It’s that time again. The first chill of Autumn is in the air, and everybody wants to indulge in a little spookiness. Well, reader beware: These paranormal stories aren’t just a little spooky, they are a LOT creepy. Make sure you read these with all the lights in your house on, long before you go to bed.
1. You Can’t Go Home
Two years ago, I woke up around 1 am thinking, "I can never go home again". It was the most intense sense of homesickness I've ever experienced, full of panic and regret. I tried to calm myself down—logically, of course, I could. My parents lived just a couple of hours away, still in my childhood home. I'd fought hard to get away from the suburb I grew up in, so why this sudden intense longing?
The next day, I got a call that changed my whole life. My dad had been hospitalized during the night and was in the ICU. He didn't make it out. And while the house is still there, it's not home anymore.
2. Peek-A-Boo, I See You
My friends and I still talk about this story years later. When I was in high school, in the days before cell phones were common, my friends were going to come over to pick me up from my house one night. We had made plans at school for them to pick me up at 7 pm.
At 6 pm, my parents said I had to come with them to do something, and I totally forgot to call my friends and tell them. They came to my house at 7 pm and called the house phone. No one answered. There were four of them in the car. They all told us the exact same story—and it was chilling.
They said that they were about to pull out of my driveway, but they saw someone peek through the blinds from the bedroom on the top floor on the right. That was my room, so they assumed that I was messing around with them. Five more times, they said that someone would peek through the blinds, and a couple of them said they even saw the person’s eyes.
We got home at probably 7:10 to 7:15 pm, and they were still in our driveway. One of my friends came over and said they thought I was screwing with them. Then they asked me, "So, who’s staying in your room?" I told them that no one. So they asked, "Who’s...home at your house right now?" Again, I told them, no one.
Their stone-cold faces then told me what they had seen repeatedly over the last 15 minutes. At first, we all thought there was a burglar in the house or something, so we called the authorities.
They came over and inspected the house. It got even creepier at that point. There were zero signs of a break-in, nothing was touched and nothing was stolen.
Our house had an alarm on it, so there is no way someone could have come into the house without setting off the alarm. My family, my friends, and the officer all kind of stood around for a few minutes, trying to make sense of the situation. My friends swore up and down (and still do) that they couldn't have imagined what they saw.
All four of them saw the same things, and it wasn't particularly a dark night so their eyes wouldn't be playing tricks on them. To this day, none of us can make sense of the situation.
3. Just Checking Up On You
A week or so after my childhood dog had to be put down due to cancer in his mouth, my family and I experienced something so surreal—we started hearing his usual footsteps coming down our stairs. He was the best dog. We buried him in our yard and 10-year-old me painted him a gravestone that still marks the spot.
It was nice to hear from him a few more times after we lost him.
4. Keep Nice And Quiet
When I was about 12 and started getting left alone at home, something used to shush me. I'd be pouring cereal, singing along to the TV, and suddenly, "Shhhhhhh!" The first time it happened I absolutely destroyed myself with fear and didn't say a word until someone came home. I didn't tell anyone because I didn't think anyone would believe me.
Every time I’d start to convince myself it was just my imagination, it would happen again. I think it happened about five or six times. One Saturday morning I was in my top bunk, and the beds were super noisy so the slightest of moves would result in them creaking. "Shhhhhhh!"
I thought it was my younger sister and decided to annoy her further. I started rocking about in my bunk making as much noise as I possibly could. Colossal mistake. Suddenly...
"SHHHHHH!!"
I chuckled, still thinking it was my sister, and then she whispered nervously from below "…Was that you? The shushing, was that you?" I popped my head down and said "No, it was you". She looked terrified, her eyes welled up with tears, and she said "No it wasn't". She ran out of the room crying and wouldn't come back in for a long time.
I realized it must have been the "shush ghost" and was overcome with relief that I wasn't crazy because someone else had actually bloody heard it. Haven't heard it since. I'm always kind of waiting.
5. It Runs In The Family
Not just me, but my family experiences this very strange phenomenon. If someone close to us passes, one of us has a dream about them the night they passed. It could be years since we had seen them but we would still dream about them. My aunt dreamed of her husband the night he passed, my dad dreamed about a family friend who was basically a second grandmother to us on my mom’s side the night she passed, and I dreamed of both my aunt and my great-grandmother.
6. The Black Hand
So in this one dream I had, I was outside my grandma's home. She was deceased this happened. I saw her smiling creepily and standing near the door. Her hair was also weird, like here and there and sticking up. I didn't mind it until one day, early morning, I was outside my house, and up above the roof, I saw a full black figure sitting, and it was gone the next moment.
But here's the weird thing—it had the same haircut. And another time I was home alone, I came from a shower and was wiping my face when I saw a hand (again full black) on my shoulder but obviously no one was there. To this day, I don’t know what to think of it. Not even sure if it's paranormal or my brain playing tricks.
7. Leave Those Playmates Alone
A few years ago, my sister was married to a soldier in the British Army and he was stationed in Germany. We all visited her and she knew I was interested in history so, for a day out, we visited Belsen Bergen, the former concentration camp. As we were walking around, my sister was pushing the pram with my nephew in it.
He was like two years old at the time. The thing about Belsen Bergen is that after WWII, it was burnt to the ground so it's more or less blank fields. As we walked, we passed a tree. That’s when the most chilling moment of my life happened. My nephew asked my sister who the kids were behind us.
We all turned around and no one was there. My sister asked which kids, and he replied, "The ones in the pajamas". Yet again, no kids anywhere to be seen. We all knew for a fact that he has no idea what country he was in, let alone know about the horrible events that occurred at that camp.
8. They’re Always Watching
I've had this happen around three times in my life and it's always the same. Once when I was a child, I was sound asleep. Maybe I was dreaming, I can't remember, but whatever was going on in my head stopped and all I saw were two brightly lit circles about eye-width apart.
It jarred me awake and when I woke up, my little sister was standing near-ish my to my bed staring at me. Somehow, I sensed she was staring at me. I later reasoned that my eyes had opened at some point and I didn't realize it and I actually saw her staring at me, subconsciously.
It happened again about two years ago. I was laying in bed and I remember I was actually dreaming about something. It was like all the noise and action of my dream just dropped around me there was nothing but blackness. And then I saw it—two brightly colored circles about eye-width apart.
Again, it jarred me awake and when I opened my eyes my wife was looking at me. She said I had made a throaty noise in my sleep so she had been staring for about 10 seconds to make sure I was breathing. But she assured me I never opened my eyes, as best she could tell.
It happened again about three to four months ago, and my cat was staring at me this time.
9. Man’s Best Friend
I was in basic training at Fort Knox and we were on a very long road march. Suddenly out of nowhere, this beautiful yellow Lab with no collar and that looked exactly like my dog at home came up to me and walked beside me, of all people, for a few minutes before running back into the woods.
This was a big boost to me because you needed to finish the march as one of the requirements to graduate and I was dragging my butt due to stress fractures in my feet. I was able to finish and we earned some phone time to call home. So of course I called home to see how my dog was doing. That phone call broke my heart.
My mom informed me that they had to put my dog down. She was sick before I left and they were hoping she could hold on another week but she just got too bad. When that dog came up to me it was literally out of nowhere; there weren’t any houses around for miles. One of the things she and I loved to do was to go on runs together, so I like to think that was her coming up to me to say goodbye.
10. You Can Never Get Away
When I was two, I used to tell my parents about an "Invisible Man" who lived in our house and was from Cincinnati. He’d apparently offed his wife in our house as well as his son, whom I also talked to. I also knew the correctional facility went, etc. Keep in mind, I'd never even heard of Cincinnati before this.
We researched it years later and we found out a chilling truth—he was a real person.
11. Angry Ghosts
My family and I had just rented this beautiful historical house that was built around the underground railroad era. It had small hideouts and doors where people would hide out. As soon as we moved it, I knew something was wrong. We got uncomfortable vibes from it. We'd hear footsteps coming from upstairs when everyone was downstairs, the TV would turn off/ on by itself, and doors would open and close by themselves.
We eventually accepted the fact that we had a ghost and it seemed harmless, so we called "her" Claudia. Each of my family members had a least seen Claudia once. She was a tall dark figure who would move fast. But then it got worse. Most of the hauntings would come from my bedroom, it was always cold and had an unpleasant smell.
My little brother began sleepwalking and would have terrible nightmares. One night became the final straw for my family and our relationship with Claudia. My sister and I were away with our friends while my parents and brothers were at home. The whole house was asleep when my dad woke up from screaming coming from my bedroom.
When he ran out past the living room—where my little brother liked to sleep because of his sleepwalking—he noticed that my brother wasn't there. So he ran upstairs, where he met my older brother who had heard the screaming as well. They both saw that my bedroom door was shut, and they realized the horrific truth.
It was my little brother screaming in my room. They both went to open the door, but it was like something was blocking it. Finally, my dad busted the door down and as the door flew open, a black shadow ran right past him and my brother. He then entered my room which was so cold, that he could see his own breath.
He looked over at my little brother, who was laying on my bed and covered in sweat and tears and started yelling his name to wake him up. But my little brother, still “asleep” just pointed at the corner of the room and started yelling "Get her daddy, get her!!” My dad looked over but saw nothing but pitch black.
That was enough for him. He quickly grabbed my brother, who was as stiff as a board and ran the heck out of there. When my brother woke up the next day, he had no memory of what had happened that night and still doesn't remember when he talks about it almost five years later. We moved out of that house a few weeks after the incident and my brother stopped sleepwalking as soon as we did.
We've heard a few other stories from the people who currently own the house, but nothing quite as terrifying as what happened to my brother or my dad. The house has a great history behind it, but it was too creepy for my family.
12. Safety First
When I was younger and dumber, I was on a road trip the summer after my freshman year in college. I had been driving for maybe five or six hours straight without wearing my seatbelt. I then had a sudden urge to buckle my seatbelt—what a horrible idea that was. Less than two minutes later, a driver crossed the center line and clipped my car, causing a massive accident.
My car rolled over and I walked away with bruises and scratches. I'm certain if I hadn't followed that urge, I wouldn't be here today. Still can't explain why or how that happened.
13. The Girl In The Road
A few years ago now, I was driving home towards Chelmsford in England, Essex. It was the middle of winter, probably around midnight, and my girlfriend is in the passenger seat. There was no moon and the road was unlit and empty, so I was just enjoying the drive. I was pretty much flat-out on a long right-hander coming out of a roundabout when I noticed there was a girl in the middle of the carriageway.
She was tall, skinny, and dressed head-to-toe in black with a long billowing skirt. She had long black hair and was facing away from me with her arms by her side. As I said, I was pretty much flat out. Everything happened so quickly. I swerved into the opposite lane, just missing her, and I hit the brakes. In my rearview mirror, she was momentarily lit up with my brake lights and was again facing away from me, but still in the same spot and with no sign of movement.
I was spooked, so I instinctively got off the brakes and back on the gas. I could see her silhouette recede in the mirror. My girlfriend didn't see a thing but she was startled awake when I swerved. I circled around the next roundabout to come back and prove I wasn't crazy, but there was no sign of her. There was no path near that part of the road; it was on a slightly raised embankment through farmland and there was no reason for anybody to be there, especially at that time of night.
I'm not religious or superstitious in the slightest, and I think it's pretty easy to explain, but it just didn't feel right. It creeped me out enough to consider it a potential paranormal experience. But that wasn’t even the end of it. I had a pretty vivid night of terror about the same girl sometime later. I woke up and she was tapping on the window (ground floor flat), then she was in the room but had no face.
14. Through The Looking Glass
When I was 15, my family went for a trip to a hill station named Shimla in India. We booked a suite in a hotel where the master bedroom had a glass platform about 8 x 8 feet sticking out about two feet outside the room over the valley, which was hundreds of feet below us. Being an adventurous kid, I decided to sleep on that platform while my dad slept on the bed and my mother and sister were in the other bedroom.
So, at around 1:30 at night, I was sleeping on my side facing the glass, which was about three inches from my face. Suddenly, my eyes opened and I wanted to scream. I saw a woman looking at me intently from outside the glass. I still remember clearly her face was totally pale and her eyes dark with black hair and some dark cloth on her body.
I can only explain her gaze as that of a lion before he jumps in to kill his prey. It took me three seconds to realize where I was and that it was not some human looking through a window but some entity floating outside my room. I shouted as loud as I could and pushed myself back so hard from the glass that I ended up hitting the other end of the room by force.
My dad woke up and turned all lights on, but there was no one to be seen now. That was the last time I ever slept with my window shades open in my life. It’s been eight years since the incident but those eyes terrify me to this day.
15. You’re Gonna Want To Take This Sitting Down
We had a kitchen chair that would move. Just one of them, though. They would normally all be pushed in and this one would barely be pushed out some days, almost like someone was sitting in it but not that far back. We all came to the same scary conclusion—it must have been a ghost who liked that chair because we could see it from the living room and see it move.
It wasn’t a big movement, it was small but it definitely moved. And then my mom and I heard it move another time when it was just us in the kitchen. And sure enough, when we turned around it was sticking out!
16. One Last Goodbye
When I was about six, I had a dream that I was alone and scared on a plane. I was looking around the plane for my parents and instead, I saw my grandmother. She was sitting a few rows ahead and across the aisle. In the dream, I got up and went to her. She gave me a big hug and told me to go back and sit down, then said that I couldn't come with her where she was going.
In the morning, my parents sat me down to tell me a horrific truth— she had passed in the night.
17. What Goes Bump In The Night
My family has always had "something around" in every house we've lived in. It's hard to choose just one story so I'll just choose the most recent. So this house I'm currently at, we've had some occurrences. Our beds would shake like a mini earthquake, and my dad said he saw a "predator camouflage outline" in the trees watching us while checking what my dog was barking at.
We’ve had "them" choke us in the night. That's what happened to me most recently. My sister used to crash in our living room when visiting from school. At this time, I was unemployed, and I stayed up until 4 am every day playing video games. One night, I heard a loud gurgling, so I went to check it out with my dog. My sister had tears in her eyes.
She looked at me and pointed at the light, so I flicked the switch on and she sat up gasping for air. I asked her what was wrong and she didn't say a thing. She finally asked if she could use my bed and I let her; though, to be honest, I wanted to be able to use the larger living room TV for myself.
A few months later, I took a nap on the same couch at around 7 am, but I woke up sometime around 15 minutes later to see two glowing circles—eyes, red around the edges, yellow in the middle—staring at me. I then felt something pull me to the armrest. I realized I was in serious unexplainable trouble. I could not speak let alone scream for help.
My right arm was lifted slightly like it was putting me in a supernatural sleeper hold. But I had my phone in my left pocket and dialed the same sister's number. I heard her voice so I started flicking the phone, tapping it and tapping it until I saw the hallway light turn on. She ran over and saw me tearing up like she was that one night.
She screamed "Stop!" at the top of her lungs and I finally could breathe. We haven't slept in that room since, but I'm still interested in knowing why and what was choking us...
18. A Dark And Stormy Night
I just started working in a lab in August. Since I started, my coworkers have told me about all sorts of paranormal activity that has happened in the lab. I listened to their stories but never put much stock in them...until one night when one occurrence changed my entire perspective.
One day, about three months into the job, I was late setting up a specimen and ended up staying behind while everyone else left. The hood I was using is in a corner, and I couldn't really see anything except what was right in front of me without turning my chair. Out of nowhere, I heard and felt footsteps rushing towards me, followed by a gust that blew past me.
I turned to look, and there was nothing and nobody there.
19. What Lurks In The Shadows
My father said that he's frequently seen a woman in a white dress at the top of our stairs, where the bedrooms are, between 2-4 in the morning. During that time, if I choose to go to the bathroom, I'd have this incredibly unsettling feeling, like I shouldn't be out in that hallway for any reason.
My boyfriend and I have also seen our seven-month-old son looking up the stairs and watching something move around.
20. Keep An Eye On The Sky
I hold this story responsible for my continuing fascination with the unsolved and unexplained. It has become a part of the culture of our family. Growing up, I can recall many family get-togethers going late into the night, retelling different accounts, and discussing possibilities. Since then, I’ve carried on the tradition, as well, in telling my friends.
It’s a story that’s meant to be told at night—a standing story. At least, my father and I can never sit while telling it. I’ll never know what really happened that night. Nor will my father, my grandmother, or anyone in Wall Township, NJ, for that matter. It’s been over two decades since it happened, and I feel a desire, a responsibility even, to write and share this story with the hopes that others will appreciate it as much as my family, friends, and I have.
I wasn’t born yet. It’s the summer of 1987 in Wall Township, NJ—my father’s high school graduation night. He is out with friends celebrating. At home are my grandma and her young daughter, Jen. They live on a corner lot in a small ranch in a quiet suburban neighborhood along with their dog, Brandy, who was outside in a backyard pen that is located on the right side of the house.
My grandma decides to drop something off at a friend’s house, just a few minutes away and leaves Jen at the house for a short time. While alone, Jen is in her room, on the left side of the house, when the first strange occurrence of the evening happens. It’s the crunching of leaves outside her bedroom window. She knows Brandy is in her pen and that this is no animal out there—this is distinctively a person’s slow and deliberate footsteps, right there, under her window—cautious steps—trying not to be heard.
Jen doesn’t dare look out her window for fear of what could be out there. Instead, she hides and waits for the sound to stop. Eventually, it does. It doesn’t trail off; it just stops. Was someone still out there, being still as could be? My grandma comes home and Jen is obviously frightened. She tells my grandma what happened. I consider my grandma to be a brave lady.
She checks throughout the house and then looks out the windows. Nothing. Not too much cause for concern, it could have been anything. Time for dishes. My grandma is washing dishes in the kitchen, which is on the left side of the house. There’s a window directly above the sink. The evening hasn’t quite turned into night, and the sun is still lingering, as it tends to do in the summer.
Over the sound of the water running, my grandma hears something that she can still imitate to this day—a heavy, raspy heaving. It seems to be coming from below the window outside. Imagine a long-term smoker gasping for air—a deep and frightening sound. Two and two are put together. There has been someone outside for quite some time.
There was someone there while she was away at the store, and that someone must have been there when she checked around the house. Someone she didn’t see. Fear sets in. Then before this sound can stop, Brandy, whose pen is about 30 feet from the kitchen window, goes crazy, barking like she never has before.
As I said, my grandma is a brave lady. She decides to go get Brandy. She advises Jen to lock the door after she steps outside and for Jen to only open it when she sees her mother return, running up the back stairs with Brandy on a leash. So on the count of three, she makes a run for it. Jen locks the door and waits there for what seems to her like an eternity.
Around the corner comes my grandma with Brandy, bolting up the back steps. The second Jen lets them in the house, she slams the door behind them and locks it. Without missing a beat, the three of them retreat to my grandma’s bedroom, which is located on the back right side of the house. Before grandma even has a chance to gather her thoughts or call someone, there are voices coming from the side street out her bedroom window.
Relief rushes over both of them as they realize that these are familiar voices. My father and his high school buddies—Jeff, Drew, Mark, Chuck—five or six teenagers altogether—crammed in a small VW—laughing and joking, obviously drinking and having a good time—in—of all places—right under his mother’s nose. However, the voices quickly turn panicked.
They’re shouting, “Oh my God—what is that!? Oh, my God, now there’s four of them!!” That’s what my grandma and my aunt Jen hear coming from the car. After a couple of minutes, the shouting is directed from the sky to the left side of the house—the front left—outside Jen’s bedroom. Clearly, it’s something much more frightening than what they had seen in the sky as their shouting gets louder and much more panicked, and someone yells, “Let’s get the heck outta here!!!”
With that, tires squeal, as the car full of teens bullets forward, makes a sharp right, and tears down the long, open road ahead. My grandma stands frozen at the window watching them as they grow further and further away from the house—away from whatever horrifying sight they saw—something horrifying outside her house.
Then, unexpectedly, she saw a blur of bright red brake lights glaring in the distance. The car full of boys had stopped—but what for? It was a road surrounded by woods on both sides. Why would they stop in a wooded area after being so scared? Then, she realized what they were doing. They were making a U-turn, heading back toward the house.
In a desperate attempt to signal the boys to pull into the driveway and come into the house, Grandma runs to the front door and begins to flicker the outside light switch on and off. The car is speeding by so fast that she wonders if they’ll even notice the signal, but at the last second, the car makes a quick turn into the driveway.
Doors fly open and six boys emerge in a massive sprint across the lawn, all six of them reaching the front door at the very same second, climbing under, over, and around my Grandma, and then, someone pulls her inside along with them. They slam the door shut, lock and bolt it, and all of them, out of breath, shaken to the core, each begins telling their story over one another.
Above the power lines—it was a ball of light—it was spinning very fast, spinning until the yellow ball turned “red hot”—then it splits into two separate balls, then four—then the bottom right one spins until red again until the four join back into one. They weren’t sure how long they watched this pattern go on; it seemed so surreal to them.
They continued. And what they described was even more terrifying. “Then I said, ‘Look at that!” said Jeff. “And, now we see, leaning against the house—a figure,” Mark chimed in. And from all their accounts, something was very...not right with this figure. Imagine a silhouette of a man, not darkened beneath the shadows of the night.
No—this figure was bright white—all white—from head to toe. Was the man’s skin white? Or was he wearing white clothing that covered his head like a hood? They couldn’t quite tell. They say it seemed to be standing and leaning against the wall of the house very casually. Almost as if observing their reactions to the globes above and their patterns when they hovered in the sky not very far from the man’s position at the corner of the house—the man in the white suit.
“I started to yell at the guy,” Jeff said, “but Drew floored it and we peeled out”. “Then we’re coming back toward the house,” George said, “And we see the lights flashing. We thought the lights in the sky were making the electricity flicker in the house—but someone yells, ‘It’s your mom!’” They realized my grandma was flicking the lights to get their attention, and they knew they couldn’t just leave her and my aunt there alone.
So they stormed the house. My dad and his friends aren’t sure if the lights in the sky or the man in white were still there or not when they ran for the door. They were so panicked and focused on getting inside, that no one really looked. I don’t think they wanted to. My grandma opens the front door and is met with a group of teens bursting through the doorway all which ways.
One friend goes through my grandma’s legs just to get inside the house a split second sooner. My grandma told the boys they could party as much as they wanted in the basement and she’d cook them a big lasagna dinner, as long as they promised not to leave the house. But, first, she calls the authorities and tells them about the crunching and the rasping sounds and the dog barking.
She doesn’t want to tell him the other details because she doesn’t want them to question George and his friends who’d been drinking underage. Two patrol cars pull into the driveway. The boys sit quietly out of sight while my grandma talks to them. There’s a knock on the front door. It’s one of the policemen.
“We searched the entire yard, around the house, in and around the shed, along the row of trees and bushes outside the perimeter of the house and the yard, and, we don’t see anything. But, if you should hear anything further, just give us a call back”. As I said, we’ll never know exactly what it was that happened that night, but the story spread quickly and became a legend in Wall Township.
Years later, when I was a little kid, my dad and I were watching a show on UFO sightings together. They showed a film someone had taken of UFOs—spinning balls of light in the sky. My father jumped out of his seat and yelled, “That’s it! That’s what I saw!” The film was taped in another city—I don’t recall where—perhaps even out of the country. Unfortunately, it was a quick clip and we were unable to tape it.
All I can say is the man in the white suit and the glowing, spinning balls of light in the sky that visited my family’s house in 1987 continues to intrigue me and inspires me to keep an eye on the sky—and to share the story with others.
21. Wrong Number
My grandmother passed from brain cancer about twenty years ago. About two weeks after she passed, I was hanging out over at my parent's place and my mom got a call. No number, no unknown number, just blank caller ID. She answered it and immediately got quiet. She then hung up and went to her room without saying anything.
When I finally got her to talk about it, she said it was her mother, saying she was trapped and that they wouldn't let her leave, over and over again. Then the phone disconnected. I asked her about it a few years ago and she denied that it happened. Then, later, she admitted that it had happened two more times that year and then stopped, but she didn't want to discuss it anymore.
22. An Open And Shut Case
When I was very young, we lived in a house that had the usual "ghost" activity—hearing footsteps, hushed voices in the next room, etc. But the really scary thing was the basement door. It would open on its own, and I'm not talking openly an inch or two when you closed another door nearby, I mean it would swing fully open like someone was walking through it.
My parents tried locking the door and it would still swing open on its own. By the time I was learning to walk, my dad was concerned I would fall down the steps, so he went down into the basement and just said, to no one in particular, that he had a young daughter upstairs and could they please be careful with the door.
Ever since then, the basement door would open, and then slowly shut on its own.
23. One Ring To Bind Them All
I've had countless experiences, but this particular one I really can't explain. I wore this ring all throughout my childhood up until I was 20 years old. I went through some stuff and started thinking wearing it was pointless, so I put it on a shelf where it stayed for a few days. I sat across the room watching TV, and out of nowhere, the ring came flying off the shelf and it landed in a bowl sitting in front of me. I wore it for a while after that but eventually lost it.
24. A Bumpy Ride
I'm not sure what is real or what was my brain playing tricks on. I've heard footsteps in the attic a couple of times in my parents’ house. It’s a three-story Victorian house, so I doubt it was a squatter. Plus the only door up there has a bolt lock on the outside, which I checked each time and it was still bolted.
The worst thing that happened was the day I was all alone. This was in the middle of the day, unlike most of these stories where it's always night. I was in my room playing on my computer when I heard the doorknob rattle. No big deal, my cat messes with it sometimes. It rattled again, but really hard, way harder than the cat could do, and oh yeah...I noticed the cat was already sleeping on my bed.
I said, "Hello?" Thinking it may be someone from my family home looking for me. The response was nightmarish. I got a big thump on the door like someone was shouldering into it. I didn't have the door locked, so if someone wanted in, they just had to turn the knob. So that thump was freaky and it was followed by another thump. At that point, I was freaked out and said "What the heck?”
As the words left my mouth, there was a HUGE thump at the door, enough to shake my room a bit and scare the cat. I was sitting there, freaked the heck out waiting for something to burst through, and I was kind of wondering if it was an earthquake even though I lived somewhere there were never earthquakes.
After a minute of staring at the door, I opened it and—I saw nothing. I checked out the house and no one was there. No windows broken or any signs of a break-in. I went back to my room still a little freaked out and when I closed the door, the knob fell off into my hand. It wasn't even loose before. No idea what that was and it never happened again, but it's the strangest possibly paranormal thing I've ever experienced.
25. The Walker
I was working a night shift at a call center and it was a slow night, so I was watching Netflix or YouTube or something. We have a camera that looks at the back door and I saw someone walking down the hall towards where I was working. I didn't recognize him, but not wanting to get into trouble, I quickly closed the browser window.
A couple of minutes went by and I didn't see anyone—but I noticed a door that usually stays open had shut closed, so I went over to it to open it back up. I still didn't see anyone in the office, so I did a check of the entire building and nobody was around. I got back to work and waited for my shift to end and for other people to come in, thinking somebody might pop up behind me any second.
The next shift came and I told my manager—they gave me a look like I was crazy. The next night, I got to work and they told me they checked over the recording. Basically, the moment I saw someone walk in, the video froze on a single frame for about 30 minutes. The video started up again just as the door closed and shortly after I went open it again.
I was freaked out for the entire night next shift.
26. Dream A Little Dream Of Me
My first apartment after college was the upper half of an old house. My new roommate had just recently graduated, so he was in no rush to move in. I'd been living with my parents for the past year or so and needed out as soon as possible, so I brought a sleeping bag over with my last load of stuff on day one.
No utilities, just camping out by myself in the living room. At some point during the night, I had a vivid dream that a killer with a knife was coming down the main hall toward the door to the living room. Just as he was about to open the door, I woke up terrified. Shook it off, and went back to sleep. But in hindsight, that was just the beginning.
I was talking to my roommate one morning a few months later. He told me about a weird dream he had the previous night. Seems he had fallen asleep in the living room (for the first time) and had a dream that a killer with a knife was coming down the main hall toward the door to the living room. Just as the killer was about to open the door my friend woke up.
He spent the rest of the night in his own room. I told him about my dream from the first night. We both thought it was weird. A couple of months later, a friend needed a place to crash and asked to stay on the couch for a night. The next morning, he mentioned that he had the most peculiar dream. "A killer with a knife was coming down the main hall toward the door to the living room?" I asked. "Just as he was about to open the door, you woke up?" added my roommate. The look of pure terror on our friend's face was astounding.
27. Hello, Friend
I used to play with a boy down the street. I remember this kid so vividly. Whatever I was playing that day, he would just join in and play until I was called in. But apparently, there was something I didn’t know. Every time I mention this kid to my family, they all tell me that I used to play by myself all the time.
28. More Things On Heaven And Earth
I'm a totally materialistic person and have never experienced anything paranormal in my life...except for one thing that I can't explain. When I was a kid, I had a huge wart on my foot. My parents took me to the hospital and doctors tried to burn it out or something, but it didn't work and the wart came back even bigger.
Then summer came and I went to visit my granny in a small Russian village. She saw my wart and called for a woman known as a local healer. She took a thread and started making knots over the wart while whispering something to herself. And in just a week the wart was gone.
I learned that this is a traditional and renowned way of healing warts in remote places in Russia, but I have zero explanation of how it's possible.
29. The Room Of Requirement
My brother reminded me of this the other day. When we were growing up, we were best friends with a brother and sister pair who were our exact age, so we spent all our time with them and at their house. Their house was big; it even had a movie theater in the basement. My brother and I slept over often, and the four of us usually slept in the basement of the theater since it had a huge sunken couch that fit all of us.
Around the time I was about nine or so, and my brother was older so he remembers it better. Our friends were really excited to have us over because they had gotten a few couch cushions in "the crawl room" so it would be like camping. My brother and I both had no idea what they meant, we knew every inch of their house, so we went to see this room.
In their basement around the corner from the theater, there was a short door, so short that we had to crawl through to get in. My brother and I had never seen this door before even though we had practically grown up in this house. We questioned it, but neither of us remember the answer they gave other than "They just found it".
They were rich, so I guess we assumed it was new construction. Anyway, we slept on couch cushions in that short room that night and neither my brother nor I can remember anything remarkable about it, and we slept in the theater again after that night. A remarkable thing happened a few years later.
It was my friend’s 14th or so birthday and I was keeping her busy while her brother was hiding her present, presumably in the crawl room. At the end of her birthday party, he brought up the crawl room. He said something like, "You remember going in and out of there a few times, right?" I said yes. He looked confused and asked me to show him where I remember the door being.
We went into the basement and lo and behold there was no door. Not even an outline where it would have been sealed. My brother kicked the wall and it was solid cement. We asked our friend's parents and they had no idea; apparently, they'd never done construction down there and there was no room other than the theater in the basement.
I swear I was in this room in the basement. All night, we sat on cushions in there and brought a small TV with Nintendo, we went in and out for a solid night. We all remember it. After our friends moved, the new neighbors had us over and my brother and I went into the basement with the fresh eyes of logical adults, but still nothing.
There was still no door and we realized that there would have been virtually no room for us to sit comfortably because the basement only extends about four feet past the edge of the house; the room would have been under our friends’ lawn. It's just baffling.
30. A True Haunted House
My grandma's house is chock full of weird stories, going way back. Pretty much everything weird and scary has happened in the hallway leading to the spare bedroom. My grandma would see my grandpa's silhouette walking down the hall. He'd stop at the door to their bedroom and peer in, and she'd ask if he needed something.
He wouldn't answer and would keep walking. Peeved, she would get up to go ask him again, only to find him in the living room sleeping, or watching TV and insisting he'd been there the whole time.
My mom has heard someone calling her name from the same hall, and once we were there alone house-sitting while my grandparents were out of town. They were due back late that night, and my mom and I both heard heavy footsteps coming from the hall. She told me they must have come home early, so she went to greet them. No one there.
The guest room at the end of the same hall has a TV that will turn on by itself. They also had a couple stay there, and neither one was particularly superstitious. The next morning the husband was unusually quiet. He finally got a chance to talk to my grandma alone and said very simply: "Someone was watching us last night".
He had seen a figure standing in the corner of the room staring at them and had been so frightened that he'd just closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep. When my grandma pressed for details, he kind of shrugged it off and didn't want to talk about it anymore.
There's also a middle bedroom between the spare room and my grandparents' room, which we have always just called my room because I used to stay with them so often. I was on my bed once when I heard a thump and then a skittering noise like something had jumped off the bed and was running across the floor.
I thought it was the cat being weird, so I sat up to see what she was doing, only to find that the cat was at the foot of the bed staring intently at the doorway to the hall. I looked around for a bit but was unable to find anything.
31. Follow The White Cat
When I was much younger, I was sitting with my cousin in our grandparents' kitchen talking when I saw a white catwalk from the basement into the bathroom. My cousin, who'd been spinning around in her swivel chair, turned back to face me. She was absolutely shocked.
"Did you see that?"
"The cat?"
"Yeah”.
We got up and checked the bathroom but there was nothing there. The basement door had been closed (and latched) the whole time. I always try to think of an explanation, but I can't.
32. It’s In The Cards
Back in my late teens, I was teaching myself to read Tarot cards, so I would do free readings for friends and family all the time for practice. So I’m at a family BBQ at my boyfriend’s house, and we're all hanging out and chilling when they ask me to get my cards.
So I do a fairly boring reading for my boyfriend’s mom, and his sister-in-law decides she wants to be next. I shift over to be across the table from her and set her to shuffle the cards. I throw the cards in a standard Celtic cross layout. It’s the darkest spread I’ve ever seen in my life. Almost all Major Arcana cards, all showing their more negative aspects.
So I’m sitting there looking at these cards that are basically saying this person is Not Good, and my brain is going a mile a minute trying to figure out what the heck I’m looking at. Then a DEEP, wolfish, male voice I've never heard before or since says right into my right ear: "Tell her NOTHING". Not threatening, just giving very clear instructions.
I told her I couldn't tell her anything, gathered up the cards, and got out of there like my butt was on fire. A few weeks later I’m over there again and it came up. Turns out she's had two palmists and three astrologers react the same way to divination requests.
33. Old Houses And Old Ghosts
Several years ago when I was in my mid-20s, I accepted a job as Visitor Services Manager at a medium-sized historic house museum. The house was a Victorian Gothic cottage of an author who wrote a single rather important book and then rode that fame for many less successful and poorly written publications on various topics.
Anyway, the house was beautiful but dark in that perfectly creepy manner that only Victorian homes can be. It sat near the street with two other buildings, a carriage house, and another mansion behind, all belonged to my non-profit employer. My office was tucked in the front corner of the ground floor of the carriage house.
In the daytime, it was filled with sunlight and faced the perfectly manicured cottage gardens. But at night it was dark and gloomy and the position of the desk put my back towards the expanse of the quiet, empty, 100-some-year-old building. It was eerie on the best of days and terrifying on several of the worst, and this dreary March day happened to be the very worst.
It had been an exceptionally boring day, as most were working at an ill-attended museum. All told, I think we'd sent a total of one tour with one visitor and their disinterested college student tour guide through the house. I'd spent most of the day staring longingly at googled pictures of Robert Pattinson on the computer behind the front desk...as I said, this was a while ago, and my tastes have improved.
It was before the clocks “spring forward” for the season so it was nearing dark before closing and the deep cloud cover and persistent drizzle didn't improve the ambient lighting. Seated at the front desk in the poorly stocked gift shop, I sent my two remaining tour guides in to close the house for the night, which involved switching off lights, switching others on, shutting some doors, and opening yet others, apparently all to ensure the house burned in a particular manner were that a blaze took it in the night.
So the two tour guides were in the house and I was stationed at the front desk, on the main floor of the 1872 carriage house. Directly above me was a lofty attic space used as merchandise and junk storage of the type only museums seem to accumulate, because everyone should save the posters from the 1994 mother-daughter tea fundraiser...just in case.
Above me and to the right was the guide break room complete with a folding table and chairs, microwave, and multiple boxes and crates of books, educational material, and related. Downstairs in the gift shop, on my desk, was an old handset landline phone that could dial out but could also, with the press of an aptly labeled “guide room” button, reach the room above on speakerphone, so that I might call up and announce a pending tour, or yell at them, or sing, though I don't think I ever did sing to the guides up there.
I was just finishing up considering what color Robert Pattinson's eyes might be in candlelight. Then it happens. I started to hear the most considerable racket coming from the guide break room. It sounded very much like a person of considerable girth lifting heavy objects, carrying them to the other side of the room, and then unceremoniously dumping them out, stomping the entire time.
This continued for perhaps 30 seconds and I recall the thought that drifted up through my confusion and irritation was "that sounds URGENT" as if the person was doing whatever it was they were doing as fast as possible. Anyway, I was annoyed, and no one should have been up there.
I called up, on speaker phone, and said something like "What the heck are you doing?!" and no one answered so I went with the classic fallback of "Hello? Hello?! Hello...?...Hello?" And then my voice went weak in my throat as I listened. I could hear it moving clearly through the speaker phone, picking things up, shoving things, dropping things, then I heard it come up to the desk where the phone sat.
I could hear it breathing, breathing hard and moving things on the desk, papers, maybe even the phone base. It was at that moment that I realized that not only had I seen both my tour guides leave to close the adjacent house, confirming that I was indeed alone in the building, but that I could see all unlocked doors from my seat, and no one had come in since their departure.
The hairs stood up on my arms and I immediately radioed our aged but well-meaning security guard who happened to be standing just outside the front door of the carriage house in the misty yuckiness of the evening. God knows why he wasn't inside where it was much warmer. Anyway, he went straight up the stairs upon my call.
I watched him march up the first set of stairs and then listened as he turned at the landing and walked up the last handful tentatively. I held my breath waiting for him to open the door and then heard no more sounds. "Rod? What’s up there? Rod WHO's up there????"
But there was no one. He came back down the stairs looking at me a bit owlishly as I had insisted there was SOMEONE up there. The room had been empty and nothing had been touched, save a pile of freshly crumpled paper in the center of the table. At this point my guides, having heard the ruckus on the radio, returned from closing the house.
They swore up and down that when they'd left nothing that had been amiss, they had not crumpled the paper. There had been a stack o paper on the center of the table when they'd gone to close up.
I won't lie. I was shaken by it. I grew up in old houses and have worked in the historical field my entire adult life, so I've encountered a few odd and inexplicable things over the years...but this was much scarier. After we'd finished closing up the Visitor Center for the day, I knew I would be returning to an empty house and that thought was too much to bear.
I instead sat in the parking lot of the local grocery store until my husband finished work. I have no idea what I heard up in that room, who walked up to the phone and was so frantically moving unseen objects, but I know with absolute certainty that it was not good and that it was angry. I do have a chilling idea though.
The oral history that had passed down from guide to guide for generations of museum employees spoke of a young man, a stable hand, who had hanged himself in the building at the end of the 19th century...but most museums have a story like that, and it's likely not true.
Whatever this was, I sincerely hope I don't meet with it again.
34. Stuck On Replay
Eight-year-old me was lying wide awake in bed. It's after midnight. The rest of the family are already sleeping in their rooms. Suddenly I'm hearing what sounds like every window downstairs is being banged on, and that every pan in the kitchen is being thrown around and banged on each other like someone playing the cymbals would do.
I also experienced what I strongly believe is called residual haunting. It’s where an event that happened in real life is "played" over and over again like a recording, long after the event in real life has passed. Again, I'm wide awake sometime after midnight (I am a night owl). My bedroom window is open, so I heard things clearly.
I heard a car coming up the road. Heard it stop. Then I hear a door opening and the voice of a little girl say, "Bye, daddy!" in a cheerful, see ya later tone. The car door slams shut and the car immediately peels out like it couldn't wait to go. The tires are screeching. Not two seconds later, I hear that little girl scream. It was the most horrific scream I've ever personally heard, even to this day.
Of course, I was on my feet and looking out my window to see what the heck was happening. Guess what I saw? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. All is quiet now. There is no way that little girl could have hidden in the time it took for me to get to my window. There wasn't even anywhere for her to hide in or behind.
My house stood on a hill. The house across the street stood on a hill. There were no bushes she could hide in, as I lived in a place of deserts and canyons. Plus, it was dry as heck out there. Any small movement would have been heard.
35. Deep Woods, Deep Trouble
You guys know what shadow people are, right? The name kind of gives it away. They're shadows and also people, look like a silhouette, you get the idea. Anyway, this was back when I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. I'm over at a friend's place and we go out back in the forest behind his house. We’re walking through some tall brush when out of the corner of my eye, I see what looks like the silhouette of a head and shoulders rise over the brush.
I ignore it, thinking I was just seeing things. A short while later, we're out on a wide trail when something darts across the path in front of us. It looked like the silhouette of a man, hunched over, running from one side to the other, somehow leaving the plants on either side perfectly intact. My friend turns to me and goes, "Oh my God, did you see that?"
I did, and we got out of that forest as fast as we could. We sat in his house, terrified, and I mentioned the head and shoulders I initially saw. Turns out he saw them too, and just ignored them as I did. What we saw still freaks me out to this day, nearly 10 years later, because we never really knew what we saw.
36. In Too Deep
The creepiest thing I've experienced was when I "saw" a ghost. I put it in quotations because there very well could be a rational explanation for what I thought I experienced, but nevertheless, it was still really creepy. About two years ago, my friends and I visited Letchworth Village, in Rockland County, NY.
It was a psychiatric hospital for the mentally and physically disabled opened in 1911 and was the site of the first polio vaccine trials in the United States. Letchworth was finally shut down in the '90s because of the rampant mistreatment of the live-in patients there. Many of the hospital's abandoned buildings are still standing on the campus, and most are decayed enough, or already broken into, to be able to easily climb in.
The final building we explored was once the main hospital, I believe. My friend mentioned that this place was apparently featured on some Ghost Hunters-type show as "one of the most haunted places in America" or something, and so we were pretty excited when we saw someone had graffiti on the wall: "THE GHOSTS ARE HERE".
The first room had rusted metal bars suspended by wires hanging from the ceiling. This in itself was not out of the ordinary, but as we entered, a gust of wind shook the bars which began to swing and clank eerily against each other. Needless to say, it was a nice spooky entrance. Upon exiting that tetanus trap, we entered a long hallway with a big staircase leading to the basement and the second floor.
Ignoring every single horror-film-infused instinct to not go down the flight of foreboding stairs, we climbed down to the basement which was of course, extremely dark, save for a welcoming burst of light streaming in from a broken window near the stairs. With our flashlights on we made our way slowly through the basement hall and at about halfway, we found the old morgue.
One of my photographer friends set up his tripod and began taking a long exposure of the morgue as the rest of us waited and jokingly tried to convince him to climb inside of it. As this was taking place, I happened to look back down the hall from where we came. I couldn't make out any details of the hallway, except for the beam of light, at the other end. Something was off about the whole thing.
It looked as if there was something partially blocking the beam of light coming in from the broken window. Kind of like a shadow but more like a silhouette—where a person's upper torso and head would have been illuminated by the light, instead of just darkness. However, the second I noticed it—it MOVED and the beam of light was undisturbed once again.
Right around that time, my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, and my bowels went a little loose as the SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS came clearly from behind the doors of the unexplored room ahead of us. I can't remember if I screamed or cried, probably a little of both, but we left pretty quickly after that.
37. Something’s Coming Over Me
Currently, in my house, things like my couch move when there is no one there. I hear doors closing and when I check there is no one there. But that’s far from all. Sometimes I wake up with scratches on my forearms. The scariest is this feeling I have, it is like a cold, angry feeling that comes out of nowhere and overwhelms me. This has been going on for the last two weeks and I am losing sleep over it.
38. A Cleaner Of Souls
So, this technically happened to me, but I was a baby and don't remember. My mom told me this once when we were talking about paranormal activity and whether she believed it. She had a couple of incidents, but the one with me went like this. My mom was at home waiting for the HVAC man to come to do something, I do not recall what.
My dad was at work, and she was alone with me. I wasn't more than two. The HVAC man had a reputation of being a weirdo; he was weirdly religious and very superstitious and all the other women in the neighborhood didn't like being alone with him. My mom figured he was just misunderstood, and she said he was odd but never made her uncomfortable.
Now, I was having screaming nightmares every night. No one knew why. I was in my own room, which was the first room a child had slept in since the house was built after my sister was born. Mom didn't tell the guy any of this. So he is checking all the rooms for whatever he's there to do, and he walks into my room and stops. His next words sent a chill down my mom’s spine.
He asked my mom if I had nightmares. She said yes, and he told her that the house was built on a native burial ground, and we had angered the spirits. They were upset, and that was upsetting me. My mom said she didn't really know what to say, and he asked her if she wanted him to perform an exorcism.
Mom told him sure, wouldn't hurt, right? He went to his truck, got his Bible, and wandered around my room muttering she didn't know what, waving the Bible, that sort of thing. After a few minutes, he turned to her and said that the spirits were calm and everything should be fine. He finished his work and went on his merry way.
Mom said I didn't have another nightmare after that. She has no idea how to explain it.
39. The Friendly Ghost
In 2000, my wife and I had just purchased a large old Victorian-style home to have room for our three kids, ages two, five, and seven. Early one beautiful spring morning, with the sun shining bright, half asleep, I opened my eyes to see a woman in an early 1900s yellow dress with little flowers smiling down at me.
She said, "Don't worry, the children will be safe here”. Still mostly asleep, I thought, OK, good, and dozed off again for a few seconds. Then the realization hit me of what I just saw, and I sat straight up in bed fully awake. The woman in yellow wasn't there of course. But that's not the creepy part...
Fast forward to the next spring. I was teaching at the local middle school. I was in the break room with a number of people. All of them filtered out, except one older lady who was a teacher's aide at the school. She had been close friends with the previous owners of the home, another family with young kids who had moved away for job opportunities.
She asked me how I liked the house, I said it was great to have room for the kids. Then she looked around to make sure we were alone and asked, "Have you seen the woman in yellow yet?" I nearly pooped my pants on the spot, and by the look on my face, she knew I had. I told her my story, and she said one of the little girls who had lived there before talked about the yellow lady keeping her from getting hurt.
40. Protection From Above
When I was nine my sister was hit and fatally injured by a car. This happened right up the road from where we lived—two houses up, to be exact. About a year after her passing, I was walking across the street, two houses up, when I heard my name yelled, very loudly. I stopped and looked behind me, and I had chills up my spine. No one was there. When I turned around there was a car in front of me.
It was passing me and the woman driving clearly did not see me. She was looking at the radio. She drove past me and I finished crossing the street. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if I hadn't stopped I would've been hit by her. I looked and never saw anyone outside or at a window. Never figured out who it was who yelled my name.
41. A Spiritual Connection
One night I had this rough dream where my friend came up crying about his dad being gone and was having a terrible time. It was one of those dreams that looked and felt real but the moment you wake up, you realize it wasn't true. Still, something felt iffy about the dream.
Flash forward a couple of hours later I was sitting next to the kid who I dreamed about. We were sitting just like we always did before going out to football practice in the 105-degree heat. And for some reason, I turned to help and told him all about the dream I had and described it thoroughly to him.
Then with a stone-cold face, he said that today is the day my dad left my family 10 years ago. Up until that point, I never knew anything about his father or when he left his family.
42. Hat’s Off To You
I was going on a bus trip to visit my cousin and the night before a laid out my favorite toque to wear on the bus. I woke up the next morning and my toque was gone. Completely vanished without a trace. I didn’t have time for this so I just left without it. So I'm at my cousin’s super far away and we're playing on an Ouija board (stupid I know) and I jokingly ask it where my toque is. The reply stunned me.
It says it's in my basement. My basement is known to be quite creepy and most people get bad vibes from it. So I'm talking to my mom on the phone and I tell her what the Ouija board says. She decided to go down to the basement and ask for the toque back. The next morning my mom wakes up, makes her bed, and has a shower. When she comes out of the shower the toque is sitting on her pillow.
43. A Memento From Me To You
When my cousin passed I really wanted to have one of his guitar picks as a keepsake. When I asked my aunt if I could have one, she told me she had given his friends all the extras she found lying around the house. I was kind of bummed out, but I tried to move on. Three months later, I was driving home late at night thinking about how much I really wished I had gotten one of his picks.
Not that I play guitar, I just wanted to have one. When I got home I went into my room and took the TV remote from the top of my clock to watch television for a while. I finally decided to go to bed, so I turned the TV off and went to put the remote back on the top of my clock, but something caught my eye.
My heart was pounding and my hand was shaking as I picked up a guitar pick from the top of my clock. To this day I have no logical explanation as to how it got there. No one in my house plays or owns a guitar.
44. Gone Too Soon
My father has a twin brother who passed about four years ago. He was a hardworking, simple man who was loved by everyone. He was diagnosed with cancer but the doctors caught it really early on and according to them, with the treatment he had a 90%+ survival chance. But while he was in the hospital, tragedy struck. He suddenly passed without any warning.
This was a day after the doctors had told my family that he was doing well in treatment and that we shouldn't even worry about anything. I was at school at the time so I couldn't travel to Korea to be with my family, but my mother and father immediately left NJ to be there.
My father told me later that they tried several times to talk to the doctors about what happened but they would not meet or give my family an explanation, and just said that these unforeseeable things happen all the time in the medical field. Okay, I understand, I have two sisters who are both in the medical field and they've both told me some pretty crazy stories too, so I understood.
But then something happened that really shook my family and made us believe that something terrible happened. My mother returned to NJ after the funeral, and my father decided to stay in Korea for a while so that he could take care of his brother’s things. My uncle was a VP for a successful company so there were a lot of things that my father had to help with.
One night, my aunt, who had cooped herself up in her room for days, mourning, decided that she needed to leave the room and get some sun. She met some friends, ate out, and came back home late around 11 pm. She told us that she felt a little better, that going out made her feel human again. But this is where the paranormal came in.
When she sat down on her bed she immediately felt a presence in her room. She couldn't quite describe it, she just knew someone or something was there. It wasn't like the feeling that she was being watched, but rather just this heavy thick air about the room itself. Instinctively she looked at her bedside table, where a picture of my uncle was, and immediately bolted out of the room.
She called my father and told him he needed to come immediately. When my father got there he said that my aunt was sitting outside with a blank expression, like she had seen some stuff. She told my father to go to her room and look at his brother’s picture. My uncle’s eyes, in the picture, looked like they were bleeding.
There was what looked like a stream of blood flowing from both eyes. My father opened up the frame and touched the picture to see if someone in the family thought it would be funny to paint it on or something but according to him, he says that the "blood" would not wipe off. That it was a PART of the picture.
To this day my father thinks the doctors screwed up and accidentally killed his brother and covered it up. The picture with blood flowing from his eyes was my uncle telling us that he had passed under suspicious circumstances.
45. Children Always Know
When my daughter was around a year and a half, almost two, my sister-in-law was pregnant. One night my husband and I are going through the bedtime routine with our daughter, singing silly songs, reading books, etc. Out of the blue, she looks up toward the ceiling and says "Hi baby!" And starts waving. She giggles a little.
Then she waves again, this time saying "Bye-bye baby!" Then goes back to what she was doing as if nothing happened. The next morning my sister-in-law calls. Her voice on the other end of the line almost made me break down at that moment. She was asking if we can take her to the ER. She had a miscarriage.
46. Blood In The Water
A few weeks ago, I was sitting at my desk in my university room. We think our flat's haunted because weird stuff happens every so often—things disappear, there are noises when nobody's in, stuff like that. Suddenly, I get a sharp pain in my leg, as if I'd been sliced.
I look down and there's nothing there, and absolutely nothing that could have caused it, so I carry on with my work. The next time I looked down, I froze in fear—there was a trail of blood going from just above my ankle and trickling down my foot.
No explanation. I cleaned off the blood and bandaged it up, and it's healing now, but I still have no idea how I got the wound. It literally sprung from nowhere.
47. From Beyond The Veil
A few months after my uncle took his own life, I had a dream where he was talking to me on the phone. In the dream, he was telling me to tell his daughters that he loved them and that he missed them a lot, but he talked like he was away in the military rather than gone. I also kept hearing weird clicking in the background.
When I woke up, I mentioned everything to my mom. Her face went white as she told me the truth. She told me that when he was in the Navy, he did Morse code. No one had ever told me that before or even mentioned it since I was alive, so it was weird that I remembered that part of the dream so clearly and it made enough of an impression on me to mention it to my mom.
48. Beasts Of The Southern Wild
I live in northern Georgia in the United States. Behind our house, there is a dense forest for about 60 miles. One summer, I was walking along this river for a few hours that goes deeper into the woods. I was about to cross the river at a shallow part when I heard this loud whistle maybe about 40 meters to the right of where I would end up after I crossed the water.
I'd never seen or heard any sign of anyone there before. I whistled back. After about 30 seconds I heard it again, but from behind me. At that point, I was confused. Then, began smelling this terrible stench. It was so pungent I started gagging. I stopped in the center of the river, and that's when I saw it.
A large, hairy, bipedal creature walking through a clearing about 15 meters from me. It looked at me and the hair on its shoulders stood up. It backed up quickly then turned around and sprinted. I’ve only told my dad about this—he told me that he had seen them before and not to tell anyone else about them.
I never believed in Sasquatch or anything like that before that day. But there is no other explanation for what I saw.
49. A Figment Of Your Imagination
I worked in a really old movie theater for my first job. It was a small theater, with six screens, and all in a line so you could see from one end of the building to the other essentially. Eventually, I got promoted to manager so I had to start the movies. We had film still so it was a fairly complicated process of threading the projectors and then watching over them because they mess up easily.
We always joked about ghosts, because a lot of weird stuff happened around there like things falling over, doors shutting, and hearing voices. Well, one day I was there with like one employee, slow midweek day, and I walked out of the office up in the projection booth and out of habit looked both ways. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
To my right, there was a woman in a whiteish dress and brown hair about four feet away just standing there. I only caught a glimpse before doing a double-take and she was gone. I wasn’t the only person to see her. Several other employees claim they've seen a similar woman around the theater but I never saw her again so I'm not sure if I just imagined seeing a person or if I did.
50. The Night Creature
This experience is 100% true and is the most frightening event to ever happen to me. Mostly because I have yet to think of a realistic explanation. I live in upstate New York and my family owns around 10 acres of land surrounded by fields and woods. I have always had experiences growing up in this house.
It was late at night, close to 1-2 am when this occurred. I have a window at the end of my bed that has an AC unit. It's about eight feet from my window to the grass below. My cat, Hudson, loves to jump up on open windows and lay across and press against the screen. This night, he had decided to jump up on that open window.
I had totally forgotten the screen to my window was out due to the AC. I didn't realize this until I heard Hudson hissing and screeching at something outside the window. I assumed it was some sort of animal, maybe a raccoon, and tried to call him in. Suddenly, he had fallen out the window and started screeching.
I have never heard him make a sound like this before, so I jump out of bed to go outside and get him. I went to my little brother's room to have him help me go find my cat. I was really nervous because he's gotten out before and had been missing for days on end, so my fear of the dark was thrown out the window at this moment.
I had my flashlight on and sprinted out the door. I went to the side of the house where my window was. I made the turn and shined my flashlight on the area. What I saw was Not my cat. It was something excessively horrifying. An eight-foot figure trying to scale the walls of my house and reach into my open window.
One of the creature’s back legs was pressed against the house while the front legs had a hold of my window sill. The creature noticed my flashlight and looked in my direction. It had deep red eyes that kept me frozen in my spot. The creature stared me straight in the eyes and proceeded to let go of the house and move towards the field on the side.
But it didn't go on all fours. Whatever this thing was stood on its back legs and ran quickly into the field. In the darkness, I was able to make out what looked like a set of horns or antlers on this thing’s head. Its height on its back legs was at least seven feet tall and it did not look at all like a human.
Its posture was slightly hunched over, and its arms swayed to the side of it as it moved. They hung close to the level of what I guess would be its knees. My little brother was in the front of the house looking for my cat, so I went to grab him and help me look in the field the creature ran into.
At this point, I think my adrenaline was going so fast I didn't completely process what I had seen. We got close to the field and saw absolutely nothing, no cat or creature. We made our way back to the front to look for my cat on the other side of the house. Without saying anything, my brother and I both froze.
We both looked towards the trees and bushes at the side of the house and saw them rustling. We heard this painfully loud shrieking, and we booked it to the front door. I have no idea if what we heard was that creature or some other animal, but I had an awful gut feeling standing in that driveway. It wasn't safe and I couldn't have my brother out there.
I locked the door quickly and went to the back porch sliding door and saw my cat waiting at the door to be let in. He is the type to escape and be out for days with no issue. He has never once just come to the back door after getting out. He looked scared. His tail was the bushiest I have ever seen, and the poor thing was shaking. He ran inside and stayed away from the windows and doors for the rest of the night.
I have only told this story in this much detail to my boyfriend, and even then, it is so difficult to explain what I had seen, heard, and felt that night. The gut feeling that something is not right, and we could be in serious danger, was nothing I have felt before until that night. The most memorable part of that experience was the feeling I got when the creature stared into my soul with those ugly, deep red eyes.
I have nightmares about this event, and I see its eyes often when I close mine. It took me so long to process and analyze what I had seen but the closest I can describe this creature and its stature is if you search up wendigo depictions. I am not completely sure if it was a wendigo, but I do live fairly close to the so-called wendigo territory in New York. T
The whole experience freaks me out thinking about it.
Sources: Reddit,
