of 2015. Everything else? Identical down to the wording. Just no name and it’s from 1968, apparently.
Holding it felt wrong, like it shouldn’t exist. I crumpled it and threw it away shortly after. I tried spotting the ghost, but it didn’t work. On August 16th after the essay printed out, he stopped visiting for a year. Then, he came back at midnight a year later. I could make out a shape with white crystalline eyes, then it faded away and I never saw it again. I stay up until midnight every August 16th though just to check if it’ll come back.
38. No Girls Allowed
My room was on the second floor of the building and the laundry area is located at an extended area on the ground floor. One night, I found out that I have no clean shirts anymore so I brought three pieces of clothing with me and some detergent. As usual, it was really quiet that night because of the strict rules of the dormitory. One of those rules included not bringing a girl over.
As I was setting up my playlist, I saw someone sitting on the top step of the stairs. It was a long-haired woman. Her back was directly facing me, so I couldn’t see her face. I didn’t want to, anyway. I wasn’t able to scream nor move. She wasn’t moving either. I tried to get out of there as fast as possible, but all I was able to do was step back super slowly until I was not able to see her. I told my three roommates what happened and two of them said that they have friends who also encountered the woman on the stairs.
39. Goodbye, Father
I saw my father’s spirit separate from his body on his hospital bed. A faint, visible light left his body from above his heart, then just dissipated as it rose towards the hospital room's ceiling. I looked around at the others in the room trying to judge from their reactions whether they saw/felt anything. Nothing. It was as real as anything I’ve ever experienced. But, it’s one of those things you don’t talk about because people think you’re nuts.
40. The Man In The Photo
I was taking a photo of my mom using a phone, but she moved. She was blurred and there was a guy behind her standing on the sofa wearing funeral clothes with brown shoes. The photo was cut at the head, so I couldn’t see who it was. I got scared and deleted it. I told my mom about it and she said that could be my deceased dad. She thought it was him because of the brown shoes I was describing to her.
41. The Radio
My sister and I shared a bedroom when we were younger and we had a little radio/alarm gadget on our nightstand. It wasn’t even connected to power and it suddenly started playing the radio for a few seconds then shut off. I checked and the plug wasn’t even connected.
42. Gone Today, Hair Tomorrrow
I used to be in the army and the training camp bunk that we lived in was said to be haunted.
Occasionally, our stuff would go missing and reappear in weird places, like under our bed, or inside a bag that we had zipped up. No big deal, right? I mean, it could have been human error. Then, came the instance that freaked everyone out.
It was one night after lights out and my friend was on his phone texting his girlfriend. Most of us were drifting off to sleep, and were lying on our beds. Suddenly, he heard the shuffling of feet from the corridor. So, thinking that it was our sergeant, he quickly hid his phone under his pillow, rolled over on his side and pretended to sleep.
Up until this day, what happens next chills me to the bone. While he pretended to sleep, he heard someone right behind him, at the other side of his bed, saying, "Don't worry, you can continue to pretend sleep". I would dismiss this as a figment of his imagination, except about five other people around him heard it as well, including me.
Creepier still, there was no one there, and it was the voice of a little girl that said it. For reference, our training camp was in the middle of an island, and was set up away from the main admin blocks. The island has been closed by the government for army training purposes for the past 15 years so there were definitely no civilians around, let alone kids.
To make matters freakier, when we came back from our weekend home leave, there was a bunch of female hair on his bed, neatly bundled up, long and jet black. Under his pillow was a note that read, "Remember me"? Now as I said, we were in the middle of a forest, in the middle of an island. And at that point in time, there were no female personnel on the island.
Our bunks were locked up for the weekend and the duty sergeant had no idea that the incident happened. We never spoke about it after that night. It still chills me to the bone thinking about it.
43. Unusual Occurrence
I have tons of stories, especially since I attended a 140-year-old Native American boarding school. A lot of them happened to other people. But I only had one personal experience. When I was maybe eight years old, I had a puppy that stayed outside. While I was asleep one night, I heard the pup crying and I tried to get up to see what was going on.
But, I couldn't. I felt like there were two huge hands holding me down by the shoulder. I could move my legs, but not my upper half. I opened my eyes, but saw nothing. I started to lose my breath because as I was pushing up, I was choking myself. My puppy got louder and louder. Then it all stopped. I took a big gasp as I popped up and ran to the front door.
I opened it up to see my puppy lifeless on the porch. No blood, no other animals. I went to bed and the next morning we noticed two eye-shaped goggle marks high up on the door. We thought it was dirt but it never could come off. This was on the reservation in middle of nowhere, so it could have been a skin-walker.
44. I Saw The Light
I work as a field biologist, and this past summer, I had what I would call my closest experience with the "paranormal". We would drive around on ATVs all night with spotlights looking for prairie chickens. One night, my boss and I were working together and our coworkers were at another site about five miles away. We made plans to meet up if either of our groups finished up in our respective areas.
Anyways, it was about 4:00AM, very dark out, and my boss and I both noticed the grass on a hilltop opposite us was illuminated, as though someone had parked their truck on the other side and turned their bright lights on, lighting up their side of the hill. It was coming from the direction and general distance our trucks were from us, so my boss and I decided to head that way, assuming our coworkers were meeting up with us.
We drive the half mile to the hilltop, when we finally crest. All we saw were the reflectors of our parked trucks in the distance. No lights, no vehicles, nobody nearby. Mind you, we were working in incredibly remote areas in Wyoming. The roads in and out were treacherous, there's no possible way someone snuck a truck in and out to spook us without us seeing them. This was prairie, we could see everything around us for miles. We saw that light, but now it was nowhere to be seen. Anyways, that was weird.
45. Possessed
I used to have this reoccurring dream where this black figure with no face would visit me and try to possess me. It would typically enter my being through my mouth and at that point, I would have no control over my dream. It would tell me to do terrible things to people and it had a scratchy voice. The weirdest part is that every time it would be inside me, I physically would feel ill.
I would wake up with the same feeling often times vomiting right away. The last time this happened must have been three years ago.
46. The Girl In The Sundress
This happened when I was 17. I was still living at my childhood home and I was sneaking out late at night to meet some friends. I went through the back door of the house and as I turned to face the door, I could just feel somebody watching me. I thought I was busted. I turned to look at who had caught me, and saw a totally monochrome figure.
The hair was completely black, like blacker than black. Her face was white/grey and she was wearing a dress. No facial features. Just the silhouette of a young girl facing me. I reached for the door as fast as I could and when I went to shut it, it closed very quickly on me. I bolted through my yard and onto the street.
I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being followed. I stayed at my friend’s place that night.
Soon after this happened, I was up late with my mom watching a movie. We finished our movie up and said goodnight after turning the TV, stereo receiver, and DVD player off. After a short amount of time in bed, I was jarred awake.
It was the sound of static with the speakers cranked up and the TV on with no input. My mom and I met in the hallway, surprised to see that we had both been awoken to an empty house. A few years ago, when I was around 23 and graduated from college, I finally told my family about the first occurrence. Before I was able to finish my description of the ghost, my mom finished for me.
She told me that she and her friend used to see a little girl in our backyard playing in a sundress. She said that she looked maybe 12. Our neighbor, who was the original owner, shared a story with us about the family that originally bought the house after it was built. It was a young family, whose daughter succumbed to leukemia.
She would have been about the right age. Looking back, the girl wasn't scary or harmful. To this day, I believe what we saw and haven't seen anything like it ever since.
47. Hide And Seek (A Ghost)
Years ago, I was playing hide and seek with both my friend and sister. It was during the night, which we found to be more exciting, since that gave us a better advantage of the game. When it was my turn to hide, I ran to one of our bathrooms that no one used (mainly due to plumbing issues) and stood in there. I should mention that it's a very small space.
It was almost like the type of bathroom built in a mobile trailer, the type that you can only stand in. So, as I'm waiting in there, about a few minutes pass and I'm still not found. As I continue waiting in silence, I heard a soft whisper, "Find your own hiding spot," right in my ear. I literally froze. I began wondering if what I just heard was actually real.
I should mention that my friend was also literally hiding in the room right outside of the bathroom, so I thought it might have been him messing with me. But he said he never moved, and I believed him, considering the voice different. To this day, I honestly don't know what to make of it. While I believe in the paranormal to some extent, I also believe that there is always a logical explanation to just about anything. However, given that the voice was so clear and distinct, I'm almost certain that it was not just my imagination.
48. Tickle Monster
I usually keep my nails very short, but tried press-on nails on a whim. They were long and fun to clickity-clack on everything. My nine-year-old daughter suddenly noticed my new nails when I was tapping them on the table during dinner. She piped up, triumphant that she’d caught me: "Someone was hiding at the end of my bed tickling my feet last night".
She continued, "They had long nails, too. I knew it was you"! I felt my heart stop in my chest. I certainly had not tickled anyone’s feet, much less crouched at the foot of anyone’s bed in the middle of the night. I was extra horrified because this was the same child that had heard a strange voice in our house a year prior that I thought only I could hear.
49. Unwanted Intruder
I work in a prison and one night, a prisoner buzzed me, just sobbing. He said someone was standing outside his cell door. It wasn't time for headcount and all the doors were showing as secure, so we sent staff down to search. Nobody was out. I was watching it all on the cameras, and operating the doors. The whole time, the prisoner wouldn't stop buzzing up, begging us to help him. They reassured him that there was no one there. It was weird, as we usually know the ones who have legit psychosis and hallucinations. This guy was not known to have any illnesses.
He was sobbing. Then, when the staff left and I got a green state on the unit, it happened. Every alarm went into hyper drive. Motion detectors, the fence alarm, everything in and near that one unit. So, back in they go, did a full headcount, and the prisoner was so frightened he had to be taken for constant observation in the safety unit because of the man he said was running around and staring into his cell.
50. Haunted Hotel
My husband and I stayed in an old hotel on Christmas Eve once. It had a busted radiator for heat that wouldn’t turn off. We had to crack the window before going to sleep. In the night, I had a nightmare that a creepy old woman climbed in through the window and leaned over the bed to choke me. I woke in a panic, and shook my husband awake, "Honey, I had a bad dream"! He woke up and said, "Oh man. I just had the craziest dream that this lady was standing over the bed trying to choke you"! We came to find out later that that particular hotel is reputed to be quite haunted.
Sources: Reddit ,
