Whether you believe it or not, strange things happen all the time and occasionally, logic just can't explain them. From déjà vu to prophetic dreams, these truly inexplicable, creepy experiences will send shivers down your spine.
1. Closer to You
When my father was in the hospital, my mother stayed with me since my apartment was right next to the hospital. One night, I had a dream where my mom answered the phone and learned that my dad had passed. She hung up and told me that my uncle, who was a doctor at the hospital, just told her that it had happened. I woke up startled and went to get water. Just as I started to relax and calm down, the phone rang. My mom picked it up, and I saw tears start falling down her face. She hung up and said that my uncle said that my father had just passed.
2. Frighty Nighties
I was in a very rural area and driving around 3 AM. I saw a woman in a white nightgown on the side of the road. She was just standing there staring up a steep embankment. There weren’t any homes nearby for miles. I pulled over and immediately called someone to come and check on the girl. When the deputy arrived, neither of us could find anyone nearby.
3. Sweetie Dreams
My father passed when I was 15. In my freshman year of college, my roommate and I were close but had only known each for a month when this happened. She was not aware about my childhood, but she knew that I lost my father. And one night, she woke me up and asked, “Did your father use to call you (pet name)?" My blood ran cold.
I hadn't heard that name since I was little and I definitely never told her about it. She had a dream that my father asked her to take care of me calling me by this pet name. My dad missed my high school graduation, but I guess he saw it wherever he is now.
4. Songs from the Heavens
I remember reading in the living room when I heard the most beautiful violin melody. I listened to the whole thing which was several minutes long. I walked to compliment my brother on his masterpiece...and that's when I realized I was completely alone.
5. Auntie Transit
When I was about nine years old back in the 1970s, I was playing football in the street. A bus came along, so I jumped onto the pavement. As it passed, I noticed my aunt, and she smiled and waved to me. When the bus had gone, I carried on playing. I went home several hours later. That's when my mom told me that my aunt had passed the previous evening.
6. In No Out
My dorm in college was...strange. Once, I went to the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. The sink was right next to the entrance, and as I washed my face, I saw and heard the door open and noticed a figure move to the end of the stalls. I just figured that another girl had come in to use the bathroom. I dried off my face and started brushing my teeth, but I realized that I couldn’t hear anyone else. I checked each stall, and no one was in there. I quickly grabbed my stuff and noped out.
7. Kicking It Old School
I was playing football with my friend and younger brother in a remote park. We thought we had it to ourselves, but then we saw three or four people came wearing Victorian-style clothing. They came in and put a box underneath a tree with big branches. Then they tied a rope around it, and one of them stood there with the noose around his neck. Then, his friend kicked the box so that he was hanging. They took turns doing this, and we left. It was super weird thinking back to it, and I have to check with my brother whenever I think about it to make sure it actually happened.
8. ¿Tiene Flatulencias?
My friend and I were sleeping in my parent's room one night when she was over, and it was probably about 3 AM. Suddenly, we heard a sound like a toot from the south-east corner of the room. I asked my friend if it was her, and she said no since it clearly came from that corner. Thinking maybe it was my dogs as they sometimes slept in my parent's room, I went and checked it out but they weren’t in the room with us.
Okay, so that's weird, I thought, and my friend also said she heard a distinct toot too, so we assumed that maybe we both misheard. All of a sudden, my phone rang. It was an unknown caller, and I did not answer because I was freaking out. After declining, I got a message from an unknown number. The text was in Spanish. After translating, it said, “did you hear that toot?” We never slept in there with the Spanish tooting ghost again.
9. No Wasted Energy
In my mother's house, the basement light would turn on while we were away even if we had it off before we left. I went downstairs and said like, “Hey, Mister Ghostman, this is not good for the bills could you please chill it with the lights? Yes, I know it's dark down here. Okay, thanks." After that, the light stayed off.
10. Final Bet
I once had a dream where my grandma was on a bus. It stopped near my grandfather and I, and she wanted me to go along. My grandfather kept insisting that I couldn’t go. The bus left as she was going to "the big casino in the sky." She loved the casinos. I woke up just after the phone call saying she had passed in her sleep.
11. Successful Shopping Trip
I was working in a retail store in a pretty sketchy area. There was this lady who was obviously a heavy substance user or had been one. She must’ve been in her 50s or 60s. She was notorious on my block for being crazy, but she would visit me all the time and said she thought I was cute. It was really bizarre. Especially so because she looked like an addict, but she’d act like a teenage girl around me.
I tried to be nice because she was known for being volatile. On Christmas Eve, she packed an entire Christmas dinner, which was all home-cooked Guyanese food and a cologne set. On her way out, she just squatted down. Then she threw her hands up and started cackling. She laughed hysterically for almost five straight minutes and then abruptly walked out. I never saw her again.
12. Coffee Minutes Fast
It was my final year at university, and I was working as a TA for a language professor. I basically lived in the known-to-be-haunted Humanities building. One Tuesday between my last class and first lesson, I was in the staff room using the microwave to heat up my dinner. A woman I’d never seen before came in. She gave an obligatory, "Lemme just scooch past ya and check the time on the coffee machine."
I found it weird that a university employee came here just to check the time on the coffee machine. You don't have a phone, computer, watch, or clock? But who was I to judge? She checked the time. And then she said, "That can't be right. What time is it?" I said, “Uh, it’s 5:37,” and she said, “Hm, five minutes fast. Okay.” With that she left, and although a bit odd, I didn’t dwell on the interaction...until one week later.
On a Tuesday evening while I was again heating up my food, she entered. She gave the obligatory, “lemme just scooch past ya and check the time…that can't be right. What time is it?" So, I checked my phone; It was exactly 5:37. I told her, and once more, she said, "hm, five minutes fast. Okay," and left. Deeply unsettled, I grabbed my food and hurried upstairs. I never saw her again.
13. Never Been Down This Road
When I was 18, I was driving at night to see my friend. Then this man jumped in front of my car to stop me. He looked crazy to me. I slowed to almost a stop, and then he moved to scream to me through the window. I couldn't make out what he was saying, but he seemed kind of deranged. I just drove off once he got out of the way. I was so creeped out, but I still feel guilty that I didn't help him.
14. That Wood Happen
My bestie and I were sleeping over at her grandma’s house and enjoying the newly renovated attic. It was just two 15-year-olds painting nails, watching DVDs, and talking about the hottest gossip at school. It was already 3 AM when we decided to get some sleep. A couple minutes later, we sat bolt upright. We heard scratching followed by a big bang coming from the other room.
One of the paintings was lying on the floor almost four and a half yards away from where it was supposed to be. It wasn’t as if the screw broke, so then it fell off. Nope. It was a solid four and half yards away from that wall. The holes in the wall looked like something grabbed that painting and pulled it straight out, ripping the drywall out around it. I’m still getting goosebumps remembering it.
15. Ninja Santa
I was in bed when the sound of steps on my roof tiling woke me up. I think I was about 13 at the time. I saw a shadow walk past my skylight and was unsure of what it was. I looked outside my window and saw a man dressed in all black looking out from the construction scaffolding. Then he looked into my window. I tried to hide, and my brother saw him too. We never found out what happened to him, but we did report it.
16. Stay Gold, Cheesyboy
On a road trip, my friend and I were hungry and went looking for food in a town in Maryland. I don't remember the name of the town, but it felt very strange as soon as we pulled onto the main road as there didn't seem to be any people out and about. It was the middle of the day, but no one was walking around. There weren't any restaurant food options other than this pizza place, so we pulled up and parked in front of the pizza place.
It seemed like everybody in the town must have gone to that pizza place. When we parked the car, everyone in the restaurant turned and looked at our car through the big glass windows. They all did at the same time. They stared at us. We stared at them. It felt so weird that I said, "I don't want to go in there." My friend just nodded at me wide-eyed, and we drove to another town for lunch.
17. Life Streaming
A number of years ago, I was using an online chat site and talking to a woman who claimed to live around 50 miles from me. We chatted quite happily for a couple of days. Then on the third day, a Saturday night, she was online, and we were talking, but she seemed different somehow. Something didn’t seem right. She explained that she was drinking, and I assumed that was the reason behind the melancholy.
We kept chatting, and she turned on her camera so I could see her. Over a couple of hours of chatting, her mood seemed to grow darker, and she seemed distressed. But she was hesitant and wouldn’t elaborate any further. She left and returned about 30 minutes later and appeared drunker and more distressed. This time she had a stack of tablets on the table. She claimed that she couldn’t go on and started to take tablet after tablet. I had no idea what the medication was.
Her speech was getting more and more incoherent. Then, I found myself in a terrible position. Was I watching someone take their own life on a live stream, totally unable to do anything? All that I had was a name and a town, both of which could be false. I made the excuse of needing the toilet and left the room and took the opportunity to call my local authorities and explained the situation. They took what details I knew, and I was told to go back and try and keep her talking and try and get further details from her. A plain-clothes representative came over.
Whilst I was chatting to her, he pulled up the chat logs and history on his laptop. By this time, her speech was becoming more and more incoherent, and the camera had been knocked over, so it was impossible to see her. Soon, we had lost connection. Was this all real? Was it all fake? I had no idea of knowing. During this time, the guy was on the phone with the station giving them what information he had been able to obtain. He then left leaving me to contemplate.
The next evening, someone called who wanted to thank me from the station. They’d managed to trace her through her IP address and had been able to attend. Apparently it had been a genuine attempt to take her own life, and she had been taken to hospital and was subsequently undergoing treatment.
18. I Was That Close
My twin sister and I both caught scarlet fever when we lived in India. We fell into a coma near the end. One day, I woke up to my mom and aunt screaming, crying, and holding my sister as she was unresponsive and not breathing. They were doing chest compressions, CPR, etc., but nothing was working. I was desperately trying to get their attention because I was young and did not understand what was going on. I went back to my room to sleep, but in the corner of the room where my sister’s bed was, I saw her laying there breathing fine.
I went back out to the living room and that's when I learned the awful truth. I wasn't looking at my sister. I was actually looking at myself in my mom’s arms as she was trying to revive me. Eventually, I saw my eyes flicker open, and then everything went dark. I woke up a few weeks later in the hospital next to my sister and mom who ended up catching it because of us. My mom told me that they almost lost me, and they were trying to wake me up, but I was unresponsive, so the ambulance took all three of us into the ICU. To this day, I am still unsure how I witnessed my almost end.
19. You’re My Rock
My father was my grandmother’s favorite kid partially because he was the youngest out of the 10 children my grandparents had. She nicknamed him “little mountain” as the last character in his Chinese name meant mountain. I remember going to her funeral when she passed, and we were burning paper money. It was for her to use in the afterlife, and it’s a Taiwanese/Chinese tradition.
I vividly remember watching my dad picking up some half-burnt money and making a strained noise. It was burnt in such a way that it resembled the character in his name even down to the middle prong being longer than the other two. I’m seriously not religious or superstitious, but that was probably the closest I have ever gotten to believing in the supernatural.
20. A Few Simple Steps
When I was 4, I hated tying my shoes. I was terrible at it, and progress was not happening. One morning, I was throwing a fit because my mom told me to tie my shoes before we left the house, and I was trying to avoid this awful responsibility while yelling and screaming on the step of the staircase. The ceiling above the staircase extended from the second floor horizontally to the space above the first step where it met a vertical wall that connected the second-floor ceiling to that of the first. I was screaming on one of the lower steps, and my gaze drifted upwards after a few minutes. I stopped crying.
I went silent. I distinctly remember seeing a man in a sharp black suit with the head of a boar all blue and complete with tusks and fur bracing himself in the corner of the ceiling like a ninja above my head staring down at me. He didn't say anything, but I knew what he wanted. My mom asked me what happened. She noticed my abrupt change in mood and started to ask what happen, and I cut her off in a monotone voice saying only, "he told me to be good."
21. I Was Here First
My best friend lived on a farm in the UK that had been in her family for 300 years. They had a completely open attic without beams. It was super light and airy so one light, we decided to have a sleepover up there. My friend said she thought there might be squirrels living there as she heard scratching and banging around regularly. So, we crept up the rickety old stairs whispering to be quiet, feeling brave but scared.
As we got up to the attic itself, there was an odd “vibe.” The closest I can think of is the sensation you get when you know something bad could happen just before you trip and your stomach falls. We both felt the same thing. Still, we poked around this huge space and found nothing unusual, and that was that. Then we turned to leave, and the scribbling scratching started from what seemed like only a few feet away.
My friend grabbed the torch and swung it around with both of us expecting a tiny animal and trying not to yell or wake her parents. Nothing. By that point, the hairs on the back of our necks were on end. We were about ready to run back down the stairs when we did a final sweep with the torch. That was when we saw what was like a mass of hair with stick legs and arms? It was bigger than tall and skinny 13-year-old me.
It skittered up the wall next to the window so fast it was like a house spider running under a sofa. It disappeared into a dark corner, and in those seconds, we turned and ran with the sound of “scritch, scritch,” following us as we slammed the door and set the bolt. Her mum was NOT happy we’d been exploring. They hadn’t had anyone check the space for years for structural integrity. All I know is, after a talking-to, we didn’t sleep that night, and a few weeks later, I slept over, and they’d moved her bedroom to one of the downstairs reception rooms.
22. Looking Over Your Shoulder
I work at an adult novelty store, so please envision the kind of patrons I get. I had this regular who was nice, and we would exchange pleasantries. One day, we said goodbye, and on his way out, he stopped right in his tracks and came back. He said that he usually ignored it, but it wouldn’t let him that day. So naturally, I asked him what the heck he was talking about.
He proceeded to tell me that there was an older Black man who was always with me 24/7. He saw him every time that I was in the store. The older man just stood next to me watching me and smiling. At that moment, I felt a chill run up my spine. No one knew in that store besides my boss that I’m half Black and was extremely close to my 65-year-old Black father who had passed in 2014.
I said the usual, “wow” and “oh my god,” so I wouldn’t give anything away to see if he’s being legit. The customer proceeded to tell me that the man, my father, was sad. He was sad about his kids not doing what he’d asked and was greatly disappointed in one in particular. The man also wanted to tell me how much he loves his wife even though she remarried. By then, I had tears in my eyes because there was no way this man knew about conflict I had with my siblings about my dad.
How would this man know my mother was married again? He kept mentioning that he could feel this strong religious pull with my father. My father had been a preacher. He told me a bunch of other things and asked if I was pregnant. I said I wasn’t, but apparently, my next baby was going to have my father’s soul. My 2-year-old son looks like my father and loves his favorite songs. I have never seen that man again.
23. Coloring Together
My daughter was about 3 when we were on a family vacation in a state park lodge. Our room had exposed wood ceiling beams to match the décor. It was supposed to be nap time for my daughter, but instead she was quietly playing by herself and just chatting away while the wife and I were reading on the other bed. Out of nowhere, my daughter turned and asked for a piece of rope.
I asked why she needed it, and she nonchalantly explained, “it’s for my friend. The purple girl on the ceiling.” My wife asked, “what friend?” My daughter told us, “I’ve been talking with the little purple girl hanging from that wood up there.” While she said that, she pointed to the ceiling beam. And then she asked me for another piece of rope. Nap time was decidedly over, and we quickly exited the room.
24. Passing Through Darkness
I was driving with somebody through a very odd, small town in Arizona. As soon as we entered the city limits, I felt this extreme heaviness; it was surreal, dark, almost like a shroud of evil. As soon as we exited the limits, we both, not having spoken in a few minutes, said, “did you feel that?” We both did. It was really weird. About a month later, I was reading Time Magazine or something, and there was an article about that town and how it is so well known for cult-like polygamy and child-marriage, etc. That explained a lot.
25. Gotcha Good
Running through a large field in the middle of a nice neighbourhood, I got tired sprinting halfway and reached to hold onto a tiny tree and felt what I can only describe as claws like bugles on your fingertips wrapped around my hand. I noped out and ran back to my friends. I still have no clue what that was.
26. Door and Window Framed
Back when I was 9, my friend and I were having a sleepover. His parents were at dinner, and his brother was out. it was probably 9 PM, and his parents had just called to tell us that they would be out for a little while longer. We were young and playing games on the Xbox 360. Then we heard his front door open, which made a very noticeable, creaky, almost eerie noise. We shrugged it off thinking it was probably just his brother, who was home, and kept playing.
Then, we heard footsteps above us. Again, we thought nothing of it because his kitchen was above the basement where we were playing games. Then there was a scratching sound at the basement door. We looked at each other. Then, we heard a scratching on the window. We were terrified, and we stayed seated with one of us looking at the door and the other looking at the window. Then, again, there was scratching at the door. I opened it with his baseball bat and nothing. We barricaded the door and put things in front of the window.
We didn’t hear anything for the next half an hour and eventually fell asleep. The next morning, his dad came down and knocked on the door and tried to get down to the basement. We took down the barricade, and his dad came into the room angry, “why did you guys rip open the screen door?!” So, we went upstairs. Sure enough, the front door’s screen was shredded.
We tried to convince him that it wasn’t us and that the brother had done it to scare us. But what he said next made our blood run cold, “Jim wasn’t home last night. We dropped him off in the city with friends.” My friend lived half hour an away from the city. My friend and I looked at each other and couldn’t speak. His parents didn’t believe us. They called my parents, and my friend and I had to split the cost to replace the screen door and the basement door that also had scratch marks. We still bring it up!
27. Spending with Grandma
I was definitely atheist before this, and now I don’t know what to believe. Last fall, I had an odd dream about my late grandmother. We were in some casino playing blackjack, and we were just catching up. She looked young again, and she was wearing a very lovely black dress. We drank, and laughed, and played. A week later, at my sister's birthday party, she was talking to one of our cousins about a dream she had a week prior about our late grandmother! Detail for detail, it was the same dream that I had and hadn’t told anyone. The difference? My grandma and I played blackjack. They played poker. It was so strange.
28. Years and Years of Practice
A few summers ago, I and some friends from university stayed at a friend's house and went to a nearby festival. Her family is extremely rich with a huge, old mansion in the English countryside. We had a bit of a tour around and saw our guest rooms. Her dad began to tell us that the place was haunted in a joking tone and mentioned that when they first moved there, a dresser had been left behind in one of the guest rooms, which was the one where I was staying. This was one of the only things left behind, and there was an old lock of hair in one of the drawers.
I'm not really a believer of ghost stories, so, at the time, I just shrugged it off as a joke. That night, I got into bed and started to notice that the air felt strangely cold around me, but there was no particular breeze. The rest of the house had been at a perfectly normal temperature just before this too. I was having odd surreal dreams as I slept, which were nothing like what I’d dream normally. I'd constantly wake up feeling cold. It was like when you're very unwell and find yourself somewhat hallucinating in bed while you dip in and out of sleep. The other weird thing was that this was the middle of August.
In the UK, we don't typically have air conditioning not unless you're in an office or something. I woke up the next morning, and nearly screamed. On one side of the room, there were two hanging rails for clothes since the guest room was normally used for storing spare clothing. Several of the clothing items were on the floor. The hangers had completely come off the railings, and I would’ve sworn they had been hung the night before. Like I say, I'm not really a believer of paranormal stuff, but that night has spooked me ever since. I've never experienced anything quite as strange. I wonder if her dad's stories had a placebo effect.
29. Woah There, Lassie
I used to live in really rural Texas and was driving down a farm to market road during some very thick fog. I was driving an old pickup truck, and I was going maybe 20-30 MPH because I couldn’t see very far ahead. As I came around a turn, I saw through the fog this big hulking figure lurching across the road. I slowed down, pulled up near it to pass, and saw what was the biggest hog I’ve ever seen in my life, a good 400 pounds certainly. It was dead, probably destroyed by a car, and dragging it to the side of the road was an ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE white shaggy dog.
This dog made eye contact, lifted its head, and stared me in the eye for what felt like an eternity. I stopped my truck and stared; I was so caught off guard. After about a couple of seconds, which felt like forever, it put its head back down, grabbed a chunk of hog, and continued making its way off the road. I will never forget its eyes. They were big glowing yellow. I have no idea if it was some freak mutant farm dog, a spirit, a wolf, or what, but I’d like to never see it again.
30. Here Kitty Kitty
My first cat visited me for years after I lost him. We were quite close, and I was heartbroken when he was gone. But he never really left. It could be a movement in the corner of my eye, him sitting on top of the stairs, or feeling him cuddling me. It is a fantastic experience, always unexpected.
31. Cold and Alone
My family went out for the night to my sister’s game, and I wasn’t feeling great so just stayed home watching Enter the Dragon. While watching the movie, I heard our side door creak open and shut. Then I heard about three heavy footsteps like someone wearing heavy winter boots. I called out thinking one of my parents came home early, but there was no reply.
I called out again, but this time the hairs on my arms and legs were sticking up. Again, nothing. So I said, “nope!” and bolted out our back-sliding door, then hid in our truck bed. I stayed for a second to see if there was anyone in the house through our living room window curtains. While I waited, I could see a human figure through the closed curtains pass in front of the TV. I bolted almost a half of a mile to a family friend’s house, which was not at all fun being barefoot in winter.
They took me in and made a call after I told them what happened. People came and checked everything out. Nothing – there were no wet footprints in our breezeway that led to the side door or any wet footsteps in the house. The side door was also locked. They even looked for tracks in the snow around the house. They couldn’t find anything but my bare footprints in the snow. I still believe what I saw, heard, and know it wasn’t coming from the movie. The house did and still scares me. There had been other paranormal things in the house while we were growing up until my parents finally moved us all away when I was 15.
32. High on a Mountain Top
My boyfriend and I took a vacation to Colorado one summer in early August. One night, we were running out of gas and getting a little on edge since we weren't used to mountain driving. We drove, and drove, and watched as our gas tank got lower and lower. We assumed there must be a gas station just outside of the park, but we kept driving into the wilderness. After what felt like an hour, we finally saw the lights of a town up ahead. We crested the hill, and there was just...Christmas...in August.
I'm talking Christmas tree in the town square, ornaments on each street light, lights hung on the houses. It's CHRISTMAS. We slowed down and passed a church, and through the windows could see a full men's choir singing and clapping. We both felt this horrible feeling about this creepy town, but we NEEDED gas. We pulled into the station, and my boyfriend went to use the washroom while I filled up, and when he came out, he just hurriedly told me to get into the car because we were leaving right then. There were two men in the store who stopped and stared at him the whole time he was there never breaking eye contact.
33. Not a Pisa Cake
I was 20 and visited a town in Italy with medieval towers that you can climb. My girlfriend didn't want to join me, so I climbed one on my own. It was a sunny day when I entered the tower. There was a flight of stairs that wound around the edge with no windows. Climbing the tower took at the very most 5 minutes. At the top of the stairs, there was a ladder and trapdoor that opened to the roof. When I opened it, my jaw dropped.
I found the weather had changed dramatically and was overcast. I forgot if there was thunder, but I was genuinely concerned about lightning being at the top. I cautiously climbed out onto the roof just to have a quick look before going straight back down. The roof was surrounded with a sort of metal "cage" of bars that were clearly intended to prevent anyone falling or jumping off the tower. I heard some thunder and saw an electricity arc between some of the bars.
I decided that the tower was imminently going to be struck and descended as quickly as I could. I got down and was surprised to find the weather was sunny with a clear sky. My girlfriend could tell I was shaken and was amazed when I said I thought there may have been lightning, but the weather hadn't changed.
34. Sniffed Out
A girlfriend, M, moved in with me BUT warned me, “there’s a man that follows me. He’s not evil or anything like that, but he doesn’t like men.” That should have been the time I noped way out of my own home, but I was in love and just accepted her odd statement – until a few months later when I was home alone. M had just left for work, and I was showering. I heard the bathroom door open and hit the dresser behind it. I looked to my right and saw a shadow through the curtain. I jokingly said out loud, “oh, you’re back for some bonus shower time?” As I opened the curtain, nobody was there. I was still home by myself.
A few days later, I came home from work and hung my keys on the hook like I always did and walked away. An hour went by when I noticed my keys rocking back and forth on the hook. Minutes turned into hours as my keys kept rocking. Finally, M came home, looked at me, looked at the keys, and asked me “how long?” I just stared at her as she stopped the keys as if it’d always happened.
Another time, I was in the bathroom on my knees as I scrubbed the tub. I felt as though somebody was next to me breathing on me. As I jerked away, a hand grabbed my leg and yanked me towards the bathroom door, and then there was nothing.
That night, I was out with a group of friends. I was telling them what was happening, and at the end, the light above us flickered and shut off. As we all looked up to the light, my chair got picked up and thrown into the table. I turned to scold the jerk behind me, but nobody was there. Everyone just stared. But the scariest happened late one night when M was downstairs in bed.
I was turning off the lights when I heard our laundry room door close and footsteps going to the bedroom. My brain was thinking M was awake, so I went to the bedroom. I opened the door to the sound of her softly snoring. Then, I turned around. I was hit with the loveliest smell I’ve ever experienced. It was the smell of my late nana’s home where her perfume was everywhere. After that moment, the man was gone. It’s like she came to my home and removed his presence. I can’t explain it. All I know is that I haven’t smelled that scent in over 20 years.
35. Behind Closed Doors
I used to live in a house with two roommates Anna and Erica. I lived on the second floor, and Anna and Erica lived downstairs. Every night, I would hear a, "thud, thud" coming from downstairs. I would investigate, and it always came from Anna's room. I thought it was her doing burpees or working out at night. I was so wrong.
One night, I went to Anna's door, and it sounded like she's hitting herself against a wall and whispering and crying or laughing. I noticed when she left the room, her sheets were all scattered on the floor. I asked Erica about it, and she told me she heard it too. Anna started sleeping at her parent’s house more often. But every time she came home, there was the same "thud, thud" noise. We started asking her about it, and she had excuses like "I was moving furniture" or "my porch door was swinging open." It was so strange. I don’t think we'll ever know.
36. Sunday Schooled
A long time ago, in elementary school, my friend and I went to school on a Sunday to explore the building. We came in the early hours of the morning, and of course, we were the only ones there. We were walking along a hallway on the first floor when all of a sudden, we heard a thunderous noise from above us. It was like when you drag a chair or a table across a floor, but it sounded like there were multiple classrooms full of tables and chairs moving.
It was loud. Very loud. And it was extremely sudden. There was no reason why anyone would be in school moving dozens of tables and chairs alone at 6 AM on a Sunday. We stood rooted, stared at each other for a second, and bolted. After we got out of school, he asked me whether I heard a lady screaming in the corridor. I said no. He didn't hear the dragging sounds either.
37. No, It’s You, Bro
A few years ago, my friends and I were road tripping cross country, and we stopped at a campsite in southern Oregon. Something about this unassuming place made us all uneasy. It felt like everyone was staring at us as we drove in and set up our tents. We’d gotten that treatment in places where we’d stuck out. Here, it seemed less like gawking and more like suspicion or malice.
The sun set, our gear was set up, and we went to hotbox the car before bed. We were talking and passing a pipe around, and my friend in the backseat used his knee to crack open the door. With no warning, something slammed into the car. It was hard enough that the backseat friend was pushed away from the door, and the whole car rocked on its suspension. We immediately started the engine, turned on the brights, and drove around checking. Nothing. We fell asleep in the car arguing over who was willing to get our gear before we went to a motel.
38. Making Contact
When I was about 16, my friend stayed the night at my house. At the time, I was really into the paranormal and had just learned about EVP, electronic voice phenomenon. That night we had watched The Mothman Prophecies before going to sleep. I remember it was storming outside and there was thunder and lighting. I had set up a mic on my PC to record sounds because odd things were happening at my house and watching the movie pumped me up to get an EVP that night.
I started the recording and tested it. I saw spikes on the track when we talked, and I specifically remember a huge spike when the thunder rattled the house. The next morning, I stopped the recording and noticed that there were only four hours of audio, but we'd been asleep for nearly 8 hours. I started listening to the audio, and it seemed normal at first. I could hear the conversation we had right after starting the recording, but I no longer saw the huge spike.
Upon further inspection, I saw a spike on the track about two hours in which would have been around 3 AM. I moved to that section of the track and hit play. I'll never forget what I heard next. In the recording, I could hear what was obviously my cellphone ring tone but only partial sections of the ringtone. It rang like this around three times. Then I clearly heard an unfamiliar voice in a hushed tone say, "hello?" I immediately grabbed my phone and checked my most recent calls, and the last and only call I received was earlier the previous day when my friend called asking to hang out. My brain just exploded. Immediately, I called my friend’s phone.
His ringtone wasn’t the same. He woke up looking confused about getting a call from across the room, and when I explained what I found and played the audio, he was also clearly a bit shaken and shied away from any paranormal conversations I tried to initiate from then on.
39. Escaping the Storm
You know that black cloud that enters a room in The Grudge? I saw that for real one time that was following a person who entered the apartment where I was living. I freaked out and almost started hyperventilating, but of course, I could not tell anybody around me what I was seeing. I just darted out of there.
40. Scarier Than Hitchcock
A friend and I were parked in the countryside at night getting stoned. We found a safe spot, got out, and lit up. We were basically surrounded by woods, and it was about 2 AM and PITCH black. Out of nowhere, we heard some birds that were making almost like a crow’s call going NUTS. It was loud and very close. That was shortly followed by a sound of some sort of big cat maybe a cougar. Its scream was deafening and very close as well.
We got out of there at high speed. We both jumped into the car without saying a word. After some research, we found out the state where we were has no populations of any big wild cats. That was about 15 years ago and I still think about it. Like how close we were to danger? I still have no clue what it was, but those birds are the true bros.
41. A Comforting Voice
My brother took his own life in 2010. We had him airlifted 100 miles from his house to the town nearer to us because it's larger and has better hospitals. His wife was the only person who lived with him and drove to the hospital and leaving the house locked. She’d left his phone in his home office that night. The next morning, I got a call from his cellphone. I answered, but nobody was on the other end. I said "hi" a couple times with no response; I finally said, "everything is ok," and the line immediately disconnected. I never got a call from that number again.
42. Final Focus
We lost my grandfather several years ago after many years of dialysis. As he aged, we were told his treatment would not last forever and would become less effective. They would have had to stop it eventually. He was 83 when he passed. Always fit and healthy, the dialysis kept him going a good few extra years. He was unwell and taken to hospital. His dialysis was stopped, and we were told he would probably have about 48-72 hours left. So, our family went to the hospital and stayed in the room with him as much as we could. They made him comfortable and were plying him with medications to make sure he wasn’t in pain.
As he neared the end, he was in and out of a lucid state. He was mostly in a slumber almost living memories mumbling and muttering. If he was awake, he would stare transfixed at some spot on the ceiling talking to somebody as clear as day, and then he would drift off again. This would happen the entire night. Moments before he passed, he sat up staring at this point on the ceiling talking clearly and holding my grandmother’s hand. He turned to her and looked her right in the eyes and said that they were asking him if he wanted to take a message over to anyone, and he asked her if she had anything to say to anyone.
When my grandmother said there wasn’t, he lay back down, closed his eyes, and passed peacefully. The whole room was silent. Every single hair on my body was on end. I’m not religious, but felt I needed to start praying. My mother who has been a nurse for many years caring for elderly said that happened a lot.
43. Felt It Everywhere
I had a dream once where I was stumbling through what felt like a post-apocalyptic landscape with buildings ruined, rubble, fire, and smoke as far as the eye could see. I had a horrible feeling of despair and desolation. Finally, I pulled myself out of this dream. Shaking and sweating, I actually swore aloud. I was never so glad to wake from a dream before. I had never had such a vivid, horrible dream. I showered and went to work. I was still shaking from the lingering effects of the dream. On the drive in, the radio news reported that the first plane had hit the World Trade Center.
44. Lost, Lost and Found
I had a thing with this guy, and we had gone to the beach together where I got a parking ticket. Three years later, I learned that he unfortunately took his own life a few days after the funeral. I was sitting on my bed with a friend. She had just gotten a new bag right before it happened and reached into it. She pulled out a parking ticket. It was MY ticket from years before when I went to the beach with him. I never had an explanation for it. I just knew it was him.
45. Better Safe Than Scary
When I was around 12, my mother had to go out of town, and she left me home alone for a few days. We lived close to relatives, so it wasn't a big deal then. She refused to give me a mobile phone because she figured she could just call me on the landline if anything came up. She let me know when she’d be back. The day she was supposed to be back arrived, and I heard my mom knocking on the door downstairs calling my name.
My dog who loved her got excited when she heard her voice and went down ahead to greet her. She got to the door, freaked out, and ran back upstairs to me. Then I refused to go down to open the door. The phone started ringing, and the knocking stopped. I picked up the phone to hear my mom say, "Hey, I'm sorry. I have to stay one more day here. I'll head home tomorrow."
46. Big Brother Is Watching
I was a rookie on the force when my brother took his life. He was one of my older siblings, but we were very close. It happened in another state, and I felt a lot of guilt then about not recognizing the signs. His remains were in bad shape by the time he was discovered, so it had been a closed coffin service. About a week after, I was back at work, and my partner and I saw a dude hurting one of his girls.
I jumped out, and he saw me, and the foot chase started. I was chasing him, and he cut through a narrow corridor under a building that lead to a courtyard. I heard my brother’s voice say, “it’s okay.” I hit the courtyard, and the guy was against the side pointing something at my head and squeezed the trigger twice. I froze for a millisecond, and then I started hitting him in the head. To this day, I don't know why I didn't just shoot him. I cuffed him and walked him back to the street and found my partner.
I told my partner about him squeezing the trigger but not the voice I’d heard. We decided to unload the .32 right there, and 2 bullets had strike marks on them. We brought it to the lab for testing. We told the tech what happened, and he put the two bullets back in and shot into the test tank. Both had fired.
47. Doing His Duty
We used to live in a battered women's and children's shelter when I was young because my father was looking for us. One night, I looked in a mirror and saw a hairy demon looking back at me. I screamed, cried, and went to get my mom who assured me it was a normal mirror. At night, there was a kind looking man. I can only describe him as a ghost that appeared at the end of my bed.
He was there all night but would be gone in the morning. Then again, the next night, and the next. He was there every night for four months. We never talked; he never moved and just stood guard. Then, one night, everything changed. He woke me up from my sleep. I'll never forget how surprised I was because I'd never seen him move or talk. He said, "he's coming. Get out now." We packed up the car and left for a hotel for the night. The next morning, we went back to learn that someone had broken in and went from room to room looking for someone. I never saw him again.
48. Avoiding a Sticky Situation
It was the middle of the night, and I was sleeping. I heard a sound like someone taking a paperclip from my desk and throwing it against the wall, which then bounced across my desk. I woke up to this noise and turned on the light by my bed as I sat up. I looked over and saw nothing, which I thought was weird. As I was ready to lay back down, my 20-pound steel gumball machine fell from the shelf over my bed directly onto my pillow where my head was not 30 seconds earlier.
I flipped out and scrambled out of my bed as I was totally taken by surprise. As I stood up, I felt something under my feet. I found a paperclip. I put the dangerous gumball machine on the floor and the paperclip back on my desk and crawled into the safety of my comforter. Nothing like that happened again.
49. Off the Beaten Path
I was ten and went with my parents to this campground so that they could visit their friends. I got along with their son because we were the same age. Sometimes, however, if there were other kids around, their son would try to make fun of me to impress them. So, after we went fishing, he starts going at me. Not wanting to be stuck on a boat and teased, I decided to leave and walk back to the campground by myself.
So, I just walked on this U-shaped road. In the center were campers, and on the other side were woods, a lake, and at the very center, a park. Perfect, I thought, I’d just sit on the swings until I felt like enough time passed to go back. As I was on the swings, I noticed a path directly across me. I got up and started walking along this dirt path for about 10 minutes maybe, and then I saw this pond.
It had crystal clear water, and I had an urge to drink it. It looked so refreshing. I kneeled down, and suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck went straight up. It was like I snapped back into myself. What was I doing? Why was I about to drink pond water? Why did I walk down this path? I felt very uneasy. So, I turned around and started walking the same way I’d come.
Even though it was the same path, suddenly, everything felt different. All types of bugs were around. And the path was getting more and more narrow. I yelled for help, and I heard a voice asking if I’m ok. I said I was lost, and a woman said, “Just walk straight, honey, I see you.” I couldn't see her, just tall grass and reeds. But I walked toward her voice and eventually got to a road.
I was scratched from head to toe, and there was a woman by the playground asking me what was wrong. She took a tissue from her pocketbook and started wiping some of my scratches, and I told her what happened. I looked back. I saw no path. I was at the same park. I was in front of the swing where I was just sitting. The woman looked at me and told me that I should not even think about it and to just forget it happened because I was okay now. But she really emphasized not to talk about it. I’ve always been on the fence about this.
50. Off the Rails
When I was 10, I was riding my bike at dusk on the road where I lived. It ran parallel with train tracks. A car sped by, so I got off the road. That's when a glass bottle flew by me. It obviously came from the front seat of the speeding car, where I saw two young women laughing at me in the window. I flipped them off, then 30 seconds later, I heard the train hit them.
Sources: Reddit,
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