Sometimes when we’re faced with something bizarre, terrifying, or so out of the realm of our normal experience, we’re hit with an overwhelming urge to explain it. We often think that rationalizing this will give it less power. But, how do we explain the unexplainable? These Redditors gazed into an abyss…and the abyss gazed back.
1. Deja Vu
When I was in high school, my mom, my little sister, and I would eat dinner together every evening and tell each other about our days. At the time, my sister was young and still in elementary school. On one Monday during summer break, we were all having dinner and my sister told us about how she and our next-door neighbors were playing with their new cat when it got loose outside.
They had to spend the whole day looking for it. Fast forward two days later, and my sister told me the exact same story she had told two days prior...My mom and I looked at each other funny because we both clearly remembered the cat story. When we asked her if she had mistaken the day, she just gave us this blank look and said had no memory of it. But it got even creepier.
When we called our neighbors to ask them about the cat incident, they told us all of it happened that same day, Wednesday, and they weren't even in town on Monday. So my sister told us a story two days before it happened and had no memory of it. How is that possible? Where was my sister on Monday? We still don’t know what happened.
2. Mystery Man
My mother did all her OB-GYN appointments with a doctor in downtown Austin. He was on the fifth floor of this hospital building and had a long-time receptionist named Alison. I remember going to her with her appointments when I was little, and my mother would always make a game out of finding the office and being in the waiting room, which was colorfully decorated with a forest scene.
Alison was a super sweet woman who was basically a babysitter for us kids, too. She would read books to us, provide coloring books, and occasionally even listen to our dreadful knock-knock jokes. We all referred to her as Alison Wonderland. Anyway, years down the road, I got married and pregnant and started searching for an OB-GYN since I had moved back to Austin recently.
My mother suggested I see if that doctor, who was super young when I was born, was still in business. Well, I could not find his name in the hospital directory, so I figured I would just swing by the office and check. My mother happened to be in town (she had moved years ago) and came with me. We both joked about it being so familiar but in reversed situations now.
As we reached the stairs, we ran into an eerie problem. There was no fifth floor of this hospital office building. Odd. We both must have misremembered it. We knew it was on one of the top floors, so it must have been the fourth. Nope, not there. We thought maybe we were in the wrong building...except we parked in the same parking garage from 20 years ago and walked the same route.
That doctor does not exist. Never did, apparently. My mother and I are the only ones who remember him and Allison Wonderland. We have asked around, including among the hospital staff. We even looked up our birth certificates, which are new copies, and it just lists "attending physician." One of my childhood memories is fake.
3. The Dinosaur Room
Before making an offer on our house, my husband and I went to a house viewing with our three-year-old daughter, whom we'd left with a babysitter the first time we saw the house. As we walked in, I told her she could choose a bedroom. She said, "I want the Dinosaur Room!" and ran upstairs. OK, three-year-olds say random stuff, we thought to ourselves. A moment later, she called out, "Here it is!"
Sure enough, the closet of her bedroom was covered with dinosaur stickers. My husband, the realtor, and I were all freaked out. She acted like she knew the stickers were there, but none of us remembered seeing them before and we certainly hadn't talked about them. The house was vacant and immaculately clean since it was an estate sale. We left the stickers up.
4. Shadowy Figure
I remember when I was around seven or eight, I had pretty bad sleep paralysis. One night, I went to bed and at some point, I began having what I thought was an episode...but on top of not being able to move or scream, I started hearing static. That's when I realized this time was different in the worst way. Looking at the foot of my bed, there was the shadow of an adult figure just sitting there.
I know it's common to see and hear things when you have sleep paralysis because your mind is going into self-defense mode. But what freaks me out about that night is that I later fell asleep and dreamt that I was in that exact situation again...only, I was able to move and project my voice that time around. I really couldn't explain it; it was just so bizarre.
I completely lost it and started throwing everything around the room, kicking and screaming. The shadow got up, opened the door, and left. In the morning, I woke up and my room was a mess. The covers were on the floor and my bedroom door was open. There was something about that dream that always felt so real to me. 20+ years ago now and it's as fresh in my mind now as it was then.
5. Two Roads Diverged In A Wood
This happened last night while I was on the phone with my girlfriend. I was telling her about my day and ended my sentence with, "It shouldn't be like that." Then, I heard static and my voice echoing an alternate version of that sentence: "It shouldn't be that way." The phone call went back to normal and my girlfriend couldn't remember which one she heard first.
Did I glitch out to another parallel universe where I chose to end my sentence with the other words?
6. A Premonition
This happened well over a decade ago, but I was so freaked out by it that I still remember it vividly to this day. When I was around nine or 10 years old, I had this bunk bed with a ladder that would hook onto the metal base holding up the top bunk. To be honest, it was kind of a hazard, but I survived, so I'll call that a win. Anyway, this one day, I was at my friend's house, chilling in her room with her as we watched one of those infamous early 2000s TV shows.
I think it might have been The Amanda Show. At some point, I began to drift off to sleep. When I was in that weird twilight state between being asleep and being awake, I started to see what I can only describe as a movie in my head. I could tell I was at least partially awake because I was aware of my surroundings. I could hear the chirping of my friend's guinea pigs in the background and the soundtrack of the TV show.
The images I was seeing had this super surreal quality to them. They were transparent; like I could see through them to the darkness behind my eyelids. I saw myself in them too—I was at my house, in my bedroom. My friend was standing on the right side of me, my brother was standing on my left, and I was standing in front of the ladder to my bunk bed.
Behind me, there was a small table that stood against the wall of my bedroom. I saw myself start to climb up on my ladder and I realized I was trying to get something off of my bed since I slept on the top bunk. As I climbed the ladder, I began to fall backward, and I knew I was going to hit my head on the table. With a jolt, I snapped back to full alertness, sitting bolt upright in my friend's bed, breathing hard as my heart pounded in my chest.
I told my friend about what I'd seen, and after a few moments, I managed to calm down and put it out of my head. But then came the twist. A couple of hours later, we decided that I was going to spend the night at my friend's house. I called my mom to ask for permission before my friend and I walked down the street to my house to get my things.
I gathered up my clothes, pajamas, etc., and then went to grab something from my bed. As I was preparing to climb the ladder up to my bed, I froze. I realized that my friend was standing on my right, and my brother was on my left. Behind me was the little table. I hesitantly pulled the ladder toward me, only to realize that there was no resistance whatsoever.
It was completely unhooked from my bed, just leaning up against it. If I had begun to climb it before checking to see if it was properly hooked to my bed, my weight would have pulled it backward, and I would almost definitely have hit the back of my head on the little table behind me. I went and told my mom about the incident, still in shock.
I didn't know how my ladder had come unhooked from my bed since it was securely fastened that morning when I'd left for school. My mom looked at me with an expression between shock and horror. She revealed to me that she'd taken down my ladder earlier that day while I was at school because she was afraid my little brother would try to climb up onto my bed and fall. When I'd called her to let her know I was coming home to get some stuff to spend the night at my friend's house, she'd put the ladder back, not realizing that it wasn't hooked onto my bed.
I had no idea before that day that my mom had a habit of removing the ladder from my bed when I wasn't home.
7. It’s Always The Last Place You Look
Every night before I go to bed, I watch TV. Then, when I turn the TV off, I put the remote on the nightstand next to my bed. One night a few months ago, I did just that. The next morning, I went to turn the TV on while I was getting ready for work, but the remote was gone. I looked everywhere for the remote and it was nowhere to be found.
It bugged me to no end that I couldn't find the remote since I knew, without a doubt, that I had placed it on my nightstand the night before. Flash forward a few months later. I got a new bed and was moving my old bed out of my room. It's also important to mention that I have a wooden bed frame that the box spring sets down into. As I was moving my old bed out of my room, I lifted up the box spring…and there was the remote.
Not like it had just fallen off the nightstand and landed under the bed on the floor, but it was laying in between the box spring and the wooden frame in the middle of the frame. The only way it could have got where it was would be that someone lifted the box spring and mattress and put it there, which I definitely did not do.
8. The Secret Garden
I did taekwondo for 10 years, and my dojo always had yearly summer picnics with food and games. One year, the picnic was held at a pavilion in a forest preserve. My friend and I got bored—we were 12 at the time so w were over the games, but not "cool" enough to hang with the teenagers. At one point, we decided to follow this tiny path we found leading into the woods.
The path came to a few crossroads, but we decided not to split up, just in case one of us got lost. We left stick markers at each crossroads in the shape of arrows too, just in case. We walked for what felt like hours, eventually having to cross several roads that cut through the woods. We eventually came across what looked like an old factory or mill.
After a while of following a stream while sweaty and mosquito-bitten, we came to an old, crumbling set of stone walls and an open half-dome structure decorated with colorful tiles that looked like the front altar of a church. We were fascinated. I was SUPER convinced we'd just found the ruins of some old place of worship that no one else had ever discovered. It had Latin writing on the sides, and very worn mosaics depicting the globe, a lighthouse, and a star with radiating beams of light.
AWESOME, right? After some time, my friend and I realized that our parents were probably really worried about us, as we hadn't told anyone we were leaving to explore the woods and we didn’t have cell phones. We made our way back to the pavilion as quickly as we could, following our little markers, and emerged from the forest to find my mom on the phone and her mom standing by.
They were obviously very relieved to see us, and also very upset that we'd just wandered off without telling anyone. Later that evening, when she had cooled down, I told my mom about the "ruins" we had found. I don't know if she believed me, but she thought it was interesting. Fast-forward about five years—I was in high school, and my friends and I were enjoying our summer by grabbing iced coffees and exploring our town's downtown area.
My hometown is a touristy little town on a river. One of my good friends suggested that we go to the "shrine." I had no idea what he was talking about, but he elaborated: "It's this little run-down Catholic shrine out in the woods behind the old government building!" Instantly, I thought of the "ruins" and was a little spooked, but I HAD to go see it.
My friends and I hopped a fence and hiked out into the woods behind the government building for about 10 minutes, and sure enough, there were the "ruins." They looked EXACTLY like how I had remembered them and they were right next to a stream like the one my friend and I had followed to get to it years prior. I told my friends the story, but they were shocked and confused.
They told me that there was no way we could have traveled through the woods to get to the "shrine," because it was in a tiny patch of forest that was bordered on one side by the government building, on another side by a neighborhood, and on a third side by the river. They even took me to the edge of the path that was behind the neighborhood to show me.
I didn't believe them, so when I got home, I pulled up Google Maps to do some research. Well, my friends were right. The patch of woods containing the "shrine" in my hometown was completely closed off by the river, the government building, and the neighborhood. There was no way we could have exited the pavilion into the forest preserve and ended up in the spot where the "shrine" was actually located by simply walking through the woods for an hour or two.
I still go and visit the shrine on occasion when I'm home. It's a cool place and it's still beautiful. I haven't reached out to my friend about my discovery, as we grew apart about a year after the fact. Maybe I should.
9. Dreamscape
This is still creepy and unexplained. For a bit of context, my girlfriend had long hair when we dated, then we drifted away for a while before we got back together in a relationship. At that point, her hair was cut short. During the relationship, I had a dream about her; however, the "dream version" of her was of her past self as she still had her long hair.
In the dream, she avoided me and acted really strange as if we weren't together, just like it had been when we drifted apart. I was weirded out, but not much since it was a dream, right? Wrong. I told her about the dream and turns out that she had dreamt the EXACT same thing as me, except for one crucial detail. Hers was two years BEFORE mine.
That was exactly during the time when she had long hair and we weren't in each other's lives. She told me she was weirded out because in the dream I acted like we were together. Our descriptions of both the place and the people in the dream matched perfectly. It was a house party with lots of people and some common friends. It also had lots of strange rooms with bizarre stuff like animals and random objects. Our descriptions of the layout of the rooms made it impossible for it to simply be a coincidence.
10. Time Bandits
This happened to my family. Thanks to time zones, it's got a lot of layers. So, my brother was taking a trip out west. From my dad’s perspective, he dropped my brother off at the airport before work. My brother was supposed to have over an hour of waiting time before his flight, followed by a four-hour flight. After work, about eight hours later, my dad received a phone call from my brother.
Again, from my dad’s perspective, my brother should have been at his destination for less than three hours at that point. But my brother took his flight, got to his destination, got picked up by his friends, went to dinner, spent the night, went sightseeing the next day, then called my dad that evening. He thought he had been there for over 24 hours.
The confusion ended in a weird argument, but both of them continue to stick to their version of events. They've kept things like printouts of flights to prove that they were right. This is how deep it got—they both firmly believe in what they experienced. Honestly, I have no idea how either my dad lost a day or how my brother gained one, but it creeps me out.
11. All That Glitters Is Not Goldfish
When I was 10, I had a pet goldfish disappear. I suspected it was my best friend's dog that ate the goldfish, as he was always very interested in the contents of the bowl. When I confronted my friend with this theory, he informed me, to my amazement, that I never had a goldfish. He was serious too; he wasn’t pulling my leg. So why did I have the bowl??
12. Going Missing
One day, my mom and I decided that we were going to sleep in my room for the night. A little bit of background: The living room is in between my room and my mom’s room, and it’s impossible to get to the other without crossing the hall, obviously. So I was in my room and she was in the hall browsing on her laptop. She called out to me, asking me to tidy up my bed so she could come in and knock out.
I yelled back at her, saying, “OK cool, but I need to use your laptop, mom!" She said okay and that she had left it in the hall. Then she started walking towards my room. I met her at the door as I was heading out to grab the laptop from the sofa. As you’d expect, my mom was empty-handed. But before I reached the hall, she yelled out to me, “How the HECK is my laptop already on your bed?”
Apparently, it was in the exact place where I was lazing around.
13. Not Seeing Eye To Eye
A friend of mine, K, dated a girl, D, a long time ago. D was cool, and they dated for a while, but they eventually broke up. Sometime later, he began dating another girl, M. They stayed together for a couple of years, throughout high school mostly. At one point, I was hanging out with both of them at M's parents' house. M's dad caught us drinking, but he didn't care all that much.
Fast forward four years later—my friend and I were talking about the past, and he informed me that M's dad had passed from taking his own life. I was shocked; he was such a nice guy. We shared a laugh about old times, reminiscing on his best moments. Then, like six months later, it came up again. I asked M how she was doing, but my friend was confused, saying it was D's dad who had passed.
I told him that couldn’t be right because when he told me, we reminisced about the time he caught us drinking. My friend remembered this conversation and was completely baffled. It was just not the kind of thing he would confuse. Anyways M's dad is alive and well. It would seem we jumped into a slightly different reality at some point.
14. Double The Trouble
A couple of days ago, my friend and I happened to be driving through the same town. I was getting gas over the state line because it was 30 cents cheaper and he was coming back from the mall. We got to work later that night and he started telling people that I was speeding down the road and that he couldn't keep up with me.
I told him I saw him pass by me when I was pulling out of the gas station and that I didn't know how I could have possibly gotten ahead of him. He said he swore he saw me pulling out of the Dollar General ahead of him. Either my friend saw the same model and color of my car, a Versa, from out-of-state with a driver who looked like me, screwing around with an iPod, or there was a glitch in the matrix.
15. Wet And Wild
One time, I walked back from class to my dorm room and sat on my futon while talking to my roommate. She was pretty tired, and while in the middle of talking and ruffling through her backpack, she got quiet and pulled out her agenda book. It was soaked through with water. Everything else in her backpack was perfectly dry, and we both searched it for any other traces of wetness.
She hadn't taken her agenda book out of her backpack in a week, nor had she put any water bottles in her backpack that could have gotten it wet. It also hadn't rained for a week and a half either, so we were both mystified as to where this water came from. I just assumed she was too tired to remember properly. A minute later, I stood up from the futon and was met with an odd surprise.
The area where one of my legs was was pressed up against was also completely soaked through with water. No other part of me was wet. There was no liquid near me at all. Although a portion of my pants was soaked, none of the surrounding areas were wet. The area of the futon where my pants were pressed against was perfectly dry, too.
My roommate and I were never able to come up with explanations.
16. Pointing In The Right Direction
I don't know why, but I vividly remember seeing a mouse pointer in the sky as a kid. I must have been around four or five years old, and my family and I were out shopping. I was lying down in the back seat and I remember seeing it in the sky. My dad said it was a shooting star, but I don't remember any of them being overly excited about it.
I just have a vivid memory of it as a mouse pointer. My brain may be jumbling up the memory, but who knows.
17. Into The Night
There was one night during the mid-90s when I was with my ex and there was a big, yellow-orange full moon out, so we decided to go out for a drive. We lived in a small, west Texas town, so we didn't have to go too far to be out of town and into the countryside. After a short drive, she started getting all lovey-dovey, just as we were nearing a smaller town with a rest area just on the outskirts of the town.
We parked and instantly the mood changed. She picked up on it too. There was a van that was parked further down in the area, and for some reason, my eyes kept going to it. I kept feeling like we were being watched even though I couldn't see anyone in the front area of the van. My ex went from being loving to apprehensive, and she asked me what was wrong but I couldn't explain it.
Everything just felt off: the moon, the van, the area, the music, and I just had a feeling like we weren't supposed to be there or that we were interrupting something. I had a terrible feeling that the car wasn't going to start, which would have put us in a really bad situation because there was absolutely no one around (except for whoever was in the van) and it was nighttime, so the little town was mostly closed except for gas stations.
This was also before cell phones were mainstream, so we didn't have that luxury. Fortunately, the car started and we got the heck out of there. But as we were leaving, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw that a few people had gotten out of the van and were looking in our direction. I think we both picked up on something that night that may have saved our lives, and it was definitely extremely creepy.
18. The Missing Link
The only witnesses to this that I know of were my husband and me. It's a strange thing I can't explain. I am really into trees, and we live in a neighborhood with a lot of nice, mature oaks, elms, maples, etc. There is a house around the corner that had two absolutely huge magnolias, which are uncommon in my area. I used to love to pass them on my walks because they smelled great.
My husband and I always get angry when neighbors cut down healthy trees for no reason, so one day when we noticed that both magnolias had been chopped down, we were upset. I could see both stumps surrounded by the chopped-up wood and a wealth of smaller branches. I went on a rant about it and even grabbed a small branch with a bud from the ground near the stump to take home.
Without the two trees, this house had NO privacy from the next house over anymore. You could easily see the entire yard next door from where we stood, which was not possible when that tree was there. Fast forward to the springtime, and I was out walking around again. As I rounded the corner, I saw a shocking sight—there was the magnolia tree that I loved; the one that was closer to the road, safe and sound.
Now, I know people will say I only saw one cut down, but I distinctly remember my conversation and saying, "Why did they have to cut them both down?" I could see them removing the one close to the house, but the one nearer to the road was perfectly fine as it was. My husband also remembered our conversation but he was quick to assume that we somehow were mistaken.
19. An Echo Of The Past
December 22, 1998. It's 9 am and my aunt makes a surprise visit to my house. My parents are divorced, and my mom is at work. She decides to treat my brother and me to a movie. She's never really done this before, but we're both excited. It's now around 10 am and we're sitting in the movie theater watching the movie. I'm getting bored, and my mind wanders.
I suddenly have a thought flash through my head: "Which parent would you rather die first?" Being a kid, I weigh the option. "Maybe mom because she's so strict...maybe dad because I don't see him very often..." Then I shake the idea out of my head and think to myself, "Don't even think about this now because it won't happen for a very long time."
The movie ends, and we drive back to my house. My mom is home, which is weird because she should be at work, and I remember making a joke to my aunt that "Maybe she got fired finally!" My mom hated her job and she constantly joked about how she wished he'd just fire her already so she could collect unemployment and find something better.
I walk in and my mom tells me my dad, who was an armored guard, has been fatally shot. He was gunned down at 10:02 am. The only reason my mom is home is that her sump pump broke and the neighbors called her to say the lawn was flooding and icing over. The only way she found out he passed was when she turned on the news and there was a "Breaking Report."
About an hour after, she gets a phone call from the hospital. More weirdness: My dad was 44 years old. He passed on 12/22/98. He was gunned down at 10:02 but pronounced dead at 11:22. Years earlier when my parents were still married, they were fighting and my dad said something to my mom like, "You're going to feel really sorry the day I go to work and get shot in the head!"
My mom remembers he said this in December too...because she was putting up Christmas decorations.
20. I Think We’re Alone Now
One time, I went over to my friend's home to pick her up. When I walked in, she was running around half-dressed downstairs getting ready, so I told her I'd go wait outside. As I was standing just outside her home, I could hear the voices of her sister and mother through a window. Her sister was crying really loudly and painfully and the mother was responding back with stern-sounding responses.
It was like a fight of some type I guess. They have very distinctive accents as the mother is Somalian and they're the only Somalian people on that road (her neighbors are white people). They were both talking in a mixture of Arabic and English so I couldn't understand them, and I think at various points the mother was even using the daughter's distinctive foreign-sounding name.
After a few minutes, my friend opened the door and walked over to my car. When we're about a block away so that we were no longer within hearing range of their home, I asked her why her sister was so upset. She got really confused with me. I explained what I'd heard. She then told me that neither her sister nor her mother had been home at the time. In fact, the house was empty except for her.
This made sense, as my friend would never greet me half-naked or run around like that downstairs in their kitchen if her family were home. She got spooked and wanted to drop it right away as the idea of these unknown voices in her home creeped her out. My friend loves venting about her sister, so I knew it wasn't about trying to cover for her—like, she'd usually call me up when fights are going on to gossip right away. She'd never resist the urge to spill. Maybe they were home and she didn't realize it?
That moment has always confused me because I know that I 100% heard these two women speaking. It was clear as day—those two women in her home were definitely talking and crying for at least two or three minutes. I think it has something to do with her sister. She's very into mysticism, to the degree that we found broken eggs in the corner of one room where she'd tried some cleansing ritual. So maybe if it was something otherworldly, it was related to that?
21. Back To The Future
I think the creepiest experience I’ve had so far is the one where I had a phone call from the future. In 2007, I got a phone call from an elementary school, and a teacher asked for my name. She said she was calling about a young boy named Alex (they gave his last name, too) who was feeling sick. They said they contacted me because I wasm= his emergency contact.
I told them I had never heard of the school or the boy, and I wasn't sure how they got my information. The lady then confirmed my first and last name, but I insisted that I wasn't the emergency contact for this child. I had never heard of his last name either. She said goodbye and hung up. I later told a friend about it and we looked the number up on reverse number sites.
We found no results. We even called the number and we got the "This number is not in use" message from the operator. Nine years later, the number is still not in use. I don't remember the name of the teacher or the school, but I do remember the name of the child. I still don't know anyone with that last name. I'm convinced it’s a glitch. I can see someone getting my number wrong, I've had the wrong number thing happen, but for someone to nail my first and last name is what struck me as odd.
22. When The Saints Go Marching In
When I was in the seventh grade, Pokémon cards had just come out and were the newest fad. I, being a super cool 13-year-old, of course, collected them. I didn't bother playing the game, but I collected the cards nonetheless. I kept my cards in a binder with those protective plastic sleeves that people usually keep their baseball cards in.
One day, I was looking through my cards and noticed that one of them was gone (the holographic Machamp, for any other Pokémon nerds out there), which was really weird since the binder hadn't moved from where I had left it and the card was in there last time I checked. I looked EVERYWHERE for that stupid card and couldn't find it anywhere.
Not too long before this happened, my aunt told me a story about how she had lost a diamond tennis bracelet and had prayed to St. Anthony by saying, "Tony, Tony look around, I've lost something that can't be found" and later that night, the bracelet was sitting on her pillow when she went to bed. I decided to try the prayer, because...why not?
So I said, "Tony, Tony look around, I've lost something that can't be found" and then went about cleaning my room that I had destroyed in the process of looking for the card. I knelt down to pick something up and sitting behind my dresser, with just enough of the top sticking out, was the mother-loving Pokémon card. I was dumbfounded since I had searched every square inch of my room and definitely looked behind the dresser.
Also, my mom was the only one home while all this happened. I had no idea how the card got out of the binder, where it was when I couldn't find it, or how it got behind the dresser. I've used the St. Anthony prayer a few times since then and it works every time. It's not that I just end up finding the item, but it's always found in a weird place where it shouldn't be.
So, I guess if you ever can't find something, try the prayer and maybe Tony will help you out.
23. The Sixth Sense
When I was in high school, my mom only worked a few blocks away, so she would drive me to and from school every day. One morning, on our way to school, I had a very nagging feeling that something was wrong with my grandma, my mom’s mom. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to freak my mom out for no reason.
I went about my day and didn't really think about it again. When my mom came to pick me up that afternoon, she was visibly upset, so I asked her what was wrong. She told me that my grandma had a heart attack and was in the hospital. She told me she had to go to New Hampshire to go see her. My grandmother never recovered and passed a week later.
24. Nine Lives And A Lot Of Mischiefs
When I was younger, I lived in this apartment complex with my family. A lot of weird things happened there, but really only to me, so I don't really know how real those were. But this one was different. I know this is real because it involves my brother and sister. I remember my little sister and I were going to sleep in my brother’s room.
He had this small bedside lamp on the floor next to the door. As my sister and I were getting ready for bed, we had the light on, and we both remember seeing my cat pass the lamp. As soon as she did, the light bulb exploded. My other brother was just down the hall and he heard the bulb explode. I remember him saying something along the lines of, "What did you do to the lamp??"
After we told him that it was our cat that made it explode, he then told us that it was a complete lie…because my cat was right next to him when he heard it.
25. Dream Girl
This happened about a month ago. My girlfriend and I had gone to sleep like normal. In the morning, she got up earlier than usual and was explaining her dream to me. It was a nightmare and Tom Cruise was the base of it. In her dream, he was still married to Katie Holmes. We aren’t big fans of either, which made it kind of funny. Anyway, my girlfriend and Katie were talking in the dream and Katie let my girlfriend know she was from Toledo, Ohio.
I thought that was a specific thing to remember and asked if she had any idea where she was from. She didn't. We looked it up and behold, she was from Toledo, Ohio.
26. The Long Walk
Not too long ago, I was sitting in the middle of the back seat of a car. It was dark and my mother, her friend, and I were on our way back from dinner. As we were stopped at a light that had just turned green, I was casually looking around at the cars in front of us as they slowly moved forward. I noticed a man very close to the edge of the road who proceeded to walk into the middle of our lane a couple of cars up—and then suddenly, he disappeared.
We drove past the spot where I saw him standing and there was no sign of anyone. I distinctly remember him wearing a forest green sweater and a brown beanie. I don't even know how this was possible, but it still weirds me out to this day.
27. The Gravity Of The Situation
I was in the kitchen getting something from the fridge when my dad, out of nowhere, asked me: "Hey, what just dropped?" I was confused because I didn't hear anything fall, so I asked him what he meant. He's said he definitely heard something fall. I was still trying to figure out what he was talking about when suddenly, a date pit went flying off the kitchen counter right in front of me.
I literally saw the event unfold—it flew off the kitchen counter and landed on the ground right at my feet. I’m not sure I can think up a reasonable explanation for how my dad randomly predicted something falling off the counter, just to see it happen a few seconds later.
28. Now You See Me
Back in August of this year, I was in my room, which is in a basement, and I was just cleaning off my desk when I saw something out of the corner of my eye crawl out from underneath my bed. I immediately turned around and kind of yelped, only to see that it was a spider. I calmed down and looked for a jar in my room to put it in so I could let it outside.
I found a glass bottle, but when I turned it upside down, water came out of it. I looked for a different one because I didn't want to cause any harm to this spider. I found a candle holder jar that didn't have anything in it, so I decided to use that. I put it over the spider, grabbed a piece of paper, slid it carefully under the jar without lifting it up, and picked it up so I could walk upstairs to let it out the front door.
The paper was really thin so when I got to the living room, I accidentally slipped out the paper and the spider fell on my leg. I quickly put the jar over the spider and backed up while looking at it, making sure it didn't crawl away somehow. I knew we had thick papers on the table, so I took one while still looking at the spider.
I decided to slightly open the front door so the spider wouldn't fall out again. I just opened the screen door with my foot while holding the spider. I went over to the jar, slid the thicker paper underneath, and held it extra carefully. I peered into the jar to see if the spider was still in there. I looked at it through the jar throughout the whole process of walking to the screen door and opening it with my foot.
When I was outside, I looked one more time just to make sure it didn't fall again on my floor inside and sure enough it was still in there. I carefully set the jar and paper on the concrete and when I lifted up the jar…no spider. It just vanished somehow. I patted all my clothing to make sure it wasn't on me somehow, and there was nothing there.
Where did the spider go and how did it even vanish into thin air like that?
29. Something In The Air
When I was 13, I was in the outfield during one of my baseball games when I suddenly got this overwhelming feeling of doom. After the game, I called a bunch of my friends and family members to see if they were okay because I knew something was wrong somewhere. Everyone was okay, but I still felt really off. It didn’t take long for the other shoe to drop.
The next day, my sister’s friend, whom I am pretty close with, came over and was crying a ton. He told us that the day before (around the time of my game), his best friend back home in Alaska drank too much at a party, wandered off into the woods, and never came back. The next day, they had found his body half-eaten by a bear. After he told me this, the feeling of dread I had for the past day immediately left and I felt incredibly relieved. It's still one of the strangest things to ever happen to me.
30. Guardian Angel
I was hungover, so I had my headphones on and my hood up. I crossed the road without looking, then felt a push on my backpack. I fell over from it. I took my headphones off and got helped up by a lady who said that if I didn't trip, I would have gotten hit by the bus that just went past…But I did not trip. I definitely felt a push that kept me out of harm’s way.
31. Disappearing Act
There was this creepy little room at the back of my high school’s stage. It had no light and it was small; only lockable from the outside. It gave us all the heebie-jeebies. One day, we were joking around backstage and locked one of our friends in. He flipped his lid and started hammering on the door. We were all laughing like the bunch of jerks we were back then.
Then, his screams started mingling with the hammering and shaking of the door. We stopped laughing and just stared at the door when suddenly it became dead silent. It stayed that way for a while until we started calling his name. No reply. Some of the braver members of our group opened the door and went in.
He was not in there. We didn't believe them at first…but when we peered in, they were right. We continued screaming his name and began searching nearby. We eventually spotted him through one of the windows coming towards the building. We couldn't believe it. We all ran to him, and his reply was jaw-dropping. He said we let him out.
We were crowding the door to the room. There was simply NO WAY he passed by us. We still have no idea what happened that day.
32. Life Is Short
My grandpa was one of those jaded "I don't have emotions" kind of guys, even more so after his wife, my grandma, passed. Then, one day, everything changed. On Thanksgiving night, he just stood up and started talking to everyone very closely and intimately, hugging them and saying how proud he was of them. He just basically started acting 180 degrees opposite from his normal self.
That night, a burglar broke into his house and fatally shot him as he tried to stop the guy from taking a jewelry box from the living room. We opened that box up when we were clearing out his house and it had his and my grandma's wedding bands in it...which creeped all of us out BIG TIME because he lost his wedding ring about a decade earlier.
33. In The Dog House
This was freaking crazy. I was at home with the dogs and they were inside the house with me. They were whining at me because they wanted to go to the backyard, but I was playing some computer games and I was too lazy to let them out. They eventually left my bedroom, then two minutes later, I heard a loud noise. It sounded like they were horsing around and knocked something over.
I went towards the source of the sound but everything looked normal…except the dogs were nowhere to be found. I looked around everywhere and finally, I saw them. They were in the backyard. I don't have a doggy door, and the door leading to the backyard is always locked. Now, you're probably thinking there's a chance it wasn't locked and they were able to get outside, but even if that was true, how did the door get magically shut and locked again?
There was no way to lock that door from the outside unless you had the key. And the deadbolt was locked, not the knob.
34. It Cuts Like A Knife
When I was maybe 12 years old, I was outside and saw sunlight glint off a strand of spider web floating through the air. I didn't think much of it. When it reached me, however, it sliced open my cheek; maybe 3" across but not terribly deep. No trace of it was left behind. I still have no clue as to what that really could have been.
35. Mirror, Mirror
When I was around 10 years old, I was inside the house alone and standing in the living room. I looked down the hall and I saw myself standing there, staring back at me. This other me then started walking towards my bedroom until it was out of my sight. I followed him and when I got to the spot where I'd first saw him, I saw him already inside my bedroom.
He was in my bedroom closet which creeped me out, but something told me to join him there. I went inside and ended up standing in my closet alone. I was retracing its steps. I also realized that it had been looking around with a confused look on its face just as I had. I didn't tell anyone because I knew people would think I was crazy.
36. Book It Out Of Here
This one is super strange and I haven't told anybody about it. It just happened last week and it's still blowing my mind. I'm afraid that people will think I'm crazy. The first thing to note: I'm a bookbinder. I tear apart paperback books and turn them into leather-bound hardbacks. I'd received an order that had to be delivered on April 13th.
It's kind of a boring job, so I'd been putting it off in favor of other projects. Anyway, I got the book portion finished earlier and I wasn't looking forward to making the cover portion, so I slacked off on the night that I'd set aside to do it. I played a video game for a few hours, talked to a friend on Facebook, and then went to bed.
When I got up to go to work the next morning, the books were on my workbench completely finished. Like...the case was made, and the metal pieces were attached and glued together. They were completely done. I started internally panicking, wondering what the heck was wrong with my memory. Then, it hit me—I had an explanation...or at least I thought I did.
I checked my game's save log: yep. I played for several hours. I checked the Facebook chat: yep, I talked to Brandon right before sleeping. I checked my Fitbit readout: I'd only registered 200 steps so far, and by the time I went to bed, it was already beyond midnight. Six hours of work would have had me walking around quite a lot. I cut my board with a laser cutter that's set up in my spare bedroom, and there are always junk pieces left over from a cut, just like if you cut a circle out of paper.
You'd still have a rectangle piece with a circle cut out of it, but nope...those pieces were nowhere to be found. Not in the trash, not in the cutting bed. Also, laser cutting something leaves a distinct burnt smell, and I couldn't smell anything. My glue was exactly as full as I remember it being. None of my brushes were dirty .either
Even if I was sleep-bookbinding, my FitBit steps and scrap materials would have been left behind as evidence. I have no idea what happened.
37. In Two Places At Once
I was in a lecture once, just kind of bored and looking about. At one point, I saw this guy sitting a couple of rows ahead of me. I remember him having quite a specific look—he was quite a large guy with a ponytail and a long chin beard. I looked at where he was sitting, then over toward the door…and that's when I freaked out. It was him, the same guy, coming in through the door.
Either I passed out for a few minutes without realizing, or he moved at inhuman speeds to somehow leave and re-enter the lecture theatre. Interestingly enough, the lecture I was in was on vision and optical illusions, so if I'd been paying attention, I might have better understood what happened.
38. Trembling With Fear
On March 11, 2011, my mom was driving me to school. We had moved houses within Tokyo just a year prior, and I suddenly realized that I didn't know where our family would meet up in case of an earthquake. So I asked, and my mom and I spent the whole drive deciding on where we would go. Eventually, we chose the park near our house. Then at 2:46 PM, the Tohoku Earthquake happened.
It was during the final period of the day, and our whole grade was hosting a speaker that worked with disaster refugees. When the first tremblings hit, we were discussing what we would pack in emergencies. The whole day freaked me out, from beginning to end. When we had left the house that morning, my sister had left a big crystal vase full of birthday flowers for my mom, on the very edge of a table in the foyer.
On our way home, we were sure it had been smashed...but to my amazement, it was still there. It looked like it had barely budged a centimeter. It was literally right on the edge and it hadn't fallen over.
39. What We Do In The Shadows
When I was a kid, I lived in a trailer. The bathroom was next to the master bedroom, and one day, I was walking out and saw a shadow on the wall. At first, I thought it was my shadow, but then I noticed a horrific detail. Its arms were up as if it intended to grab something, and my arms were definitely not up. So I poked my head into the room to see if anybody else was in there, but nobody was.
While I was standing in the doorway, the shadow continued to move along the wall. I ran as fast as I could.
40. Under Lock And Key
One time, I came home from school with two friends and we went to hang out in my room. I put my keys down on my headboard since I had one of those ones with a bookshelf built-in. After I put them down, I immediately turned around, grabbed those same keys off my computer desk, and put them back on the headboard. My friends noticed right away, I did not.
41. For Whom The Bell Tolls
Strange things used to happen to me a lot when I was in high school. One time, I was asleep in a second-period class because it was early and the teacher didn't care. The bell went off and I immediately got out of the room and was on my way to meet my girlfriend at the time. I saw her, said hello, then hurried to my third period before the bell rang again.
I got to the classroom and it wasn't my class—the teacher said I was early. I looked at the clock and sure enough, it was only the start of the second period. It didn't hit me until later just how strange it was.
42. Problem Solved
I shuffled a deck of cards back into order. The thing is—I now know how it happened. See, way back when I was semi-obsessed with riffle shuffles, those fancy ones where you separate the deck into two and run your thumb up each side so they interweave and then arch it and they all go together nicely. I wanted to get really, really precise with them, so I practiced them a lot.
One day, I bought a new deck, split it, and riffle shuffled it a whole bunch of times, at least eight I'd say. Then, I idly ran a thumb up the deck just before I put it down…and every card was back in order. It was something I already knew was impossible, or at least the odds are literally astronomical, like being a number on the order of stars in the sky.
It haunted me for years. More recently, I found out why. If you riffle shuffle too precisely, the deck is split exactly into two and it is no longer a true shuffle as it is possible to sort the cards back into order in as few as eight moves. Think of it as a formal dance where you change partners. If a non-random system is kept to, then eventually every person will be back with their original partner.
43. Lost And Found
My mom used to babysit these kids when she was younger. Stuff used to go missing in the house and they would look everywhere for it, only to always find it in the middle of the basement. It would always be covered in dust as if it had been gone for years, but they usually found it after only 30 minutes of searching.
44. The More Things Change
I'm a painter I have this board that I've had since college. I started a painting on it that I never quite found the motivation to finish, but it's a decent enough board so I’ve lugged it around with me for a few years. Recently, I painted over it with a new painting. All this is a common thing for me. Materials are expensive, so I reuse a lot of my boards.
This board always stood out to me, though, as being particularly awkward and annoying to handle. I don't even remember where I got it, but that's not significant 'cause I have lots of scrap board. It's very thick, about an inch or thicker, and very heavy. It’s a pain to move up on my easel, and one edge was cut at an angle. Like, instead of a 90-degree, normal cut for a board that thick, there was one edge that was cut at 45 degrees.
Not the sides—if you saw it from the front you'd see an even rectangle, but the thickness of the back, on one side, was cut at an angle. I know this well because I picked the darn thing up so many times. I already knew it would be annoying to frame (I frame my own pieces) because to frame something, you stick pins in the back to hold the wood in, and this angle would make it annoying to pin into a frame.
I mean, all of this is no big deal, but it's all things I've thought and experienced to a pretty detailed degree while living with this board for a few years. Then one day, a month or so ago, I went to grab the board to work on the painting I've started on it. The freaking angled edge is now an even 90-degree angle. Totally normal now, just a regular piece of board, cut normally. No. Angle. This happened around the time that I was getting more curious for a "sign” even though I've been given a few already.
It felt like a cosmic joke. Like, "You wanted to see some stuff? Here's some stuff that literally no one would believe but is going to drive you crazy." I’ve examined all the edges, most with paint flecks from my working on it. The previously angled edge has fewer paint flecks but is still looking worn and real. My roommate laughed when I told her and said I must have remembered it wrong.
But I remember so many details, so many times that this weird, heavy, awkward board was in my thoughts and then just BAM, it's a different shape. It's like waking up to find that a plate you used to use all the time is now oval, not circular. But who would believe you when you point out such an innocuous thing? They would just say, it's always been oval, you crazy. But I KNOW this board was a different shape before.
45. It’s Not In Your Head
I used to work the cash register in this store in Brooklyn. One day, these two elderly ladies came in, and as soon as I saw them, I immediately thought there was a glitch. They were about 70 years old and looked like twin sisters. But the craziest part was the way they moved and the way they were dressed. It was the middle of January, so it was obviously cold.
They came in both wearing the same clothes—very bright green coats, neat black hats, the same black pants, and the same shoes. They walked right next to each other at all times while being inside and left in the same way after they bought something. This whole time, I was freaking out inside of my head. Even after they left, I was looking at their backs and it was crazy how glitchy they looked. Later, my manager told me they were twins that lived nearby and he honestly thought they do that to mess around with people.
46. In Search Of Lost Time
Six or seven years ago back in high school, I was dating this girl who went to a different school. I ended up going to her prom because honestly, I didn’t care at all about my own school's prom. We had a fun time and did all the sorts of stuff that teenagers do. I dropped her off at her house afterward and I ended up leaving her at around 3 am or so.
Now, she lived about 45 minutes away if the traffic was good. I set my mom's Tom-Tom to home and went on my way. I remember it being around 3 am because she called me to make sure I managed to get back on the highway and didn't get lost. I started my drive home, and the next thing I knew, I was pulling into my driveway. I don't remember the drive home; it was just a complete blank.
It was like I fell asleep but still made it home safely. Then it got much weirder. The part that screwed with my head was that she called me at 3:05-ish and I pulled into my driveway at roughly 3:15 am, even though it should have been a 45-minute drive. I don't know how the heck I did it. I know I didn't speed because it wasn't my car I was driving, it was my mom's.
And even speeding, in a 2009 Hyundai Elantra, there was no way in heck I could make a 55-mile trip in 10 minutes.
47. Thoughts And Prayers
My kids and I went on a road trip when they were three and five years old. We prayed for protection before getting on the road as I am religious. We got a few miles down the highway and my car wheels started to jerkingly lock up, almost like a really strong emergency brake was on. It shook the whole car and we all wondered what it was.
It stopped and then happened again, so I decided to take the next exit because we were about to take a long road trip. The first thing I saw was a mechanic shop. The guy drove my car a few miles, brought it back, and said he couldn’t find anything wrong with it. I got back on the interstate and noticed the traffic was worse than before.
As I got up the next couple of miles, I saw that there were 2 x 4s all over the highway. They had fallen off a truck...and they had been in front of me before I exited.
48. Music To My Ears
I had a dream that I got hit by a freight train on some tracks right in the middle of my town. As I was laying there injured and apparently about to pass, my girlfriend was holding me and the song “Where Oh Where Can My Baby Be” was playing. I eventually woke up to a call from her, asking if I wanted to go with her and her sister to a food festival that happened annually in town, which was coincidental because that was where I was in my dream.
I agreed to go and quickly told her about my dream and how intense it was. We had a laugh and I got ready. After they picked me up, we made our way into town and parked. As we were walking, I started to hear it. A band that was playing in one of the music tents was playing that freaking song. The very same creepy song from my dream.
I remember grabbing my girlfriend’s arm and being like, “Whoa!” Just kind of thinking it was a crazy coincidence. She realized what I was on about and also chuckled at the randomness. Just then, as we were standing there just being a little weirded out, we heard the dinging of the railroad crossing. The festival was on either side of the tracks and the train ran practically right through it.
The train went through the festival at the exact time the band was playing the song from my dream. The two of us would talk about that day for years to come, even after we stopped dating.
49. Never The Right Time
While I was living in Denver, I had a friend fly into town to visit. The Denver National Airport was about 30 minutes away and her flight was scheduled to get in around 11:15 pm. At exactly 10:30 pm, I got a text message from her. She said: "I just landed. Are you here?" Assuming her flight arrived early, we immediately started rushing to the airport while I kept trying to call her, only to have her phone go to voicemail.
I thought maybe her phone had kicked the bucket or something, so I continued to refresh the flight information page on our way there. It just kept saying the plane was still in transit. We ended up getting to the airport before 11:15. With no word from my friend or new information about the flight, we circled the airport and waited...then I got a text that sent a shiver down my spine.
At 11:15 pm or so, I got the exact same text message she had sent me at 10:30 pm. I called her and I asked if she texted me while she was on the plane. She said there was no way she could have since she had her phone turned off the entire time. When I finally met up with her, I asked to compare our text conversations on our phones.
I had two of the same texts from her, one at 10:30 pm and one at 11:15 pm, while her conversation only read 11:15 pm. She confirmed that she hadn't typed it out prior either. Her phone was completely off. This glitch in the matrix made me waste 15 minutes circling an airport.
50. The Waiting Game
I was visiting my mom for the Christmas break. It was December 23rd. I was exhausted after the 2-hour bus trip on top of the previous few hours I'd spent filling my mother in on what I'd been up to the past few months at university. My mother and stepfather were asleep on the living room couches, and I was sitting on the loveseat, flipping aimlessly through unappealing late-night TV shows.
Sometime between midnight and 1 am, I decided that I wanted to go to bed, but I kept flipping through the channels anyway. I wanted nothing more than to just crash after my long and hectic day, but for whatever reason, I felt like I couldn't just yet. There was something I still had to do before I could go to bed, but I couldn't figure out what it was.
After a while, I started to get angry. It was like I was fighting with myself, one half of me wanting to go to bed, while the other half insisted that I had to wait. Wait for what, though? All of a sudden, I heard this loud snapping sound from beside the TV. I stood up to check it out and realized to my horror that the cable to the little space heater in the living room had caught fire.
It was an old space heater with a cord my stepfather had spliced together to fix it after it had broken, and the exposed pieces of the wire had been wrapped in electrical tape. I yelled "FIRE!" at my sleeping parents and my stepfather jolted awake, lunging to his feet to grab the heater, by which time I had already yanked the cord out of the wall and ran outside with it.
Once I was sure that the fire had gone out and the heater was safe, I went back inside leaving the heater out on the concrete front stoop, flooded with adrenaline. After a few moments spent calming myself down, the adrenaline rush subsided and I thought once again that I was exhausted and wanted to go to bed. I realized that feeling like I was waiting for something was gone, and I fell into a deep sleep.
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