Can we ever really be sure of anything we think we know? Isn’t it possible that everything we think is real is just some kind of delusion? Many people have no interest in these kinds of abstract questions—but some don’t have a choice. Whether it’s a brush with the supernatural, a moment that defies logical possibility, or just something that seems completely inexplicable, there are moments when the only appropriate reaction is to wonder what in the world is really going on…
Here are 42 moments that made people question reality itself.
#1 An Unwelcome Sight
I swear I saw a headless, bloated corpse when transiting the Suez. I was on the fantail of a destroyer, so you're pretty much right on the water. I hated deployment.
#2 Feeling Cagey
A cage. Not like a trapping cage or anything but something that could easily hold 5-10 average sized people. I was hiking in the mountains just above the house I lived in, at the time, in Missoula, Montana. Took maybe 45 minutes of walking, mostly uphill and without a path, to get to the spot. Round steel bars for the edges and rope instead of chain link for the walls and ceiling.
It was all set up just on the far side of the ridgeline I was walking, so it couldn’t be seen, I suppose. Nothing around it, no footprints or tire tracks or anything. The rope looked undamaged as well. No idea what it was for but it definitely creeped me the hell out.
#3 Don’t Lose Your Head
A couple years back, I was hiking in the middle of nowhere with some friends, and as we were walking back to camp because it got dark we noticed an honest-to-goodness guillotine off the trail a little bit. Walked a little faster after that.
#4 Room For One More?
I was in my little 16-foot aluminum boat fishing around Charleston when I hear a voice, clear as day, say "Move over." I immediately jumped up and looked around. No one. It was really weird and scared the heck out of me. Literally the closest person was standing on a fishing dock maybe half a mile away.
#5 Utter Stillness
I was in the Marine Corps for 8 years. The creepiest thing I have ever experienced was near the equator in the Pacific. We went through a patch where there were no waves and no wind at all. It was like a sea of glass. It was really eerie to think about sailors back in the day who relied on wind to move their ships.
Pixabay
#6 Behind the Dark
Took my young children to a cave not far from our house. Popular spot, but we had the place to ourselves. You can walk through it in about 30 minutes without too much difficulty. It has a tiny exit at the opposite end. It was pretty muddy, so we decided to turn around and head back to the entrance. Halfway back, there was a lit candle sitting about eight feet up one side.
It was definitely not there on the first trip. I went into full-on protective-dad-mode, knowing there was likely someone hiding in the dark while we walked the rest of the way out.
#7 Horsing Around
I was backpacking in Yellowstone above the tree line, at about 10,500 feet. We are hiking on a ridge above a lake when all of a sudden we came across a horse skull. No body, just the skull—pretty cool looking. We get to our campsite, not to far away from the lake near where we found the horse skull. When we climb down to the lake we find the body of the horse rotting on the edge of the lake with negative film strips floating in the water and laying around the shore near the body.
#8 Please Stop Whistling
This is my brother's story: He was fishing, and there was a cemetery nearby. He said he was whistling a song, and every time he would whistle, he would hear somebody running behind him. If he didn't whistle, he wouldn't hear them. I have had experiences with this cemetery being creepy too.
#9 The Fog
Casual fisherman here. We were out on the Chesapeake Bay fishing for rockfish—they're called striped bass everywhere but Maryland—and a truckload of fog just surrounded us. We couldn't see 5 feet past our boat. It was the longest 45 minutes of my life, trying to make it back to the marina where we keep our boat. Luckily, our GPS tracks where you've been, so we followed the exact way we came. I kept thinking we were going to hit something or someone the whole time.
#10 Making a Spectacle
I worked at a small retail shop that sold mostly small accessories and clothes. I have never really believed in ghosts, but my coworkers always swore the place was haunted. Lights would flicker randomly and canvases would fall violently to the ground for no apparent reason. The thing that really made me question everything was when I was closing alone at night.
We had a sunglass display in the middle of the store, just a flat glass shelf with a bunch of sunglasses laid out nicely on top. I walk past it to the register and hear this huge crash. All of the sunglasses were on the floor. It looked like somebody just took their arm and dragged it across the shelf, pushing them all off. There wasn't anything above the display, so nothing could have knocked it off. I don't have an explanation for it.
It was right as I was about to close too. He was a rude ghost.
#11 Treason
In 1984, I was 14 and was on a ferry heading to London. I was talking to some guys from India. They casually said that they were planning to kill Indira Gandhi in the near future. A few months later she was assassinated. I still think about this from time to time.
#12 Time Flies
My wife and I had a 2-hour drive back home from St. Louis. Shortly after leaving, we both look at the clock and realize that we are already an hour and a half into the trip and are almost home. Neither of us has any recollection of the past two hours whatsoever. We had only used enough gas to have gone a half hour and our GPS showed that we had been driving our normal route.
We still have absolutely no idea what happened and it still freaks me out to think about.
#13 Photo Evidence
My girlfriend and I are from different states, but our families used to vacation at the same place. I recently discovered what I believe to be a picture of my middle-school-aged self in the background of one of their old family pictures.
#14 You’re Not Supposed To Be Here
I was a sonar operator on an Adelaide class frigate. Whilst conducting exercises in the South China Sea, I detected a submerged contact not supposed to be in the area. After failing to respond to communication attempts the contact changed course and accelerated to 50+ knots and left the area.
#15 Dog Nights
I once woke up to the sound of heavy breathing and felt as if I was being watched. I couldn't move for a while either. Then, I just blurted out my dog's name and kept calling for him. He didn't run over, and as soon as I could get myself to move I went looking for him. I found him sitting in the kitchen doorway, just staring straight forward.
I started calling from right behind him and he wouldn't even turn around. I touched his back and he turned to glance at me, but then went right back to his trance. A year or so after the fact, I found out that the first thing was probably sleep paralysis. Not too sure about what was going on with the dog though.
#16 This Blows
I was in the bathroom and had just finished blowing my nose. I sat down on the toilet and, without looking at the trash bin, rolled my tissue into a ball and threw it in. Two seconds later, the tissue hit me in the arm. It was as if it was thrown back at me somehow…
#17 Cleaning Up His Act
My friend was about to clean his gun and it was pointed directly at me. It suddenly went off. For a few seconds, we both stood there in shock—him thinking he killed me, and me in a state of pure panic. Afterward, we found the bullet embedded in a wall beside me. I will never let him live that down.
#18 Spooky Sea Sounds
I worked on a small trawler as a deckhand for a friend's dad one summer during high school.
One thing that stuck with me was the first time hearing the wind howl in the distance when there was little to no breeze in the immediate vicinity. It was late at night, the sea was fairly calm, and the skies were clear except for a dark patch of clouds on the horizon. I was shoveling at the end of a long haul and just wanted to go to sleep when I heard the low drone, almost like an air raid siren being cranked too slow. I can barely explain the feeling. Just dread and impending doom, almost paralyzing.
The hairs on my arms standing on end and a sinking feeling in my gut, I asked one of the other guys on deck what the noise was, and he just shrugged. He heard it, but didn't know what it was, and clearly didn't care. His indifference grounded me right then and there. It was nothing to worry about, just put your head down and get back to work. I've heard it a few times since, and I always remember the feeling, but haven't felt it since.
#19 Lurking in the Shadows
I worked in the kitchen of a frat house that was built in the 1800s. On a couple of occasions, I had caught what appeared to be glimpses of a woman in the back corner of the stock room, but I just brushed it off. When the semester was almost over, I discovered that all five other employees had thought they’d seen her too.
#20 Jimmy Hacked Phone and I Don’t Care
I moved into a house that was almost 100 years old. After about a year of living there, I was sitting alone painting one day when Alexa blurts out "Yes, Diana. It is Jimmy's favorite song" and then proceeds to play Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Diana is the name of the lady who had previously owned the house and has been dead for about five years. Jimmy was her cello-playing husband who, after Diana died, moved into a senior assisted living community.
#21 An Unwanted Visitor
When I was 19, I worked a late shift and was a little paranoid. I would take different routes to and from work, “just in case.” One night, as I was driving to work, I swear I saw what appeared to be the stereotypical Death character: black hood, no face, scythe. It was just standing in a field, leaning on the scythe, and watching me go by. I freaked the heck out.
Once I got to work, I called my best friend and told him. That way, if I died, someone would know. Work went fine that night. I forgot all about it after a few nights. A week or so later, I was involved in a head-on collision that temporarily killed me. I woke up a week later with extra parts and a lot of physical damage.
My best friend asked me what route I had taken home and I lost it because it was the route I had seen Death on before.
#22 Sea Spirits
I asked an old fisherman on a beach in Malaysia if he had experienced anything like this. He said there are female spirits in the sea, who are basically neutral towards humans, but that you shouldn't be messing with them anyway.
One day, a boat sank, and divers were sent to recover bodies. Two of them were searching the seabed. Suddenly one guy feels a tug on his arm—and it's his buddy frantically pointing at the bed.
There, a beautifully-dressed Malay woman was knelt, holding a corpse like an offering to the divers. Both divers fled for their lives, and gave up the search. Apparently, the woman was one of those spirits.
#23 The Man Who Wasn’t There
My grandfather was in the Navy, in WWII in the Pacific. He occasionally, when in a particular mood (whiskey), would tell a story of how they were getting attacked, and he was trying to get to the other side of the boat. He reaches a doorway to the deck, opens it, and just as he is about to step out, he hears someone shout his name behind him. He stops, begins to turn around, and an explosion goes off just outside the door. He looks behind him to thank whoever called his name, but no one was there. That shook him up more than the bombs.
#24 Spotted
After my grandpa died, there were multiple sightings of him reported throughout the neighborhood. I have no explanation for this, but everyone said he was smiling—so at least there’s that!
#25 Blast From the Past
My cousin and I both saw what appeared to be a woman in white floating in our grandparents’ living room. Grandma said that based on our description, it was probably her friend who died during WWII.
#26 It All Makes Sense Now
One night, I vividly dreamed that it was dark and raining, and that I was in the woods walking towards a campfire. There were three men around it whom I had never seen before. One was wearing a shirt and pants with huge white and black horizontal stripes like a prisoner might wear. I could not figure out why I was not scared in my dream.
Fast forward ten months later, we're hunting and camping. A friend brings along three of his friends that we had never met before. I have to go to the bathroom and my husband walks with me since it's dark. We start back and it starts to rain. We get to the clearing and there are his three friends around the fire, one wearing the outfit described above.
I wasn't afraid in my dream because my husband was behind me and I just couldn't see him.
No one believes me.
#27 Monster in the Deep
In my city, the port is one of the oldest, if not the oldest port in the US. Back in the 1800s or 1900s, there were multiple accounts of an eel-like sea monster in the water. Some people saw it from the shore, some saw it from boats. Some of the people that saw it hadn't heard of it prior to spotting it.
#@8 No Hands On Deck
Was out on my boat fishing. Had my lights on. A shrimp trawler came by and almost crashed into me, outriggers passed right over. Not sure if it was a ghost ship, or drunks passed out on autopilot. No one on the deck or at the helm.
#29 Unholy Encounter
A horse that appeared to be sacrificed. We were riding quads in the Arizona desert and came upon a horse with it's back legs tied and rib cage and skull showing.
Shutterstock
#30 Six Feet Under
I like to hike really deep into the woods. Sometimes I use narrow deer trails. One day I was out in literally the middle of nowhere and found a 6-foot deep hole, about two feet wide, and about 5-feet long. No shovel. It was New Jersey. Mafia.
#31 Scare-Me Elmo
I once found an inside out Elmo doll that was restuffed and it had a soundbox from some kind of Halloween toy that made this creepy laugh. It wasn't that bad, but it sure creeped me out.
#32 A Good Night’s Jog
I will always remember this and do not have an explanation for it. When I was about five years old, I remember waking up in the middle of the night and walking to the stairs. I remember closing my eyes for a second at the top of the stairs and when I opened them, I was at the bottom. I then ran upstairs, closed my eyes, and repeated the same process.
It happened at least four or five times until my parents yelled at me to go to bed because they could hear me running up the steps. It’s weird because I was WIDE AWAKE and do not have any history with sleepwalking. I still think about it and wonder how and why this happened.
#33 How Do You Figure?
I woke up in the middle of the night, having to pee really badly. From my position on the top bunk, I could see into the hallway. The bathroom was right across the hall from my bedroom door and also right in my line of vision. I was just starting to climb down to go to the bathroom when I saw, heard, and felt the footsteps of a man coming down the hallway and going into the bathroom.
I figured it must have been my dad, but thought it was strange because he and my mom had their own bathroom. Even stranger, he didn’t turn on the light or close the door. So after a while, I got annoyed because I really had to go, and I called out to him. No answer. Finally, I climb down and switch on the light. I find an empty bathroom.
I had definitely seen a figure, heard the footsteps, and felt the vibrations of a large man coming down the hallway and going in there. I was about ten when this happened, but I remember it vividly because it was the freakiest thing that has ever happened to me.
#34 Open Door Policy
I'm the type of person who keeps my bedroom door closed and locked at all times, even if I'm home alone. About a year ago, it was 1 AM and I had decided to get a glass of water before going to bed. After coming back to my room, I swore that I closed and locked my door. After about 30 minutes of dozing in and out of sleep, I suddenly felt all the ambient noise completely dissipate and immediately got that "something feels off" feeling.
I got up and saw that my door was wide open. It scared the wits out of me, as I was home alone.
#35 Burned out and Baffled
Fishing in the Gulf, off the Keys, we saw a burned out boat idling by. We chased it down, climbed aboard, killed the engine, and called the coast guard. No one was onboard, and it was burned almost entirely down to the water line, with the exception of the helm and rear deck. The coast guard came and started an investigation. I don’t know what happened after that, though.
#36 That’s Enough of That
My dad joined up with an oil tanker crew in the Gulf of Mexico for a year while he tried to figure out what to do after college. He says he had a lot of fun and made some great memories, but for a while, he wouldn't tell me why he quit. Eventually, I convinced him to tell me when I got older.
One night they hit bad weather and he had to go up on deck to do some grunt work real quick. He had his life vest and the bungee cord on securely, so he figured he'd be ok. A huge wave hit the ship, and he went over the stern of the ship, hitting the water. He was submerged completely, came face to face with two propellers bigger than he was, then was pulled out of the water by the bungee cord and slammed back hard on the deck. He finished that job, quit immediately after they hit land, went back to college and enrolled for his second degree.
#37 A Voice in the Dark
This is probably the only borderline "paranormal" thing I've ever experienced. I was night-fishing with my wife and a female friend on a local river—watching a meteor shower, just chilling, drinking, fishing. I decide I want to check out a spot further downriver so I leave them behind and head off into the woods. I'm about 100 yards or so down the path, all alone, just me and the crickets, when I hear a female voice say my name. Loudly, plain as day, like someone was standing a few feet behind me and was trying to get my attention. I turn around naturally thinking one of the girls followed me into the woods, but nope, no one there.
I am not really a huge believer in the supernatural or anything but this absolutely freaked me the heck out. So I just immediately head back, and sure enough, they're still hanging out on the river bank watching the meteor shower. There is absolutely no way I could have heard them that clearly from that far away. I told them what happened and they still to this day think I was just messing with them and trying to scare them. But I'm telling you, I still get the willies thinking about it and in fact have never been back to that spot since.
#38 Side Sleeping for Safety
My grandfather was in the Royal Navy for a few decades. At the end of WWII, he was helping ship Japanese prisoners of war back to the West. Many of them were suffering from serious trauma and had completely lost their grasp of reality.
He was asleep in his bunk, often they were stacked with three or more levels. The guy below him had lost it and drove a knife up through his mattress. Luckily, my granddad was asleep on his side, and the knife missed him by millimeters.
He said those months at sea were the hardest of his entire naval life.
#39 You Didn’t See Nothing
Worked for a bit as a deckhand on fishing boats out of San Diego. A few times we would come across deserted smaller boats (pangas) drifting with outlandishly big motors. Every time the Captain would just cut hard port or starboard to get away from them as quick as possible—I knew they were illicit-substance-running boats that had probably dropped off their cargo, but I would check them out with the binoculars if we were close.
One had two people on it—both had clearly been shot a bunch of times, and one was moving and fairly alive. I told the Captain—got a disapproving head shake and we were on our way.
#40 Got a Big One
My dad was a fisherman for 16 years. He told me that one time when he and the crew were out fishing, they caught a plane in their net. Not a big airplane, but one of those small planes that can seat two to four people. With two decomposing bodies in the front seats. It turned out to be a plane that had disappeared a few months earlier.
#41 A Stranger’s Kind Gesture
I was at a baseball game and went in the washroom. A guy was leaving one of the stalls and said, “Don’t go in that one, people are such animals!” I went in the next one over, and while I was doing my thing, somebody went in the one the other man warned me of and screamed, “Jesus Christ what the heck?!?” I wrestled with the idea of looking but decided against it, and now I’ll never know.
#42 Mystery Egg
During a party I was throwing in 2014, one of my friends was hit in the head by an egg. She was standing in the backyard and an egg seemingly flew out of nowhere and cracked on her head.
Four years later, and no one has been able to venture a theory that does not require a wild stretch of imagination.
#43 Snacking on Cash
When I was a teenager, my family and I lived on a military base in Japan. In front of the on-base shopping center, there was an outdoor ATM that dispensed both yen and dollars. My mom and I got in line for the ATM—the line had about 6 people in it. While we were waiting, a man took out the equivalent of $50 in yen from the ATM. As he walked away and past the line of people, he chewed up and ate the money, one bill at a time.
#44 Bizarre, But Who Would Say No to Fuzzy Slippers?
During freshman year of college, my roommate was mysteriously sent fuzzy animal slippers about once a month. I think she ended up with like 7 or 8 pairs. Her family said they had nothing to do with it. It was especially weird because we changed rooms at the beginning of second semester, and even after we changed, the delivery address had the correct room number, so whoever it was knew that she changed rooms.
#45 I Have a Hunch That it Was The Parents
A stack of EE Savings Bonds remains missing. They were stashed in the dresser drawer beneath my underwear. I had quite a collection of bonds, most of them with a face value of $100 or $500 each that were given as gifts from the time I was born. For every birthday, Christmas, graduation, and other occasions, family members would give EE Savings Bonds as gifts to be used later in life.
One day I noticed the bonds were gone, even though we hadn't had a break in. Hopefully, no one can cash them in, because my name is on them.
#46 A Bloody Good Mystery
When we did blood typing back in high school biology, mine was not an option given my parents’ blood types. My type has since been confirmed by the Red Cross when donating blood, and my parents' types were from reliable sources. I’m either a freak of nature, got swapped at birth, or that wasn’t my dad.
#47 A Disturbing Discovery
Who or what killed my goldfish? My family and I were at dinner and when we arrived home, my goldfish was in the middle of the room with a needle through him.
#48 We've All Been There
On the night bus home after a night out, I struck up a conversation with this guy. Turns out we had a lot in common, lived nearby, and on top of it all, he was really cute. As we got to his stop I said something like, “Would it be creepy of me to ask for your number?” He burst out laughing and said he wanted to ask me, but didn't want to be “that guy.” So we swapped numbers.
We went on a date after that and it's one of the best dates I've been on, we laughed from beginning to end. The following weekend there was a music festival that we were both going to. Death Cab For Cutie was on the bill and it was going to be the first time for both of us to see them live. We agreed to meet up to watch Death Cab together.
The morning of the festival, he messaged me saying he couldn't wait for Death Cab and he was looking forward to seeing me. We had a bit of back-and-forth and agreed that I'd let him know once I got to the venue.
I got to the stage where Death Cab was playing, found an easily identifiable spot for him to find me, and messaged him where I was. He didn’t respond. About 10 minutes before they were due to go on, I gave him a call. No answer.
About a week after I told my sister about it, she said he'd probably lost his phone and didn't have my number memorized. I sent a final, “Hey, it's me, hope you enjoyed the weekend” kind of message, but again, no response.
I'd love to know what happened in the two hours between "looking forward to seeing you" and standing me up.
#49 A Six-Week Sojourn
I still don’t know where my childhood cat disappeared off to for over a month. He was the neighborhood stray cat. My mom took pity on him when winter set in and he became our cat. He still enjoyed going out at night and got into quite a few adventures I’m sure. One morning he showed up half torn to pieces. The vet said he probably ran into a badger or something. Either way, for 12 years he always came back everyday. Then one day he didn’t.
We looked for him for about a week, then assumed he had probably been hit by a car or some other “outdoor animal accident” had happened. Then one day about six weeks later, he shows up howling at the door all skin and bones (He had been a chunky cat.) He very rarely left my mom’s side after that for the remaining six years of his life. I still wonder what happened to him that made him disappear.
#50 Guitar Gone and Then Found
When I was a teenager, my mom bought me this gross old guitar, and we stripped it down and painted it blue. I played that thing for years and years. One day, I realized I hadn't seen it in a while. Then when I went to find it, it was gone. The case was there, but the foam inside the case and the guitar itself was missing.
Ten years later, someone I know sent me a picture of a guitar asking if it was mine. They had found it in their basement behind a bunch of crap that hadn't been touched in forever, still in the foam cutout from the case. It was stripped of all its paint, and the pickguard was painted a different color. I don't know how it got there. They don't know how it got there and it makes no sense for it to even be in their house. I don't know where the paint went, or who painted the guard. It's not badly done, but it's not professional by any stretch. But it is done in colors I like.
It's a complete mystery to me. It went off on some weird journey and came back.
#51 A Terrifying Phone Call
I was out camping one time in southern France with my family. We were visiting from the Netherlands. After setting up the tent and checking out the area, my parents started cooking and I got some time off for myself. I was about 15 and just bought a new phone from my first job.
I was sitting in my own secluded little area playing some Animal Crossing, when suddenly my phone rang. I pick up and hear nothing, but there is some breathing. I answered, “Hello, who's this?” And then I hear a small girl slightly sobbing, asking me, “Do you know where my mommy is?” The kid couldn't have been older than ten. I got caught by surprise by that question, so I just answered back with “What?!”
Then they hung up and nothing else followed after that.
#52 Perhaps Some Mysteries Are Better Left Unsolved
Who was the lady who birthed me? I was found in a dumpster, premature, and had been left to die. I really don't have any deep urge to find her or anything. A while back I got 23andMe and ended up finding first cousins. The lady who birthed me would have been their aunt.
I reached out to them, and they're both very nice. However, we left it at pleasant hellos and small exchanges about ourselves. See, they have 7 aunts. One of them is my birth mother. From what I've been told, they're all a happy family, and I may even have half-siblings.
But I'll never know why I couldn't have been left somewhere safer. To me, it's not worth dragging that skeleton out of the closet or potentially getting someone in legal trouble. I'm glad she's doing okay. I grew up in a happy, loving family that has my back, so I made out well enough.
#53 Did You Check the Back of the Wardrobe?
When I was about 10 or 11, I was reading the final Narnia book. It was a library book from school and it was hardcover. I was very obedient regarding library rules and handled it with care. I was reading the book one night and it was late so I eventually stopped. I put the book under my pillow and went to sleep (my parent turned off the lights).
In the morning, the book was gone. Gone! My family and I tore the apartment apart trying to find it, since we didn't want to pay the library to replace it, and it was never found. When we moved out two years later, it still wasn't found.
What the heck happened to that book? I slept on it!
#54 Great Aunts Don’t Typically Disappear for 30 Years
Where was my grandma's sister for 30 years? She disappeared in the '50s and showed up again in the late '80s like nothing had happened. She said she'd been living in Wisconsin, but never explained why she hadn't contacted them for all that time. My mom thinks she was in prison.
#55 The Ghost Poop Phenomenon
Where did that poop go all those years ago? I felt it perform its exit, and when I looked down into the bowl, there was absolutely nothing there. I know you think I'm joking, but I'm legit still bewildered to this day.
#56 This Is the Start of a Horror Movie
I was driving and heard a little boy's voice whisper in my ear, “Faster.” And then suddenly, the accelerator on the car I was driving pressed itself to the floor. It terrifies me to this day, and there still isn't a logical reason for it to have happened. In the past, someone mentioned cruise control or maybe the radio was on. Nope. The vehicle didn't have cruise control and the radio wasn't on.
#57 Closing off Contact
I had a family friend whom I’d known forever. She had been a friend of my parents since over a decade before I was born. When I was in my late teens, she dropped all contact with us for absolutely no reason I can discern. Parents don't know either. Her brother confirmed that she's still alive and in the country, she just doesn't want to talk to us anymore.
#58 Super-Absorbent Drama
Once, my roommates and I bought a jumbo pack of six rolls of paper towels. We placed it on top of the fridge, and the next day the entire package had vanished. Even when we totally emptied and cleaned the whole house to move out (including moving the fridge out to clean underneath and behind it), it never showed up.
I find it deeply disturbing that the two most likely possibilities we came up with were: a) A six-pack of paper towels somehow fluttered halfway across the room to land in the bin, where all four of us failed to notice it all week. Or b) The estate agent crept in in the middle of the night, stole it without touching anything else, and left congratulating himself on a successful heist.
Like, I get that one of my roommates probably just brought it all up to their room and lived in luxury for the rest of the year. But honestly, not knowing which of those jerks failed to own up to it for the last three years is like a constant shadow over our relationship.
#59 Tiny Plastic Elephant, Where Did You Come From?
When we were kids, my sister and I had a big box of toy animals. We played with them everyday, so knew every single toy in that box. One day, my sister stood up from playing and underneath where she'd been sitting was a teeny tiny plastic elephant that we'd never seen before. The only explanation we could come up with at the time was that she had given birth to it there and then. I still can't think of a better one.
#60 Why Would Someone Do Something So Cruel?
I was about 10 years old and had a photo of myself with a horse in my wallet. I kept my wallet next to my bed. One day, I went into my room and the photo of the horse and me was torn into pieces lying on my pillow. I was a sweet and shy girl and that broke my heart. I never found out who did it or why. I still think about that moment.
#61 Sherry, Can You Come out Tonight?
What happened to Sherry? Sherry was a friend of mine twenty-odd years ago. She moved to another state to live with a man she met online (back when this was a complete oddity). We stayed in touch for a few years and then she dropped off the face of the Earth. From what I can tell, no one has heard from her in about fifteen years.
#62 Anyone Else See a Bizarre Faceless Entity in the 90s?
What the heck did I see briefly peeking out of my neighbor's master bedroom when I was little? The thing had no face and it retracted just as fast as it had popped out. This was back in the '90s, by the way.
#63 A Serial Square Cutter
My parents hosted two small church potlucks at our house, a few years apart in two different places, hundreds of miles apart with two entirely different groups of people.
The first time, everyone left and the next day my mom discovered someone cut a perfect 1.5” by 1.5” square out of the middle of one of her shirts in her room. Few years later at the next event, someone cut a perfect square of similar size out of a sentimental baby bib that was kept at the bottom of a drawer in the kitchen with other special linens.
No one knows who it could’ve possibly been. Both groups of people were fairly small, and were close family friends. We eventually narrowed it down to two suspects, one for each event, but my parents never asked them or tried to find out. We just stopped inviting them and if they did come, we locked the bedroom doors and kept an eye out.
#64 We All Have That One Oddball Co-Worker
At work, each time I go to the private bathroom, the lock is left in the locked position while the door is open. This means that someone consciously locks the door as they are exiting and leaves the door open. I just don't understand the reasoning behind this, and the small inconvenience drives me bonkers.
#65 What Happened in Argentina?
For some reason, I have blocked out my childhood memories. We used to live in Argentina, and I don't remember anything about what we did or where we lived, unless I look at photos. About the earliest memories I have are of third and fourth grade here in the US. I've spoken to my mom about it, and she is worried that something happened that caused me to block those memories. I thought it was normal to not remember things from childhood, but I seriously don't remember anything.
#66 I’ve Heard of Diamonds in the Sky…But in the Mail?
After I graduated from college, a mystery-sender mailed me a beautiful antique diamond ring with no return address, and no note inside. I had it examined and appraised by a professional jeweler. It turned out to be worth a great deal of money. Yet I have no idea who sent it, or why.
#67 Taking an “L”
I have a scar on the side of my face in the shape of an “L.” And it's not in any of my baby pictures and then started showing up in pictures of ages 3 and up. I've asked most if not all my family where it came from and they all say, “I don't know,” even my mother.
#68 Where Did Nicholas Go?
When I was in elementary, I had a friend named Nicholas. The kid seemed lonely and others made fun of him for his weight. There were huge truck tires on our playground that were buried halfway in the ground. We'd go there and hide in them because some kid named Justin would throw rocks at us and call us a whole bunch of names.
Hiding in the tires, I remember him saying he had a secret he was going to tell me. He said to come back to the tire spot the next day during recess. So, the next day I was there and looked all around for him. A car pulled up next to the spot and his mom rolled down the window. She asked if I knew Nicholas and if I had seen him. I hadn't. Never saw him again at school and never found out what happened.
#69 Are Golden Crabs Native to West Virginia?
One summer, when I was a little kid, we were at my grandparents’ house in West Virginia. The house was on a winding road facing a small creek on the other side; not super close but you could see it from the porch. On this occasion, a bunch of relatives were visiting and I ran around the house to join them on the porch. I stopped when I happened to see on the grass what I could only describe as a “golden crab.”
Yeah, it looked like a typical crab, but it was golden in that it kind of glowed. I remember vividly that it writhed around on the grass. It was dusk, so maybe that had something to do with it. Whatever it was, it was much bigger than a crawdad. I was stunned at first and speechless, and then freaked out and ran to my mom screaming. Did I imagine it?
#70 How Do You Know My Name, Mystery Skier?
A couple of years ago, my friend and I visited his relatives in the countryside, not in the middle of nowhere, but like a thousand miles from my hometown and from our current location. It was winter and we took the relatives' dog and went for a long stroll. Miles from any other place where I've ever been, we met a group of skiers. One of them stopped in astonishment and said: “[My name], what are you doing in our forest?!” And I never learned who it could be.
#71 Fraternal ESP
When I was 10, my friend and I were playing video games in my room. My dad was on the phone and I heard him say, “Oh my god” in a very serious tone. I looked at my friend and said, “I think my brother died.” I don't know why I assumed that or even said it. We kept on playing video games, and about half an hour later my dad came in the room and told me that my brother had been killed.
I'll never know how I knew what happened. I don't remember hearing the conversation on the phone at all, just the “Oh my god” part. Perhaps I subconsciously overheard them talking and my dad said something about it, but I don't remember that. Even when I told my friend, I didn't believe it myself, it was just a feeling I had.
#72 The Oddest Assignment
When I was in grade 3, our teacher got very serious all of a sudden and announced that she was giving us a special test. She had us each take out a piece of paper, write our name on it, and then instructed us to copy exactly what she put on the board. So she started out by drawing two tall, skinny arch shapes. Sort of like the McDonald’s golden arches but not connected at all. Then above them, she wrote the words “I see two mountains.”
When we all had drawn the arches and the phrase on our sheets of papers, she announced that the test was over, and everyone needed to hand in their work. She collected the papers and never spoke about it again, nor did she ever pass them back with a grade or anything.
Every now and then, I start thinking about it and wonder why she made us do that. My best guess is that maybe a student had vandalized something and they were trying to figure out who it was by comparing the handwriting of all the children in the grade. But what did they vandalize? Why did they write “I see two mountains,” and why was it considered such a big deal? Kids would scribble on the walls and desks in pencil all the time, but the teachers just erased it and moved on, they never tried to find out who did it.
She acted like it was so grave and important. It was all just so strange. I don't think I'll ever know.
#73 Was This Camp a Cover Clinical Trial?
I've had asthma my whole life, but when I was a child it was very severe. In the summer of 1996, I attended a camp for children with asthma called Camp Wheeze Away in Alabama. It was a pretty regular summer camp with various outdoor activities and an emphasis on adherence to medication schedules. However, when I returned home that year, my asthma was completely cured for about 3 months. I had no symptoms at all, and I could hold my breath and swim the length of a regular swimming pool 4 times. I can't even do that now as an adult.
Recently, I pulled my charts from my former asthma specialist, and my pulmonary function tests indeed improved for the period of time after camp. I have since suspected that I may have been part of a clinical trial. My mom remembers a rigorous set of qualifications to be admitted to camp.
#74 What Happens in Paris Stays in Paris
When my grandfather was younger he, his two brothers, and his brother-in-law went to watch a rugby game in Paris. When they got off the plane, his brother-in-law told them to go to the hotel and he would meet them there, he just had to go sort something with his luggage. The way my grandfather told it, he never turned up. They spent the four days in Paris before the game ringing hospitals and police stations and searching all the pubs and bars.
They couldn't find him, so went to the game hoping he would turn up there. He didn't. The next two days was pretty much a repeat of the previous four. They were then called to identify a body that had been found that matched the description my grandfather gave to the police. It turned out it wasn't him.
The day of their flight home, my grandfather went to the airport to try and change his ticket so he could stay and continue the search. He found his brother-in-law at the airport in the same clothes he was wearing the last time they saw him. He refused to say where he had been or what he had been doing. It was a secret he took to his grave over 20 years later.
#75 An Unidentified Pen Pal
I’ve always wondered who exactly was my childhood pen pal. When I was about eight years old, I started getting little notes in the mail every week or two. They were all stamped and addressed to me, and they all contained little doodles and said very random things such as, “I like birthday cake, do you?” or “My favorite flowers are daisies, what are yours?” They were never signed and there was no return address. The handwriting didn't look like anyone in my family or any of my friends, and every person I asked denied it.
Eventually, my parents got visibly uncomfortable with it and would start insisting on examining the letters before I opened them. Pretty soon after that, they stopped coming. It’s been nearly 20 years and I still have no idea what was up with that.
#76 Who Let Them in?
My roommate was gone for the weekend, and I was sleeping in, when his family somehow broke into our apartment. I always lock the door with the chain, so even if they had a key they shouldn't have been able to get in, but they did! His mom popped into my room, apologized, and then disappeared. When I got up later they were gone, but the door still had the chain locked on it. I have absolutely no clue how they got in. I know they were there and I didn't hallucinate the whole thing because they left some groceries for him. My only theory is they crawled in through the balcony, but it just seems so farfetched.
#77 Wormhole? Portal?
I was once driving a group of friends home from an away high school football game we all went to. I believe it was in November 2011. We were on I-35 headed south, listening to music, and having a conversation. I remember just south of OKC I looked at my radio to turn down the music, and when I looked back up we all looked around and said: “Where are we?”
Somehow we were heading East on I-240. The same song was playing from my radio and no time had seemed to pass as our conversation was ongoing. None of us remembered how we got there, and I couldn't have taken an off ramp because I had my cruise control set on 70. To this day, it still freaks me out to think about it. There were five of us in the car and not a single one of us knew how we got there. No bright lights, missing time, or anything else. We blinked and we were somewhere else.
#78 A Missed Connection
I started dating my best friend in university. He was my best friend for years, and we finally got together. He was infatuated for a long time before we got together, I think.
A few months into our relationship, I was in a serious road traffic accident. I had a brain injury and suffered retrograde and anterograde amnesia (forgot the last six months and the following three). Somewhere in there, he dumped me. I never knew why, and my other friend had to remind me everyday that he left me because I kept forgetting. But because I kept forgetting, I went stalker-ex on him because I thought we were still together.
To this day, even though I’m blissfully married, I miss my best friend. I wish he knew that I wasn’t stalking him, I just had no idea he dumped me. If you’re here Stef…I miss you bud.
#79 Speaking To Yourself
It happened in early 2000 when I was working at a juvenile detention center in a small town in Oklahoma as a corrections officer. I was working nights at the time and went to work at 9 pm.
This one night when I arrived for work my supervisor looked confused and asked me what I was doing there. I said "I work tonight," and he said, "But they said you called in a few hours ago saying that you were sick." I was a bit confused and said: "It must have been someone else and they got the message wrong."
After everyone else showed up for work that night it was a bit weirder, but we carried on as usual and assigned everyone their places for the night; I went to work in the control room where I usually work. The control room is the center of the prison that has direct control over the cameras, doors, phones, and everything.
After I relieved the guard on duty and settled in for the night, I looked at the message that said I called in. It said that I had called at 6:50 and said that I had gotten sick while out cleaning up after the storm. There had been a storm the night before and it was a bit bad, but not anything that I had to go out to clean up. It was truly weird.
The supervisor came into the control about that time. He was also a friend of mine outside work and we started talking about it, and how odd it was. I decided to call my wife at home and tell her about it while he was still sitting there. I picked up the phone and dialed. After two rings a man picked up the phone and with a raspy voice said "Hello?" I did not know what to say for a few seconds. I looked at the phone to make sure I dialed the right number, and I had.
After a few seconds, the person said "Hello?" again in the same raspy voice. I said "Hello. who is this?". "This is Taylor who is this?" the person said. My head started spinning because my name is Taylor. I said in almost a scream "Where is Ann?". He said "Ann's in bed. Who is this?". I dropped the phone and told my supervisor to ring me out, I had to get home, and I took off towards the door. I could hear Dave pick up the phone behind me and say "Hello?" followed soon after by "What the heck!" rather loudly.
I ran to my car and drove home faster then what was legal, my mind racing the entire time. I busted through the door and my wife was sitting watching TV and was shocked at me being home. I asked her who was there and she said no one has been here. After a rather long talk with my wife, I went to call the prison to tell them what was going on, but the phone was dead.
I went back to work and when I came in Dave was acting weird and asked me "How the hell are you doing this?". He told me that when I left, he picked up the phone and the person on the other end sounded like me. He kinda freaked out and hung up the phone. A minute later as he could see my car leaving the parking lot, I had called back from home and asked what was going on. He said that I was a bit irate and said I was sick and did not feel like playing these games and was telling him to stop prank calling me and hung up. After convincing him I had no idea what was going on we went back to work.
Later, I find out that the phone line for my area had been knocked down the night before by the storm. This is absolutely the strangest thing that has ever happened to me.
#80 Hanging in Wait
Last year I hiked part of the Appalachian Trail in Tennessee when I came across a noose just hanging from one of the trees. Nothing was hanging from it, it was just there.
#81 Not Cool
My buddies and I found a cooler in a gully while camping. It was dark and we left it, but authorities found it a few weeks later and there was a body in it.
#82 A Matter of Time
This old woman hiker in her 70s somehow saw us in reverse order through a wormhole or something. The first time we saw her she said: "Oh, well hello again!" I just passed it off as her being old, slightly senile. Then 30 minutes later, we saw her again, and this time she just said "Hi" as she passed us. I'm not even sure how she got there...she was going the opposite direction of us on the trail both times.
#83 Mystery Messenger
We saw the words "Per audacia ad ignotum" drawn in the snow in the absolute middle of nowhere, yet there were no footprints around them. The words were probably a few hours old. The closest translation we could find was "Through audacity towards the unknown."
#84 We All Scream for the Ice Cream Man
I was fortunate enough to do a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail in 2012. Stopped by this guy's house—known as the ice cream man—right on the trail. An old man with thick glasses appeared at the door, took me inside by the hand, and gave me an orange cream popsicle, as he read Where the Wild Things Are to me as we sat at his kitchen table.
#85 A Bone-Chilling Beekeeper
I was camping near Nederland, Colorado and a fellow walked out of the woods with a large knife and a beekeeper hood on. It was near dusk and he walked between our tents and our fire, where we were, through our campsite (which was dispersed camping, not in a campground) and back into the woods on the other side.
I assume he was just trying to scare the hell out of people, and he succeeded brilliantly. I am glad I brought a change of underpants, and he is lucky that we weren't the gun-totin' sort.
#86 Night Terrors
Camping with family, it's about 11 PM in the middle of a forest. Pitch black, you can't see anything without a flashlight. Out of the blue, my little cousin who was about 3 years old at the time starts crying. When my uncle asked him what was wrong, he just kept repeating "Help guy come". He couldn't yet talk in complete sentences yet, which made the whole situation even more terrifying. Nobody slept well that night.
#87 There’s Something in the Fog
I was hiking in the Hoh Rain Forest on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington back in 2003. I was trying to do this really snazzy hike from the Ocean to Mt. Olympus. Well, day one is a blast, get everything accomplished. Day two, fog. Fog as thick as anything you can imagine. I can't get a decent GPS fix, so I'm pretty much blind, but I know if I follow the Hoh river upstream,
I'll get to one of the campsites I'm going for. The day goes by, and fog isn't clearing up at all. I get to a fairly big clearing and set up my tent. I grab a power bar and chill out as it starts going to the darkest black night I've ever experienced. I'm seriously a bit unnerved at the whole thing...not scared as much as just...anxious.
About 2 in the morning, I start hearing this huffing noise. Like Darth Vader without the helmet on. My imagination starts to go freaky, and I reach for my flashlight. I pull the drawstring on the tent a little...very quietly...and poke my head out. Still dark as death. I hear the noise coming from maybe, MAYBE five feet to my right.
At this point, I'm seriously re-thinking my belief in Sasquatch. I poke my flashlight out and turn it on. I'm a few feet away from a MASSIVE Roosevelt elk, who'd lost his way in the dark as well. He sees the flashlight, bolts the other way, tags a tree and knocks himself clean out. I laid in the tent until I heard a groan, a bunch of commotion and the big guy grunt away.
#88 The Ritual
I was backpacking in New Hampshire and camped out for the night after a day hike. I wandered off from our fire to go take a leak and stumbled upon a circle etched into the ground with tuning forks surrounding the circle standing up straight...It looked like a creepy ritual circle and it bugged me out so I booked it back to the group.
#89 Sinister Signposts
A series of arrows carved into trees leading into the middle of a swamp, ended up leading to a corpse. The open space was in a very populated area, the sheriff told us it was probably a homeless person. There are several phases of finding a dead person: Loss of words. Shock. Continued shock. Realizing you're all alone in the middle of the swamp. Intense fear.
#90 The Sinister Sound of Music
I lived in a national park by myself for three months. Several times when I was going back to my trailer for the day, I would hear music, like a music box or an ice cream truck. It was always loud and sounded like it was coming from somewhere over my head. One day I decided to look for the source so I followed the dirt road past my trailer.
The music continued, I couldn't tell if I was getting closer or not. I had my eyes on the trees and looked down just in time to avoid stepping on a snake. I scrambled back but it didn't move. I realized it was dead and it wasn't alone, there were half a dozen dead copperheads stretched out in the road, looking in the same direction.
I went back to get my car because I couldn't bring myself to step over them, but by the time I got my keys, the music had stopped, and I didn't hear it again.
#91 Close Encounters
My sister and I were driving around Lake Tahoe at night. A car followed us for a few miles. We went over the top of a hill, and as we drove down the other side the lights behind us came over the top of the hill and continued up into the sky. We both were quiet for a moment, then turned to each other and said: "Did you see that?"
#92 Time to Turn Back
I was walking through the arboretum in Madison, Wisconsin, it’s a huge, unkempt watershed, very very rustic, though still in the middle of the city. I found this faded cross nailed to a tree waaay back in there that said, "Forever in my heart, Delilah.". It looked like it was 50+ years old. I noped the hell out of there and never went back. Who knows what’s buried out there; it would be the perfect place to dump a body.
#93 Musical Mystery
Out in the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. I could hear this strange music way in the distance. It didn't sound like any instrument...but it wasn't quite natural either. I never did figure out what it was. It lasted only a minute or so. We were miles from civilization.
#94 Mysterious Meetings
There was a period when I kept seeing people not dressed in hiking gear walking into the deep back paths of the hiking trails as the sun was setting. Many miles away from any civilization, where there are just canyons and trails to those giant utility towers. Men, women, and children. Only on a couple of occasions did I see someone carrying a suitcase or backpack.
Most of the time they weren't carrying anything. I usually checked the internet and timed my hike to return to my car as sunset hit, so those people were definitely not making it out of the hills before dark. My car was also usually the last one out, so they most likely got dropped off or parked somewhere other than the public trailhead.
My guess was either a squatters’ camp or drug operation deep in the hills. Either way, sucks for those kids.
#95 Bill Can’t Catch a Break
Been waiting years for this question: Hiking alone at dusk doing a five-mile loop in the Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles. I see another lone hiker approaching from the opposite direction. As he gets closer, I suddenly realize I know this person: It's the guy who played Jame Gumb, AKA Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. We get within three feet of each other.
He looks at me. He sees the lightning bolt of recognition hit my face. His sad and resigned expression back said it all: "Yes, I'm him. No, I'm not really a serial killer." I walked briskly by him anyway and didn't look back until I was a good 100 yards down the trail.
Shutterstock
#96 Silent Stranger
In my experience, the creepiest thing you can see out on the trail is a sketchy person or a drifter. I was on a weekend hike with a friend, and we came across a man standing just off trail staring at us as we approached. I offered him a greeting, don't remember exactly what I said. No response. He had cold eyes and was just generally spooky. We were pretty far out from the nearest town, and he had zero hiking gear.
Normal clothes that looked clean enough. We passed him, and kept trudging on up the trail. I glanced back over my pack and the guy just turned and walked into the brush. We stopped hiking that area.
#97 Bad, Bad Dog
Yesterday I was hiking in New Hampshire, and as me and my group were descending we passed a family with a dog. We were in a groove, so we just continued past them as they were standing off to the side of the trail. But as we walked by, they appeared to be holding hands around the dog in a prayer circle. I heard the father say "Lord please, do not let this dog kill again."
I have no idea what was up with this dog.
#98 Almost Cougar Food
Before the DNR was forced to admit to the release of cougars in the state to control the deer population, we (myself, my husband, our 6-year-old, and our 3-year-old) were fishing and kept hearing rustling behind us about 20 yards. Told husband I thought I heard a low growl, of course, he hadn't, so it was all in my head. Fast forward an hour to when we're packing up our gear to leave, he finally hears a growl.
Looks at me terrified because it was close and we were a good quarter mile from the car. I figured out very quickly how to fit two kids into a single stroller, I walked closer to the river, husband between us and woods, both adults terrified the whole time, kids thinking it's fun to ride together. Get everyone in the car and flip on the lights before starting the car only to see a cougar turn and run back into the woods.
#99 Need a Hand?
I had just reported aboard my first ship. We were in port in Brooklyn, NY, and I was over the side, on a camel, a long wooden raft that kept the ship away from the pier, scrubbing the side of the bow with a push broom. This was in December, on the East River. The river was moving swiftly and was rough. It was a cold, dreary, awful day.
Anyway, I'm scrubbing away and looking around when I see an arm raise up from the river! Just as I start to call out about it and point, it sinks out of sight. Everyone thinks I'm nuts now and starts to rag on me. I can still see this in my mind, though it's been almost 40 years.
#100 Devastating Debris
I worked in the Mediterranean Seas doing oil stuff. Children’s backpacks would sometimes float by, along with other miscellaneous debris. This was from refugees, usually fleeing Libya, who did not make it.
#101 Unidentified Flying Objects
20ish years ago, myself and my fellow boy scout troop saw some strange lights in the sky. We were in Texas, pretty far out in the middle of nowhere, away from city lights. I don't recall the name of the area. On the night in question, we were sleeping outside in sleeping bags, on cots, and we arranged our cots out so that we were laying in the same direction, head-to-toe.
I don't recall what actual direction we were facing, we were just lined up the same way. We broke up the sky into sections (e.g. "top left, top middle" etc) and started watching for satellites. After we'd been watching a while and had seen what we were sure to be at least a couple of satellites, we saw three lights—not much brighter than the satellites we'd recently seen—moving towards each other, none moving in the same direction that the satellites were moving.
We were stunned...even more so when they stopped. They stopped about half of a finger width (holding your finger to the sky) apart from each other. Eventually, they all shot off, each in the direction they came from, but MUCH faster than they were moving the first time.
#102 Torn Asunder
I was out on a hike and I noticed some deer bones on the side of the trail. Odd, I thought, but there are lots of deer out here, and it's not uncommon for them to be taken out by a cougar, bear, lynx or a myriad of other predators. Then I saw a hipbone in a tree. Later I saw the severed head had been neatly placed on another tree.
Throughout my hike, someone had physically placed parts of a fresh deer carcass all over the trail and throughout the trees. It was pretty damn unsettling.
#103 Into the Void
I worked on the flight deck of a carrier for three years. Two deployments to the Arabian Sea, also transited the Suez.
Felt the "call of the void" as I’ve heard it called. Would be smoking on a weather deck watching the sea speed by. Leaning against the railings, sometimes the thought of jumping over would materialize in my mind. For the briefest second, it’s almost comforting, like a faint magnetism to just do it. Then it's gone. It never even disturbed me, so much as baffled me.
#104 A Bang-Up Job
I was doing a fairly long trail run from one town to another. I was up in the mountains when I heard some shooting. Not uncommon for people to drive the forestry roads and do some shooting. As I kept running the shots became louder, so I started yelling out that there was a hiker on trail and to please stop shooting. About four minutes later, I hear some crazy high pitched crackle and then the gun shot!
I immediately fell to my belly and started screaming to stop shooting. They heard me and started hollering if I was alright. A little ways down the trail I met up with them at the road crossing. They offered me a beer and said sorry they couldn’t hear me. I thanked them and kept on my run.
#105 Poe Would Be Proud
A raven saying "Hello!". It would say it once or twice, then stare. It followed me for a while. I'm pretty sure someone trained it to do that, and it was waiting for a treat, but damn that was creepy.
#106 What’s for Dinner?
While some buddies and I were hiking in Arches National Park we decided to go off the beaten path for a bit. Shortly thereafter it started raining which turned to a torrential downpour, forcing us to take shelter for a bit. We found an alcove in the small gulch we were hiking. After a few minutes, we turned around to find a mountain of bones and animal carcasses behind us.
We noped right out of there, only to find a notice posted at the trailhead warning of several mountain lion sightings in the park that day. Thankfully, we avoided being eaten alive to hike another day.
#107 A Silent Guide
When sailing singlehanded, I often hear the ocean talking to me, sort of just telling me something is off, a vessel you haven't spotted is on collision course or a reef is dead ahead. It’s not voices, just this eerie feeling someone is trying to get my attention. My grandfather was a sailor, so I like to think it’s him watching over me. Might just be boredom and/or sleep deprivation, but that’s science and not magic or fun.
#108 The Eerie Aftermath
I was in visiting Mount Merapi in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and I knew it was the scene of a bad volcanic explosion a couple of years ago, where many people died. Everything looked peaceful though, so I kind of forgot a huge tragedy had happened there before. I was wandering off trail to get good photos when I just encountered all these houses that were still partially covered in ashes.
I stepped inside and there was no evidence that anyone else had been in there since the explosion. It was really creepy seeing how time seemed to stop there, and all you can see are destroyed ruins.
#109 The Light in the Sky
I was camping in California and I over the hill I saw a large red flash and streak of light fall over the hills. I have seen meteors before, but this seemed more intense. I told my parents what I saw but they didn't believe me.
#110 The Watcher in the Shadows
Well, this was on a trail cam, but I was looking through some of the pictures and most of them were just deer, foxes, and coyotes. But there was one which was just a pair of glowing eyes, with the rest of the picture completely dark.
#111 One Step Ahead
My old man was an avid outdoorsman in the Colorado Rockies in the late 80s. He'd go on week-long treks with his buds. One summer, they'd been out for a few days in Pikes National Forest. They set up camp in a ravine they thought was safe. That night my dad unzipped the tent to take a leak in the dark and outside stood a pair of pale bare feet.
My dad screamed and zipped up the tent. Everyone else woke up and asked what was wrong. My dad said someone was barefoot out there. They went out and flashed their lights for a bit, hollering. My dad swore he saw what he saw and described the feet in detail: they were old blotchy feet, one even had a lump on the ankle. Tony, his bud, asked which foot, left or right.
My dad said it was the right. Then Tony said they needed to move their camp immediately. Dad asked why. Tony said they didn't have time. They went along with it and packed up and moved on top of the hill. The next morning they woke up to find a flash flood had torn through the ravine during the night. It would have surely killed them.
Tony's grandfather had just died a month prior and one of the last things he said to him was that he would always watch over him. The feet my dad described reminded Tony of his grandfather's feet.
#112 The Man in Black
When out exploring an old abandoned quarry with some friends we found this dude stood staring at this rock, occasionally twitching, but he never turned around. We were pretty creeped out, so we didn't investigate, and left pretty soon after. Later on that night we found out that another friend was driving down the lane that runs parallel to the quarry found a guy in a black coat stood in the middle of the road, and wouldn't move.
She was pretty freaked out and had to reverse all the way back up the lane in the dark because he was still there. Pretty sure it was the same guy, otherwise it was just a big coincidence.
#113 Shrines to Murder
Bushwalking in New South Wales (Australia), me and my friend came across this weird platform looking thing made out of rocks. Later that year the cops arrested some bloke on suspicion of the murders of a series of backpackers who had gone missing over the course of a few years, and at the sites of several of the murders slightly off in the bush were these “altars.”
A current affairs show runs footage of one (the trial and run up to it were all over the news) and yeah, it's that thing we found. The altars were typically no more than 300 yards from the victim's shallow graves. The guy who was arrested and subsequently convicted for the murders is Ivan Milat, Australia's worst serial killer.
Now the cops are pretty sure that at least one other person was involved in the murders other than the one now in jail for the crime, they just couldn't prove it.
#114 Oh Deer
Over the years when I have told this story, many people haven't believed me, but it's true as the sky is blue. Me and my brother were hiking out in our new backwoods (we had just moved in to a new house) and we stumbled upon a small, open, grassy field. In the center of it, there was a person with a blue jacket crouched over.
We thought it was a friend of ours that we had recently met, so I ran out to greet them. I did not have my glasses on, but I got pretty close enough to see that it was a grown man leaned over the carcass of a deer, stabbing it with an unsharpened stick. He looked up and saw me. I was pretty freaked out, so I turned around and yelled at my brother to run, and so we started to sprint as fast as we could back home.
#115 Need a Hand?
I went camping in southeast Ohio once with my dad and sister miles from civilization. As it started to get dark, my dad and I started to prep food for the fire while my sister went to change in her tent. A couple minutes later she walks over to me and asks “Were you outside my tent?” I asked her why, and she tells me that someone walked out from the direction of the trees to her tent and placed their hand on the wall of the tent.
She smacked the hand away thinking it was me fucking with her but when she came out no one was there. We tell my dad and he says he did it and left it at that. The problem was, I knew it wasn’t him, because I was with him the whole time. Later that night I asked him why he lied and he told me it was too late to go home so there’s no sense in scaring my sister when there’s nothing to do about it.
I stayed in my sister’s tent that night with a knife in hand. I didn’t sleep. We stayed for another night without incident, but I couldn’t get my mind off of the fact that we weren’t alone.
#116 The Line Is Busy
One night when I was a kid, my parents were out late and I decided to watch a horror movie. A couple of minutes after the movie ended, the phone rang. It was 2 AM, in the middle of the night. The caller ID showed no display whatsoever. I tentatively answered, but there was no sound on the other end—nothing. I hung up and my heart was almost bursting out of my chest.
#117 Parallel History
I spent three weeks in a coma, but didn't realize it because I believed that the things I was imagining during that time were all really happening. To me, it seemed like many years had passed and I can still remember everything I believed that I did while in that coma. When I woke up to realize that all those years weren't real, I was very disoriented and confused.
I’ve been struggling to deal with reality ever since.
#118 I Dreamed a Dream
One morning, I woke up to my alarm going off at 6:30 AM as usual, so I got up and cooked breakfast. As soon as I sat down to eat, my alarm went off again—and I woke up in bed. I had dreamed that had I woken up and gone about my morning routine. That was easily the most disorienting thing I've ever experienced.
#119 Dingo Took My Baby
I was talking with my son when he was about four years old while he was playing with a Darth Vader toy in his mom's lap. Completely unprompted, he nonchalantly said "Dingo cold, Dingo cold," and then went back to playing with his Star Wars toys. I asked him what he said. He giggled and denied having said anything. My wife very clearly heard him say "Dingo cold" too.
I had never told him about my childhood best friend, "Dingo," being killed in an avalanche ten years earlier.
#120 There’s Something in the Lake
When I was a teenager, I was alone on a rowboat in the middle of a small lake, about a mile or two long, by no more than 200 yards at its widest. I was mostly just enjoying the day, but I dropped a lure into the water expecting nothing, almost as an afterthought. Something big grabbed it though, and pulled hard enough for the entire boat to be pulled about 10 feet and turned 180 degrees—force transferred to the boat via my fishing rod and my death grip on it. The line snapped, and that was the end of it.
Prior to this, my friend who lived on the lake had told a few other friends and me that one morning, waiting for the school bus, he saw a huge living thing in the lake. He described it as being the size of a car and brown, to the best of my recollection. He refused to swim in the lake from then on. He wore mild prescription glasses and of course, due to this, we teased him mercilessly about seeing the “lake monster.” But whatever took my lure that day was big. I like to think it was just a huge carp, but I don’t know.
#121 Naval Nightmares
I was a sailor/submariner (sonar technician) in the Navy for 5 years.
Creepy, creepy is easy. There’s an overall sense of dread involved when you’re inside a steel tube hundreds of feet underwater.
When the sonar system goes down (crashes) and you frantically work to troubleshoot and repair the network, because you're hundreds of feet underwater and without that sonar suite, you are 100% blind to what is going on in the ocean around you.
If you take creepy to the level of downright terrifying, then I would simply say whenever any alarm (fire/flooding) sounds, and it is not a drill. That's absolute terror.
#122 Mystery Pursuer
Grew up sailing on a 100-foot wooden schooner. On a leg back from Hawaii to Washington, we spent some 30 days at sea. For much of the trip, we could see a very large animal following us. We knew it was there because it was generating phosphorescence. We still have no idea what it was, but since it didn't surface for air, it couldn't have been a whale. Maybe it was a whale shark or a giant squid. It sure freaked us out though.
#123 Strangers in the Night
I was driving down a really dark rural road late at night. I was super sleep deprived and hyper from several Monster energy drinks. I didn't have the radio on, so it was pretty quiet. That was when the whispering started. I’m immediately confused and don't understand what it is. Then it starts mumbling louder. Finally, I hear a very loud and clear "turn here" instruction coming from this mystery voice.
My GPS says to continue for 12 miles. I ignore the voice, blast the radio, and continue home. Next physical, I mention the incident to my doctor. Am I insane? He explains that both sleep deprivation and caffeine have been known to induce auditory hallucinations individually. Combining both, it's perfectly normal to hear things.
Phew! I thought I was going mental!
#124 Baby On Board
I survived a car crash as an infant after being ejected 100+ feet from the car, without so much as a scratch on me. I was still in my car seat when the police found me. My dad wasn't so lucky and he broke his neck. He was in a coma for quite a while. The driver who hit us was driving stealth and was absolutely hammered.
#125 Mike Drop
I had a terrible nightmare when I was ten and called my mom in to come lie down with me for a bit. I woke up a little later staring at the back of her head—and for some inexplicable reason, she suddenly looked exactly like Mike Myers. She turned around shortly and was back to normal, but I will never forget the weirdness of that initial feeling.
#126 More Questions
Once while fishing, I fished up a small briefcase. Obviously, I had to open it up. The only thing inside were multiple pairs of children's shoes. All of them were in too bad condition to really tell what kind they were, outside of a few Nike swooshes.
#127 The Horror
I was an LCM-8 (Landing Craft Mechanized) boatswain (a type of ship’s officer) in Vietnam in 1966. My outfit was stationed in the city of Qui Nhon and we sailed in and around the Qui Nhon bay. One night, when I reported for duty at my boat, the bay, as far as I could see, was covered by swimming rats. The water looked like it had been paved with rats. This lasted for about one hour, at which time the tide began going out. The Qui Nhon bay is about 40 square miles or so, and when the water flows out during outgoing tides, the speed of the current can go to 15 mph or so. The rats were flushed out as if someone had pushed the flush knob in a toilet. Never saw that occur again during my tour.
Another night, as I was coming into port, I saw two merchant mariners, obviously drunk, trying to get into a boat that would take them back to their ship. One missed a step and fell into the water; the other one reached for him and went in as well. Since the tide was going out, they disappeared in a moment. I turned my boat around and we tried to find them using our spotlight, but they were gone. We never reported it, I know it sounds cold, but that was the way it was.
#128 Waving Goodbye
There was an old man who lived on the street I drove down every day to get to the highway. He sat on his front porch drinking his morning coffee and always waved at me when I drove by, so I always waved back. This went on for the better part of a decade. One day, I was telling my neighbor about how awesome this man’s waving made my mornings.
My neighbor says “Wait, what? That man has been dead for three years.” I never saw the guy again. Who was I waving at that whole time?
#129 Being Shadowed
When I was about 17, I was at my friend's very old apartment building in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. According to his dad, the building used to be owned by Al Capone—but I'm not sure how true that claim is. There was an empty apartment on the top floor that we used to hang out in and sneak onto the roof from to smoke cigarettes.
One night, we were about to go up, but I had to pee so I told him I'd meet him up there. After I was done, I went up the stairs to the area that was connected to the roof. There were no lights and I only had the dim light of a phone screen to navigate the cluttered mess. As I made my way to the roof door, I saw a shadow pass by me.
This wasn't the shadow of something moving with the light of my phone, this shadow was solid, like a person. I followed the direction it went thinking it was my friend. I kept saying that I knew it was him and to stop playing around. It passed me a few more times before heading to the other side of the attic. That's when I heard my friend’s voice from downstairs. He had gotten a call from his girlfriend and had been in another room talking to her the whole time. I have no idea what that shadow figure was, but it really freaked me out. That was the last time my friend and I went up there.
#130 Cloudy With a Chance of Spookiness
When I was about 8 years old, we were driving along a dirt road in the country and I was staring out the window. Over a field off in the distance, I saw a silvery glowing cloud that looked completely unnatural. It suddenly moved towards the road, then up over a tree just as we were passing it. As we climbed a hill, I saw it drop from the tree back onto the road, and then float back toward the fields.
#131 Creature of Habit
I woke up to what appeared to be my deceased grandad standing by the door staring at me. It scared the daylights out of me. Suddenly, there was a flash and he was gone. He had been dead about 7 or 8 years at that point. I told my mom about this and she said he does that often.
#132 Leprechaun Loot
It was St. Patrick's Day and I was in second grade, playing on the playground. I brought my favorite Beanie Baby to play with during recess. However, somehow a seam split when I dropped it onto the bark chips. The beans spilled out everywhere and I hopped down immediately to try to collect as many of them as I could and refill it.
As I was sifting through the bark chips to get to more of the beans, a glimmer caught my eye. I investigated and lifted a bark chip away, and it revealed a tiny pair of golden scissors. I gasped because I knew that they had to belong to a leprechaun. I saved them in my pocket and showed them to all my friends in my classroom after recess, but unfortunately, a teacher saw what was in my hands and confiscated them.
#133 The Tale of the Creepy Cheesecake
When I was about 14 years old, I visited my best friend and we decided to eat some cheesecake we found in their fridge. His parents were not home. After eating half of the cheesecake, we went into another room to play video games. After two hours, we went back into the kitchen and the leftover cheesecake was gone. We were alone in the apartment and he never left my side. After looking everywhere, we found the fork that was stuck in the cake in his room. The door was locked. His parents came home about two hours later from work, and nobody except his grandma (who lives in another state) has a key for the apartment.
#134 Cavemen
In my hometown, there was a hiking trail that people did not visit very frequently. I went with some friends when I was 19. We were crawling around exploring and found a cave that went pretty deep. We had never been in there before and had never even seen it. We pushed forward and decided to check it out even though we had no flashlights.
We stepped into the cave and it was freezing cold. Upon looking around, we noticed it was really clean inside the cave—as in it didn't have beer cans littered everywhere like all the other small caves did. While in there, we started to get a really eerie feeling and then began hearing strange sounds. Then we all felt a sensation like we were being touched, poked and pulled around.
We each assumed it must have been one of the others trying to mess with us, but any time we sparked up a lighter, we were all decently far apart. We decided to high-tail it out of there after only a few minutes, convinced it would be better to come back with flashlights. We came out to see that it was now dusk outside. When we entered, it was mid-day. Somehow, we had lost roughly three hours inside of this cave in what felt like just a couple of minutes. We tried going back with flashlights the next week, but have never been able to find this cave again...
#135 Don’t Look Down
Anchored out and decided to swim to a small uninhabited island in the Bahamas. I happened to glance down as I swam across the channel to see about 40–50 tiger sharks just hanging out beneath me. I just tried not to soil myself until I got to the shore, and then hailed my girlfriend to come pick me up in the dinghy when she came up topside—she'd been napping.
#136 Where the Heck Am I?
One of my first few dives, I was diving with a group at 60 feet in a freshwater lake. I was at the back of the pack, so I was getting everyone else's silt. Noticing I was starting to sink, I checked my buoyancy compensator (air-filled vest), losing my perspective in the process. Turn back around and... had no idea where anyone else was, nor where I was. Couldn't see the group, couldn't see the ground, couldn't tell which direction the murky sunlight was coming from. Had no earthly idea which way was up or if I was ascending—it was one of the more bizarre experiences of my life.
After a minute of mild, out-of-body existential crisis—how do I not know which way is up??—I figured out how to deflate my vest, used the bubbles to determine "up," and found the group. Weird, weird experience. You hear the stories about that phenomena, but figure it could never happen to you.
#137 Feral Instincts
My cat hated me for the first seven years that we had him. He was a feral that was tamed by my wife, and he only accepted affection from her. My wife assured me that this was common for ferals. Then, one day, he suddenly warmed up to me and wanted me to pet him. We've been best friends ever since. This was approximately four years ago—about the time that my wife's brain cancer was becoming aggressive. Even before we were aware of it.
She died two years ago. It's like he somehow knew it was just going to be the two of us one day.
#138 Window Shopping
When I was a kid, I used to wake up every night to headlights coming through my bedroom window. The lights would then stop and turn off, not as if a car drove by but as if they were turned off. Then the long shadows of a man, as if looking at me, would pass by and stop in front of my window. I would lay really still and pretend nothing was happening, every night for months. Eventually, I convinced myself it was my imagination.
Across the street lived my best friend, whose mom’s window faced my house. She told me years later that she had at one point refused to sleep in her room because every night, a man would park in her side yard and walk over to my yard. The long shadows were from the light in her yard. She eventually figured it was my dad just checking on us and never mentioned anything. It wasn’t my dad though, I asked him. So I thought I was just hallucinating for years, but apparently, I wasn’t...
Pixabay
#139 Doorman
At least six times in my life, I've come home knowing I had locked the door, yet when I'm about to put my key in, the door opens by itself as if someone is expecting me. It's happened at my mom's house, my own house, and a friend’s house. I don't know what it is, but I’m hoping it might be a superpower.
#140 All Eyes on Me
My fishing buddy and I were fishing for catfish on a summer night. We finished up around midnight and began the mile walk back to our cars through a field. When we turned on our flashlights we saw what looked to be little lights surrounding us in a semi-circle a couple hundred yards out. We continued to walk towards them, as our cars were in that direction, when all of a sudden, the lights all turned and ran. We realized that we had just walked up on a giant pack of coyotes, and they were watching us. It was one of the weirdest but coolest experiences I've ever had.
#141 The Sound of Silence
So I was a Submarine Sonar Tech.
There were places we would go that were just dead quiet. No shrimp, no dolphins, no 120/4 merchant ships, no own ship noise, just nothing. Dead quiet.
I don't think most people have ever experienced the complete lack of sound before. I know I didn't prior to that. That’s the creepiest thing I've ever experienced.
#142 Ghosts at Sea
My dad was a sailor and he said that there was a ghost in the engine room. He said that weird stuff would happen in during the night shift, and once when he was alone in the engine room, he saw it staring at him before it walked through the wall.
#143 Identity Crisis
I used to work in a gas station. One regular customer was like night and day each time I saw him. One day he’d be soft-spoken and shy, the next he’d be obnoxious. His cigarette preference also changed from day to day. He always came in the same work truck with the same guys, at the same time of day. One day, he walked in and went straight to the bathroom. A minute later, he walked in again and came up to the counter. It had taken me eight months to realize that they were two twins.
#144 Mad Hatter
As a child, my brother would go to my grandma’s house and tell her about "the man in the hat." No one had any idea who he meant, but he claimed to have seen this character walking around the house. Years later, we find out that our cousins used to also tell their mom that they always saw a man in a hat walking around my grandma’s house.
#145 Speaking To Yourself
It happened in early 2000 when I was working at a juvenile detention center in a small town in Oklahoma as a corrections officer. I was working nights at the time and went to work at 9 pm.
This one night when I arrived for work my supervisor looked confused and asked me what I was doing there. I said "I work tonight," and he said, "But they said you called in a few hours ago saying that you were sick." I was a bit confused and said: "It must have been someone else and they got the message wrong."
After everyone else showed up for work that night it was a bit weirder, but we carried on as usual and assigned everyone their places for the night; I went to work in the control room where I usually work. The control room is the center of the prison that has direct control over the cameras, doors, phones, and everything.
After I relieved the guard on duty and settled in for the night, I looked at the message that said I called in. It said that I had called at 6:50 and said that I had gotten sick while out cleaning up after the storm. There had been a storm the night before and it was a bit bad, but not anything that I had to go out to clean up. It was truly weird.
The supervisor came into the control about that time. He was also a friend of mine outside work and we started talking about it, and how odd it was. I decided to call my wife at home and tell her about it while he was still sitting there. I picked up the phone and dialed. After two rings a man picked up the phone and with a raspy voice said "Hello?" I did not know what to say for a few seconds. I looked at the phone to make sure I dialed the right number, and I had.
After a few seconds, the person said "Hello?" again in the same raspy voice. I said "Hello. who is this?". "This is Taylor who is this?" the person said. My head started spinning because my name is Taylor. I said in almost a scream "Where is Ann?". He said "Ann's in bed. Who is this?". I dropped the phone and told my supervisor to ring me out, I had to get home, and I took off towards the door. I could hear Dave pick up the phone behind me and say "Hello?" followed soon after by "What the heck!" rather loudly.
I ran to my car and drove home faster then what was legal, my mind racing the entire time. I busted through the door and my wife was sitting watching TV and was shocked at me being home. I asked her who was there and she said no one has been here. After a rather long talk with my wife, I went to call the prison to tell them what was going on, but the phone was dead.
I went back to work and when I came in Dave was acting weird and asked me "How the hell are you doing this?". He told me that when I left, he picked up the phone and the person on the other end sounded like me. He kinda freaked out and hung up the phone.
A minute later as he could see my car leaving the parking lot, I had called back from home and asked what was going on. He said that I was a bit irate and said I was sick and did not feel like playing these games and was telling him to stop prank calling me and hung up. After convincing him I had no idea what was going on we went back to work.
Later, I find out that the phone line for my area had been knocked down the night before by the storm. This is absolutely the strangest thing that has ever happened to me.
#146 Don’t Lose Your Head
I think I was 8 years old, my mother and sister were fishing off a dock. I was a couple hundred yards south, next to the water, leaning against a tree, when I opened a fish bait bottle and it spilled. As I’m picking up the bait, right next to me in the water, a man's head just rises out of the water, green and pale. It looked at me and slowly sank back into the water. I began crying and never saw the head come back up—IT WAS NOT WEARING ANY KIND OF REBREATHER—and my sister ran over to me and asked me what happened.
I'm 14 now, and every time I try to describe or explain the story, they never believe me and say I was dreaming. I can still remember that face, but I wasn't scared the first time I saw it, I was purely shocked. But that face was terrifying, like ‘90s Pennywise terrifying. These days I try and play it off as something paranormal or spiritual, but if that was some sort of living creature, then this world is a scary place.
Max Pixel
#147 Nothing Is The Same Anymore
A long time ago I had a conversation with an old workmate who described much the same thing.
The detail is hazy, but he said one day he in his house when he felt a sudden NEED to go outside an stand on his lawn, he claimed it was the strongest clearest feeling ever, and on doing so he experienced a sort of "wobble" he just said everything was screwed up for moment, and he experienced a feeling of detachment/outside-ness. When it passed he turned to go back inside.
Now, while talking to me he got quite upset at this point and asked me not to think he’s crazy but he said the next thing he saw was his car parked in the street and it was the same model/registration but a different color.
He was so thrown at this, and then more so because then his wife came out to ask what he was doing, and he said he realized "She was in all appearances his wife, but somehow not his wife.” He said from that point on, she liked foods she had claimed to hate before, and sometimes brought up memories that he said had zero relation to things they had done in the past.
He said things like his route to work, was still the same but somehow different, he said there were buildings on the way that either he had missed in the six years he'd driven past them five days a week or had just "appeared" overnight. He even said some people he remembered from other departments in work had just vanished, and asking about them brought total incomprehension from other people.
He was a totally regular healthy guy, but he said he measured his life in relation to that afternoon. There were things that happened before the change, and everything afterward. He went to say he was now living his life with a feeling that about 15% of it had spontaneously changed that afternoon.
We moved on and drifted apart since then (different jobs) but I've never really felt so sure about the permanence of "reality" ever since.
Sources: , , ,
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