Strange creatures, creepy noises, and unexplainable events. Stories like these can make the hair stand straight up on your arm! These Redditors have been kept up at night by experiences like these…that they still can’t figure out to this day.
1. The Calling Card
My grandparents lived in a farmhouse in rural Canada. It wasn’t an old farmhouse at all, probably built in like the 1940s or 50s. It was a split level with an unfinished basement with a large cast iron wood furnace. To allow heat to rise, there was a large cut-out in the living room floor that was covered with a grate that you could see through into the basement.
One day, my grandpa is sitting in the living room alone when he hears a loud crash from the basement. He heads down and finds that the heavy cast-iron tools for the furnace had tipped over and were scattered all over the ground. These things probably weighed like 50lbs total for the complete set and would’ve been hard to knock over without some force.
When he was kneeling down to pick them up and put them back on their stand, he spots something under the furnace that makes his blood run cold. It’s a single white rose. We all had weird experiences in that house that ranged from cold spots to large floating green masses. There was a bedroom that none of the children wanted to sleep in because of just the “vibe” of the room and the closet being specifically very unnerving.
2. My Best Friend’s Scarf
My neighbor's daughter is four and has an invisible friend. Her parents are told it's normal and to play along. The little girl sometimes brings her mom her friend's scarf to wash with the white laundry. Her hands are empty, but she's holding up the pretend "scarf". Mom plays along, and it happens every other month for a few months. The girl can be found in her room talking to her "friend". She calls him Charlie.
Then the mom's father passes. They have tons of family and friends in town, decide to have a reception at their house. Mom goes into the attic to get all the old pictures of her dad. Sets them up all around the house. During the party, the little girl comes out of her room. As she's walking past a table she stops and says, mommy...Why do you have a picture of Charlie?
Mom says those pictures aren't Charlie, that's my Dad. This particular table was full of pictures of her father during his time in the service. The little girl says no, that's Charlie, pointing to one specific photo at the back of the table. Mom picks up the picture and looks at the back. It's not her father. It's her grandfather. His middle name is Charles.
And it's one of those pics where he's standing on the ladder of his fighter plane. Wearing a white scarf. Mom swears the box was buried in the attic, undisturbed, and that the little girl was never up there alone. There's no way she could have seen that pic.
3. The Land’s Warning
My family camp has been in my family for generations, it’s on old Native American land with a burial site. We have found many things on the land from our ancestors. We have the leader of the tribe that will ride his horse across the top of our sand pit and watch over us. The best thing that ever happened to us was one night as we were all asleep in our campers.
Something came to every camper and ran around them knocking on them, when we all came outside, we realized the river was flooding really bad and we had to hightail it out of there. The next day after the rain stopped, we went back to find our little bridge had floated downstream. We had to get some paddle boats from my aunt’s house to cross the river, and once we got back to camp, we saw that it was all flooded up to the doors of the campers.
If we had stayed there all night we would have been stuck there and our vehicles could have been ruined, but luckily something that night warned us ahead of time.
4. Grandfather’s Ghost
After my father passed, I went to live with my friend and his mom for a little while. Things with my mom were very strained and I didn’t want to stay at my friend’s house initially. But they didn’t want me alone during that time. Staying at anyone’s house always made me feel uneasy for some reason. On my first night there, early in the morning, I woke up to the sound of my bedroom door opening.
A gentleman wearing a red flannel and bib denim overalls came into my room holding a bag of tools. He turned the light on, looked at me, and walked through another doorway to the utility room. Soon after, I fell asleep again. But when I woke up this time, the room was dark. Everything was the same when I went to sleep the night previously.
Figuring I imagined the whole thing, I went upstairs for coffee and asked my friend's mom if the guy with the overalls is still here. With a weird look, she informed me that it’s been her and I in the house all night. At this point, I’m VERY confused. So, I explain detail in detail about what the man looked like. Height, weight, clothes, facial hair. Everything.
She turns pale white, bolts to her room, and retrieves a photo. When she shows me the photo, It was the man I saw in the basement that morning. Even wearing the same clothes. She tells me that he died 30 years ago. It was her grandpa who owned the property previously. He had taken his own life to save the farm when he invested his money into horses instead of machines and his investment flopped.
It was all to keep the bank from taking the farm. On a stormy night, he took a lightning rod into the middle of a pond and nature took his life when lightning struck the rod. Because of this, life insurance paid out and kept the house from being foreclosed on.
5. Grandma’s Support
In my early 20s, I went through a lot. I lost my career due to the housing collapse. I lost my college free ride. My wife left me because "she never loved me". It was a tough time, and I was stuck at a job I hated living alone. My family isn’t the super encouraging type, and we don’t do emotions. The only person growing up that ever told me what I needed to hear was my grandmother who passed when I was 14.
So, one night I’m in my apartment drinking, and I fall asleep. The next thing I know, everything is white, and I see my grandmother. She says, "It will be ok. I know you will make it". I woke up screaming with tears running down my face. I don’t remember my dreams usually, but this is vivid. Proud to say 15 years later I’m a proud father with a career, wife, and house. My grandmother was right as always.
6. A Bathroom Break!
This happened a couple of years ago in my old house. We had friend friends over for a little BBQ and some drinks. For context, it was a two-story house with a full room in the basement and two upstairs. It was a Friday, and I happened to be more tired than usual, so I went to bed before everyone had left. I lived with two roommates at the time, and we had four friends over.
I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom right outside my room, but I noticed the light was on inside. However, my half-asleep self just opened the door anyways and someone was there sitting on the toilet looking at me, I didn’t stare as I was still half asleep, so I mumbled an apology and went to bed again.
Here's the funny thing though, the next morning I went to apologize to whoever it was. My roommate’s reaction was chilling. He said no one was home for the night, they had gone out and only came back around 5, and that incident happened around 3am or so. To this day, I don’t know who or what I saw but it was very weird, and it still haunts me sometimes when I think about it.
7. The Girl On The Top Bunk
My dad had stuff going on in his house, so much that almost every kid who would come in, myself, my sisters, my brother, and my dad have all had multiple experiences in there. I remember one time I was going upstairs to have a shower. The bathroom was the end of the hallway and on the way to it, I had to pass by the room I shared with my sisters when I was over for the weekends.
As I passed by, I saw something sit up on the bottom bunk from the corner of my eye. This thing looked like a little girl. She had pale skin, short black hair that was cut in a bob style with straight bangs covering her forehead, and her eyes were these massive circles with large black dots in the center for pupils. She was facing sideways, so her right shoulder was facing me when she turned her head, and the other half of her body looked like it was under the blankets.
I remember getting such an intense feeling of fear that I went back downstairs and refused to go upstairs at all or even sleep in the house. My dad had to set up the camping tent in the backyard for the rest of the weekend. If this occurrence had been nothing, just seeing things that weren't there, I feel like I shouldn't still remember it in perfect detail at the age I am now
8. The Exploding Glasses
In Snohomish, WA, there’s a bar called the Oxford. It has a violent history as there have been at least two or three deadly incidents there. My parents have gone a few times to listen to live bands and heard of women being locked in the bathroom and plates shattering in the kitchen when no one was around. One night my dad had a glass of red wine and headed downstairs to the basement, where there were pool tables and another bar.
He says that the cup part of his glass exploded in his hand, there was a pop sound—but that’s not the weirdest part. He looked down and he only had the glass stem in his hand and there was no red liquid or glass on or around him. In a bit of a daze, he went to the bartender, handed her the stem, and explained what happened and she replied, “No problem, that kind of stuff happens all the time”. And handed him a new glass.
9. Slipping Between The Servers
At one of my previous SysAdmin jobs, we were closing down one of our smaller data centers as it was being consolidated into one of our larger ones, but we still had to have at least one person there in case of server issues that had to be dealt with on site. We rotated each week on which one of us would do the overnights there.
The place was reportedly haunted, by what I have no idea, just heard rumors from other coworkers when I hired in. So, imagine a relatively large open office space that is completely void of all the cubicles, desks, etc. that are normally there, with just one desk and a few random cables hanging from the ceiling. Also, just the lights over my desk were working and bleeding out into my surroundings by about three feet.
That was where I was for the week. I remember sitting there and just hearing ambient noise from the far-off server room working on a server for a customer of ours and seeing something dart across the room in my peripheral vision. I looked up and didn’t see anything, so figured my eyes were tired from the screen light and making me see like those floaties when your eyes close too tightly.
I went back to work and then about five minutes later, I saw it again, although this time I heard the bathroom door open and shut. I thought maybe one of my coworkers was here for a server fix, so I got up and went to greet them and wait for them. About 10 minutes pass and no one comes outta the bathroom. I go in to make sure they’re not passed out or hurt, but lo and behold, empty bathroom.
Now I’m creeped out. I leave the bathroom and this time, see the shadow person thing on the other side of the room dart across again, but looking at it straight on and not from my peripheral vision. Quickly went over and threw the rest of the lights on and started searching the whole office and server room for a co-worker as I was 100% sure was messing with me.
I never found anyone. The rest of the night was uneventful, as well as the rest of the week, minus me sitting terrified at my desk waiting for something else to happen.
10. Uncle’s Return
On the weekend before leaving for Navy boot camp, my friend left my family's house in the middle of the night to crash at home, forgetting his keys in the process. After knocking a few minutes in an attempt to wake his dad, he tried the basement window with no luck. Eventually, he walked back to my house, but we were all asleep.
After another trek back to his family’s, and a few minutes of pounding on the door, he still had no luck. Frustrated, he sat on the porch and had a smoke. Then, heard the faint sound of the lock click. He opened the door to see what he thought was his dad walk down the hall and turn left into the kitchen. He walked into the kitchen seconds later to apologize for waking him up...
It was empty. This is a small townhouse that ends in the kitchen. There is nowhere to go. He sprinted up the stairs and pounded on his dad's locked bedroom door. Dad eventually woke up clearly confused, half asleep, in his underwear... After the shock started to wear off, they made a disturbing realization. It was the exact year anniversary of his Uncle's passing.
The person he saw looked like his dad and was fully clothed in jeans and a white polo with a blue collar. Apparently, his uncle wore this type of outfit everyday.
11. The Secrets Of The Art
I have extremely vivid memories of me and my ex doing a bunch of art classes for fun as a couples thing. My ex continued to do landscapes, and she was really good at it. I even remember going to multiple local arts and crafts stores to buy painting supplies. We broke up, and I remember keeping six of the paintings wrapped up.
I even remember multiple times seeing the paintings when going through my storage locker and kept debating to throw them out. We briefly got back together a few years later. I off-handedly mentioned I still had her art, and she was extremely confused. She claimed we never ever took an art class together, and she has never painted in her life beyond middle school.
She also said I never painted anything outside of my wargaming stuff. This caused a huge rift between us. I thought I was right, and she thought she was right. I got so frustrated that we ended up driving out to the storage locker. All of the canvases were blank, and I could not find any of the shared painting supplies that I swear was in a big red plastic container right by the paintings.
She honestly thought I was crazy, and I doubted my memory. The relationship ended up falling apart pretty quickly not long after that and went no contact. Then a few months later, when I went to grab camping supplies from my storage locker, all six paintings were there, no blank canvases to be found along with the red plastic storage container full of our art supplies, including some printouts with both our names from the art class.
I ended up tossing it mostly because I was done with the idea of having a relationship with her and how spooked I was at that point. I am still not really sure what happened there.
12. The Haunted Hotel
I worked in a hotel that was about 100 years old at the time. I never saw anything that crazy myself, but I'd go into the basement every hour or so and doors would be shut with the lights out one hour and open with the lights on the next. I was the only person in the building with keys to any of those doors. My brother was working there with me.
He was coming out of the walk-in and reaching for the lock when he heard a voice from inside say "No! Don't”! He freaked out, threw the lock, and immediately heard something pounding on the door from the inside. It scared the heck out of him and shook his entire belief system. He quit within the week and refuses to talk about it almost ten years later.
There were a lot of stories from that place, corroborated by lots of people. Like I said, I never saw anything that crazy myself, but I suspect that it's because I wanted to see it.
13. Missing In The Woods
When I was about 11 at summer camp, we went on an overnight camping trip in the woods. In the middle of the night, nature called, and I went outside. There, I saw an older teen in a varsity jacket standing outside taking a smoke. I asked him where was a "good place to go" and he smiled at me. I turned away for a second and when I looked back, he was gone.
The next morning, I asked my counsel who the guy was and when I described him, he turned white. He said that in the 50s, a bunch of local kids had gone into the woods and were murdered. I laughed it off, thinking he was just trying to scare me. Several years later, when the internet was a thing, I ended up remembering the incident one day and searching it out.
Turns out my counselor was 100% correct, and the hairs on my body stood on end. Ever since then, I've been convinced there are such things as ghosts.
14. The Woman In The Basement
When I was 17, I started to see a woman out of the corner of my eye, and it started happening more frequently. I should note that I had lived in that house since I was five and in particular, I always felt something in the basement and would absolutely bolt up the stairs every time I was leaving it. I started seeing her more and more frequently but any time I turned to get a good look she was gone.
Then, one random night I was sitting on the couch long after everyone had gone to bed and I saw her again—but this time was different. She started chasing me and I bolted up to the second floor where my bedroom was. I had to sleep with every light in my room on that night and slept completely underneath the covers because I just knew that whatever was in the basement was now under my bed.
I slept with the lights on every night for a week because I was convinced if I didn’t it would hurt me. The paranoia and lights on for days happened a few more times over the years but only ever in that house and nowhere else. It’s been probably two years since I’ve had any visions like that though. But I’ve never seen a figure as clearly as I did then.
15. I’ll Always Be With You
My wife and I had a miscarriage about 7 years ago. We now have a son and daughter now. One night this past winter, I’m sleeping and wake up with the feeling I’m being watched. I lift my head, look toward our bedroom door, and see who I think is my daughter standing in our doorway. I call her name and ask if she’s ok, but no response.
I get up and walk over to check on her and make sure she’s not sleepwalking or something, and the shape of her disappears. Thoroughly confused, I go to her room, pop the door open a crack and see she’s sleeping. I close her door, and head back to bed, only to see the shadow girl on the other side of the bed, where I sleep.
I walk over to that side, and she disappears again. At this point, I go into the bathroom, verify that I am in fact awake, and go back to my bed. Nothing else happened that night. On several other occasions since then, I’ll see this shadow figure slightly bigger than my daughter in our bedroom at night. Sometimes I’ll think it’s our daughter crawling into bed with us, only to ask my wife in the morning and she’d say “no, she wasn’t in here last night”.
Sometimes I’ll see her in the doorway, or standing by our bed, or hanging out in bed with us. I don’t believe in ghosts and the usual paranormal stuff, but I have no explanation for our occasional shadow visitor other than perhaps it’s the spirit of our daughter that we miscarried. At first, I found these visits unnerving, but now I’ve just come to accept them.
16. Breaking My Routine
When I was in high school, I used to get home earlier than everyone, and I would stay alone for at least an hour. I don't remember exactly why, maybe because we didn't want our dog sleeping on the beds, but in the morning before we all left the house, we closed all the bedroom doors. So, my daily routine was: get home, greet my dog, leave my stuff in the living room and open all the doors.
I wasn’t afraid of being home alone, we lived in that house for 10 years and I never heard or saw spooky things. This day was the same. I go and open all the doors, and when I'm about to grab the doorknob of my parents’ bedroom, I hear a woman screaming NOOOOOO followed by a BANG, like if someone just punched the door from the other side.
Of course, I got really scared, but I kept telling myself that it might've been the wind, even though the punch on the door felt physical. When we moved out of the house many years later, my mom told me that on the first nights in that house, when everyone was asleep, she would feel someone sitting on the edge of the bed.
17. The Campground Ghoul
I was working at a summer camp in the PNW one year. On the second or third night there, I was jogging alone back from the staff campfire to the cabin, where the campers and my co-counselor slept. I'm walking in this big grassy throughway that has some taller reeds separating it from a shore of the Puget Sound.
It's probably around 2 am, with a full moon. As I'm jogging, I see this figure in the reeds—and my heart stops in my chest. It's wearing a white gown, and it has no face, just hair. I only notice it because, as I approached it, it stood up from a crouched position, backed up a few steps, then crouched down again, but I could still see it there, like it was waiting.
Its movements told me that it was not human. My knees gave out, and I felt flooded with fear as I collapsed. And then it got worse. I tried to run back to my cabin, but my legs would. not. work. I crawled and scrambled there on all fours. I tried to scream but no sound came out. Just gasping. I finally got to my cabin and fumbled with the doorknob for what felt like a minute before I could open it.
I closed the door and stood there waiting for a while inside. I didn't hear anything, but I barely slept. At some point later that night I remember laughing, thinking "Oh, it was just one of the campers peeing”! I was hysterically laughing at myself for like twenty minutes, then fell asleep. The next morning though, I realize that no campers returned to the cabin that could have potentially been out there peeing that night.
I asked all of them, and all of them said they hadn't gone out to pee the previous night. I'll add that this was a camp that was overtly for nonreligious, skeptically minded staff and campers, of which I was and still largely am, but I have no explanation for what I saw that night. It still scares the heck out of me just typing this.
18. Remembering The Chapel
When my youngest son was about three years old, we were eating out in town, and he got a bit restless. I decided to take him for a walk and as I held a door open, he got away from me and made a break for it. He bolted into an adjacent site that had a ruined chapel and almshouses with info boards for tourists. I found him staring up at the chapel ruins.
I asked him: “What are you doing, mate”? I ask. His reply: “A long time ago I got married here”. “What”? “A long time ago…” Then a switch flicked, and he was a three-year-old with energy to burn and was off running again. That shook me to my core.
19. Shining Headlights
Several years ago, some friends and I were driving through one of the millions of small towns around the North and South Carolina border in the mountains. It was well after midnight. My friend looks behind us and sees a pair of headlights coming up on us. Quickly. They were easily going 60-70 MPH when the limit was only 25 or so.
They showed no signs of stopping so my friend pulls over to let the car pass. And what passes us is two lights. Just lights. Far too bright to be a firefly or any luminescent creature. As bright as headlights, if not brighter. Not attached to anything. No car, nothing. Just two lights booking it down the road.
20. The Haunted Book
I was reading a library book before bed one night when I was a teenager. It was something really boring I had checked out for a history project for school, and I couldn't keep my eyes open. I fell asleep with it on my bed. I had like a sleep paralysis event happen—and it was utterly terrifying. I watched this shadowy figure of a man walk into my room, look around, pick up a few knick-knacks and put them back down.
It was so terrifying; my entire body was screaming to move but I couldn't—not even my fingers. I just wanted to scream for help, but nothing happened, no matter how desperately I tried. I finally got enough courage to look at the man, but he wouldn't come into focus for some reason. He was just a shadow, like he wasn't fully there.
He came up to the side of my bed and stood over me, looking down at me for what felt like forever. I was so terrified, but I couldn't move a muscle. Then he reached down, grabbed my library book, and turned, walking out of my room. I never found that library book, ever, after tearing apart my room and my house. My mom said it was a coping dream for losing the book.
However, I distinctly remember falling asleep reading it that night and I even sent a text to my boyfriend that night saying that I wished I had chosen a different book because this one was putting me to sleep. I had to pay a fine and everything!
21. A Radio Signal
My father died from cancer when I was a kid. The night he went, at roughly the same time around 4 am, the radio in my room turned itself on waking me up. It was tuned to static, but I was sure I had been listening to it the previous day. Granted this happened like 20 years ago. I would think it’s just a scrambled memory, but my mother remembers this too. She thinks that’s how he said goodbye. By scaring the heck out of me one last time.
22. The Thing In The Attic
I was babysitting two younger cousins at their home, which was about a hundred years old and situated next to a graveyard. There wasn't necessarily a bad feeling in the house whenever we were there, but it was a bit creepy at night looking out at the headstones. I was helping the girls brush their teeth and whatnot before bed, and I headed downstairs after I had said goodnight.
I sat down and almost immediately I heard a commotion of doors, not slamming, but shutting hard, and the girls talking loudly. When I got upstairs, they were at the end of the hallway, around a corner, and they were pushing their hands against the door to the attic, as if trying to keep someone or something from coming through.
"We gotta shut it! Help us shut it”!, they half-shouted, and half-whispered. I'm already on edge because of the house and the stories my aunt and uncle had shared with us regarding paranormal activity. Then, when I put my hand up against the old, heavy attic door, what I felt was seriously disturbing. I felt something pushing back from the other side!
I paused for a moment in shock, then quickly and forcefully slammed it shut. Thank goodness. The girls thanked me, as if this were like a normal bedtime thing for them and went back to their rooms to go to sleep. I noped the heck out back downstairs. My aunt and uncle returned later that evening and I mentioned it to my uncle as he drove me home.
He just kinda chuckled and said something to the effect of "Yeah, sounds about right”.
23. The Dream Terrors
I had once had a dream I had forgotten to wear my uniform to school. It was normal at first, with it ending with me realizing that I had forgotten it. I only remember one of my friends saying, “You silly goose you must be dreaming”. I then woke up and thought I was awake. I saw my mother with something seriously wrong with her face, like she was a Demogorgon.
I kept waking up, but still being in a dream, and every time I would go into another dream and have a Demogorgon-like head on one member of my family’s faces, and they would all say, “You silly goose, you must be dreaming”. I then wake up and pinch myself to see if I wasn’t dreaming. I then get ready for school…and forget to wear my uniform.
I then get sent to the office, and there one of my friends is sitting there with a Demogorgon shirt and he says to me: ”You silly goose you must be dreaming”. I couldn’t sleep that night, thinking maybe I was still in the dream.
24. The Man In The Night
I must have been like nine or ten. I was in my village, with just two houses: my grandfather's and his brother's. All our families were there. So basically, we kids decided that we wanted to have a sleepover. There were two separate places to stay, one was like a fairly open two-story hut, and one traditional Nepali house.
We being stubborn kids, wanted the hut because it was more open. I woke up around 2 AM because I had to pee. I was too scared to get down and go to the toilet, so I decided to pee from above the hut. While up there, I see an old man with a large build wearing a black coat, waving his hand, and walking towards me. He had a big hat, so I couldn't see his face.
It was so scary that I ran back to bed without peeing. I couldn't even speak or scream. I just got to my bed curled up, facing towards the wall, not being able to speak, scared out of my mind. I somehow fell asleep and didn't dare to go the same place. The day after that, I mustered up the courage to go up there with my friends.
Turns out, the figure was a banana leaf, which was shaped and would move like a walking person would when the wind hits it. I still refused to go there at night, even after knowing it was not a person, because it was so scary to me.
25. A Voice From Afar
I once was sleeping at an airport, and I was really scared and paranoid about someone attacking me in my sleep so I would wake up every so often in a panic. In the midst of one of those violent awakenings, I shout, "Daddy”! and then immediately go back to sleep. In the middle of sleeping, I saw a text from my dad but didn't think much of it.
I instead went back for round 20 of sleep. When I was situated the next day, I called him back and what he told me still sends shivers down my spine. He said that he heard me yell his name like I was in his living room, and he went to check for me. When he said that, I remembered how calm I felt after calling for him. There is a reason this guy is my emergency contact on every form.
26. What Comes Out At Night?
So back in the early 2000s right up near McCall, my buddy Tyler and I were up in the mountains pretty far from any sort of actual civilization. We were up camping with my family, and I brought him along. After about two or three days, we had the bright idea to go out on a night exploration. Bad idea. We didn’t tell my parents and just left at about 2:00 in the morning.
We were probably about 20-30 minutes into our so-called “night exploration” and we were decently far from camp. Around this time, I started to get an uneasy feeling. I told Tyler that we should probably head back because it was pretty cold, and I didn’t want to admit I was freaking out. He insisted that we go on and that I should stop being a baby. I agreed.
After about 10 more minutes into our night exploration, I shined my light into a little clearing of the trees. I thought I saw a tall dark figure with exceedingly long lanky legs, a strangely shaped body, and no arms. I wasn’t too sure what it was and told Tyler we should go a little closer. We did and found this large 12-ish-foot-tall thing staring right at us both from about 20 feet away.
When I tell you I have never run faster in my life I mean it. And after the run back to camp my legs were torn apart and bloodied by all the branches and whatnot. We had to sleep in my parents' tent the rest of the trip.
27. Eyes… Watching…
I was sleeping in my own room and woke up in the middle of the night for no reason—until I realized someone was standing next to my bed. It was dark, so I only saw a figure, but once my eyes got used to the darkness, I saw it was a human figure wearing a white dress. Its head was bending down towards me a little, as if it was watching me sleep.
I couldn't see its face. I thought it was my little sister, so I asked, "What are you doing in my room”? There was no answer. I realized it couldn't be my sister as it looked to be a lot taller than her, so I carefully raised my leg to kind of get the feeling If it was a real person. My foot didn't hit anything and then the figure slowly disappeared.
After that, I panicked and hit the lights on and couldn't sleep at all that night. It was so weird, and I have no idea what that was. This happened over eight years ago, and I still think about it from time to time.
28. Singing Of The Songbirds
When I was in college, I had a dream something was wrong with my great-grandmother. I called my mother the next day to see if she was okay. She said everything was fine. Two weeks later, we found out she had stage four lung cancer. A few months later she was placed in hospice and went to the hospital. She was out of it and unable to talk, but when I said goodbye and I loved her, she said “I love you too”.
The following morning, I got a phone call from my mother saying she passed. After we got off the phone, I heard a cardinal singing. Cardinals were my great-grandmother’s favorite bird. She had statues of them all over her house. I looked out my dorm room window, and the cardinal was right on my windowsill. I had to go to class and was trying not to cry when I felt a hand on my shoulder.
I immediately felt a sense of relief. I looked behind me to see who it was. There was no one. I said in my mind “Grandma, if that’s you, please do that again”. This time instead of one hand on my shoulder, I felt both hands on both of my shoulders. I miss her a lot. This year, two cardinals made a nest in my rose bush. It made me so happy.
29. The Woman’s Sadness
This happened to me when I was six. I was in my bed sound asleep when I felt the mattress beside me slowly shift as if someone was laying beside me. I opened my eyes and there was a full-grown adult woman beside me. She wasn't particularly scary, only normal looking, but she was a strange person in my bed. Of course, I opened my mouth to scream but before I did, she put her finger to her lips as if to tell me to be quiet.
Her eyes looked very frightened, and she seemed to be silently pleading for me to keep quiet. I screamed my guts out anyway, and I heard my parents getting up out of their bed. The strange woman just looked incredibly sad; her eyes were full of tears. Dad turned my bedroom light on and as soon as he did, she just wasn't there anymore.
No sign of her at all. I slept in my parents’ room that night. I was very scared but even more than that, I had a deep feeling of sadness. That was decades ago, and I still remember it clearly. I've had a few run-ins like that with different people, but never that same woman.
30. The Winged Menace
My wife and I were driving along the highway in remote northwest Australia. we come around a corner from behind a hill and there's this massive bird in the middle of the highway ripping into a kangaroo. We slam on the brakes to avoid hitting it and it spreads its wings and flies away. This thing's wingspan was easily longer than our Corolla and the top of the bonnet was probably 2/3 the height of it standing on the road.
It looked like a type of eagle. Now, a wedge tail eagle is supposed to be the biggest flighted bird in the world. and I’ve seen wedgetails, right up close and trained to do tricks. this thing was easily at least four times the size as that. it could easily lift off with a dog or small child.
31. The Cat Whisperer
My one-year-old cat Salem passed suddenly, and I was so sad that I couldn't save his life. On that day I called my workplace and told them it was my grandpa so I could cry at home. I cried for days because of him. One day I went to work and there was a guy who is doing witchcraft and he claimed he could see auras. So, I passed him with my powered pallet truck, and he looked at me and said, 'Oh my god, who left you, my darling?'
I told him my grandpa did, as I didn't want to ruin my excuse. The guy’s reply left me stunned. He said, “Are you sure it was your grandpa? Because a black cat is sitting on your truck and meowing very loudly”. I was in shock. I didn't tell anyone that I had a cat and didn't post anything on Facebook. Then, he described to me how that cat looks, with a white spot on the chest. He described my black cat exactly.
32. Haunted House Stories
My dad used to work at a haunted house and wanted to add a ghost story to the website to get more people to come. He hired a medium to look around the place to see if she sensed anything. My dad didn’t really believe in the stuff though. Halfway through the tour, she asks if my father was missing a hammer. He said he was missing a lot of his tools.
The medium said an old woman died on the floor above and had the hammer. My dad asked the spirit to give it back and the next day it was laying on the table. After that, he left flowers for the spirit, and it never took anything again.
33. In The Airing Cupboard
When I was a child, my niece who my parents adopted after her parents passed, would tell us about nightmares she had about a clown living in our airing cupboard. We always just thought it was bad dreams obviously. My partner, one of the times she slept at my mother’s house, told me she was having dreams of a clown living in the airing cupboard. I have no idea how to explain that one.
34. The Secrets Of The House
My dad owned rental houses. Back in the 90s, my girlfriend and I’d go in after a renter left and rehab the house. One particular house, he’d purchased years ago with the renter already in the house. When they passed, we went in and started in the bedrooms, first painting and then cutting out the carpets. We noticed we kept losing our carpet cutters but thought we’d accidentally rolled them up in the carpets.
So, we got fluorescent orange cutters. Nope, we still can’t find them. Then we pull the living room carpet. Several large stains that look exactly like dried blood are soaked into the cork underfloor. OK, might be a stain, or someone butchered a chicken in the living room. No telling. But as I’m painting a living room wall, I see a human-shaped shadow coast across the wall.
I think someone is walking around the house, maybe a meter reader. I run outside and no one is there, up or down the street. I run around the house. NO ONE is there. We finish in a big hurry and get paid. My dad calls later and asks what we used to clean with because the house is full of flies. I go back and wash every flat surface with bleach and water.
The next day—full of flies again. It’s a house built on a concrete slab, so there’s no crawl space. He decides they must be getting in through a crack in the slab and fills the cracks with silica. Nope, there are still flies the next day. I vacuumed up hundreds of flies. He had lived through the depression and fought in WWII. He raised 10 kids and lived to tell the tale. But he sold that cursed house in a second. He didn’t believe in paranormal stuff, but he wasn’t a fool.
35. Spirits Of The Dogs
I’m a super chill person, an art teacher and rock garden enthusiast. I love paranormal stuff but don’t go looking for it or anything. I work with kids, so I’m pretty substance-free and of sound mind. The man and his two dogs who used to live in my house are still there. A German Shepherd and a Malamute. I got the house cheap because of its history of the disturbing passing of the previous owner.
I thought it was horrible, but I needed a place to live ASAP. So, I braced myself against superstition or the creeps. The weirdness started immediately. Pounding and moaning like the house was being hit by a bulldozer. Neighbors can hear it from outside sometimes. Huge dogs howling from somewhere inside the house. Bedroom doors opening and closing.
Footsteps went through the kitchen hallway every night at 4 am. It was nerve-racking but also sad. More than once I’ve awakened at night thinking my house is being broken into. Then I started seeing the dogs. Walking across my bedroom carpet and standing at the foot of my bed staring at me. It scared the heck out of me because I don’t have a German Shepherd or Malamute…
I have a Sheltie with an overbite that can only make ‘ffffff’ noises. My own dog went crazy making noises at the ghost dogs, and I ran all over the house making sure it was really spirits. We see their fluffy tails and watch them disappear into the closet. I don’t think he’s an evil spirit, and the dogs are certainly innocent.
Often things go missing and I’ll ask him and the dogs to help, and the missing things reappear in totally odd locations. Like my lipstick showing up in the freezer, or my headphones under my dresser. Places I’d never leave ANYTHING.
36. London Bridge Whispers
My first year of university, a girl I lived with had her friend over one night. He’d been shooting footage on London Bridge at 3 AM to get some shots of it abandoned at night. He was really riled up about something and insisted we watch it with the audio up all the way and listen closely. Around the one-minute mark, I heard a low, deeply menacing voice whisper slowly “as you walk the devil’s path…” then something unintelligible… then “…death”.
It felt so final and evil. He turned to us and said, “Did you hear it”? I said I’d heard a voice. “What did it say”? I told him what I’d heard. His face went white. “You heard the exact same thing as me. You’re not the first”. My housemate said she’d heard the same thing as well. He hadn’t heard the voice when he was on the bridge, only when he was working on the audio.
But when he’d shown it to other people, they all heard the same thing. I don’t really have any other paranormal encounters, but I’m generally wary of paranormal events and this still scared me. There was some sort of presence on that bridge at night. It wanted to make itself known. I don’t think I ever want to know what it was.
37. It’s On The Baby Monitor!
My cousin, around 30 years old, had a baby and had one of those baby monitors with a video feed. She was in the living room with her sister, watching TV. Her sister gets up to go to the kitchen, swings by the baby monitor to take a look at the baby, and goes white. She slowly walks up to the mother and says there is a grown-up woman with a white dress holding the baby.
They were both alone in the house. The two of them both go running into the bedroom, only to find the baby in the crib and everything closed. To this day, the sister never forgot what she saw in the monitor.
38. Aliens In The Sky?
I saw a UFO when I was 11 years old. I will swear on this my entire life. It was around 9:00-9:30 at night, and it was springtime. I was wide awake, completely sober, not on any meds. I looked out the window, and in between my house and my neighbor’s house was a grove of trees. It was a wooded area. Well, on the ground in this wooded area was a UFO.
Except, the physical surroundings were unaffected. None of the trees were crushed. This UFO sat there for about 5-10 minutes, then slowly took off in the air. It just went around in circles as it got higher, and as it got higher, the circles got wider. This lasted another five minutes or so until it vanished.
39. The Disappearing Market
My best friend and I found a store that didn't exist. It was full of pagan items and things like it, such as zodiac sign necklaces, candles, and books. It was downtown in our small city, and we were both familiar with the area and had never seen this store before. We ended up not buying anything because we were a couple of broke teenagers.
However, we did agree that we were going to return when we had more money. Except that when we did have more money, maybe two weeks later, that store was gone. It wasn't that the owner had closed up and left an empty space behind. The doorway straight-up no longer existed. It hadn't been freshly bricked over or anything, it just wasn't there.
40. The Sleep Demon
Ever since I was 10, I’ve always encountered a sleep paralysis episode once a month. This experience I will never forget. I went to sleep earlier than I usually do, probably at around seven or so. I woke up at two in the morning and found out I couldn’t move. I tried calling my mom and dad, but nothing. In one corner there was a long dark black figure.
It had no facial features from what I remember. But the legs and that huge, long body is what terrified me the most. It crept closer and closer. Every movement felt like hours. Then it got to the side of my bed and their long finger was pointed at me. I closed my eyes and I think that’s when I passed out. I woke up a few hours later at 4 and it was still dark.
The figure was gone though. I didn’t get out of my bed or anything. I just cried and cried and cried. I stayed up the rest of the night looking at the corners every second. The trauma from that was so bad that I had to see a therapist, and my mom pulled me out of school for a few days so I could relax and be to myself. Every now and then I think about that day. And it makes me cry. The thought of me thinking I would get hurt or being taken still scares me.
41. The Animal Conference
I once saw a cat, a hare, a rat, a fox, a seagull, and a weasel all standing stock still on a road near Appleby in late summer a couple of years ago. The weird thing was, they were totally still in a perfect circle in the road facing each other, and as I approached in my car, I had to stop. I waited a few seconds, then they all seemed to snap out of it and legged it in different directions into the surrounding fields. I was so odd; I've never been able to work out what they were doing.
42. Emptying The Cabinet
My roommate enjoys making candles and keeps all his wax, scent oils, and supplies in the cabinet above the stove’s vent hood. We were hanging out in the living room one day and heard glass break in the kitchen. We found the cabinet open, and one of his oil vials shattered on the floor. We’re discussing how weird that is, and as I’m cleaning it up, another flew out of the cabinet and broke on the floor as well much further away.
It was like someone flicked it like a paper football. We both witnessed it and we still talk about it.
43. Spooky, Spooky Shadows
When I was eight, I saw a shadow following my moves during my prayers. What was troubling for me is that the movement of the shadow was delayed by a few seconds just like any people following a prayer would normally do. The shadow itself was not as clearly defined as my shadow and was half the size. I was terrorized but I pursued my prayer as if there was nothing happening.
It lasted for three days and even now I do not have a scientific explanation for this event. There was only one source of light, and the room in which I did my prayers was too small to allow another shadow with that delay. I had a few members of my family watch me as I pray in the same spot, but it did not happen when they were here, unfortunately.
44. Monsters Of The Deep
My wife and I both saw massive crab-beings at the beach. I'm talking the size of a human. We saw a light coming through the lagoon and thought it was a boat. I kept watching as it floated up to a little island. I saw a massive crab leg reach out into the grass. While this was happening, my wife was looking at something right below us in the water.
It was also a giant crab leg but was reaching for her. I looked at her, said let's get out of here and looked back to check the light but it had disappeared. We were completely sober. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen.
45. The Abandoned School…
About two years ago, I went exploring in this abandoned school with a few of my mates. One of them thought it would be a good idea to fly his drone around in the main hall since it was a large open space. After about 15 seconds of flight, he flies his drone back to us. What he tells us is terrifying. He nervously says to us, “Guys? Don’t get alarmed, but I don’t think we’re alone in here”.
Curious and unnerved, the rest of us take a look at the footage that he recorded on the drone. There was a child staring at the camera through one of the windows of a corridor on our side of the building; blacked out eyes and smiling. We looked down the corridor and saw nothing, yet we heard no footsteps that could indicate to us that there was someone there.
46. A Crowded Empty House
My family had just moved to a new house. This was our first time living in a house. My room was upstairs, but I was too scared to be there alone since I was 12. I stayed downstairs while my mom went to the store. I was lying on the floor next to the couch, and this couch was facing away from the door. I thought I heard the door open, so I sat up to get my mom.
As soon as I did, I saw a curly-headed white little boy. My family is black. Apparently, my siblings had been seeing people in the house too. An old Asian lady, a crying baby, I even saw a white middle-aged man that looked to be living in the 1930’s staring down at me from the balcony of the upstairs area one night. Never stayed home alone ever again after that.
47. Satanic Panic
A buddy of mine who was a former marine found a pretty large, abandoned building in a public park in upstate New York. We weren't expecting it and it was off the beaten path in the middle of the day. It was stable but missing large parts of the wall and we could see no one was around. It wasn't anything too exciting. Just rubble and lots of graffiti.
We went to the upper floor, and I noticed some satanic graffiti on a wall. Pointed it out to him and we chuckled, we're both metalheads and into the occult. I then opened a door that led to a small office and on the wall directly in front of me is a wall-to-ceiling pentagram in what looked like thick oil paint. There's no furniture or anything in this room.
We both stood there for a second, and as I went to take a step toward it, I heard "Get Out" in an even but stern voice like it came from in my head. Before I knew it, my friend started running in the opposite direction. I took off behind him and when we got outside, he looks at me wide-eyed, and asked "Did you hear it"?
He heard the voice too and he said it sounded like it came behind us. I've never felt anything like that and still causes goosebumps. I want to explain it away, but I can't accept it in my head.
48. A Grab In The Woods
I was in the woods, on vacation in Sweden, it was about 3 am, and I had to go to the washroom. Suddenly, I hear footsteps. I start asking "Who's there"? and I hear nothing, except for the footsteps coming toward me. I'm either a dumb idiot or the bravest dude ever, but I don't run away. Suddenly, when the footsteps seem to be right next to me, they stop. That’s when it happened.
Suddenly, I feel something tugging on my leg, and I actually fall down. By the way, this whole time, I'm still peeing. I feel something, some hair, some skin. On instinct, I aim toward it. I hear a human scream, and just as quickly as it came, I hear footsteps running away. I'm 90% sure it was a man. I was just 15 at the time. It was either a ghost or a guy who tried to kidnap me.
49. The Gathering Of Bullies
I was in a village in the Adirondacks, helping house-sit for family members while they dealt with some medical emergencies. Now, I'd heard a few weird stories about this house from said family members, but always wrote it off as a mixture of superstition and it being an old house. Until this one winter night. I'm fairly sure I was watching South Park or something on Comedy Central, when I noticed that I was having trouble hearing the TV.
I start looking for the remote, when I hear what sounds like a young child bawling his eyes out while walking down the street outside the house. Now remember, it's the middle of winter at close to midnight, in a small village in the Adirondack mountains. What the heck could a kid possibly be doing out there in the cold, crying like that?
So, I pause my search for the remote control and start going to the window to see what the heck is up. My hand is on the curtain, about to peek out, when a new sound joins the crying kid. It sounds like a pack of kids following the crying kid and they are laughing just maliciously. It was like if every bully you ever had got together and followed jeering at you.
This one kid is still just sobbing his poor guts out and the rest think it's the funniest thing ever. I froze. As in every part of my lizard brain was screaming at me, "DON'T DO IT, YOU WILL GET HURT". I basically stood there for a minute, so afraid to move a muscle until the sound finally faded into the distance. I didn't sleep that night.
I've tried to reason to myself later on that it must've been some wild animals or something, but the weird thing with the TV and the fact that I'm not superstitious but my body entered into "DANGER DANGER" mode, always makes me wonder.
50. The Attic Door
I had no idea our house had an attic door because it was in my parents’ closet. One weekend, I was home alone. I ALWAYS heard strange noises in the house. Like steps coming from upstairs, or random bangs, creaks. The usual house noises you try to forget about. My Mom gets home, goes to her room, and comes walking back downstairs like immediately.
She looks at me and she says, "Why were you in my closet”? I wasn't, so I told her that. She told me that the attic door was missing so she knew I was lying... to which I replied, "There's a door to the attic"? It had been pushed up into the attic and flipped over to the side. Attic doors are not light either, so it was WEIRD.
Strange noises still happened all the time. Other stuff would start to happen—like things going missing—that made us think it may have been squatters. But we moved, so...not my problem either way anymore.
Sources: Reddit,
