When there is no way to scientifically explain a situation or phenomenon, we often attribute the cause to some sort of supernatural power that defies logic and data. Whether you believe in ghosts or reject the concept entirely, the following stories are sure to send chills up your spine:
1. The Phantom Intruder
When I was in college, I housesat for my parents. I’m a bit of a scaredy-cat, so I locked every door leading up to the bedroom when I went to bed at night. I had the weirdest dream that someone unlocked each door and turned on every light, and I felt cold and woke up to my dog barking. Sure enough, all of the lights in the house were on and every door was open and unlocked.
My dog wouldn’t stop barking in the hallway, but there was nothing there. I sat in the shower with my dog and phone the rest of night, scared out of my wits. To this day, I still have no explanation for that night's events.
1. Inspiration, For You
There was a young woman in her early 20s, about my age at that time, sitting alone at a nearly empty coffee shop. She seemed like she was trying not to cry, so I went over and asked if I could sit with her. We talked for hours. About everything and nothing at the same time. She didn't go into detail about what was going on with her, but she felt like there was no hope.
I did my best to encourage her; told her not to give up. I tried to give her reasons to hold on, thought of ideas that might give her a spark of hope. Before the coffee shop closed, I wrote my phone number down, told her that I would love to hang out with her again and that she could call me anytime. She looked at me and told me that everything I said to her wasn't for her to hear, it was for me. I must have gone white as a ghost.
I hadn't told her that I was in fact suicidal. I had originally gone to the coffee shop to think about how to best kill myself. While talking to her, I figured if I could maybe help someone else not feel the way I do, I wouldn't, at least not yet. She hugged me then walked out the door. I ran after her because she forgot the napkin with my number on it. I was no more than two seconds behind her. I got outside and there was no one there. That day, she gave my whole life a new purpose filled with hope. I'm a therapist now, and I help people all day.
2. The Bloody-Faced Man
One afternoon in college, I came back from classes and decided to sit on the couch and have a snack. After that, I just passed out. I had a nightmare of some bloody-faced demon thing screaming in my ear at the top of its lungs. I then woke up and went about the rest of my day. My roommate comes back later that night, and goes into his room as I’m sitting in the main living area.
At some point, he lets out this random startled scream. Panicking, I run down the hall to see what’s going on. His words chilled me to the bone. He looks at me and goes, “I swear to god, someone with a bloody face just walked from your bedroom into the bathroom.” I never told him about my nightmare I had earlier in the day. After that, I didn’t sleep for two days straight.
2. The Psychic
I was working in Florida as a manager in a large chain of automotive dealers. I was on the service side and dealt with the customers who had the most difficult issues or were upset. One day, an older man came in and I went for a quick test drive to assess his concerns with the vehicle. He was calm and polite, a very easy-going person. After speaking for a few minutes, he asked me if I liked magic.
He then proceeded to start talking about where I was from. He didn't ask a single question; he just began to talk. He narrowed down the area until he was within a 20-minute drive from the hospital I was born in. That hospital is an 18-hour drive from where that dealership was. After a few minutes, he said, "But you didn't live there very long, moved south to the city, right?" He was absolutely spot on. It was starting to get freaky.
Then, he started rubbing his eyes and humming. He asked me how long I had lived in Norway and narrowed it down to the city I lived in for eight years. At this point, I'm thinking he's some kind of weirdo who has done a background check on me, but there was no way he would know where I had lived while overseas. On the return drive from the dealership, I was running every possible scenario through my head. Did a friend set me up? How did he know the name of the city in Norway? He had me so confused, he honestly could have said he was some kind of psychic, and I wouldn't have been able to argue.
3. Open Door Policy
I used to work at a 24hr Subway. Well, one day I was doing the dishes, and my co-worker was cleaning the toaster oven and bread oven. Out of nowhere, around 3:30 am, I heard our door chime go off. Out of habit I say, "Welcome to Subway" as I turn around. But nobody's there. My co-worker's gone too. I thought "Okay, maybe he hopped the counter and went outside."
Heading back to the sink to finish the dishes, I hear the door chime again. Nobody. Checked the bathrooms. Nobody. "What...the...heck." I ignore the dishes, and stand at the front counter, eyeing the doors. A couple minutes later, my co-worker comes through the back door where we get our deliveries. "Where'd you go?" I asked him, turning towards the back door area.
"To take out the trash," he replies. Okay, I think, I'm just imagining things. But nope, just then, the door chimes again. We both turn around to see nobody there, but this time the door was wide open. But here's the freakiest part: Our doors are weighted so they'll close on their own if you let go of them. Door stayed open for a couple minutes as we stared...Then suddenly slammed.
Not a windy night, and our doors wouldn't even stay open like that on the windiest of days. Have no idea what caused this, or why it happened on that particular night, but after I got a different job, I was told it never happened again. Told my boss about the incident and we all looked at the cameras. Nobody could explain it.
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3. A Rejected Deal
I was in my 20s, traveling through Italy. I was on a boat trip around Capri when an old man started chatting with me. Whatever the question was, I made some remark about backpacking and wanting to make my money stretch the length my travels, and he responded that he would swap my age for all his money. Felt like the world had stopped, holding its breath while I thought about my answer. It truly felt ominous and foreboding until I said no. I still remember that feeling 30 years later.
4. Missing In Action
We lived in a house a few years back, and random things would just go missing, then they'd turn up somewhere else. We never really thought hard on it because they were never expensive or important things, so because of this none of us ever mentioned it to each other. Fast forward and my mother loses an earring one day.
Not a huge deal, but it's a nice dangly pair she wears frequently. Maybe a month later, I come home and find it perfectly laid out in the middle of the ground at the end of a high traffic hallway. I take a photo and show mom when she gets back, give her back her earring, and we discuss the oddity. I mention that lately I've been misplacing random inconsequential stuff like staplers, and she looks at me sharply.
She goes that's weird...Me too. Our housemate gets home and we mention it, and he goes “Oh man so weird, my razor vanished for a while and I found it back on my sink one day.” So basically, we're all convinced there was a friendly ghost attached to that house that just misplaced things to let us know they were present.
4. The Park’s Guardian
One evening in winter I didn't leave work till almost seven PM, so I was walking home and thought I should cut through the park to get home quicker, even though it's really poorly lit. A couple of minutes into the park I could hear a group of people behind me and in front of me. I got a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was sure I was going to be jumped. Up ahead there was a lamp post with a CCTV camera on it, so I decided to stop there, thinking if I get jumped, I'll get jumped on camera.
As I stood beneath this light, this really tall woman jogged over and stopped next to me. I'm six feet tall and she was way taller than me. She asked if it was okay for her to walk with me, and I told her it was fine. She walked with me to the edge of the park, talking about how dodgy the park was at night. As soon as we got to the edge of the park, she told me to have a good night, then jogged back into the park. It was a really weird experience, and I felt certain I would have been mugged or something if she weren’t there. I walked through that park every day for about a year and never saw her again.
5. An Unexpected Guest
I'm a paranormal investigator, so I live for the creepy and paranormal. I seek it out. Throughout my time as an investigator, I've experienced a lot of creepy things, but the strangest happened at the Sallie House in Atchison, Kansas. My team had arranged toys on the floor in Sallie's room because it's said that "Sallie" will move them if you do that.
We'd just finished a dinner break in the kitchen downstairs and went upstairs to check on our equipment in Sallie's room. But when we got to the top of the stairs, the door to Sallie's room was closed, even though none of us had closed it. Someone knocked on the door and asked, "Is anyone in there?" The response made me jump out of my skin.
We heard a distinctly male voice say, "No. Just leave." I need to point out, we were all downstairs together. No one had gone upstairs to close the door, absolutely not. But, any investigator will also tell you in old houses doors sometimes close. However, no men were upstairs. We had two men in our group, both were downstairs.
5. Guide To Another World
This is a story from a friend. He was walking home from work at night, when he came to a corner, he had to turn. Normally there was a streetlight above the corner, but for whatever reason it was turned off, meaning he couldn't see around the corner like usual. A man wearing all white clothes—a suit with a tie—came up to him from behind him and asked if he could go with him. My friend was a nice guy, and just felt good about the man, so he said yes.
He said they turned the corner, and BAM. Completely blind. He felt the man grab his arm and silently escort him through the darkness. He said it felt like forever but was likely only a block or so. The man walked the rest of the way home with him, and once my friend went inside, the man was gone. My friend still believes that that corner was some kind of portal to the underworld that night, or some other sketchy place, and that the man was an angel guiding him through.
6. The Banshee’s Cry
One time, I was camping with friends from high school. We had decided to sleep around the fire, not inside of the tents, since it would be nice to sleep under the stars. I fell asleep in the chair after a while, but I woke up to very loud screaming from the forest surrounding the campground. It sounded exactly like a friend of mine, Jeff, who had been sleeping right by me.
Well, I didn't see him in his chair anymore. I woke up the person next to me and asked where Jeff went. They told me he was just across the way, sleeping elsewhere on a bench. I then went “Okay” and fell asleep. The next morning, I was asking people about the screaming. It turns out that nobody else heard it but me. To this day, I know I heard screams. I just don't know who was yelling.
6. The God Of Pool
I was out a college dive bar on a Friday night. The place would get crowded, and I was an avid pool player. People knew me at parties because I'd always go out to play pool almost every weekend. I'd get money and free drinks for winning. I'd run the table. Sometimes I'd grab a random partner to do "twos." Me and a random person against two other frat kids or something of the sort.
Anyway, this one spring night the place is packed with a bunch of younger kids around 21-24 including myself at this college dive bar. I'm trying to find a partner to play with, and in walks a man who looks in his late 70s, dressed in a tuxedo. It was way out of the norm for this place. He also had well-groomed white hair and dress shoes. I felt like I was playing pool that night with God. This guy did not miss a shot, and he was on my team.
We played people at the bar until it closed, and kids were dropping money on the table trying to bet against us thinking we'd lose at some point. But nope. This tuxedo man and I won every game. I’ve never seen him at the spot since. It was the one and only time.
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7. It Lives In The Attic
In the house I grew up in, it always felt like you were being watched. I’d see shadows out of the corner of my eye and dark mists that would dissolve when you looked straight at them. My older sister was always scared of the attic especially. She would barricade the door to it whenever we were left home alone, just in case.
I went in the attic quite often to get various things. It’s where we kept large toy containers, old clothes and stuffed animals, and I just liked seeing what I could find. It always felt like I was being watched, though. One time I went up there, and as I reached the top of the stairs, I saw a large, translucent alien-shaped white head looking at me from behind a box.
I froze, terrified, and locked eyes with it for a few seconds before it slowly lowered itself down to hide. I turned right back around and left, telling myself I had imagined it, but I was too scared to go in the attic for years after that. I didn’t tell anyone for years. My parents eventually sold the house and we moved, and I’ve never felt the same way anywhere else I’ve lived.
7. The Wishing Seat
I was walking in the woods by the sea in southern England and I came across a rock formation that had a sign The Wishing Seat. It was rather like a giant throne, although obviously natural, not man-made. I sat on it, and entirely frivolously made a wish. As I was sitting on it, a young family passed along the path in front of me: a man, woman, boy, and girl, all very ordinary in dress and appearance but strikingly beautiful.
The following year I was walking along the path again, but in a different month and at a different time of day. I came across the Wishing Seat again and sat on it, and the same family passed by again. The world is full of coincidences, some significant, and some not, but this seemed a rather a long coincidence.
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8. The Music From Next Door
I lived in an old house in Athens, Ohio, which is reported to be one of the most haunted American cities. During the first year I lived in my apartment, I frequently noticed this strange music that seemed to be coming from inside the house. It's hard to describe, but it sounded like a keyboard or an organ. It sounded faint and was played in the minor key.
Always sounded the same. Regardless, I just chalked it up to my downstairs neighbors, and it never bothered me enough to investigate. It was definitely coming from inside our building, though. The following year, my original neighbors moved out, and my new neighbor, Sarah, moved in. We became friends. One night, she was hanging out in my apartment and the music started up.
She asked me pointedly where the music was coming from, and I said I didn't know—she didn't have music playing in her apartment? She said no and we both looked at each other uneasily. Sarah asked me if I ever saw or heard weird things, and I said that other than the music, I hadn't. The way she asked implied that she had, but she didn't want to talk about it.
A few months later, her boyfriend moved in, and she later confided in me that she saw and heard things: Specifically random tendrils of what looked like smoke swirling inside their bedroom. Doors slamming or opening without explanation. Her boyfriend hated going to the basement so much that he'd sing the whole time he was down there to do laundry.
Thing is, I hated the basement too because it hadn't been changed much since the house had been built and there was a creepy room that looked like where you'd keep nefarious things. I always felt like I was being watched when I was down there. One day, I graduated and was getting ready to move. I went out of town for a few days, so my parents were watching my cat at their place a few hours away.
The night I got back to Athens, I decided to start packing some of my books. I fell asleep and woke up in the middle of the night to a giant crash. I was tired and disoriented, so I assumed the noise came from Sarah's place. The next morning, I went to my living room to find that a giant antique mirror hanging over my fireplace had crashed and shattered into hundreds of pieces.
The nails supporting the mirror were intact, still in the wall. After that, I was finally prepared to admit that the place was haunted. I know Sarah saw and heard way more than she ever admitted, but she didn't like talking about it because she still lived there. She moved recently, so maybe I'll get more out of her now. I never really believed in ghosts, but too many unexplainable things happened.
I did do some cursory research into who owned the house. I learned a woman was the original owner. Back then, the house was for a single-family. She sounded like a quiet woman—a widow who died at an old age. In her obituary, I learned she loved to play music and had founded the Athens music appreciation group. I wonder if I kept hearing her favorite song to play . . . .
8. Seer Of Malady
My friend volunteered at a home for the elderly last year. One of the ladies she talked to took one look at her and said, "There's something wrong with your right side." She had no symptoms at this point. A month or so later, she had an OBGYN appointment and learned that she had a chocolate cyst in her right ovary.
9. Nightmare On Elm Street
My boyfriend and I woke up in separate parts of the house in hysterics, naked and covered in sweat, just totally drenched in it. When we both finally calmed down and talked, we made a disturbing discovery. We both realized that we had the same dream of being surrounded by a group of black and white people with no mouths.
9. A Sad Goodbye
Back in 1997, when I was 8, I shared a room with my younger brother who was 4 at the time. We used to have our grandparents over for dinner most nights and it wasn't uncommon for them to stay long after we had gone to bed. They would come and kiss us goodbye in bed when they were going to leave. This one summer day, I woke up during the night and saw my grandad standing near my bed. It wasn't unusual, like I said.
My grandfather came and sat on my bed and said, "Yes, I'm saying goodbye for now." He kissed me and then went and sat on my brother’s bed and kissed him as well. Then he left. My intuition picked up that he was a bit sad. The next morning, I went into the kitchen to find my mum crying. When she explained why, my blood ran cold. She told me that my grandad passed last night of a sudden heart attack.
I asked how that could be, because last night, he came and said goodnight to me. My mum said that my grandparents left shortly after I went to bed last night. I also remembered that my grandpa said goodbye and not goodnight. It was quite a shock but at the same time a little comforting too. I don't remember a lot from my childhood, but this is a memory that I won’t forget.
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10. Guardian Angel
My great-grandmother had a favorite rocking chair. The night she passed, my mom and I had already been to visit my grandparents and my great-grandmother a couple of days before. We all knew her time was coming soon, so we wanted to make it memorable. She even met her first great-granddaughter when my cousin brought her daughter to see them.
The night after my cousin left with her daughter, I had a dream that I was talking to my great-grandmother and she had been sharing some wisdom and saying goodbye. My mom woke me up in the middle of that dream, at 4:30 in the morning, to let me know that she had passed peacefully in her sleep and we needed to say goodbye.
Of course, in the grogginess that comes with being woken up from a sound sleep at 4:30 in the morning, I had said “but I just said goodbye...” and freaked my mom out. Fast forward a couple days past her cremation, we noticed her perfume scent randomly in the halls, the kitchen, and occasionally hovering around her chair. Now, any time I go to see my grandparents, I’m always greeted shortly after entering their home by the smell of her perfume. It’s paranormal, but the heart-warming kind. Miss you, grandma.
Wikimedia Commons, Levi Clancy
10. What’re Those Lights?
Across the street from my house was an open field that quickly turned into foothills and maybe 300 yards further was a tall ridge of mountain. There was some kind of antenna on top of the ridge, and it had a light that was always on at night. No blinking, just a steady white light all the time. One evening I went out to use the outhouse nearby and happened to notice that the light on the ridge was off.
I walked down the driveway a bit because I thought maybe there was a tree blocking it from this angle or something, but I was stopped dead in my tracks—suddenly the entire sky behind the ridge lit up. It was like someone had turned on extremely bright floodlights and they were reflecting off of snow to an overcast sky or something, but there was no snow on the ground, and it was not even slightly overcast. It was eerily quiet, even more than normal.
Now I was really curious, so I continued walking down the driveway to see if I could get a better angle on it, only to see a guy come around the curve of the street from the left and approach me in a quick walk. This is a fairly remote neighborhood, there are 2 other inhabited houses on the street, we hardly ever see traffic much less foot traffic, so this was unexpected.
As he got close enough, he said, “You don't want to go over there,” in a cautioning tone. It’s not like I was going to climb the mountain in the dark, but I asked what was going on, trying to keep it conversational. “Couldn't say,” he said, “but you don't want to be a part of it.” I gestured in the direction of the ridge and noticed the light was fluctuating a bit, like a slow pulsing, saying that was really weird, and I was a curious person.
The guy then shifted to a darker, more ominous tone and said, “Your eyes are not meant to see.” The way he said it made me think “your” meant “human,” and in retrospect, it was definitely a warning, maybe even a threat, and it almost sounded like a kind of ritual pronouncement—but I was oblivious in the moment.
I looked back up to the light and said, “Well I can see it just fine, what's the problem?” but when I looked back down, the guy was gone. In the space of the maybe 5 seconds I was looking away he had disappeared. There's no direction he could've gone, no matter how fast he was running, that he could've gotten out of line of sight in that amount of time. I was already freaked out by the weird lights, but this really pegged my freak-out meter.
I went back inside and explained to my roommate what had just happened. I also encouraged him to come out and see for himself, but by the time we got back outside whatever was going on behind that ridge was over. I figured that guy was just off his rocker and there must've been something entirely normal going on over there, so I went online and looked at Google maps for the area.
There was nothing on the other side of that ridge—no roads, no buildings, no signs of civilization whatsoever, just a blank spot on the map. I switched to satellite view and saw nothing but more wooded ridgelines behind it. To this day I have no idea what was going on or why I was warned away from it, but it feels like I had been sent some kind of messenger to keep me from blundering into something terrible.
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11. Hallway Of Horrors
I was living with my now mother-in-law in a house she had just purchased a few months before. We had all had various weird "feelings" or experiences in the house, but two really, really stick out. Collectively, there were three dogs living in the house at the time. One evening, we are all sitting with our backs to the hallway (this is significant) watching a movie.
All of a sudden, my German Shepherd and my terrier both perk up their ears and start staring down the hallway behind where we are sitting. I mean, full attention. I notice and turn around. The light in the hall was off and it was dark, so of course don't see anything. Five minutes later, they're still staring and now growling intensely.
This time my wife and I turn around, and our jaws drop to the floor. We both watch as the light switch on the wall gets flipped to “on.” Dogs went CRAZY and so did we! Then, a few weeks later: Same scenario, light is off and we are watching a movie. My German Shepherd loved to play fetch and we always had a million balls around to entertain her.
This time, she's staring down the hallway and wagging her darn tail. This time, we all notice again and start to watch. I swear to God, a ball, a single orange tennis ball, came rolling down the hallway towards her. We all went white. There were a few others, but man I hated that hallway. It never felt like a bad energy, but my feeble little brain was still scared nonetheless.
One more story...My mom-in-law was having these dreams a few weeks after moving in about the house catching on fire and burning to the ground with us all inside. Horrible. About three weeks after these dreams, we woke up one morning and distinctly smelled smoke coming from the house somewhere. Panicked, we all started searching and eventually came to the garage.
On a rafter, we noticed smoke coming out from around a fluorescent light fixture. At that moment I realized...my God, it's attached DIRECTLY to this old dried-out beam! The light was left on all night and it was clearly burning the rafter ever so slightly. Lights are not supposed to be secured on to a rafter like that. So we like to think our ghost hosts were looking out for all of us. After that, her dreams stopped.
11. The Relationship Coach
One day my girlfriend at the time and I were doing an internship in Orlando. We had been fighting a lot, were on the brink of breaking up, and it was just a really tough but pivotal moment in our lives. There was a lot of growing that was about to happen. One day, we were fighting about where to go to eat when we decided to walk to the Hurricane Grill around the corner from our apartment complex.
As we're arguing while we walk in, some random dude walks right up to us, gestures for us to take his hand, and says, "Come on, let’s go in I'll grab us a table. Let's talk." Alarms instantly started going off in my head. I'm trying to make sure that this guy isn’t trying to drug us or hurt my girlfriend, but he seemed safe and oddly confident. He picked a table, ordered food, and just started having the deepest conversations with us about relationships, marriage, life, our personal goals.
At one point in the dinner, he looks over to me, starts crying, and says, "You are going to accomplish everything you want and more, stop doubting yourself so much." It was bizarre because I could feel how much he meant that, it felt like he knew me. So, I teared up too. We finish the dinner, he gives both of us a big hug, and pays for everything. When we ask him if he needs a ride home or anything he says no, and then he just starts walking towards some bushes and trees. I never see him again.
12. Not Quite Human
My partner and I were driving along a road and we see this shape in the middle of the road. It looks like it could be a kangaroo, but the closer we get to it, the more human it looks, but kind of oversized. It is surrounded by a bunch of smaller shapes, and we start to think maybe it’s a giant bird, because it looks feathery. But it’s definitely human-shaped, but not quite, like it had monstrous features.
We’re driving slower now, like walking speed, and I’m frantically telling my partner to drive around it and not leave the car. We see the little shapes up closer…and they’re plastic chairs, surrounding a huger scarecrow. Now, you think knowing it’s not an actual monster would help calm you down, but a freaking scarecrow surrounded by small chairs in the middle of a quiet road at night doesn’t ease any mood. We laugh about it now, but it freaked me the heck out.
12. Professional Reassurance
I was coming back on the plane from a very important job interview, and I thought I blew it. I was spacing out during the entire flight. When the plane landed and I got up to grab my bags, an older woman three aisles down looked straight at me and said, "Don't worry, it'll be okay. You'll get it." I reflexively thanked her and ignored what she said but a few hours later I got a call that I got the job. Only then did I remember what she said. I still don't know why she said that and how she knew what my problem was.
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13. The Vanishing
I dropped my mug onto the floor accidentally one day. It should have been no big deal, but it turned into my weirdest "glitch in the matrix" moment. I heard no noise when it hit the floor, and when I went to pick it up, it was gone. I honestly went to bed and pondered what happened and slept feeling incredibly uncomfortable. I never did find the mug; it remained missing even days later. Still bothers me to this day.
13. A Surprise Playdate
As a child, I used to play outdoors with my childhood best friend Kyle. We would either knock on each other’s doors and ask if the other could come out to play, or we would hear each other in our respective front yards and come outside. One day when I was about 10, I walked outside into my driveway because I thought I heard Kyle outside.
I called out to him and a little girl about my age came from around the back of the house instead. I learned her name was Amaya. She told me she was going to be there all day because she’s waiting for her mom to pick her up. I asked her if Kyle was coming but she said no. Kyle didn’t technically live next door, his grandmother did, so it’s not uncommon for him to not be on the block for days because he’s at home.
We spent the whole day playing. I can’t remember the exact time, but I know it was from the hottest point in the day to when the sun almost began to set. It was the peak of summer, so that meant we were outside for hours. We spent the first half of our day inside of my garage playing because it was cool, and as the outside began to get cooler we moved our shenanigans out into my driveway.
After a couple of hours, she said that she had to go because her mom was coming soon. I hugged her, really sad that my new cool friend was leaving but I figured she must be related to my neighbors in some way, so I’d be seeing her again. The next day, Kyle’s mom dropped him off at his grandma’s, so I came outside to play. I asked him when Amaya was coming back. Kyle said, “Who’s Amaya?”
I thought he was just being annoying, but by us going back and forth, I realized he really didn’t know who Amaya was. I told him she had on a blue top and blue khakis yesterday, and her hair was in three large twists with pink hair ties. Kyle insisted he didn’t know who I was talking about. I asked his brother who was 5 years older, but he didn’t know who I was referring to either.
I started to get fully creeped out. I ultimately asked my parents, “Wasn’t I playing with a girl yesterday?” My mom and dad had no idea what girl I was talking to. They thought I was outside in the garage playing by myself. As a last resort, I asked Kyle’s grandma. She told me there was no little girl there yesterday. She was at home with her husband, and she didn’t know a little girl by the name of Amaya.
To this day, Kyle swears he doesn’t know who I’m talking about. I don’t know what to make of the situation. I know I played outside with that girl. We jumped rope, we blew bubbles, and we played hand numbers. No one knows a little girl named Amaya, but I spent the day with her.
14. Father Knows Best
March 2015. My father had just passed a month ago. I wasn’t sleeping well and I would stay up later and later every night. When he was alive, my father always used to scold me if I stayed up so late because it would ruin my sleep schedule and affect my work, y'know, just standard parenting stuff. So I'm thinking about this one night when I couldn't sleep. It’s about 2:30 am, and I’m watching YouTube on my PS4 to distract myself.
Then, the power in the house flickers. I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the start of the strangest night of my life. I check the window, there's no rain or wind or anything. I figured somebody hit a pole somewhere. Couple minutes later, power goes out for a second, then comes right back on. Nothing was affected, which is weird because when power goes out, the electronics usually reset. So I check the window again, but still see nothing happening outside.
A couple minutes later, power goes out for almost a whole minute. From the couch, I can see the streetlight outside is still lit, as well as the other houses on the street. Power comes back on and EVERYTHING is still as it was. Video continues where it left off, clocks haven’t reset, nothing. It’s now 2:37 am. I audibly said “ok” and went to bed.
Next morning, I wake up for work. The clock on the oven says 11 am. My phone says 7:23. It was around 11 when my father left the house the day he passed. Fast forward to January of this year, the third anniversary of my father’s passing, I can’t sleep. I’m upstairs at my NEW home, watching Netflix. Power flickers and goes out.
I immediately said “ok I’m going to bed.” Power comes back on. Next morning, getting ready for work, oven clock says 11:41am. Dad doesn’t like when I stay up too late.
14. Party Crashers Everywhere
A little over twenty years ago my friends and I went to a 4th of July party at the house of a guy they went to high school with. It started out pretty chill, but as the night went on it ended up being the kind of party I didn't think actually existed outside of an '80s teen movie. It was a huge house in a rich neighborhood, with no regard for property damage. There were a couple hundred kids in their teens and early 20s, half of whom were on LSD, and many of whom showed up with literal loads of fireworks.
At some point, these two guys showed up. Nobody knew who they were. They spoke to no one, not even each other. They didn't eat anything. They didn't drink anything. They didn't try to interact with anyone at all that I saw. What they did do was freak everyone out. Visually they were exactly average. Average height, average looks, average build, ambiguous age, ambiguous ethnicity. 100% forgettable.
Except...they absolutely radiated darkness and hostility. They would just stand on opposite sides of a room and glare angrily at each other for a while, then walk into a different room to glare angrily at each other again. They seemed to communicate with each other like that. It was like there was some kind of evil force inside of them that was barely contained by their skin. If they walked into a room where you were it felt like the air itself suddenly became really heavy.
At some point, my friends and I dipped out to go check out another party up in the mountains, and a couple of people we knew took off to a different party in a town in the opposite direction of where we were going, and about 30 miles away from the original party. About halfway to our destination, we stopped at a gas station to get smokes and drinks.
When we walked out those guys were there. They were standing outside of their car, perfectly still, just staring holes through us. I don't know if I've ever felt that creeped out. We all piled into our car in record time and peeled out of the parking lot. Thankfully, it didn't look like they tried to follow us, and we never saw them again.
A few hours later we went back to the first party to find a girl we knew sitting on the floor holding a baseball bat, ready to swing at anything that looked threatening. Apparently, those guys got way creepier after we left. Nobody would go into any detail though, so I never found out exactly what happened. However, everyone who had stayed at the first party looked thoroughly shaken.
The next day I ran into one of the people that took off to the other party, and right about the same time we had our gas station encounter with the spooky twins, they had the exact same encounter with the same guys at a gas station probably 50 miles away from where we were.
Meanwhile, the people who stayed at the first party swear those guys didn't leave the party until hours after we saw them at the gas station. It was all intensely freaky. I don't know who those guys were, or what they wanted, but I have genuine doubts as to whether they were really human.
15. The Disembodied Voice
A lady’s voice was coming from my closet and asking for help. My closet door was cracked and she said, “Help me. I see you through the cracks.” Every synonym for the word scared was coursing through my body. I went and checked to see if there was a woman in need of help, but nothing was in there but my clothes and shoes.
15. A Piercing Gaze
I was a sophomore in college. I walked into my math class like any other day and sat in my usual spot...about 4 seats in on the third row. Even though we didn't have assigned seats, there was always a girl sitting two seats to the left of me, and her male friend to her left. They seemed to just be good friends; they were always laughing, and there was never any reason to give me concern.
This day in particular, I sat down, got my spiral and pencil out, and just quietly sat there looking forward and thinking about what I was going to do after class. Suddenly, I got this eerie feeling. I looked up to my left, and my heart practically stopped. The girl was staring straight at me, blank face, and her eyes were shining a bright, piercing electric blue.
They were shining like lasers. Nothing at all natural. I can't explain accurately. I was basically paralyzed and couldn't move or say anything. I eventually blinked and looked forward, then looked back and the girl's head was turned back to her friend as he was talking again. It's been about 15 years and I haven't experienced anything like that again, but it messed with my mind for a while.
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16. The Ghost Of Houses Past
When I was about five or six, I was sitting on the back deck of my family home, which was an old farmhouse. I remember this old lady walking up the steps and going straight into the house without acknowledging me. I followed her inside to see who it is, and my mom is standing in the kitchen, which was right off the back deck.
I ask her who's here in the house, and she gives me this confused look. Around that time, the original owner of the farmhouse passed, and I am 100% convinced it was her.
16. Dreaming Of The Future
I was about maybe six to eight years old when I had a dream of eating at a marble top counter with two girls. I was eating some kind of pasta. When my parents divorced when I was nine, I went with my dad to live with his cousin. Her family consisted of her husband, two girls, and a newborn son. These two girls were my distant cousins who were from my dream, and the exact same situation played out after two months of me living there.
I had never met them before, nor ever been out to see them. I literally exclaimed to them that I've dreamt about that instance before. They were just as perplexed as I was about it. We spent the whole time trying to figure out how I was able to even dream or fathom the situation, but we came up with nothing other than I could have somehow seen into the future in my dream.
17. The Shadow Of The Valley
I was miles deep into the middle of the desert, driving a dune buggy with friends, and we stopped to check out an abandoned mine that my buddy had explored in before. My buddy stayed behind while the girls and I went inside to look around. About 100 yards into the mine, a man's voice calls out "help me please!" along with strange whimpering noises.
We all froze and stared at each other wide-eyed for a few seconds before the voice called out again and the girls took off running for the exit. I wanted to run too, but something was telling me it was my buddy playing a prank on us and I didn't want to fall for it. Convinced he was calling down from some sort of hole above, I called back and followed the voice, hoping for triumph over his little joke...
Instead, I found an old man and his injured dog trapped deep down a 30-foot drop. Saved both their lives.
17. A Trickster In The Forest
Years ago, I used to work at a nature facility that was around 500 acres with a few miles of walking trails. One day, I had a lady come into the office and tell me there was a dead armadillo in the middle of one of the trails. I went to clean it up, and it had a single bite to its underbelly. The next day when I was walking the trails I came across another armadillo. It was the same thing: a single bite to the underbelly.
This went on for 14 days. Every day I had to remove an armadillo. Number 13 was on a trail on the back side of the park. While I was cleaning up the armadillo an old man looking to be in his late 70s with sun-weathered skin walked up on me. He was wearing a western style shirt. He said, “He's just messing with you.” I asked him what he was talking about, and he said, “The trickster.”
I said, “What now?” He said, “The coyote, he's just messing with you. He thinks it’s funny how mad you get." I said, “Well, I wish he'd stop.” The old man just chuckled and started walking off. I tossed the armadillo into the brush. I was less than 10 seconds behind the old man, but when I turned the bend he was gone. I looked all over for him.
I walked the trails for hours asking everyone I saw if they had seen him. No one had. The next day when I got to work I went in the office to check my emails. I opened the window blinds and there was an armadillo with one bite in its underbelly laying under my window. That was the last one, number 14. I sat there thinking, the old man's shirt had geometric coyotes in a desert. I'm pretty sure that old man was the trickster.
18. Alarm Bells Are Ringing
As a child, I was an Army Brat who moved around a lot. Because weird stuff would always happen, I kept insisting that every house I moved to was haunted. It wasn't until my second year at university that I had a chilling realization. I clocked onto the fact that it was me who was haunted, not the houses.
Last year I was on the way to my house from my job at a bar at about 3 am. To get into the house, you have to walk down a privately owned alleyway. Just as I reach the entrance to this alley, a man runs up behind me and spins me around. He's clearly had a bit too much to drink and starts trying to grab me, touch me up, and convince me to remove my T-shirt. Naturally, I'm very uncomfortable and scared.
I remember that the window to the house had an alarm that went off if the window was hit. I figured if I could get down the alley and hit the window, my two male housemates would wake up and help. The only issue was that every time I walked down the alley, he'd grab me again. After maybe five minutes of a struggle, the man hit me.
Next thing you know, the alarm on the window goes off, waking up my housemates and scaring off the man. The next day the authorities were called. We gave them access to the CCTV footage at either end of the alley. Later that day, my housemates and I decided to check the footage to see what caused the alarm to go off. There was nothing.
No bird, cat or any other animal. The alarm just went off. This had never happened before and didn't happen anytime after, either. I'm convinced it was my ghost. It used to freak me out but I'm kind of glad it's around now.
18. Aliens At Starbucks
I swear two girls working at my local Starbucks are aliens. They’re insanely tall, stare blankly, and both speak to each other without actually speaking. If you make small talk, they have to think for an awkward amount of time to form the most perfect response in a monotone voice. Their skin is almost the color white, and their eyes are like ice. I told my wife about them, and if she had seen them, and she hadn’t.
A few weeks later she comes in saying she talked to the strangest girl working at Starbucks, almost like she wasn’t human. I described one of the girls and my wife’s face went straight to shock/validation. There is something off about those two, but in a very non-threatening way. Also, they work alone together. Just the two of them. At the only Starbucks for miles.
19. The Red Right Hand
I was sleeping in my basement, which is pretty much my bedroom, and I woke up at some random time in the night for no reason. I rolled over and saw a black figure, probably around 5’ 10” and typical male physique, standing at the side of my bed. It was standing between the bed and the stairs, so there was no way to get out.
I just rolled over and straight up started praying. I rolled back over…and it was gone. The next morning, I was in the shower (also in the basement) and the curtain was pushed to the side, not like all the way, but it noticeably moved. Then when I got out of the shower, my cello’s D string was plucked three times then rung out. But the creepiest thing was yet to come.
I went upstairs, where I saw my little brother. He had this vivid red handprint that reached all the way across his neck and cheek. It was too big to be his own hand. But the man I had seen hovering near my bed? It was the right size to be his...
19. The Traveling Healer
I used to work at a Ben & Jerry’s a few years ago. I had an opening shift and usually, things are slow up until around three when the nearby high school rings the last bell of the day. This was maybe an hour into my shift, and I had already cleaned out one dip case, had a fresh batch of waffle cones, but I'd started developing a really bad limp.
That particular day, since I had woken up, my knee was really bothering me. I even took my brace to work. Being the only one on shift and having to walk back and forth so much honestly wasn’t helping. Then a group of maybe four people walked near the entrance of the shop. They looked maybe mid-twenties/early thirties, and it was two guys and two girls.
Just the girls walked into the shop. I don’t remember their order anymore but when I handed the scoop of ice cream to the second friend I was ringing up, I told her to have a nice day and turned to walk back to my task. I tried hiding my limp the whole time, just because I didn’t want to be hopping around while ringing them up.
Then she called me over and said it seemed like I was in pain. I downplayed it and said it was nothing, but it was like she knew how much pain I was in. She had a heavy accent. I couldn’t make out from where, but I understood that she and her friends like to travel, then asked if it was ok to hold my hand and say a prayer.
I thought it was a bit strange, but she just made me feel so comfortable with her, I couldn’t say no. She held my hand and in mid-prayer, I swear I felt the pain literally lift off of my knee. It was amazing. I asked her name, she gave it to me, and now for the life of me, I cannot remember it. Since that day, my knee has never bothered me again. I’ll never forget her.
20. Don’t Look Now
I have a weird warning system that functions without any obvious triggers. For example, I once hiked through the forest to some old castle on a hill. To get there, I needed to cross a bridge that goes over a 20-meter deep canyon. I've been there a thousand times, as I used to live in the area. This particular time, though, I started to get a weird feeling as soon as I stepped into the forest.
It got stronger and stronger until it was pure fear. I thought I must have eaten something wrong, because there was no reason whatsoever to be afraid. So I tried to ignore it and went on. Right before I stepped onto the bridge, that weird feeling acted up so wildly I almost turned back. Again, I convinced myself that I was being stupid and made it to the middle of the bridge.
One has quite a nice view from that position into the forest and the rock formations below, so as always I stopped and looked down to the right side of the bridge. Then I turned to the left, but before I could look down, that feeling didn't let me. At that point, I really thought that I must be going crazy, but still I "obeyed," didn't look down, and made my way to the castle ruin complex that started right behind the bridge.
After I’d been there for 15 minutes, some officers arrived, started to scream at me to come down, interrogated me about who I was, what I did there, who I saw on my way to the castle, how long I have been there…and how come I didn't see the dead guy under the bridge, on the left side. Apparently, he jumped shortly before I arrived.
20. A Final Hand
As a kid, my grandmother lived in a different country. She was super affectionate but due to a severe back problem, she couldn't give many hugs, so the most physical touch we had was holding hands. She always had the most tender and warm hands, even on the coldest days or when the AC was on. We used to sit and talk for hours.
When I was 21, she suddenly had a stroke. My last words to her before I saw her last were, "I love you very much," and that really comforted me at the time. In accordance with my culture, we bury our dead, and since I am one of the only males in the family, I bore the brunt of digging most of the grave. I was exhausted and sad from the whole day that I didn't get to express my emotions until the evening when I got home.
I rushed to my room and let my emotions out, cold and drained from working so hard and especially being outside during winter. As I lay on my bed, my entire body cold, suddenly a weird feeling of warmth felt one of my hands. My hand became searing hot, and I felt so eerily calm and placid. I knew she was there that night holding my hand and saying goodbye.
21. Don’t Go Into The Light
20 or so years ago, I was driving east on Highway 60 at night. There were two of us in the car, and we noticed a really bright light on the right rear side. I mean really bright. We then remembered that the train tracks were there, so we kept driving without really thinking about it. Well, the light stayed with us, which was weird because trains usually don't go that fast out there.
So, then my friend rolls down the window and looks back to see what it is—and suddenly the light vanishes. Also no sound. So now we're a little freaked. We pull over to check things out. A chilling realization sets in. There are no train tracks next to the road on this section of road. Now we're really freaked out, and bolt out of there ASAP.
Wikimedia Commons, Tony Webster
21. Sally The Ghost
To preface, I lived at the main party house and the people who lived there and the people who lived there years prior have said that it’s haunted. It was a running joke in my frat that the house was haunted, but the kids who lived in the house were always dead serious when they said this, saying that they would hear noises all the time and stuff like that.
My friend would even say that he knew where the ghost lived, in his room in a crawl space that he would always keep shut. They even had a name for the ghost which I forget exactly but it was something like Sally the Ghost. A few years ago, when we were still at school, we had frat meetings every Sunday to talk about important things, but at the end we would share any cool stories from the weekend.
The same friend raises his hand and starts telling this story. He said he was at the only bar in our college town that everyone goes to, we were actually all there. This bar always hosted the same people so most people knew each other to an extent. He says it was later on in the night when most of us had left that he met this really pale girl with silver-blonde hair.
He says she was alone which was weird because most people would go with a group of friends or go alone and meet up with a group of friends. He says they hit it off, but he said there was something off about her. For starters, she was alone and he didn’t recognize her, and secondly, she would not tell him her name. He said he tried asking a few times, but she would bring something random up as soon as he would ask to get around it.
They end up going back to his house to hook up. This is where it gets freaky. He says that he doesn’t remember doing anything with her all he remembers in waking up the next morning alone. When he wakes up, he felt very scared because his door was still locked, and it could only be locked from the inside. He had not opened it because the ghost lived there, and it was drafty in wintertime.
Well, he woke up with the mystery girl gone, and his door was still locked, so how did she leave? Turns out the crawl space was open. He ends his story with, “Guys, I think I slept with Sally the Ghost last night.”
22. The Endless Night
I was driving down this back road after work, trying to get home since the main road was blocked from an accident. I enter this area where there are no houses and trees overhang the road, almost like a tunnel. Well, about as soon as I enter the tree tunnel, my headlights shut off. It’s like 9 pm in the fall, so it’s pitch black.
I immediately stop and back up, but my reversing lights aren’t working either, so I just hold the wheel straight. I had only driven a couple seconds in, so I was maybe a hundred feet into the tunnel, but I had been reversing for about a minute at this point and couldn’t see anything still. I check my phone, it’s gone, the screen doesn’t turn on or anything, my watch stopped ticking, and nothing electronic in my car is working.
At this point, I’m freaking out. I'm looking around and I can’t even see the road or the trees that were supposed to be around me. I step out of my car and look up, and can’t see any stars or anything, no moonlight. I walk to about where the other side of the road should be, and I just keep walking along a flat plane. I walk backwards straight so I don’t lose my sense of direction.
I manage to get back in my car and just start driving. I was going about 80 for a solid 10 minutes, on what was supposed to be a winding back-country road with a 40mph speed limit, before I just decided to wait it out and sleep until morning, if there was even going to be a morning. I fall asleep, and wake up to the sunlight coming through my window. In the middle of a field.
In the middle of nowhere. No houses nearby, nothing. I go to check my phone, and it’s still dead, but the screen turns on to let me know it has no battery charge left. Car turns on and all of the lights come on. Onboard GPS tells me I’m about 5 hours away from my house, in a borderline uninhabited part of the state. Full tank of gas. No mileage difference from the day before.
My watch is ticking normally and showing about what would be the correct time given the sun’s position. I start the long drive home and haven’t travelled that road again and never, never will.
22. The Soldier From Before
I was five years old, and my brother was three. My family decided to take a day trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Dad is a Civil War enthusiast, and he was excited to see a spot there called Devil's Den, where there had been a high number of casualties in that battle, it was one of the bloodiest. I remember it was August, it was HOT and humid that day. I also remember walking with my parents up this hill when my parents were approached by this one guy dressed in a full-fledged Union uniform.
I think I remember wondering why he was dressed that way when it was so hot. I genuinely thought he was a tour guide because they made the tour guides dress that way. I don't remember the conversation between him and my parents. I think I just shrugged it off as adult talk. We got up to the top of this hill, a rocky cliff where he was pointing out stuff to my parents, but mostly my dad. There was only one way off and on this hill, and that was the path we just took.
I remember starting to get bored when he pointed something out for my brother and I to look at. I remember walking up to the edge and looking down, seeing nothing. When I turned around to tell him so, he...wasn't there. Like, at all. He just vanished. My parents, brother and I walked all the way down that hill looking for him but didn't see him. Years passed before I learned the full truth about that day.
He greeted my dad by his first name, which spooked him because he'd never seen that guy before in his life. The man told my dad he was from a town not far from Gettysburg and pointed out various towns to him on that hill; we later found out all those towns were destroyed. The park also didn't make any tour guides wear the uniforms because it was too hot that day. Dad said he even noticed the guy wasn't sweating.
23. The Haunted House Of Mouse
I work at several attractions at Disney. I first started working for the Mouse, I learned that most of the buildings were haunted in one form or another. Generally, I take this stuff with a grain of salt. Show me the science or prove it to me, then I'll believe. But I swear I've had two separate encounters with two ghosts in two different attractions, and let me tell you, I believe a heck of a lot more now.
Experience one: In a slow-moving journey through time, you come across a scene where a famous painter is lying on his back, painting the ceiling of a building. There is a ladder going up to that scene, and the rumor was that a maintenance guy had a heart attack during his shift one night and dropped at the base of the ladder.
No one found him until the next morning, and he had already died. It became a tradition upon closing the ride for the night to tell him good night, or else havoc would come down upon the ride the next day. Silly, I know, but we all played along with it for kicks. I never really believed in it, everything seemed very circumstantial. Then, I had an experience that changed everything.
On one particularly slow day, I was riding through the attraction when all of a sudden, it stopped in that scene I mentioned earlier. Now, if you've ridden this ride, you'll know that it's basically a train car with two rows. Well, as far as I could see ahead of me, there was no one. As far as I could see behind me, there was no one.
The ride system is pretty sophisticated: When someone hops out, there are pressure-sensitive mats on one side that trigger the ride to stop and show on our ride display screen exactly where it is. On the other side of the ride vehicle, there are photoelectric beams that also give the exact location of this intrusion, as we call them.
Now, we stop this ride pretty often. If someone takes too long to get into the ride vehicle, we stop it and then start it back up again. Well, in this case, they started speaking over the intercom into the entire ride. That usually means someone is out of a vehicle somewhere on the ride. A few minutes into sitting there, I start to hear keys jingling, two sets headed in my direction.
I'm completely alone, and here come my fellow Mouse employees, looking rather concerned. "Did you jump out?" they ask. Of course, I hadn't, which I told them. They look at each other, and back at me with this creepy expression on their faces. They asked, "Did you see anyone?" I hadn't. It was just me. Then they reveal why they were so freaked out: "The mat and the eyebeam were both triggered in this scene."
We all sort of stare at each other and sort of whisper the ghost's name at each other. They leave, and within five minutes, we are moving again, but I never went on that ride alone again.
23. Missing The Picture
I was in the Kroger parking lot loading groceries in the back of my car when I heard a voice behind me say, "I miss my mother. " I turned around and there was a woman standing there. She just looked... odd. I couldn't tell if she was old or young. Her hair was in a bob with bangs. She was wearing a yellow sweater with mismatched stickers. It was almost as if a child drew a picture of a woman, and it came to life.
“Excuse me?” I said. “My mother’s gone. I miss her,” the woman replied. "I'm so sorry, " I said. She then asked if I could give her some money. I told her yes and gave her a couple of bucks from my wallet. She said thank you as I was putting a bag in my car. I said, "You're welcome," but as I turned back to her she was gone. I looked all around and there was no sign of her. In less than two seconds she had completely vanished.
24. The Lizard Man Of East Saint Paul
I used to have this recurring nightmare about this lizard man/monster who could see what I could see out of my eyes. So I'd run and hide, and he didn't know where I was, but then as soon as I peeked to see if it was safe—he'd know where I was! So I'd have to leave that hiding spot and go find a new one, and then it would happen over and over and over again. A literal nightmare. But here is the real spooky part...
I once mentioned the lizard man to my dad. His face went white as a sheet. His voice was all shaky and he just said, "This dream took place at our house in East Saint Paul? The one with the apartments right behind it?" And I said "Yes! That's where I'd always go to hide!...how did you know that?!" And he said, "Because I have the exact same dream."
I don’t know if it was just the way he said it or just the overall situation or both, but I still get goosebumps thinking about it. It's quite chilling.
24. A Fashionable Alien
I had three separate interactions with this person a few years ago while still in college. The day started out normal, went to work tabling for a student visit day. Right near the time to wrap up for the day, I hear a hush come over the crowd and look up. Walking through the ballroom was a very tall, very tan man in an outfit that looked like concentrated Hot Topic.
He was just sauntering through, but what made him stand out though, was the Macklemore/Cruella de Vil-esque giant fur coat he was wearing. He walked through, looking at no one. I was bewildered. Later, as I was bringing stuff back to the office, I saw him very animatedly arguing with a group of girls tabling for the Student Republican Club. No fur coat to be seen.
Even later that day, I was walking home after my one class of the day, and I saw him again, fur coat back in its rightful place. He was standing at the entrance to the Engineering lab building, holding the door open for no one, and singing in a high falsetto. I hope he enjoyed his visit to Earth.
Pexels
25. A Sixth Sense
My great-great-aunt was in a nursing home about a year ago. Her husband had passed back in 2012. They had been together since she was 19, and she was in her 90s. We would visit, and once a nurse took my mother aside and told her, "This may sound crazy, but I am a sensitive and there has been this man standing in the corner of the room watching her. When I see this, this usually means she doesn't have long, maybe two days at most."
My mom calls me, tells me about it, and we rush to the nursing home to give her our goodbyes. After the last person visited her, she passed.
25. Neighbors Next Door
I moved into a new apartment complex last year and I am positive one of our neighboring couples are aliens. Both seem to be in their 40s. The husband is nice, but it seems very "fake" nice, not snobby or anything but genuinely trying to put on a show. When I greet him, he always slowly raises his hand, stares, and then after a few moments gives me a very weird, "Hi there." He is also constantly working outside of his garage area on "man stuff" but none of his projects or purchases ever see the light of day. It's like it is all a show.
The wife is even more bizarre. Unlike her husband, anytime I say Hi to her she stares at me and kind of follows me with her eyes and doesn't say anything. She'll stand in the apartment entrance and if I pull my car in she just stares and doesn't move until my car is weirdly close to her. The wife's weirdest trait? I have never seen her wear shoes, but I have never seen her feet.
She wears socks all year. I have on two occasions caught her outside in the pouring rain doing things with only socks on her feet. She takes walks with socks and plays with her kids in only socks. Everything this couple does seems straight out of a Men in Black movie.
26. Fire In The Sky
I used to live out in the country, way back almost to the end of a long road. There were only two houses that were actually lived in that far down: my dad’s and the old lady at the very end of the road. There’s my dad’s house, and around it kind of off to the side were a bunch of old medium-sized barns and sheds scattered around.
I used to let my cat out sometimes and she would roam around the yard, then come back up and paw at my window when she was ready to come in. One night, I had done just that, but after a long while I got a little concerned. She usually only stayed out for an hour or two tops, but it had been way longer than that. So I decided to go out and get her.
I go out through the side door on the house. That's when I started to feel like something wasn't right, like I wasn't alone. I needed to get my cat, though, and if something was there, I chalked it up to a raccoon or other critter. I grabbed the flashlight and set off for the barns, calling for my cat. I found her huddled up in one of the barns, and she did NOT want to leave.
It was like she was terrified of something, and she was very stiff when I picked her up. I hadn’t taken but two or three steps when this light shoots across the sky directly over me, illuminating everything almost like lightning. It made this odd “wooWOOM” sound as it passed. My cat FREAKED out and started growling and clawing at me, which she never does.
I actually dropped her because of it, and she took off towards the house as though she were running for her life. I did the same. I’ve never figured out what that was. I’ve read about comets and things like that, but nothing says anything about the odd noise I heard, or the reaction my cat had. It could’ve been something simple and explainable, but man did it freak me out at the time.
26. The Freaky Retreat
I went to a meditation retreat where we would spend most of the day sitting and meditating. You would hear the instructions and close your eyes. You were not supposed to make any noise and keep your eyes closed until they told you to open—like about an hour at a time. Being my first time, I could never be still and meditate for that long.
I would open my eyes and look around and watch people. Sometimes there would be others also looking around too. On the third day there I notice this woman two ahead and one to the right. She was moving very weirdly. She would have jolts of arm movements. She would shake uncontrollably. I just sat there and watched a bit shocked and a bit confused.
It got progressively worse as the days went on and it was freaking me out. On the sixth day I am sitting there trying to meditate and open my eyes to see her shaking and moving one arm above her head like one of those blow-up balloons we see at gas stations.
She moved up and down as if a gust of wind lifted it and then it fell while at the same time shaking her torso and head. I watched it, gobsmacked. Then she suddenly stopped abruptly, her head falling forward so her chin is touching her chest and she starts twisting her head to the left all the way until she locks eyes with me.
Oh man! My heart never beat so fast. It was like a horror movie. Her face turned towards me in that weird position. Her hair was covering most of her face but through it I could see her eyes watching me. She did that for about 10 minutes until the sound for us to stop started. The song would be a sort of song to “raise” you back into consciousness.
She turned forward, sat up straight, got up, and went ahead with the day as cheery as can be. That cut me off from meditating altogether. I am still scared of her and had nightmares about her coming into my dorm room the rest of my stay at the retreat.
27. Monster Hospital
I was working at a nursing home, and did the night shift from 10 pm to 8 am. First, I took care of 16 ladies on night duty, on my own. The halls have 16 rooms, with a sister hall, same layout, next door, only separated by a sliding door. There's a nurse who oversees the two adjoining halls, but I never saw her very much, so it often got lonely.
As it was a nursing home, the ladies who live there are older and can get really sick really fast. One lady was sent to the hospital for pneumonia and was gone in four days. One night, around 3 am, another lady—same hall neighbor to the lady at the hospital—started screaming "Get him out of my room!" Thinking a male resident had wandered from the other side of the building, I ran over to her room...
But I didn't see anything. Now, this is a lady who is VERY with it and never has issues or hollers out. But tonight she is absolutely beside herself. I figure she had a bad dream and try to calm her down. It took about 15 minutes. When I leave her room and get back to the office, I see that the nurse is on the phone...It turns out that the lady at the hospital had passed. Exactly 15 minutes ago.
27. A Time Traveler?
I used to work at a service deli and this guy walked in one day looking around at everything. He asked me a few questions about how we get our meat, how it gets shaped that way, what kind of currency is accepted, and how the interaction of a purchase is made. Then he just kind of smiled and said, "So sorry if I come off as strange, I'm from the future so this is all overwhelming to me." Then he spent time at the whole meats department a little distance away from the deli counter and asked my coworker similar questions.
He also asked him if people purchasing meat of creatures is a significant part of our infrastructure. Me and my coworkers talked about it all day. He could have just been a goofy guy. He seemed like a regular person, and he was wearing office attire that looked expensive, maybe silk, and he spoke clear fluent English. I never encountered or had a conversation with anyone like that before.
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28. Midnight Train To Nowhere
I was driving to pick up my friend from the airport around 10 at night. His girlfriend was also with me as she wanted to see him as soon as possible. We were going down some dark, super lonely back road. I've never been that way before, but I was following good old Apple maps. Eventually, we came up alongside a train that was matched with our speed, so we couldn't see out past it on the right side of the car.
After a couple minutes of that, we came upon a train yard on our left. A very spooky, very generic horror movie train yard. Nothing crazy yet, except for the fact that it went on and on and on. We probably spent 10 minutes driving at 45 miles an hour down a dark back road with a train yard on our left and a train on our right blocking the view.
Eventually, we made it back into society and picked up my friend from the airport. We told him all about the spooky train yard and train and were excited to drive back and show him just how much it was like a generic horror film. We drove back down the same roads. It wasn't there. We never passed a train yard. There were no trains on the tracks.
Friend's girlfriend and I flipped out. We swore up and down we drove right along the train yard for a long time. The drive home felt much shorter.
Wikimedia Commons, Vince pahkala
28. Phantom’s Hug
I was standing listless at my friend’s memorial in a shopping center parking lot where it happened. It was around midnight, and I was alone. For reference, I'm a 6'4" man. Not someone generally approached by a lone stranger in the middle of the night. As I'm looking over all the pictures for the umpteenth time, a blond woman of average height walks over to me, says she is waiting for some friends to get off work, and if she can give me a hug.
I nod woodenly. She reaches around my neck, and we hug like two people trying to occupy the same space. After a long moment, she lets go and walks back toward the entrance to the parking lot. The thing is, there was no car, and no place open where her friends might work. I never really questioned it until much later. I also couldn't have picked her out of a lineup the next day.
29. Touched By An Angel
I was about 17, and I was in my bedroom crying my eyes out over something. Home could be difficult at times, and that evening I was really upset. I really needed someone to talk to, but the only phone in the house was downstairs where my parents were, so calling a friend wasn't an option. I didn't know what to do to deal with what I was trying to live with, and I really felt that it couldn't go on for much longer.
I remember thinking "Please, someone, just help me!" Not a prayer as such, as I'm not really sure if that does any good, more sort of a mental scream into the void. There was definitely no one in the room with me, and I had my back to a chest of drawers. And then I felt something on my left shoulder, as if someone was standing behind me and resting their hand on me.
I could feel the weight of each individual finger, and the palm cupping my shoulder, and I could feel warmth from it. It didn't scare me, but it was enough to stop me crying. I guess the feeling lasted for a minute or so and then just stopped. I have no idea what it was, but it was enough to calm me down. I wish I could feel it again.
29. Am I The Time Traveler??
When I was in my late teens I was working at Wal-Mart and these two teen girls came up behind me hollering another guy's name. I just ignored it until I got tapped on the shoulder. They said the name again, right to my face, and asked why I would just walk right past them and not say anything. I told them I wasn't who they were saying, and they continued to argue with me that I was someone else for a while. They eventually gave up, saying I was not being funny, and left.
Maybe I'm the traveler.
30. Kitchen Creep
The very first hotel that I worked at, I started at the front desk and worked the 3pm-11pm shift. There was someone there with me from 2pm-10pm, so I always had a little more than an hour where I was alone at the desk. Our kitchen closed at 10pm, so usually by 10:15pm, it was only the bartender and me still there, just hanging around.
One night, it was almost 11 pm and there was a huge noise that came from the kitchen area. The bartender and I ran back there and saw that every single pot, pan, ladle, spoon, everything else that was hanging from the ceiling racks, were on the ground. After our shift, we watched the camera back. The footage made our jaws drop.
There was NO ONE in the kitchen when it happened. I have no explanation for it other than it was one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me, and I could not get out of there fast enough.
30. The Jogger In Pink
I used to drive to a park that was near me, run around it for about an hour, and then drive home. One time on the hottest day of the year I saw this woman who was somewhat overweight, and I'd never seen her before. I remember thinking that a 98-degree day was a terrible day to be going for walks or jogs. I saw her from a bit of a distance, but I could see that her mouth was wide open. Her walk was a very fast paced shuffle like a person running with their pants around their ankles.
I saw her a few more times over the coming weeks, always in pink, always with her mouth open, always shuffling, and always from a distance because the park path had many splits and turns and such. I had mentioned her to friends of mine who thought maybe she was power walking, but after watching videos of that I don't think that was it. One day I was running the opposite direction from her, and our paths were going to cross.
As I got closer to her I said good afternoon and waved. As I was saying this I noticed that her eyes were very dark brown, and it was very hard to distinguish the iris from the pupil. She stopped dead in her tracks, stared into my eyes, and smiled at me. And by “smiled” I mean her mouth moved very jerkily like something out of a horror movie. It went from an O to a frown, to completely straight, to a smile, and then back again. It was so creepy. As I was leaving the park that day I saw her sitting on a bench and staring at me as I drove away. I never saw her again.
31. The Man In Black
My mom and I visited my grandma at her senior home and left at like 10 pm. I went out the front doors and bumped straight into this dude's chest. I said sorry and backed away, but when he didn't respond I felt a bit weirded out…and looked up to see this HUGE tall middle-aged dude (I think he was like 7') with a black fedora and black suit and really wide eyes and a briefcase.
He had huge wide eyes, and he kept staring at me without blinking or saying a word. Then my mom called for me to hurry up and follow her to the car. When we got in the car, I asked her who she thought that man was. She said "What man?" I explained what literally just happened, and she said she didn't see any man. I turned around and the dude was gone. Creepiest thing that's ever happened to me.
31. The Wind Spirit
A long time ago, when I was little, maybe around six or seven, I always slept with my window's blinds open, and I would look at the stars as I fell asleep on the windowsill. One night when I did this, I felt a presence below me. I looked down into my driveway from my room, and saw a lone shadowy figure that looked like a man with a very long beard. I remember my vision distorting and warping around it, and it felt like I was physically blown away from the window.
Obviously, I was pretty freaked out, so I ran to my parents' room, and my dad came with me to the window. He said he didn't see anything, and to go to bed. In the morning I asked my dad about it. I told him I thought it was a monster, and he said he didn't remember a thing. My mind was very alert, mind you, because I came into the room yelling that there was a man in the driveway, and he came into my room ready to fight them off. But he didn't recall anything. I haven't slept by the window since.
32. Goodnight, Moon
I don't believe in ghosts or the paranormal, so this one freaked me out. My parents own a 300-acre ranch in George West, Texas. My stepdad and mother were going out of town for a week and asked me to look after the animals. I decide to spend the week there in the guesthouse and make myself comfortable. Now, this ranch is in the middle of nowhere and the nearest neighbor is probably like 10 miles down the road.
One night, I finish feeding the cows and decide to take a walk in the woods behind the cow pen. It was late, and I'm scanning the woods with a flashlight and just walking. I remember taking my phone out because I had thought I felt it vibrate. The screen says the time, but I see there is no signal. Okay, whatever. Seconds later, I hear what sounds like a woman singing a lullaby.
I freak the heck out and become paralyzed due to shock, I scan the woods with a flashlight in hand. I don't see anything, but the singing is getting louder. I ran out of there like a little girl and went back to the guesthouse.
32. I Can See Your Aura!
I was going through a really hard time back then, and I was walking back home after getting something to eat alone at a local food court. I was standing at the traffic lights, saw this guy kind of off to my right, and got a weird feeling. It was like he had an aura or something. A totally normal-looking man, by the way.
A few minutes later he comes up to me as I'm walking and says, “You have one of the kindest energies I've been able to see.” And I'm like…Oh God, is he trying to pick me up? Please leave me alone. But then he continues and accurately, like insanely accurately, tells me what's been going on in my life.
He knows that specific things are happening but in a broad sense, like, “I think recently you probably lost a family member close to you that you love, you had a falling out, but you need this to push forward.” When I clearly look freaked out he just smiled and said, “Yeah I have a gift. People don't believe me, but it's a thing,” and just wandered off.
33. The Lady In Blue
when I was in high school, I’d have my then-girlfriend over to my house almost every day. every night, I’d have to drive her home, and since I was like 16 I had the whole “no driving after 9:00” thing. so, I’d drive her home at like 8:30 and get back on my road at around 9:00. But this is when something strange and bizarre happened. To this day I can't explain it.
One day when I turned off onto my road, I went up it about half a mile and see this girl, like a teenager, in a blue dress with a light blue ribbon tied around her waistline, walking down the road. It was around fall and she was barefoot and grinning ear to ear with mascara stains running down her face from some heavy-duty crying.
I told my then-girlfriend the story, and she didn’t really believe me. It happened the next three nights, and each time I just stared at her, my heart beating hard in my chest. I never stopped to see what was the deal—who in their right mind would? The fourth night, I waited until 10:00 to bring my girlfriend home. I didn’t see anything, and I haven’t seen her since.
33. A Good Talk
My girlfriend had broken up with me and I was walking home crying. Out of nowhere, a younger-looking girl maybe three or four years younger looking than me, comes up and says, “Hi, umm it's dark and I'm alone. I see that we're going in the same direction, and you've been crying. Should we keep each other company?” I said sure. I asked what her name was, but she just replied with, “Maybe later, let's get to know each other first.”
We had the most wonderful conversation. She was super insightful, had an answer to my every question and a comment to my every word, to this day it has been my favorite conversation ever. We walked for blocks and blocks. As soon as I said, “Hey thanks, I was super sad, but I'm not anymore, I felt super lonely and I don't anymore, this talk has been incredible,” She said, “Okay, this is my house.”
I asked for her name, but she said it’s not necessary for me to know that and thanked me for keeping her safe. She kissed me on the cheek and entered the house. I had lived in the area for five years and lived there for an extra five years after that. Had to walk very often by that house. Never again did I see that girl.
34. Animal Instinct
I was around 15 years old and babysitting a neighbor girl down the road from my parents’ house. The house was older, but I never thought it was "creepy." They also had this awful rat terrier that would bark at everything...worst dog ever. Once the girl went to bed, I sat in the living room and was watching TV. The dog started freaking out, but instead of barking at the door like normal, she started barking at the corner of the room.
Then she would run to another room and bark and come back to where I was like she was following something. Finally, she stayed in the kitchen barking for a solid two minutes. Afraid that she was going to wake the girl up, I went into the kitchen to quiet her down. When I walked in, I immediately froze. Every single cabinet door in the kitchen was open.
All of them! I grabbed the dog and ran into the living room. After she stopped barking, I went back into the kitchen and closed everything. Thankfully, the dad finally came home soon after. I refused to go back and my parents never believed me. I still get freaked out when I think about it.
34. Advice From The Future
A few years ago, I had family and schoolwork issues. I was also feeling terrible throughout the day. I was just chilling in a park at my college and there's this one guy sitting at a waiting shed that looks like an aged version of someone I knew but I can't recall who it was. He just initiated a conversation and seemingly knew what was bothering me, then proceeded to give out advice. I had to leave after an hour since it was getting late, but I was creeped out after that. I wondered if this was someone from the future or something. I never saw that guy in the waiting shed again.
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35. In Search Of Lost Time
When I was younger, I was at a friend’s house and my mom called me to come home. I left on my bike, but when I got home, my family was crying and freaked out. I asked what was wrong and they asked me where the heck I was. I eventually looked at the clock, and it took me over three hours to get home from my friend’s house, which was only like 4 blocks away. I still to this day have no idea what happened and don’t remember the bike ride home.
35. Embodied Calm
I was nine at the time and my family had taken a trip to the beach. One day we decided to go visit Fort Sumter because my dad loves history and I had never seen it before. The day goes by, and the tour is fun. The fort is what you might expect and the day is a nice sunny day. On our way out I see a child crying in the distance and he is looking around for I assume his parents. He looked to be about five.
A woman in bright red hair walks up to him and grabs his hand and he immediately stops crying. As my family walks past her on our way out of the fort I look at her and she looks at me. I am immediately struck by the light in her eyes as it is almost beyond blue into a more intense version that is possible. She smiles and me and in my mind I literally hear, “Everything will be okay” in a soft voice. I am overwhelmed with a warm feeling of peace and calm that I cannot describe.
The boy has stopped crying and is smiling as she leads him into the guest service area. As she walks away the peace slowly goes away and I feel more normal and active as a nine-year-old does. She had an energy and a presence to her I have never experienced before. It was the combination of the soul-piercing eyes, the voice in my head, and the aura of peace and calm she generated as she helped that kid. I believe she was an angel on Earth.
36. Passing The Torch
This was a couple of years ago, but I still remember it vividly. It kind of happened in a dream. The dream itself wasn't that creepy. In fact, it was very pleasant. In my dream, I spent the day with my step-grandfather. He tried to teach me how to golf, we jogged together, and ended the day at his house. He needed help cleaning out his room up in the attic, and I was happy to help.
As we were cleaning, though, I started to notice a theme between all the items we got rid of. Old baseball cards, baseball caps, his entire Strat-O-Matic records...all of these things were very important to him. When I asked him why we were getting rid of these things, he just told me that he didn't need them anymore. It was about then that the dream ended.
The creepy bit came when I woke up. That morning, my parents broke the news to me that my step-grandfather had passed in his sleep. As for all the things he and I threw away in the dream? That was the extra chilling part. Those were all given to us in his will.
36. The Floating Eyes
I saw a pair of glowing orange eyes standing in my dad's front yard when I was 12. It stared at me for a good five seconds before falling to the ground and running away extremely fast, looking back at me every few seconds before it disappeared into the woods. The next morning, I go down and look at about the level where the eyes were and it had to have been 10 to 15 feet tall, and then scrunched down to no more than a foot.
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37. Past Lives
I bumped into a girl at university in the alley behind my college, and she seemed really familiar. I felt like I knew her better than anyone, but at the same time couldn't place her at all. She was looking at me funny, too, and I asked if she was okay. When I did, she expressed exactly what I had been thinking about her. She felt exactly the same way.
She said she felt we might even be married, and it seemed that way to me too. Even though I'm a gay man. I kind of figured I would bump into her again at some point, but I never did.
37. So You Were Reborn?
A new guy had been hired at the restaurant I was working at, and he was definitely a little…off. This dude made people seriously uncomfortable with how outwardly strange he was. One day, about a week into his tenure, I’m in the side station filling up some glasses with tea. He walks up, and without any small talk or acknowledgement of one another or beginning of a conversation he looks at me and tells me, with total seriousness: “In the early 1400s, in one of my past lives, I was brutally questioned and executed as punishment for attempting to burn down a cathedral.”
He then just looked at me awaiting a response. I was caught so off guard, the best I could manage was to stammer out, “That’s rough buddy.”
38. The Floating Children
Not me, but my mom. She grew up in a ranch house in Colombia that used to be some kind of hospital ward. When she was little, she and one of her sisters saw little white gowns floating around their bed at night. They were obviously terrified and fought against sleeping in that room so fiercely that my grandmother actually had a priest come and bless the room to set their minds at ease. After that, no more floating gowns.
38. Whoops, Thanks!
I was a latchkey kid. This would have been early-mid 90s. Home alone. Made eggs. Was watching cartoons. It’s probably like six or seven PM in the summer so the sun is still out. The doorbell rings, I go open it and it’s a man in running clothes. He is younger—I’d say maybe mid-30s and in good shape. He is jogging in place and politely asks for a glass of water. Well, I’m like 7-8 years old and I invite this man into the house. No one else is here, so I show him to the kitchen.
He grabs a glass, fills it up, guzzles it down. He pauses after drinking, holding the empty glass near his face. He smelled gas from the stove. I must have bumped one of the other burners or something when I made eggs because the stove was leaking gas. He turned the burner off and said the gas was on. He thanked me and left after that.
39. Little Boy Lost
I was eight years old on Christmas Eve and lived on the third floor of a large house that was converted into apartments. I had trouble falling asleep. One night, I saw a boy floating outside my window wearing one of those old beanie hats with the propeller on top. I threw the covers over my head, tried to ignore it, and eventually fell asleep.
The next morning, my parents told me that they saw a figure of a small boy sitting at the end of their bed and asked if it was me, which it was not. Well, a few years later, we had some plumbing work done and they had to tear up the floorboards. They found an old book that had pictures of the property from about 60 years prior. Its contents sent a shiver down my spine.
There was a picture of the boy I saw in there, and it turns out that he was shot during a hunting accident on the property and passed. Still freaks me out to this day!
39. The Man In The Woods
One time we were canoeing, and we’d flipped twice. Everything we had was soaked. We were soaked. It was raining. I almost drowned because I got tangled up in some ropes when the canoe flipped. Everyone was super bummed out. We were on the North Saskatchewan River and it’s pretty desolate. That said at this really low point it just so happened that we bumped into this dude who lived on the river.
It was really weird given that nobody lived in the area that we knew of. Anyway, this dude basically just came out of nowhere and helped us with everything. He helped us dry out our clothes, let us use his campsite. He even had a phone so I could call my mom. I think he even gave us food. On top of that, the weather changed. We got sun showers and warm rain. Anyway, we stayed the night on his property. Even though he was super friendly we never heard from him again. Ever.
40. The Headless Horseman
Me and my wife both saw a green, severed, floating head when we woke up in the middle of the night. This happened on separate occasions and in different rooms. Neither of us believe in ghosts.
40. A Vampire, Maybe?
I was in my teens, attending some event where I was more or less unsupervised. I was hanging out in the venue, waiting for the event to start. There was a pretty good-sized crowd, a couple thousand people, most of them in small groups. As I was waiting and people-watching, I noticed this guy walking around in the crowd. No one was really looking at him, but they were getting out of his way as he walked, instead of the other way around.
As I was noticing this and thinking how odd it was, suddenly he looks over at me. Then he came over with the crowd parting around him, but not paying any attention to him, and talked to me for a bit. Here's where it gets really strange. I don't really know what we talked about, and I don't really know what he looked like. I remember he was male, taller than me and I think he had dark hair, kind of longish. I think I specifically remember his hair because I was actively trying to remember something about him, so I was concentrating on what his hair looked like, to see if I even could remember it.
I think he noticed I was staring somehow, because in the middle of our conversation, he said something like, "Don't do that." Not in a menacing way, but just as a casual "you're being rude" comment. And I think we may have gone somewhere briefly, because I have a vague sense of being somewhere away from the crowd, although I don't know where and I don't remember going anywhere with him or coming back.
At some point, I was just alone again. I went to the event, had a good time, and at some point after I was home, I noticed I had a pretty good-sized scratch on my arm. It didn't look like something you'd get scraping up against a nail or playing with a dog. It looked more like an incision: not long, fairly deep. It didn't hurt unless I noticed it, and it was hard to notice it.
I feel like it must have healed pretty quickly, or else I just didn't notice it healing. I had a scar for a few years, but not anymore. In my mind, the man and the scratch are linked, but I don't actually know if they are or what any of that was really about. I've always kind of wondered if I met a vampire that fateful night.
41. Voices From Beyond
My godmother is on a paranormal research team, and she uses an EVP machine, and the things it catches terrifies me. After she walked into the child section of a cemetery on a case, you can hear multiple voices on the EVP tape say, "Go away. We don't want you here. Let us rest." Her daughter was also having weird stuff happen to her in the cellar at the restaurant she works.
She felt like she was having her hair pulled and stuff. So she took the EVP in, and the tape has a voice saying, "Pretty Hannah. Love Hannah." That's her daughter's name.
41. The Shapeshifter
When I was maybe seven or eight, I was playing in a big park/wooded area in California. Exploring, climbing trees, etcetera. My parents were within ear-shot, as was an aunt of mine, but they were talking and certainly not in line of sight. Then, I saw a fox. Brownish-reddish-gold, pretty. I'd not grown up around there, as mentioned, and had never seen a fox before.
In the manner of a curious child who didn't get to run around as much as he'd like and was hyperactive when he could and knew nothing about wild animals, I chased after it. It ran, but with no particular urgency; a good bit faster than me but not getting out of sight. It headed down a big hill, with a fair amount of brush, and a number of crooked trees growing out at angles from the hillside. I alternated between running down, clambering down, and sliding down, depending on steepness.
At the bottom of the hill was a clearing, with a big tree in the middle, trunk wider than I was tall. At the foot of the tree was a sort of lean-to structure, a pit dug into the ground, with sticks and branches and some cardboard leaned up around it, making a sort of tent-like enclosure. Like something a homeless person would make to get out of the rain, or an enterprising kid would build as a clubhouse. The fox trotted into that structure, and I, who was still getting down the last stretch of hill, lost sight of it.
Around the time I got to the bottom of the hill, a girl crawled out of the lean-to. She looked to be my age, or a little younger. She had messy hair with leaves in it, blue denim overalls, and no shoes. I would love to say that it was the color of the fox's fur, but I can't remember for sure. At that age, very few things had crystallized into seeming impossible yet. I checked the lean-to, no fox, nor anywhere I could see that it could have gone.
The girl was standing there looking at me, so I asked something to the effect of, "Were you the fox I was chasing?" and she said "Yes," with a sort of proud aren't-I-cool tone. I asked, "Are you a person who can turn into a fox with magic?" and she said, "I'm a fox, but I can look like this too." I asked, "Do you live here?" and she said, "Yes." I asked, "What do you do for fun?" She said, "I play games. I catch bugs. I hunt mice. I hunt birds. Sometimes I get cinnamon buns from the vending machines." Pretty sure her responses are all word-for-word what she said, but it was a long time ago.
42. A Warning Sign
I work in a relatively old building, it’s something like 200 years old. It used to be a hospital, and there are some toilets that aren’t frequently used because they're in an awkward place. On several occasions, I've heard someone whisper my name despite the fact the area is empty. On one occasion, I heard them say my name followed by "Watch out." Nothing bad happened, or has happened. Probably my mind filling the quiet…right?
42. The Strongman
Two engineers and I arrive at the gate of a mill to pick up a purchase, but the guys there are very busy. We loiter a bit, and after a while they send their junior machinist to deal with us. Out comes a guy whom you would not accuse of looking like a professional machinist. Tall but skinny, long hair, scraggy beard, and an eyepatch. He had this strange life-worn face that could be 25 or 55. Add to that a hippie linen shirt and some torn jeans. If not for the hardhat and a tool belt, he would be looking like a malnourished pirate-turned-hippie.
He greets us in accented, overly polite and formal English. At first, he kinda sounded like if he was mocking us, using over the top and antiquated polite language. For example, he referred to us as "Kind Sirs." We thought the purchase would fall through because the Swedes clearly don’t care about us and sent a junkie to deal with us, but the guy turns out to be 100% professional, if extremely strange.
Finally, under Eyepatch Guy's supervision, the forklift operators load up the pumps and hatches we were to buy, start palletizing it, and securing it with belts. We finish the formalities and head up to see it all loaded on a truck. Then, something happens. One of the forklift guys screws up and hits a pallet with another. A heavy industrial pump slides off the pallet and almost falls off the ramp. The warehouse guys panic and pull at it to align it back, to no avail.
Our Swedish Cotton-Eye Joe casually pushes past them, grabs the edge of the pump—which is like, 350 kilograms—and with an effortless tug, pulls it back on the pallet. The guy weighs as much as a wet mop, yet he effortlessly pulled more weight than strongman competitors manage. We stare in disbelief, and the Swedes laugh. Apparently he does that kind of stuff all the time to amuse them.
43. The Gentleman Ghost
I work at a building where after midnight, it's often just me and my co-worker. One night, I was scheduled to go home at 3 am. As I walk out of the office and up to the elevators, the elevator dings and the door opens. These are elevators that stay either on the top floor or the ground floor, and I'm on neither. I have no explanation for why it would just be there waiting for me.
I almost didn't even get on, but instead I just said "Uhh thank you, please don't show yourself to me," just in case.
43. Is This A Test?
My wife and I tried for years to have a baby. I travel for a living, so I see a lot of different cities. I was in Dallas, Texas and stopped for gas and a bite. This young woman was sitting in her car with three kids and was crying her eyes out. I reluctantly asked what the matter was. Crying, she says, “I’m on my way to North Carolina because my dad is alone. I'm trying to move us there.” Her car broke down, she has no way of fixing it and barely enough money for gas to get there, so she was stuck.
I asked them what they liked from McDonald's. The kids were excited to tell me their order, but the mom hesitated. This was a truck stop full of truckers so I asked loudly whether or not there were any mechanics in the house, then explained about the young mom and her kids. A couple gentleman followed me to her car. I gave them their food and while they ate we looked at her car.
30 minutes later, at no cost to her, she was on her way, but right as I was getting in my car her youngest girl, who hadn't said a word the whole time, walked over to me and stuck her little hand out. I took her hand and she said, "You will make a good dad." Then this feeling came over me and I just sit there in my car weeping like a child. Weeks go by and one night I'm on another trip and my wife calls me barely able to talk, “I'm pregnant! I'm pregnant, my love!” I know it wasn't a coincidence.
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44. The Trauma Ward
I was on call at a hospital, and as I was going to leave for the night, I walked the long, empty hallway to return my pager. As I returned down that hall, a terrifying sight made me stop in my tracks. I noticed a woman limping down the hall toward me, sobbing and crying, "Help me." Mind you, it was 2 am, and no one should have been in that part of the hospital. When I blinked, she was gone.
44. Medicine Dispenser
When I was young, I was sick in bed one night. It was pretty bad. I have a memory of someone walking into my room in the night, a lady I didn't recognize. I wasn't scared of her, even in the slightest, because she was nice. She came in and took my medicine off the table, handed some of it to me, and told me I need to take my medicine, so I did. The lady then put the medicine up on a high shelf where I couldn't reach at the time, left, and I promptly went back to sleep.
Now, I normally am a bit of a realist, but I have no explanation for this one. I told my mom the story and she started freaking out asking everyone in the house who gave me that medicine. I couldn't have done it himself, as the medicine was actually up on that high shelf where I couldn’t reach, and where it definitely hadn't been placed the night before.
45. Intruder Alert
I shared a room with a guy in college who was a musician. He’d stay out late almost every night and come home around 3 or 4 in the morning. Our room was a straight shot through the kitchen from the front door. One night, I woke up to the bedroom door opening and figured it was just my roommate coming home after a gig.
I thought it was strange that he turned the light on when coming in. He knew I was a light sleeper and would normally use his phone’s light to shine around the room if he was looking for something while I was asleep. My bed was twin-sized and positioned against the wall connecting the bedroom to the kitchen. When he came in, I was facing the wall.
I kept my eyes closed and pretended I was still asleep because I didn’t feel like having a conversation while I was still half-asleep. I heard him go to his side of the room, opposite of my bed, and rustle around his desk and dresser looking for something. Sometimes he would grab some clothes for the next day and go stay at a buddy’s house, so I wasn’t concerned.
Then I felt him start reaching under my bed. I kept a few things under there, but he would normally ask before straight-up taking anything of mine. At that point, I was really confused and annoyed by all this, so I made it a point to passive aggressively roll over on my other side and face the middle of the room and the direction from where he was reaching, just so he knew I was angry that he was ruining my beauty sleep.
Then I heard nothing. But I could feel he shot up from under the bed and was just standing there. I never opened my eyes, but I figured he would either apologize for waking me up or something. But he never said a word. He just stood there. After probably two minutes with the light still on, I heard him leave the room and go to the kitchen.
I opened my eyes after a couple more minutes because he left the light on in the bedroom. He wasn’t in the kitchen, but he had pulled a knife from the knife block and left it on the table. I checked around the house and couldn’t find him, but quickly realized my Xbox, book bag, wallet, etc. were all gone. He’d taken them all. Or rather, someone else had.
I called my roommate to see if he had been home…but he was miles away at a party. He still had his house keys and never gave them to anyone else prior. I must have accidentally left the door unlocked that evening, which was the one time someone decided to check the knob. The authorities never followed up with me after that night, so I doubt they ever caught the guy. I can’t imagine what would have happened if I ever did open my eyes and see that guy standing there or if I chased him out to the kitchen.
45. A Warning In The Wind
I'm deaf in my left ear. I stopped at Walmart one morning, the sun wasn't up, and I wasn't paying attention. What sounded like a gust of wind entered my left ear, and it felt like it opened; a voice very desperately said into my ear, "Turn around!" I turned around and there was a man following me at arm’s length. When I saw him, he began stammering and falling all over himself; he finally sputtered out, "Do you have a smoke?" I didn't say anything as I was totally shocked. Without explanation, he turned and ran away.
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46. The Fatal Aura
When I was in high school, my girlfriend’s parents would let me stay overnight on the weekends so long as I slept in the RV that was parked in back of the house. I had done it multiple times, and my girlfriend would come sit outside with me for a while until she got tired, and then she would go inside and I would listen to my Walkman while I tried to fall asleep.
I remember one night I was having trouble falling asleep. This wasn't so unusual for me, but as I lay there, I started to notice an unfamiliar background noise. When I removed my headphones, I realized that it sounded like people outside the RV were having a loud discussion. Then the number of voices started to multiply and multiply and get louder and louder until it was unbearable.
I searched round and round, peering out of the windows, but nobody was there. I was very shaken at this point, and I decided to run into the house and sleep in the living room and try to explain myself in the morning. Problem was, every time I got about 6 feet away from the RV, there would be a flash of white and I would open my eyes and find myself back in the RV. Now, I was nearly having a panic attack, so I called my girlfriend on the phone.
She could hear how terrified I was, so she told me she was coming outside to get me. I heard the back sliding door of her house open, I heard her walk across the deck, down the steps, across the garden stones. I finally heard her hand fumble on the RV door, but when it swung open…no one was there. Now I was pretty much in tears when suddenly I felt the presence of something behind me.
I turned around and found this massive red aura hovering there. I was overcome with this immense sense of dread and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I remember feeling like this energy was draining me, like absorbing my life force if that makes any sense. I dropped to my knees and realized that if I didn’t break free real fast, I was most certainly going to die.
I don’t know where I found the strength from, but I willed myself back to my feet and slammed the RV door open and bolted for the house. This time I actually got inside. I hollered for my girlfriend, and she came downstairs with her mom to much confusion. I explained everything that had happened, getting especially angry that my girlfriend never came outside like she promised.
She said that we never spoke on the phone and she had no idea what I was talking about, but when we compared our phones, mine showed a 1:25 am conversation completed to phone while hers showed nothing. That's when she and her mom started taking me seriously and began to look quite scared themselves. The rest of the night was uneventful, except that I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I would see a small circle of intensely burning white light.
46. Spirits In The Doorframes
The third floor of the Victorian house I grew up in was odd. If you walked down the long hallway at night, you’d see what looked like a single drop of water falling from the top center of the door frames down to the floor, but they were bright white illuminated drops. I would never see them if looking directly, but always out of my peripheral vision, in every single doorway and only when it was dark.
47. The Skeleton In The Wall
I was around four years old and in bed ready to go to sleep. As a child, I was scared of the dark, so I used to put the whole bed cover over my head. Due to this, I got hot fast, so I decided to put my right-hand out of the bed cover into the open. I felt bone-like fingers move down my hand and fingers. I quickly pulled my hand back inside under the cover. I didn’t know what to do, I just stayed waiting, listening, but I heard nothing, I built up the confidence to have a look, but when I did nothing was there.
Nothing happened for about two and a half years until my mum found a skeleton in the living room wall. She rang some specialists to come look at the skeleton, I was moved into my bedroom whilst my mum was questioned, and I was only allowed out when they had gone. The specialists took the skeleton to do tests and find out the gender, age, how it had gotten there and how long it had been in the wall. Two weeks later, my mum got a phone call from the company saying they had done the tests and that the skeleton was a woman and she had been there since the early 1900s.
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47. Dark Doppelganger
I was having a tense conversation with someone who I was close to years ago. The conversation quickly devolved into a passive-aggressive fight that ended with the other person getting in the car and driving away. As I started heading back inside, the other person came back, got out of the car, and started our conversation again. Except this time, something was very, very wrong.
Their tone of voice was totally different and their stance was different and the feeling in the air was completely off. I don’t know how else to explain it. As the conversation progressed, the other person started saying some nasty and mean things that were completely out of character. I said, “This isn’t like you, Emma.” Oh my god, their response.
They said “What makes you think that I’m Emma?” I remember continuing the conversation and talking to the “person” for a long time, but I don’t remember anything specific. I do remember becoming more and more alarmed and knowing something wasn’t right. Finally, I told the person to go home. They complied and left.
I went back inside and started telling my sibling about the situation when the doorbell rang after maybe 2-3 minutes had passed. It was Emma coming back to apologize for the original fight. They had been driving around town for a long time and didn’t want to go home leaving things unresolved. I asked why they had said some of the things from the last conversation, and they looked at me like I was crazy.
They had no idea what I was talking about. Totally could have been lying, but that whole situation just felt dark. Scared the heck out of me.
48. When A Stranger Calls
My brother and I were home alone one night watching TV while my mother was working a night shift and my father was out. Eventually, my father came home, pushed the door ajar, and poked his head through to say hello. We both turned around and said hello back, my father closed the door. Thirty seconds after that, another man opened the door to say hello, we both turned around and say hello back, man closed door.
We assumed one of my dad's friends just came over to have a beer. Anyway, about five minutes later, I headed into the kitchen where my father was, making dinner or whatever, and I’m expecting to see his friend again. I see that he’s alone making dinner and assumed his friend was upstairs in the bathroom. I ask my father who his friend is.
My father looks at me and asks me, “What friend?” I reply, “The guy who came back with you.” Dad looks at me, thinking I’m some sort of weirdo. He says, “I came back home on my own.” Biggest whaaaaaaaaaaaat?! I’ve ever experienced. My brother was freaked out to the max. We both remember the man’s face. He was pale looking and had bright white hair.
48. Victoria
In October of 1998, I rolled my dad’s car along a lonely dirt road in Arvada, Colorado. I lost control of the car because I was speeding on a dirt road and swerved to avoid a woman. I remember the accident clearly, including the actual rolling, the following moments, and flagging down some help. However, from my point of view, I was only stuck on the road for an hour before help arrived. The truth is though, I had been out there for three hours, so there was a two-hour gap in my memory.
About a year and a half after this, I got that memory back. It was triggered in my doctor's office while I was being treated for Meniere's disease. At this appointment, a cocktail of steroids was injected into my ear canal's labyrinth via syringe through my eardrum. After the doctor injected me, he left the room and a nurse came in to look after me, and I swear it was the woman I had swerved to miss.
Seeing her must have triggered something. Those missing two hours from my car accident came flooding back to me. So did her name—Victoria. Not Vicky though, she hates that name. Something I clearly remember her telling me more than once during our conversation next to my dad's wrecked truck. I asked her about it, and called her by Vicky, but she didn't answer me. Instead, she shoots me a dirty look, does a couple of checks, and walks out.
About 10 minutes later the doctor comes back. I asked him the name of the nurse that had just been in the room looking after me. He looked confused, so I went on to describe her, and he said I must be mistaken. He explained to me that all the nurses were busy at the time and none of them fit the description I had given. Then I asked, "What about Victoria?" Confused, he told me that no one there is named that.
Twelve years go by and in September of 2012, I see this woman again. This time, she's working at PetSmart. It's Labor Day weekend, and they're having an adoption event. I was in there to pick up supplies for an adult dog I had picked out at the Denver Dumb Friends League. She approaches me and steers me towards the litter of puppies they were trying to adopt out. She talks me into at least holding the female puppy that was kind of off to the side doing her own thing.
After a few minutes of that, she tells me, “This is your dog." Then she asks me if I want to spend some time alone with the dog. I agree and she leads me back to the PetSmart employee break room. As I'm about to go in, I take a peek at her nametag. It read "Victoria." Right before she closed the door to leave me alone with the dog, I said, "Thanks, Vicky."
She responded with "It's Victoria. You know I hate Vicky." Then shuts the door. I screamed, "I KNEW IT!" and then fumbled with the door, puppy in hand to confront her, but when I opened the door, she was gone. I took that as a sign and adopted the dog.
After that, there was an eight-year break before she popped up again, this time at my vet's office. She released my dog to me after a surgery to remove a tumor, and wouldn't you know it, she still looked like she was only 25 years old. Since it was a bit later and there was no one else around, I decided to trust my memory and instead of testing her by calling her Vicky, I straight up just asked her why she kept popping up in my life and how she still looked young as she did in 1998.
Without missing a beat, she takes a deep breath, turns to me, looks me directly in the eyes and says: "Because I owe you." Then she motioned for me to lean down with her finger. When I leaned down, she kissed me on the cheek, then said, "Thank you for what you did that night. I'll see you again soon." I don't know what I did for her even though the memory of that night is fairly clear to me. There has to be something I'm missing...or I'm just going crazy. Either way, it's been weird.
49. Shadow Play
Something happened to me last night. I got home from work very early in the morning, 2:30 am. My house has an entryway or mudroom before you actually get into the main living area. I open the front door, step inside, close the front door and proceed to try and find the key to get through the next door to get into my house properly.
So the only light in this entryway is through the glass on the front door, the rest of the room is completely black. I can barely see my hands in front of my face. All of a sudden, I start to hear this...buzzing/vibrating?...noise behind me off to the right. House is old, so maybe just weird house noises. I’m still looking for the key when I notice that the noise is getting louder, closer, and it has risen in pitch to something as if a woman was humming loudly. Maybe it's just ringing in my ear. But that was just the beginning of the nightmare.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a shadow that I thought was from light reflecting outside. Nope, it’s moving towards me and creeping along the wall...that's when I noticed the vibrating noise was also getting closer to me, and it seemed to be coming in the same direction as the now-moving shadow. I'm desperately trying to open this darn door and when I finally do, the noise stops, the shadow disappears, and I'm hoping it was all in my head.
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49. Little John’s Spirit
I used to work in a small art gallery. The building that housed the gallery is old, and it was many things over the years before it was a gallery. It's also very quiet. Having a dozen people through during a day would have been considered busy. So, you can very clearly hear when somebody else is in the building. You're aware the second somebody else enters. It's not like they can sneak by you. The only other door requires a security code, so it's not accessible to the public.
I'm working an evening, sitting at the desk, and movement in the main gallery catches my eye. It's a little boy—maybe five or six years old. He’s just staring at the artwork. It wasn't any one piece in particular, he would look and move on to the next, but very intently. He'd spend a few minutes with each piece. I was startled.
I hadn't heard or seen this kid come in, and he definitely didn't have an adult with him. So, I went up to him and asked where his parents were. He ignored that question, and instead asked me all about the artwork. We probably spent a good 20 minutes chatting, and this kid was incredibly intelligent. It felt more like a conversation with an adult.
I had a weird feeling looking at this kid, though. There was just something that wasn't quite right about him. His color was just a little off, like that sort of grayish skin tone that terminally ill people have. That's probably the closest I can come to describing him. His movements were also just a little strange and kind of jerky. It was unsettling, but not quite scary. Just... off.
The phone rings at the desk, and I excuse myself to go answer it. Maybe two minutes I'm gone. I turn around when I'm done, and the gallery is empty. The kid just vanished. I never saw him again. But a few months later, there's this old man in the gallery, the kind who will spend the whole day telling you stories.
I was talking to him about when he worked in the building roughly 50-60 years ago when it was a post office and not a gallery. We're looking at a painting of a little boy on display, and it reminds me a lot of the boy I'd seen, though I didn’t tell him that. The old man chuckles and says it reminds him of John—a little boy who would randomly appear and watch them sort the mail. The conversations he had with that boy blew his mind. That kid could talk about anything. I couldn't believe it—but there was more.
Shortly after he retired and before it was a gallery, the building was turned into a public library. I met the woman who used to run it a few years later, and I told her the story of this little boy, curious if she'd ever seen him. She nodded and said it sounded exactly like John—a little boy who they'd find between the shelves, staring at the rows of books.
You could talk to him about anything, and he had an amazing range of knowledge. The little boy never aged in all those years. It's the only time in my life that I think I've seen a ghost. I haven't been back to that building in a long time, but I still wonder if he's there, watching and learning.
50. The Imprint Of Life
My grandfather passed when I was eight and my little brother was two or three-ish. He had this big Lazy Boy chair in the living room that he always planted himself in. Everyone knew this chair was "grandpa's chair." Anyway, we went down to my grandparent's house in Florida for a long weekend to attend the funeral.
We're all chatting the first night there in the living room, and my mom was sitting in the chair. My little brother goes up to my mom and says, "Grandpa wants his chair back." My mom asks him where grandpa is, thinking the little boy probably didn't understand death, to which he responds, "He's right behind you." My mom BOLTED off that sofa immediately.
50. Blue-Eyed Devil
The man was a customer I was helping out. There was nothing that really stood out with him. He was handsome, but in a normal way. He dressed normal and talked normal. He was blandly friendly, as you are with strangers. Just a normal upper-middle-class type guy. The only thing that really stood out was his blue eyes.
Not in a goofy supernatural way, he just had very, very blue eyes. But for some reason, he made every hair on my neck stand on end. Alarm bells were going off in my head like crazy, all I wanted to do was hide. I have NEVER felt this way, before or since. Even when I was followed home by someone, I have never felt such gut-deep "you are in danger" as I did with this guy.
After ringing him through, he reached out to shake my hand. This is not common at all here, but out of politeness I took it and shook. I instantly got so nauseous I almost gagged. The moment I got nauseous, he just held my hand and smiled, and something in that smile made me absolutely sure he knew what I was feeling, and he enjoyed it. I'm not religious in any way, but I remember thinking in that moment, "Oh no, is this the devil?"
After he left, I was still so sick feeling I had to go to the back and sit down. I'm not sure if he was a bad guy or what, but to this day I have never experienced something even close to that encounter. I absolutely felt bone-deep certainty that I was in some sort of danger. I felt every bit the prey. It's a hard story to explain because it's all based on feelings, so I haven't told that many people about it. But to this day it is absolutely one of the scariest and weirdest things I have experienced.
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