There are many things in life that we can’t explain. From strange coincidences to things that go bump in the night, there are obviously other forces at play that go beyond our tangible earthly realm. Whatever the cause, these occurrences are enough to spook the daylights out of us and send us running for the hills. Keep reading for some inexplicable spinetingling tales that will surely make your hair stand on end.
1. Peepshow
I lived in north Switzerland. We had a lot of old military bunkers dating back from WWII. When I was seven or eight years old, three friends and I went out to explore one of these bunkers, which was built on a hill inside a small forest. The main door was jammed, so we had to break it open. We found a big log nearby and used it as a battering ram.
After many tries, the door wouldn’t budge, but there was a peephole, so we took a look inside. There was a long, dark hallway with rooms on both the left and right sides. We couldn’t see the end of the hallway because it was far too long. We all took turns taking a look. Then, one of my friends said, “There is a small light at the end of the hallway.”
This light was not there when I took a look through the peephole, so I pushed him away and took a second look. What I saw gave me a shiver. It was not a small light, but rather, it looked like a flashlight pointing directly toward me. Behind it was a silhouette of a person. I walked a few steps back and said, “There is someone in there!” At that moment, someone, or something, knocked on the door from the inside, and we all panicked. I ran straight home and locked the door.
2. I Couldn’t Tucking Believe It
Years ago, I fell asleep on my mother's living room sofa. She was already in bed, but my brother was out somewhere. Some time in the middle of the night, I woke up to see someone standing over me and covering me with a blanket. It looked like a man wearing a bandana. I assumed it was my brother, but thought it was strange that he would be wearing that.
The next morning, I asked him about it, and he said he didn't even come into the living room when he came home, and it wasn't him who covered me up. My mother also denied doing it, and no one else was in the house that night. I didn't find it creepy until a while later when one of my aunts stayed at my mom's house. Incredibly, she reported the same thing had happened to her.
Apparently, a ghost in that house wanted to make sure people were tucked in when they fell asleep on the sofa.
3. What The Hay Is Going On?
My mother-in-law was a very funny and cool woman. She and my wife were close, and sadly, she passed when our son was about four months old. A few years later, I was bathing my son when he started looking over my shoulder, not at random stuff, but at something. A moment passed, and then he asked me a question that sent a chill through me.
He asked why Grandma calls Mommy a funny name. I took a long pause. I asked him what he meant, thinking he was talking about MY mom. He asked, “Why does Grandma call Mommy,” and then referenced my mother-in-law’s nickname for my wife. I was taken aback. My wife and I never used the nickname. It was just what her mom had called her since she was a baby.
I asked him where he had heard that. He replied, "The farmer told me." I asked him who the farmer was, and he replied, "His friend." I told my wife this story later, and she was reduced to tears over the whole nickname thing. We both know there was no way for him to know this, and we marveled at it. The following weekend, my son was playing in his room.
My wife was at work, and I was home. I heard him start talking like he was having a conversation. Immediately the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I went into his room and asked him what he was doing, and he said playing. I asked with who, and he said "the farmer." At that point, I was already thinking about The Exorcist and “Captain Howdy.”
It was unsettling. I asked him where the farmer was. He said he left when I came in. I told my wife when she got home, and she was just as weirded out as I was. We had no idea what to do and figured if it happened again, we would do something. A few days later, in the middle of the night, we both overheard our son say, "Grandma says you and I can't be friends anymore."
My wife and I went to check on him. He was just sitting up in bed. I asked if he was OK, and he said, “Yeah. Grandma says I can't play with the farmer anymore.” He never once mentioned the farmer again—not ever.
4. A Sibling’s Spooky Story
When my son was about six months old, I dreamed that I was at my grandparents' house with him. My grandfather held my son and cried while I talked to my grandmother. I told her that I wished she and my grandfather were still alive to see my son, and she said, "Don't worry, we see him." I didn't think anything else of it until about five years later.
I was talking to my sister and mentioned that I'd had a dream about our grandparents. She said, "Was Papa Joe holding your son while he rocked in his chair, and did Grandma tell you they were watching you?" I said yes, and asked how she knew. She said, "I had the same dream when my son was six months old." Still creeps me out to this day, but it also makes me happy.
5. Scottish Tales
When I was in high school, a group of friends and I did an archeological dig of a Roman fort in South Shields, UK. I had never been out of the US, so we took the train up to Edinburgh for some sightseeing. We were really enjoying ourselves until the evening when we went out for drinks. As we were walking back to our hotel, a group of two women and one man approached us.
For whatever reason, I was overcome with anxiety. As they got closer, a small, dark feeling formed in my stomach. I saw that they were three of the most beautiful and arrogant-looking people I had ever seen. They had bright blue eyes, perfect hair, and perfectly fitted, all-black clothing. Everyone in my group noticed. They came up to us and inquired as to what we were doing.
We stood there awkwardly. Someone mentioned that we were heading to London the following day. One of the women looked at us and said that we must avoid the tube and buses and that it would be best to get out of the country ASAP. We were all extremely creeped out by that point but made it to our hotel. The following morning, we took an early flight back to London.
We took a cab to our hotel. That was the day of the London tube bombings. Six years later, I was visiting my girlfriend, who was getting her degree at the University of Edinburgh. We were at some pub, and I saw the woman and man who had talked to me half a decade before. Even though I looked completely different, she approached me and said that I was right to have taken her advice.
It was the single most spine-chilling event of my life, and I don't think I'll ever forget it.
6. A Mother Knows
My mom was epileptic and had a seizure in her sleep. It ended horrifically. She got wrapped up in her blankets and suffocated herself. The paramedics were able to get her breathing again and loaded her into an ambulance. I was tasked with calling family to tell them my mother was in the hospital. The first and most important phone call I had to make was to my grandmother, her mother.
Before I had a chance to grab the phone and call, the phone rang. It was my grandmother calling. This would have been about 5:30 in the morning but about 2:30 in the morning in her time zone. She wanted to tell us that she had seen my mother bathed in golden light and claimed they had talked. She told me that she was gone but headed to a better place now.
At that point, I didn't know my mother was going to pass from the injuries her brain had sustained that night. My father was at the hospital with her, and he didn't know she wasn’t going to make it, either. The doctors didn't even yet know she was brain dead, but somehow my grandmother knew and contacted me. It was incredibly spooky.
7. Little Oracle Annie
For a few months after college, I lived with my mom’s friend Annie. I was up late watching TV after everyone else was in bed, and Annie walked into the living room, half asleep. I said, "What's going on, Annie?" and she said, "My grandmother just called." No one had called. She insisted, however, that she had just talked to her grandmother.
She said that her grandmother called to tell her goodbye, and now she wanted to call her family to check on her. I told her, "It was just a dream. Don't bother your family in the middle of the night. Go back to bed and call them in the morning." She went back to bed. I was just getting into bed about an hour later when the phone rang, "for real" this time.
It was her family calling to tell her that her grandmother had passed about an hour before. The next day, Annie didn’t remember any of it, and we never spoke of it. THEN about a decade later, Annie died unexpectedly. I went to her funeral, and her brother delivered a eulogy. In it, he told a story about when Annie was four years old and her great-grandmother had passed.
The entire family was gathered in the house, and someone noticed that little Annie had disappeared. After a brief search, they found her in a bedroom, rolling on the floor, laughing. They asked her, "What on earth are you laughing about, Annie?" Little Annie replied, "Great-grandma was tickling me. She came to tell me goodbye." This girl, man.
8. The Ouija Board Flipped Us Out
When I was 14, I stayed overnight at a friend’s house along with three others. We had all grown up together, except for one, who was a cousin of the kid who lived there. We had never met him before. His older sister, who was 16 at the time, was the babysitter while the parents were out for the evening. She decided to unearth an Ouija board from a cupboard.
So, we all gathered around and she started off with a kind of yes/no lie detector, directing questions to each of us in turn. We were giggling at first, but then things started to get strange. When the sister asked, “If anybody is here, please show yourself,” a framed picture fell off the wall. Naturally, we all freaked out. She calmed us down and insisted we go back to the board.
We started asking questions like, “Are you in the room?” The pointer said yes. “Are you a man?” The pointer said no. We asked its name and the pointer spelled out “S-A-R-A-H.” We said, “Tell us a secret.” The pointer spelled out, “FLIPACOIN,” so we did. As we watched it descend, it stopped spinning and serenely fell edge down to land on the table, perfectly balanced on its edge, as if someone had reached out and gently placed it there.
Breaking the silence, the pointer started moving again. What seemed like random letters turned out to be the initials, including middle names, of all of us there. Somehow, every person present had their initials correctly spelled out to them. The pointer paused and then spelled out three last words, “CHILDREN. STOP. NOW.” It took me many, many weeks to be able to sleep properly.
9. Piano Man
I did the sound work for a friend of mine who did all kinds of ghost things. I was going through the audio with him, and he heard something that sounded like a piano playing. I stuck it into the app GoldWave to clean it up. You could hear the piano fade in and out slowly, clear as day. But here's the thing: There was no piano in the house, no power in the house, and no access to radio.
Not only that, but the closest neighbor was about a mile away. We also didn't hear it during the time it was playing, so only the equipment picked it up. It gave me chills with zero explanation. There were several other unexplainable pictures and noises that we picked up, but NOTHING to that magnitude.
10. Grandma Was Deerly Missed
My grandmother had a giant window in her family room that looked out into the backyard. It was a good-sized yard that backed up to fields and a wooded area. The deer would make daily trips to her yard to hit the provided salt-lick and take pears off the trees. My grandmother would sit in her chair and watch the deer. It would be uncommon to visit her and not see several deer walking through the yard.
My grandmother got very old and developed cancer that couldn't be treated. She went from her chair to lying on the couch, still able to enjoy the deer outside. Eventually, the decision was made to move her to hospice. My father, uncle, and sister were there that day. It was a very emotional process to take someone from their home of 60 years for the last time.
As they were making a final trip through the house, they saw a magical sight. They went through the family room and saw 15-20 deer in the backyard. The deer were all sitting and all looking at the house. They usually just wandered around for a few minutes and moved on. But they were all sitting there and stayed that way while my family stared back. I like to think that they came to say goodbye to a longtime friend.
11. Skeletons In The Closet
I'm the kind of guy who believes in what he sees/experiences. I don't believe in the paranormal, but I can remember a few things that were unexplainable in my life. When I was young, around 2-3 years old, I was always sick and very quiet. My parents moved us from Alaska to Oregon so they could be closer to family to help raise me.
We moved around a few times, renting old houses. There was one house we lived in that was old and had an insane landlord. The place had a bad vibe. My parents could feel it, my grandparents could feel it, and I could too. I told my parents there were skeletons in my closet watching me. When my grandma was alone with me, I told her, "Man with gun."
That was all I said. We were close to the city, so it would not have been anything normal to see such a thing around the house. I never said anything about monsters, skeletons, or ghosts before or after that house. The weirdest part was about a month before we moved out, someone broke into our house but didn't take or touch anything. There was human excrement smeared in weird patterns around the house and walls. Needless to say, we moved to a different house after that.
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12. Advice From Beyond
I had bad pneumonia that was not responding well to antibiotics the doctors were giving me, so I was being transported to a bigger hospital. In the ambulance, I was choking, unable to breathe. The ambulance was jolting, I was short of breath, and the next thing I remembered was feeling a SEVERE jolt that sent me out of my body.
I had read stories by others in similar situations who reported seeing a tunnel and a light, but this was not what I experienced. It was just a jolt, a kick that threw me out of my body. I was looking at my body from the side and saw a medic trying to put a breathing mask on my face. At first, I thought that something had happened with my vision, and I panicked.
I saw everything in 2D, like on a movie screen, and nearly black and white. I was 14 years old and in a state of panic. I thought of my mother, and in an instant, I was looking at her. She was traveling together with my father and my uncle in a car, following the ambulance on the road to the city. I started talking to my mother, telling her that my eyes were not OK, and I couldn’t see well. She did not hear me.
They continued to talk, cursing and lambasting the incompetent doctors at the local hospital, discussing how those doctors tried to coax them to sign some papers after the ambulance left, how they refused to sign, and how they arranged for me to be admitted in the department led by an experienced and very competent doctor with a strange name. At that point, the gravity of the situation hit me.
I finally realized that something weird had happened, that I shouldn’t be in the car, and I panicked even more. I began to think of my friends at school and of the girl I liked, and as soon as the thought of someone was really "sharp enough" in my mind, I instantly saw them as if I was standing next to that person at that very moment. Then the panic hit me even harder.
I started jumping from place to place, from memory to memory, at an ever-increasing pace, and everything became a kaleidoscope of people and places. This jumping from place to place abruptly stopped when an old lady came. She was very old, with snow-white hair. She took me by the hand, insisted that I look at her, and repeated several times that I should calm my mind so that the random jumping from place to place stops.
Then she proceeded to explain that I was going to fall asleep, and when I wake up, I would be at the hospital. She told me that doctors would start giving me injections, that some of them would be painful, but I shall be brave like a man and endure the pain, and that my condition was going to improve. She told me after two months, doctors will propose surgery.
She then insisted—several times—that when I wake up, I MUST immediately tell my mother to refuse to sign the papers for the surgery and to refuse to let them do the surgery. She told me that if they did the surgery, I wouldn’t make it. She insisted again that I should explain this to my mother as soon as I woke up. She also told me that if I was a good boy and did as she told me to do, my uncle was going to bring me a lot of delicious chocolates to the hospital.
I woke up in the ER and told everything to my mother. When I saw her face, I knew. She was shocked by my detailed description of what they talked about in the car, which was completely accurate. I distinctly remember her eyes grew WIDE OPEN when I told her the strange name of the doctor. She listened to my frenetic demands from her to refuse to sign the papers for the surgery.
She did not understand what I was talking about since, at that moment, no one was talking about any surgery. My mother told me that everything was going to be ok, that there wasn’t not going to be any surgery, and generally tried to calm me down. I finally recovered. 45 days later, X-Rays showed one particular spot on my left lung that was refusing to heal.
Two months later, it was still there. Wouldn't you know it, the doctors proposed surgery to remove this spot. My mother resisted them initially, but as time passed, there were so many doctors insisting that surgery must be done. My mother finally gave in to their pressure and signed the papers. However, this delayed the surgery for many weeks.
When they did a final X-Ray before the surgery to see how big the spot was, it was gone, and the planned surgery was canceled. My mother also told me how she watched, in disbelief, how my extremely stingy uncle was bringing me chocolate after chocolate in the hospital. That particular piece of my story was what convinced my mother to refuse to sign the surgery papers for so long, despite such intense pressure from the doctors.
13. Pennies From Heaven
Every now and then, pennies are being thrown on the same spot in my living room. I’ve always been alone in the room when they're thrown. I'll be watching TV and hear them scatter on the ground, turn my gaze to see them spinning and rolling in the spot they fell. I have no pets. There are no tables, holes in ceilings, or pennies around where this happens. I can't explain it. They somehow materialize. I've been saving them ever since it started.
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14. Blowing In The Wind
I lived in some really unsettling places, but there was one event that stuck with me the most. I woke up and, as usual, I walked to the mirror to brush my teeth and fix my hair. I was in a relatively small place with a balcony and sink in the same room without any windows that could open. I looked in the mirror and saw one of my plants moving. There was no wind blowing against it.
I turned around and walked over to the plant to check if the balcony door was closed. It was. While walking back to the mirror, my eye fell on one of the pens lying on my desk. When I arrived at the mirror, I noticed all these pen markings on my face. My heart stopped. I cleaned up and fled the room. When I came back, the door to the balcony was open. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy being there for quite some while after.
15. Powers Unite!
When I was four or five years old, I had a room full of toys. One day, my mom said we had to go out, so, as usual, I went looking for my favorite toy, a blue Power Ranger. I looked and looked for it in my toys room but couldn't find it. After a few minutes, I said out loud, "Whoever took my toy, give it back," and my Power Ranger fell from the ceiling, right in front of me. It still creeps me out when I think about it.
16. Frozen In Fear
It was my second year at university, and I was living in a creepy townhouse. It overlooked a giant ravine filled with trees. One night, I was watching television in our living room. The TV was set up in front of the living room windows. I was cooking pasta, and it fogged up our windows completely, as it was -20C (-4F) outside. As I was coming back from the kitchen, I sat down and continued watching television.
Halfway through my pasta, my eyes looked at the windows. There was a fresh handprint that had been streaked across the window from INSIDE of the house with moisture dripping down. I walked closer since I was skeptical. My fears were realized. Someone or something had just put its hand across the window. I ran out of there in my shorts and T-shirt in the freezing cold to my friend's house.
17. A Series Of Unsettling Events
There was a series of occurrences at my parents' house a couple of years ago when I was home for Christmas break, and then it stopped. First, I was drying my hair upstairs in the bathroom. When I finished, I shut off the dryer. There's no way I could have accidentally left it on because the sound is not subtle. The only other person in the house was my mom, who was downstairs waiting for me to finish getting ready.
I went downstairs, and we heard a weird sound coming from upstairs. It was the hairdryer. This happened again later in the same week. Then, I was given an iHome for Christmas. Two nights after I got it, I still hadn't opened it up from its packaging. Suddenly, at around 3 AM, there was static blaring throughout the house. We didn't know where it was coming from.
Then, I realized it was the iHome. It hadn't gone off the previous night and wasn't even plugged in or anything. The final incident was my jewelry box. It was one of those that wind up and play music. I hadn't opened it in some time, which was evident from the dust outline of a candle I had on top of it. I was sleeping, and the box started blaring music in the middle of the night.
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18. I Can See The Light
My friend and I were walking home from another friend’s house who lived on a country road a few kilometers away. As we walked, we both noticed an orange light in a field a few hundred meters to our left. We both glanced at it but ignored it, putting it off as a tractor or farm vehicle of some sort. We kept walking when we both got a strong whiff of ozone.
We turned and looked at the field. We were just in time to see an image that will haunt me forever. An orange ball of light a few meters round rose and then rocketed into the air without any sound. We both stood still for a few seconds, then bolted down the road, sprinting until we both nearly collapsed. We ran most of the way back to his place and told his parents what we'd seen.
19. A Kiss From A Rose
My parents used to talk about the afterlife a lot. They once even talked about, "If I pass first, I will send you a sign so you know I'm okay." They even agreed on the sign and specified that said sign would have to occur at the same time every day to confirm and rule out randomness. My dad's sign to my mom was to be a single red rose.
Years later, my dad passed. After the wake, my mom was sitting on a bench outside, and a strong wind blew up, and a rose rolled across the lot and stopped at her feet. It was 4:30 PM. The next day, after the funeral, we were carrying the flower arrangements into my uncle's house and found a red rose in the driveway. None of the arrangements had roses. It was again 4:30 PM.
The next day, my mom went to the bank to make a deposit, and the cashier's name was Rose. She stamped the deposit slip, and it was 4:30 PM. Nothing happened for a few more days, but that next weekend, we went to a dance event, and some close friends of ours performed a tribute dance to my father. They presented my mother with a bouquet of assorted flowers but with one single red rose.
They did not know the story. The video was time-stamped again at 4:30 PM. Years later, my mother would still get the same random reminders, such as a license plate on a car with the reference “rose” or a photo she has of a rose will fall off the wall—all usually occurring at 4:30 PM.
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20. It Was Written In The Stars
One night, I was stargazing. I was looking at Orion and noticed a very bright "star" about 20 degrees up, due south. I thought it was Sirius, except that night, Sirius was more southwest and about 40 degrees up in the sky. So I was wondering what it was. It wasn't moving, so it wasn't the space station. It was WAY too late to be Venus, Jupiter was high in the sky, and Saturn was not in view.
Then I heard a noise and noticed a pure white coyote/wolf walking along the water's edge. It was odd to see a coyote in the city, but not beyond expectations. Since I was only about 20 feet from it, I decided that it was better if this animal knew I was there, so I made a bit of noise. Its response was chilling. It didn’t react at all. The thing didn't even look at me.
It continued along, and I noticed the "star" I had been watching go bright suddenly fade to black. There were no clouds in the sky. Perplexed, I turned my attention to the wolf, but it was gone. The time was 12:30 AM. The next morning I was awakened by a phone call. It was my best friend's dad. He was crying. My best friend, who lived in Norway, had passed from a heart condition in his sleep at 6:30 AM Oslo time. A
fter I hung up, I realized that he had passed at 12:30 AM my time—the exact time I had seen my star/wolf weirdness.
21. Help!
The area where I lived was once open prairie, and we had found Native American artifacts lying around the area. As time went on, strange things began to happen. The more I noticed them, the more frequent they would become. Footsteps began to be a very common sound in my house, especially at night. So, after some time, I came to the realization that my house was haunted.
One day my good friend and I were out in the sun and decided to retreat to my mom's house while she was away. We walked inside and headed straight for the basement, which was cooler. While walking down the stairs, I noticed that The Beatles' “Yellow Submarine” poster was tilted slightly to the left. I figured I must have bumped it. I fixed it, and we walked into the main room, where we had posters hanging everywhere.
All 10–15 pictures on the walls were each tilted slightly to the left, just as The Beatles one had been. Then, we noticed the storage room had its door cracked open. I walked over and saw a golden glow emanating out from it. There was a pull light located about 10 feet from the door that was turned on. So I turned it off. I called my mom and asked her about it.
She said she had no idea what I was talking about and hadn’t been in the basement for weeks before she left on her trip. I looked back into the storage room, which had a dirt floor, and there was a footprint. It was the most distorted and mangled footprint imaginable. My friend and I looked at one another, slammed the storage space door shut, locked it, and bolted out of the house as fast as we could.
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22. We Got Our Lines Crossed
When I was walking to work, I was talking on the phone to my friend using headphones. Suddenly, there was a clattering sound on the other end, like she had dropped her phone. I was expecting her to apologize for dropping the phone. But instead, I began living in a nightmare. First, there was this really deep guttural laugh.
Then howls and squeals and what sounded like a car crashing, tires squealing, then a man yelling, "Burn, burn, burn!" I freaked out and hung up. I called her back, and she was angry at me for not responding to her for about a minute. She could hear me, but I was hearing that awful sound.
23. When The Band Began To Play
My dad passed unexpectedly at about 1:30 AM. We left the hospital, went home, slept, and got up the next morning to make funeral arrangements. His co-workers brought his things from his office, including a digital picture frame, but they had forgotten the cord. My mom wanted it at the service, so I went to Best Buy to find one.
I went to checkout, and they asked if I wanted to use my rewards card. I said sure. When they scanned the card, the cashier asked if I was my dad because his name was on the account. Being a girl, I clearly didn't have a dude's name. I IMMEDIATELY burst into tears at the sound of my father’s name. The overhead music system was playing some terrible song, and when I started crying, the song stopped.
There was silence. Then it started playing a song by my favorite band, not from the beginning, but in the middle of the chorus. The week before my father passed, I had just introduced him to that same band. He had loved them and wanted more, but he got sick, and we never had a chance. It was the only thing that made me stop crying so I could get out of there. I felt like he reached out and comforted me.
24. I Got Targeted By A Bunch Of Elmos
I used to work a warehouse job at a Target. My store was a stone's throw from a couple of cemeteries, so superstitions were a big part of the culture there. The main warehouse was a series of narrow aisles with motion-activated lights, so if no one was working, most of them were dark. It was an after-school job, so I worked alone between 4 PM and 8 PM when the night crew showed up.
One night it was business as usual when out the corner of my eye, I saw the lights come on in the toy aisle. I went to investigate, and sitting on the ground was a Tickle-Me Elmo doll. I picked it up by the cardboard backing, and without touching the doll, it said, "Elmo wants to play! Do you want to play with me?" Suddenly, all the other Elmo dolls on the shelves in their cartons started laughing simultaneously. I calmly put it down and bolted for the door.
25. Some Extra Inhabitants
My house was built in 1889. It's inevitable that someone would have passed there. There were two that we knew of—one was a child that had an illness in 1944, the other was an older gentleman who passed of undetermined causes in 1979. The boy passed in my bedroom, the older man in the area that was once the enclosed front porch and was now my daughter's room. And everything was most certainly not ok.
Both their spirits inhabited the house. The little boy was mean. One day when my roommate was about three-quarters of the way down the stairs, a dresser that was sitting about a foot back from the top of the stairs came flying down the steps, almost hitting him. The old man hung around in our entryway. He would cover my daughter up when she was cold, and she claimed to have talked to him, but I have never actually seen him myself.
When we moved in, there was a satchel full of dried red peppers hanging in the entryway. I took it down and threw it away—it was put back up. This went on for literally months before I asked him to please stop putting them back up because they had a potpourri smell to them, and it was making my roommate really sick. He let me throw them away for good after that.
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26. We Thought We Were Going Crazy
When I was a student, the campus was located in what had been an old insane asylum. I was the student/professor team leader, and we usually had our meetings after hours. One time, we were sitting in what used to be the old employee cafeteria. A little while into the meeting, suddenly, all of us—8 people in total—turned simultaneously.
Everyone heard what seemed like a woman's scream coming from an open window towards the old women's wing. We all knew we were the only ones on the campus at the time. It was creepy.
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27. Ghost Tours
A few years back, my wife and I were taking a tour of the Waverly Hills Sanitorium in Louisville, Kentucky. As we started into the building, my wife kept swatting at the back of her head, saying, "Stop it," and giving me dirty looks. This happened twice in a row, but I ignored it, trying to listen to the tour guide tell us about the history of the place, the paranormal happenings, etc.
A few seconds later, the guide said, "By the way, girls, if you have long hair, don't be surprised if it gets tugged on. That seems to happen a lot, especially in the area that we're in." My wife turned to me pale as a sheet and said, "That really wasn't you pulling on my ponytail, was it?"
28. It Was The Drive Of His Life
My childhood friend and his dad were really close, and whenever his dad was home, they would play Gran Turismo on PlayStation. When we were five or six, his dad was killed in a car accident. After a few months of grieving, Michael and his mom went home and found that his TV had been turned on. But it only got creepier from there.
His PlayStation was also on, and Gran Turismo was running. However, he had left a different game in the PlayStation.
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29. Beam Me Out!
My dad bought a large old house. It was run-down, but his plan was to renovate it. His first job was to remove the chimney stack in the attic. One day, he was working up there alone, routing around in the roof beams, when he came across a piece of paper. He reached over to pick it up, but it was jammed behind one of the beams.
As he reached over, right in his ear, he heard the most horrific scream he had ever heard. Not in the room but right by his ear. He got out of there fast. Later on, he opened the paper. It was a "last wishes" note dated from the 1940s, from someone who took their own life.
30. It Was Almost The End Of The Road
Years ago, some friends and I went to investigate an area called “Demon Road” where there had been an accident and shootout that left two people dead. The car was never taken from the spot it crashed, and the angry spirits never left. We parked on the dirt road, and a truck pulled in from the other side. A woman got out.
She walked to my window and said, "You be careful." She got back in her truck and drove off. I got out, rubbed some dirt on my car in an attempt to reveal her fingerprints, and headed down Demon Road. About a quarter-mile down the road, things went from eerie to bone-chilling instantly. First, I felt a cold punch on my chest and froze in my tracks.
I tried to walk forward but again felt a press on my chest. I turned back to my car with a friend while everyone else continued to their vehicles. About 30 minutes later, the group came back and we started comparing pictures, audio, and EMF readings. One of the girls asked the guy next to her, "Why did you pull my hair?" He said he didn't.
About 10 seconds later, she screamed, "Something jerked my ponytail." We scrambled back to our cars and sped back to the city. When we got back to civilization, I got out and saw handprints and finger drawings all over my car. The most compelling were the two smeared handprints on my trunk, as if someone was hanging on, lost grip, and slid down the trunk.
The Roman numeral XII was also fingered into the dust. It was the scariest encounter of my life.
31. The Cat Was Out Of The Bag
When I was young and living in Salem, MA, my mom was reading me a bedtime story and trying to get me to fall asleep. Suddenly, I said to her, "He says you shouldn't be sad." My mom asked, "Who said that?" I replied, "The man with the cat on his arm." The reason my mom was sad was that my dad's brother had passed right before I was born.
My parents hadn’t talked to me about it when I was young. My uncle had a large traditional-style panther tattooed on his arm. I had never seen or heard of him before and hadn't seen any pictures of his tattoo.
32. A Hair Raising Experience
One day, my mom called me at work, saying, "Grandma's fallen in the bathtub. We're taking her to the hospital. We think she broke her hip." She went into seizures in the ambulance. It turns out she'd had a pulmonary embolism. I was in the waiting room with the rest of my family waiting for news when it felt like someone ran their hand across my face and hair from behind.
My bangs were physically pushed into my face from the force. Then it got much weirder. Not a minute later, a doctor came in to tell us she had passed. A couple of days later, nickels and dimes were turning up in random places. One nickel, one dime. Then it stopped for a few years. I had been going through some rough times, and again, I was finding nickels and dimes.
I would wake up with them in my bed, on the seat of my car, and in my jean pockets. My granddad got rid of all of my grandma's belongings. Everything was either donated or thrown out. I was disappointed because I had been obsessed with one of her rings, and she had promised it to me when I got older. I was at my boyfriend's house and put my coat on to go home.
I put my hand in my pocket to get my lip balm and felt something hard. When I pulled it out, it was my grandmother’s ring. I went home and asked my mom if she had put it in my pocket, and she said she hadn't seen the ring in years. She contacted my aunt, who has also been finding nickels and dimes, and said that her young son had just found her nana's opal ring.
33. Arachnophobia
Once, I was in bed playing Pokémon. A huge spider crawled out from under my bed and just sat in the middle of my room. I tried to catch it under a cup, failed miserably, and it ran. After hiding in various places, it eventually went under my wardrobe. My wardrobe had three sides that it stood on, and the front bit on the bottom had come off.
This meant that the spider could only come in and out of that one section. Being clever, I plugged the hole with a towel and went back to playing Pokémon. About 20 minutes later, a couple of small spiders crawled out from my bed and, with no hesitation, went directly towards the wardrobe. They went underneath the towel to the same place the big spider was trapped. I slept in the lounge that night.
34. Just Say No
When my son was younger, we went to a Boy Scouts meeting to try and get him signed up. He really wanted to join. We paid the fee, filled out the paperwork, and went home. I then fell into a deep and profound funk. I could not figure out what was wrong with me. The whole time I would not let my son go to the Boy Scout meetings, nor could I give a good reason. I just said no.
Finally, when asked for the umpteenth time about my son going to Boy Scouts, I said, “NO! Never, he can't join, forget the money, he just can't be a Boy Scout.” The feelings went away right after that, and I was my old self again. I never forgot how I felt during those three days. One year later, we found out the horrific truth.
The leader of what would have been his unit was arrested for harming kids in it.
35. Something Was Not Hospitable
I headed out with my mom and aunt to go look at colleges. We stayed on the second floor of a brand new hotel. I stayed up late the night we arrived, watching television and reading. I was slowly drifting off to sleep when I heard a light tap on the wall by my head. I rolled over, ignoring it. I heard it again. I switched the lamp on and looked around. There was nothing there.
I was by the wall to the outside of the building. I heard sporadic taps all over that one wall over the course of an hour. I managed to convince myself it was a plumbing or electrical issue of some sort and finally fell asleep. Around 2:30 AM, an especially loud tap woke me. Then, I began to hear rustling. It sounded like clothes lightly brushing against each other as somebody walks by at a distance.
The sound had no determinate source and was coupled with what sounded like feet brushing against the carpet and quiet breathing. I was wide-awake at that point. I covered my head with my pillow, wrapped myself tightly in my blanket, and hoped to make it to the morning. When I woke up, my mom and aunt asked me how I slept. I told them, “Meh.”
When my mom heard I didn't sleep well, her face went pale as a ghost's. "I know," she said. "That room was so haunted." When I asked what she meant, she told me she heard all of the same noises I did, including the tapping. My mom also heard a loud crackling noise, like somebody cracking his knuckles over her bed. The next day, I found out what actually happened.
She didn't want to scare me, so she didn't tell me the entire story until after we left. She heard everything I did, but she woke up around 4 AM. She saw someone standing in the corner. She asked, "Is that you? What's wrong, honey?" I didn't answer. I sleep-walked as a child, so she thought that might be the issue. She climbed out of bed and began walking toward me to see what was wrong.
She glanced towards the sofa I was sleeping on and saw me sound asleep, wrapped up in blankets, pillow pulled over my head. When she looked back to the corner, the dark figure was gone.
36. I Was Free Fallin’
When I was a kid, my parents took me to a Christian "family camp" every August. It was sort of a middle-class resort in the mountains, with Bible classes and hymn singing for the adults and more standard activities for the kids like crafts, swimming, and sports. My favorite thing to do there was always to lie in the grass of the sports field at night and watch the Leonids.
When I was 11 or 12, I was heading out to the field at around 11 PM. It was pitch black, just a faint glow of a distant streetlight to see by. I didn't have a flashlight, but I'd been there many times, so I didn't feel the need to have one. Instead of going around to the main entrance to the field, I decided to take a little shortcut by stepping between some bushes.
Suddenly the ground disappeared from beneath my feet, and I had the sensation of free-falling. My legs instinctively made a very rapid scissor motion, and my whole body sailed about six feet away. I felt a light splash of water across my face as I effortlessly landed on solid ground. I looked back and could see a rectangular pool of water.
I poked a tree branch in and found that the water was about 10 feet deep and covered in green moss. I had only a few drops of water on me anywhere. I can't explain how my instinctive muscle twitch propelled my whole body to such a distance without a solid surface to push off of. I briefly considered the possibility that an angel had pulled me out or that I had some kind of extraordinary ability that I hadn't been aware of previously.
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37. My Eternal Roommate
My grandmother passed when I was in high school. In the weeks following, I would have recurring dreams of visiting her house and seeing her there. I would know she was gone in the dreams, but she would be moving about the house regardless as normal. When my grandfather moved to assisted living, he left the same house to me.
The week before I moved in, I had dreams every night of walking through the house and knowing someone was in it with me but not being able to find them. As soon as I moved in, one of my cats started acting really weird. I noticed that he would be doing his regular cat stuff when suddenly something would catch his attention.
He would move to a random spot and would start going through all these behaviors as if a person was standing there. One night, not long after I moved in, I was sitting in the living room watching a movie. The house was empty except for me, but I started to have a feeling as if someone was there watching the film with me. This happened multiple times that evening.
It got so unnerving that I stopped the movie and called my mom to chat. It ended up making it even worse. During the conversation, she was in the middle of telling me something when she paused. There was silence on her end for a couple of moments, and then she asked, "Are you with a friend?" I said, "No, why?" She said, "Oh, my mistake. It sounded like someone was there talking to you." I have no doubt I live with my deceased grandmother.
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38. The Night House
When I was five and I would go to sleep, I would have this one recurring dream. It happened every night while we stayed in that house and lasted until we moved. I would dream that I would wake up in the middle of the night and be in my living room with my dad and mom beside me. I would try to wake them up, but they wouldn't budge.
I would get thirsty, so I would go to the kitchen to grab a drink, but I'd hear a loud bang in our washroom. At this point, it got terrifying. I would go to investigate, and as I would walk down the narrow hallway which led to the washroom, a dark figure would jump out and grab me by my shoulders and would say, "Hello Aaron, you'll be coming with me tonight."
He was jet black with white teeth in contrast and red eyes. I could never make out his body. I got so scared as I'd have this dream every night and would wake up sweating profusely, so I told my parents. My dad agreed to sleep with me in the living room on the floor to prove to me it was just a nightmare. This backfired in an utterly horrible way.
I felt more at ease, but when my dad slept with me, I noticed that he was sweating badly. I would try to wake him up but to no avail. When my dad woke up, he said he had the most frightful dreams with that black thing. I never dreamt about him again after we left that house.
39. Lights Out!
I grew up in a house that was built in 1880. There was SOMETHING going on in that house. I once walked up to the front door and saw the silhouette of a person walking through the front room into the bay window. I went in and started talking to who I THOUGHT was my mother. No one was there. This happened often.
When I was about 16 and at home by myself, I went upstairs to get something out of my room and saw the light on in one of the bedrooms. I shut it off on my way back down. An hour or so later, I came up, and it was on again. Irritated, I shut it off. The switch was again in the "up" position. At that point, I was annoyed. I knew the house was odd.
I slammed the door open, slammed the light switch down, and said into the empty room, "Quit turning the light on!" It didn't come on again.
40. It Was A Wild One
A few years ago, I started to find green #4 Uno cards everywhere—in the silverware drawer, under folded laundry, in a storage box in the closet, tucked in my shoes—just everywhere. Knowing the pranks my husband would pull, I just assumed it was him being silly. I would just take them and throw them away. I would find at least one a day.
I finally broke down and asked my husband about the Uno cards. His reply stunned me. He looked at me confused and said, "I thought you were doing it. I keep finding them everywhere." So we collected them. They were never a different color or different number. This went on for nearly a year, and then, suddenly, it stopped.
We never got the feeling the house was haunted or anything, but to this day we cannot explain what was with the cards. To make matters even more confusing, it started right when I found out I was pregnant and ended right after I gave birth.
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41. This Left Everyone Wired
Over Christmas, my entire extended family was watching old home movies my brother converted to DVD. There was footage of three family members who had passed in the videos. During a part that had my deceased grandmother in it, a speaker that had the wire clamped on the back of my brother's entertainment stand became unplugged and fell to the floor. Everyone started yelling and running around the house while our grandfather prayed.
42. Coming Home
One day, I took a nap while waiting for my fiancé to get home. I heard him come in the door and say, "I’m home, sweetie!" However, I couldn't find him when I got up. That wasn't even the strangest part. I noticed that both dogs were hiding under the futon, super upset and shaking. I sent him texts and called him but got no answer.
Later that night, I found out he was in an accident and drowned in his car at 1:42 PM. I had sent him the text asking if he was home at 1:46 PM, which means I dreamt of him coming home at almost the exact minute he passed.
43. The Door Was Always Open
When I was about five, my mother had put a bit of rope around the knob of my room's door and tied it to the wall with the door open. The door was faulty and could get stuck if closed, so she feared I would shut it and get trapped in my room. During a family dinner, the entire family was interrupted by loud Vivaldi music and a soft slam from upstairs.
It was Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." My dad walked upstairs and came back down immediately with a pale face. The rope had been ripped off, and my door had been shut, as my CD player was playing the Vivaldi from a disc. To this day, I hear that song and start to get uncomfortable.
44. Boulderama
When I was 20, I was camping with a friend in a little valley in the hills behind Santa Barbara. It was a nice evening in March, and technically we weren’t supposed to be there because the campground wasn’t open until May, but there we were. We had dinner and had a nice campfire going, and all was quiet. Then, out of nowhere, we heard a commotion on the top of a ridge.
It was like someone running around through the dried leaves and brush. We didn’t think anything of it at first, but then the noise stopped. It was starting to get a little creepy. But we hadn't seen anything yet. Then, this thing started running down the ridge, not straight down, but in long zigzags, toward our spot in the little valley.
Then it stopped again for about another half hour. Suddenly, we heard something coming straight toward us FAST and out of the dark came a giant BOULDER rolling into our camp. It went straight into the fire, sending burning wood and hot coals everywhere! We got out of there as fast as possible and never looked back.
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45. Same Time Next Year
When I was 12, my grandfather passed on February 5th, 2016, at 4:14 AM. On that very day, I woke up at 4:14 AM. I remember looking at the time on my phone and thinking, what am I doing up this early? I then found out later he had passed then. The following year on February 5th, I woke up again for no reason at 4:14 AM. It has been a thing that has happened ever since. Every February 5th, I wake up at 4:14 AM.
46. The Sound Of Music
When I was a teen, there was a house down a local secluded road that we called the "Amy House." As the story went, the girl was adopted by a family that harmed her and locked her up in a cage. Then she lost her life due to severe neglect. The home had been abandoned as long as I had lived there and wasn't in great condition.
It was rumored that she haunted the house. So, one night, my sister and I decided to go up there and check it out in the middle of the night. The road was in the middle of a wooded area. We parked about a quarter-mile from where the house was. We got to the house, and it was eerie. There was old furniture still inside, eaten by bugs.
After a while of nothing creepy happening, we decided to make our way back to the car. As we were walking on the road with no street lights and just a phone flashlight, we started to hear what sounded like music. It almost sounded like a lullaby song. We both looked at each other. Then it got louder. It was coming from the trees across the street from the house. This house was the only one for a mile on that road. We got so freaked out and booked it to the car.
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47. I Alley-Ooped Outta There
I went to boarding school for six years. It was in the middle of a one-stoplight town and on a hill 800 feet up. The school used to be an old monastery that was hundreds of years old and huge. Every student had a job that they had to do either at night or in the morning to help take care of the school. I used to be in charge of cleaning the gymnasium at night.
One night, I was there by myself, getting ready to start sweeping the gym. The gym had two floors to it. The upstairs part was the weight lifting area, and you could see it fully from the bottom part of the gym where the basketball court was. As I stepped into the gym, one of the basketballs started rolling a bit. I looked around to see if any doors were open, and none were.
I chalked it up to randomness, but then I saw that it was continuing to roll. As I watched it, it made a full circle around the entire gym and stopped right next to my feet. I was a bit scared at that point but figured it was nothing. I heard a creaking coming from the second floor and looked up. There was a girl there, just staring right at me.
As soon as I made direct eye contact with her, she bolted to the stairs that would take her to me. She let out a scream that I can’t describe. I was terrified and frozen in place. Thankfully, she didn't come to me but took a left and bolted through the main doors of the gym instead. They didn't open; she just went right through them. I got out of there.
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48. Mixed Signals
We had a two-month-old newborn sleeping in the room next door. I had a video monitor on my bedside table so that my wife and I could easily check on him. One day, I woke up in the middle of the night and clicked the button that turned on the video image. When I registered what I was seeing, my heart stopped. My baby boy was gone.
I froze and looked over. My wife was sleeping next to me. I turned up the volume on the baby monitor and heard another woman's voice singing a lullaby in a very soft, gentle, and melodic voice. I finally jumped up, ran through the hallway, and burst into my boy's room. He was sound asleep in his crib. There was no woman and no singing.
It turned out the monitor was picking up my next-door neighbors' monitor. They had just bought the video monitor for their newborn on our recommendation. I've never experienced anything scarier.
49. Out Of The Attic
I was at a friend's house when I passed out on the couch. I woke up a bit later and realized it was time for me to go. I got up and noticed my buddy's light on in his room, but the door was shut. I walked by the door and told him I was leaving, and he said, "YUP, SEE YA!" I went to the fridge to grab my drink, walked back by his room, and said, "Later, dude."
He replied, "YUP" again. But something didn't seem right. It didn't sound quite like him, so I opened the door. I couldn't believe my eyes. There was no one there. In fact, there was no one in the house. I went outside, and his truck was gone. I freaked out. I called his cell, and he had left to go to McDonald's 15 minutes prior. I bolted outside and waited for him to get home.
He told me the kid that used to live there years ago hung himself in the attic, and ever since he lived there, he has noticed strange things and voices. After that, just about anyone who would go over there had a weird experience. My buddy dealt with it for years. When it gets weird, he just yells out, "LEAVE ME ALONE," and the weird vibes stop for a bit. But they always come back.
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50. What’s Cooking?
We lived about a hundred yards from the local church, which had a bell tower. Every year in winter, the church bells would chime six single times at 6 PM. When this happened, a smell would take over my home for around 30 seconds. I can't quite describe it, but it was a mixture of sweet and sour, dark and cold, wet and dry. Eventually, I had to find out what it was about.
We did a lot of research on the house but couldn't find anything interesting. We spoke to our landlord, who said he'd never noticed anything, although he never actually lived in the house. We let it drop when we couldn't find anything out. It became part of our daily routine. Sometime later, our neighbor passed. His daughter was clearing his house, and I got chatting with her. That was when it all came out.
She explained that the past tenant in MY house was a widower, the same as her father. He lived away with his son in the summer but would spend winters at home. Every day at 6 PM, when the church bell rang, the two of them would cook dinner together. They were a bit crazy with their recipes and ended up making all sorts of concoctions, and you could smell them cooking up the street.
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