Everybody, let’s gather round the campfire and tell some ghost stories, shall we? Only, reader beware: These may not be merely stories. Instead, these Redditors confess the true experiences that finally made them believe in ghosts.
1. Seeing Things
This could have been a dream, but I testify to this day that what I saw was a ghost. So here I am, a young boy who awoke in the middle of the night. I am currently sharing a bunk bed with my brother, and I am on the top bunk. I look out into my living room and notice everything is dark. Except for one horrifying thing.
There is a person in an evening gown dusting my fireplace mantle. The woman was slender, which threw me off guard because my mom is obese. I yelled out "mom”? to the person dusting the counter, and the person turned around. It was not my mom, but some older woman. Suddenly, she shrieks and her face becomes severely deformed. It was like that stuff you see in horror movies, like ridiculously scary, especially for a young kid. I blink my eyes and she was gone. I somehow went back to bed, and the next morning I went to my living room and noticed that even though the TV was off, there was something "written" on the screen.
It said: "Do not be afraid". The text slowly faded, and no one else saw it. As a young boy, this was, and still is, extremely terrifying to me.
2. A Herald Of Darkness
This story is about a guy who was a friend of my dad's, we'll call him Keith. This guy is at a camp in a rural area with some of his friends, but the camp is just outside of a small town, so they could head in for food or supplies whenever they wanted. Anyways, he goes to lunch by himself at the town, and then runs into an old friend, Don, who invites him for a meal.
Everything starts out great, and he's really happy to see this guy, but a growing feeling of discomfort begins to gnaw at him. Eventually, halfway through the meal he gets the worst feeling he's ever had. He realizes what the heck wrong. Don is dead. This dude has been gone since they were in middle school. He tries his best to keep his cool, but is basically just looking for an excuse to leave now.
Don offers to pay for the meal and pulls out some weird money that Keith's never seen before. Keith hastily says thanks and tries to leave, but Don says, "No, wait, we haven't seen each other in so long. How about we head down to the river and do some fishing”? Well, after realizing this dude might be a ghost and seeing some weird money, no way in heck was he going to agree to that, so he declines.
Don gets more and more agitated, and finally Keith just starts hastily running away. Without sounding very angry, Don says, "Alright, I guess you got one on me, but you owe me now”. Keith is now frantically powerwalking around this town, not recognizing anything, when he suddenly rounds a turn onto a street that he knows.
He continues on, leaves the town, and goes back to his friends. He's not too familiar with the area, but he sure as heck remembers the restaurant that he went to for lunch, so he relates what just happened to the friends at camp, and asks them about the restaurant. It got so much weirder. Neither it, nor the street it was supposedly on, exist.
So, did Keith just have a crazy dream, or did he take a wrong turn and have lunch in the afterlife? No clue, but three months later, tragedy befell Keith's younger brother. His brother was out with his own friends having fun, when suddenly, according to the friends, he starts acting really weird.
He walks out into the water even though he can't swim. Suddenly, in waist deep water, he just disappears under the surface. They all run to where he is, but when they tried to pull him out of the water he seemed stuck. It was only after he was dead that they were able to pull him out. This river where Keith's younger brother drowned was where Don wanted to go fishing.
3. Our Dream Home
My buddy was a fairly new real estate agent showing a newlywed couple some houses, and despite weeks of his best efforts, nothing suited the new bride’s fancy. Getting frustrated, he took them on one last run to look at one last house as the couple had decided to put the house hunt on hold for a while if it didn’t pan out.
Well it didn’t. But as they were driving home, just down some random street, the new bride practically screamed STOP! He slammed on the brakes thinking he was about to crush a kid or something. He said the woman just kept staring at a house on her left saying “That's it! that's the one! That is OUR house”!
There was no for sale sign, but my buddy promised he'd look into it. Well as it turned out the house had been on the market for quite some time, way longer than normal, with just one previous owner—an elderly woman who had just taken it off the market because she was convinced it wouldn't sell. It got pretty eerie.
He set up a viewing for the newlywed couple and the new bride breezed through the place like she already lived in it. She knew all the rooms, the cupboards, storage, everything, like she'd been there before. They agreed this was definitely the place for them, it was magical. Papers were signed and it was a done deal.
On the possession date, the little old lady asked that she be there to hand the keys over as the house was her pride and joy...not a problem. But as the new couple walked up to get the keys, the old woman's face went deathly white. She didn’t speak and couldn't get away from them fast enough. The couple didn’t seem to notice, took the keys, and happily went about their business in their new home.
My buddy caught up to the old woman and asked what happened back there? He said she was so sickly white she was practically transparent, she could barely breathe when she said “That woman...has been haunting this house for the last year. There's no mistaking it's her”.
4. My Friend Dissaga
My sister married young at 18 and worked two jobs to support herself, her lousy husband, and my niece Suzy. She left the house at 8 am and returned at 8 pm. She kicked the louse out when she discovered he locked Suzy in a closet with a box of cereal and a diaper and left her there all day.
We didn't know this was happening…but that's around the time when Dissaga came. Suzy's imaginary friend. She talked about her and TO HER all the time. We asked her many times if she meant “Jessica,” and she would get mad and say "No! She said her name is Dissaga”! There are many stories of Suzy and Dissaga talking and playing, some creepier than others, and soon my sister forbid Suzy to talk about Dissaga or for us to talk to Suzy about Dissaga.
Suzy revealed the closet secret when she told her mom, "Dissaga is mad at you because you don't believe she is real. She comes to play with me when Daddy closes the closet door after you leave and lets us out before you come home". Creepy, right? Poor kid, conjured up an imaginary playmate when her dad was supposed to be watching her. Now comes the super creepy part.
My sister is now divorced, Suzy is not allowed to talk about Dissaga, and it's been a while since her dad has lived with them and they are moving out of the house they rented. The sweet old landlord is there to oversee the move out and he says, "I was always worried about your little girl on those basement stairs. My little granddaughter Jessica fell down those basement stairs and broke her neck in front of that closet door down there".
My sister said she got the chills and simply said "Dissaga". The old man looked at her and asked, "How did you know that's how she said her name? She was four and couldn't say it properly, HOW DID YOU KNOW”? Sadly, my sister is very good at denial and told him she didn't know what he was talking about, took the last of her things from the house, and left.
Fast forward 20 years, and we are still not allowed to talk about Suzy and her friend Dissaga.
5. One Last Visit
Two days after my grandfather passed, the neighborhood security guard knocks on our door on a Sunday morning. What he said made chills shoot down my spine. He told us: "An old man came to your house earlier, knocked on your door for half an hour, and finally left. When I asked him what he wanted, he told me he needed to say goodbye to someone he had never had the chance to meet".
We were all stunned, had no idea who this old man was, or who was he looking for. When the guard came in, he shouted: "That's the old man”!! pointing at a picture of my grandfather. My entire family froze for a minute. I'm not 100% sure if the guard was telling the truth, but I almost like believing that my grandad wanted to say goodbye to my newborn sister before resting in peace.
6. A Dark Figure
My house was built in 1904. It is a single-family home, wood frame setting on a concrete block foundation. I have been living here for about 12 years. Of all the weird things that my siblings and me have seen or heard in this house this one event is my favorite. This happened to my brother. About ten years ago my brother and his best friends had started a garage band playing mostly Spanish rock, like alternative music but in Spanish.
His friends could only get together on Sunday afternoons. They would practice into the early evening, and they would usually call it quits by 8 pm. This was the time I worked the graveyard shift, which is important for later. This happened in late fall, so the days were getting shorter.
They had just finished a long session when the decision to head to someone else’s house came about. My brother handed his car keys to his buddy so they could load up the equipment. Everyone had filed out of the basement and were outside sitting in my brother’s truck waiting for him. My brother was walking up the back stairs when he remembered that he had left his pancakes in a to-go container sitting on a speaker in the basement. He made the decision to go back. Now the basement doesn’t have full sight lines. The boiler and main heating unit are right smack in the middle.
So after my brother walks back, he is about to retrieve his food container, when out of the corner of his eye he sees it. It is a shadowy figure, right at his peripheral vision, and this feeling of dread and uneasiness washed over my brother. We had been taught that if you are in the presence of a spirit or ghost and you felt a bad vibe, to say quick prayer or to yell at it.
My brother chose the latter, he basically just told it "Hey, screw you, I don't have time for this”. My brother started to walk to the back of the basement and briskly up the stairs, closing doors and turning off lights as he was walking out. The last light switch is on the opposite side of the front door.
Luckily the door was open and the light from the street lamp was flooding the living room with its amber light. My brother said he felt something at his back, but at no point did he turn around. As he flicked the last switch, the living room went dark, as did the rest of the house. As he stepped out, he pulled on the door closing it behind him.
Still holding his food container in one hand he jogged down the few porch steps. He walked towards the front gate. As he closed the gap between himself and his friend-laden truck he kinda of smiled and thought things over in his head, mad at himself for spooking out when there was no reason.
He climbed into the driver’s side of the truck, putting on his seat belt and getting ready to pull out of the parking spot directly in front of the house. That’s when one of his friends asked, "Hey wait what about your brother, isn't he coming with us”? My brother answered, "What do you mean? He went to work tonight. He’s already gone, do you see his car anywhere”?
The next question they asked: "So then who was walking behind you when you were leaving the house”?
7. Off And On
My friend told me a story his dad told him. Every day, his dad would come home from school and he would be the first one there for at least an hour or two. One day he walked in the front door and the TV was on—and it instantly turned off. He stood in the doorway for a second, turned around and walked away. He didn't go back into the house until his parents came home.
It gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it.
8. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
During hurricane Gustav (in 2008, I think), I evacuated to a church in Baton Rouge with a friend and his family.
At the same time, there was an entire nursing home's worth of old people staying in the church. My friend, his family, and myself all shared one room together.
In this church, there was one bathroom that was large, similar to something that would be in an elementary school. One night during the storm, my friend and I made a trip to the bathroom. The lights had since gone out (middle of a hurricane and all). The church had a musty, eerie feel to it. Kind of like when you turn out the AC in a house for a few days. The area surrounding the church was also completely quiet, since there was no electricity in the area.
The bathroom was several halls over from our room. So, we grabbed our flashlights and set out. While walking down one long hall, we shined our flashlights ahead, and there, at the end of the hall, sat an old man in a wheelchair. It was in the middle of the night with no one around.
Now, this hall was incredibly long. So we could make him out, but we couldn't really see all his facial features, etc. Once we grasped what we saw, we turned and looked at each other, semi-freaked out. Then, we shined our flashlights back to where he was, and there was nothing there. It was as if he vanished.
No signs, no sound...nothing. Needless to say, we hauled our butts back to the room.
9. Out Of The Mouths Of Babes
“Daddy, I had a bad dream”. I blinked my eyes open. The clock glowed red in the darkness—it’s 3:23. “Do you want to climb into bed and tell me about it”? “No, Daddy”. The oddness of the situation woke me up more fully. I could barely make out my daughter’s pale form in the darkness of the room.
“Why not sweetie”? “Because in my dream, when I told you about the dream, the thing wearing Mommy’s skin sat up”.
10. You Can Never Leave
I was driving home with a friend from a tournament we had gone to about 2-3 hours away. The whole weekend, it had been raining and storming very hard, and a lot of roads were flooded. We ended up going through a few side towns and back roads that were a lot higher elevation away from other bodies of water.
We were driving through one small town, and I was navigating with the GPS in the car. I would glance at it every once in a while, but I was also paying attention to what was going on outside the car, as it was raining pretty heavily still. The GPS directed us on a road that connected up with a more main one, and we were driving on it just fine, when suddenly, my buddy slams on the brakes.
We're in the middle of a graveyard, and the road just ends. I look down at the GPS, and then show my buddy that the road continues straight on and straight back the way we came according to the GPS screen. He shrugs, turns around, and then we start back the way we came. Now, we had been telling ghost stories, and I was not at all sleepy or tired.
We had driven on the one road the last 15 miles or so, directly through the town, and on into the countryside before we encountered the graveyard. On the way back, we made 5-6 turns within this graveyard, through which we had just come on a straight road, that also suddenly spanned back a mile or so, before finally getting back onto the straight road we thought we were on before.
I looked at the GPS again, and it was rerouting. When it finished, the route it wanted us to take was "Make a U-turn, and continue on County Road 200 N for 10 miles". We both turned around in our seats, to confirm that we had indeed just driven through a huge graveyard, with many turns and twists in the road leading back into it. Nope.
Instead, we saw the road ended in a small graveyard. We immediately drove back to the town the opposite direction of the graveyard and took a different route home.
11. We’ve Got You Surrounded
This happened to me when I was a junior in high school. It was December and it had just started snowing that evening. My best friend and I were in debate and getting ready for our state qualifiers that were the next day. We were writing our cases and as usual, at each other’s throats over the details of the cases.
It was a stressful, tense evening. We finally finished our cases at about 3 am. Then we went to my room for the night. Almost as soon as we get into my room, we hear what sounds like the water turning on in the other end of the house. No big deal, probably my parents, I think. Then, we hear the front door open. I told her, "I bet mom woke up and wanted some fresh air".
It made sense. I really thought that’s what it was. It all went so wrong from there. Then we heard incredibly heavy footsteps in my living room, headed for my room. They were NOT anyone in my family's footsteps. Then they stopped. My friend and I looked at each other and were both freaked out, just standing, frozen in my room.
We walked closer to each other and the footsteps started again, but this time they were running toward us. We both flipped. We grabbed each other’s hands, out of fear, and my bedroom door flew open. We both looked at the door. Nobody was there. We ran to the bathroom that's connected to my room.
I closed and locked the door and stood against it. When we finally got the courage to do it, we sprinted to my parents' room, crying. We obviously startled my parents awake. They said neither of them had gotten up. My dad got up and looked outside. No tracks in the snow, or anywhere around our house.
12. The Long Goodbye
My grandmother is in a nursing home after suffering a stroke a few months ago. Mentally, she is all there. However, her one side is partially paralyzed, and she is in rehab in the nursing home. She's been weakened by the relative lack of activity, though.
On Sunday, as we were getting ready to go visit her first thing in the morning as we always do, we got a call from the family of her old best friend. The friend had moved to Florida about 10 years ago, and they had gradually lost touch save for a Christmas card every now and then. The news they brought was horrible. The friend had just passed very early that morning, and they were calling to inform us.
When we got to the nursing home we signed in and noticed we were the first visitors of the day. We went to my grandmother's room and said hi. We also have a little visitor's book for people to sign in her room so we know who has visited her. Nobody had signed it since Saturday morning.
As we walked into her room, she exclaimed, "Oh my, so many visitors this morning”! We asked what she meant. Her words shook me to the core. She replied that she had gotten a visit from an old dear friend that morning; it was the friend from Florida who had just passed.
She had told my grandmother that she was going away for a while, not to worry, that she would be watching out for her, and that they would see each other again. My grandmother also remarked at how healthy she looked. I've never had chills run down my spine like that before. Later I asked if anyone had been to my grandmother's room that morning, and the staff said no. We asked if any phone calls had come through for her that morning, and they again said no.
They also log phone calls for residents and when they checked the logs there was nothing that they had forgotten. I also this morning called the family of the friend in Florida to offer my condolences and ask if they had called anyone else around here. I asked under the guise that I would help notify people around here, so I didn't want to double call people.
They said we were the only ones they had called from around here and the only reason they called us is because they thought my grandmother still lived with us. They had no idea until I told them this morning that she is in a nursing home. I know it's in the realm of reality that she could have simply dreamed it, but the chances of her having a dream like that with that sort of message on the very morning that her friend passed are so remote that it still gives me chills.
13. Hush Hush
My brother once lived in a flat in downtown Mt Clemens, MI. The Clem was known to be a hot spot for “baths” back in the depression era and was booming with activity. Nowadays it has some run-down parts, and this is where my brother rented his flat. It was a giant old raggedy house which was now separated into multiple odd apartments.
Anyways, long story short, he always admitted to odd experiences, cupboard doors opening up, things missing, but one peculiar oddity was that he was always missing boxers and underwear from his drawer. He thought his house was haunted and that the ghost had a crush on him. Never anything violent or disturbing, just odd things. But it got a whole lot worse.
Later on, he starts dating his future ex-wife. She starts coming around and he notices that the oddities begin to increase. New oddities began to occur. His girlfriend would always find her shoes (which were left on a mat inside the apartment) outside the door on the patio in the morning.
She’d always comment to my brother to stop putting her shoes outside. He had an idea of why but didn’t want to frighten her. Besides, it wasn’t hurting anyone right? Well, things started getting worse. He comes home from work and his girlfriend was staying there while he was gone. She claims that the stove burner kept lighting itself.
She'd walk into the kitchen and it would be lit, she'd turn it off and shortly later it'd be lit again. It soon got downright terrifying. One night my brother wakes up in the middle of the night and sees his girlfriend sitting at the end of the bed, not just sees but feels her near his feet, staring at him.
He calls out for her to come back to bed. She doesn’t respond so he calls out louder, telling her to come to bed and asking what’s wrong. His girlfriend then asks what he’s doing. He turns and she’s sleeping next to him, he turns back—no one is at the end of the bed. Now, he’s freaked out but still doesn’t want to scare his girlfriend from coming over his place.
A few nights later, they’re both sleeping and he wakes up to his girlfriend screaming. He looks over and she’s sleeping but thrashing around holding onto her neck. He doesn’t see anything so he starts yelling and shaking her to wake her up. After a few shakes she wakes up, crying and terrified. Her words were bone-chilling.
She starts telling my brother about how real her dream felt. A woman was strangling her, telling her to get out, that she doesn’t belong there, and to leave her man alone. Her neck had red marks on it. My brother then comes clean with her, and they decide to do some research.
They find out that the address that they live in was an old “Ladies of the Night” house back in the day, and the rich bathers used to stay in it. My brother lived in that house for a few more weeks before he could locate a new place. His girlfriend never came back to stay the night though.
14. Ghost Call
My best friend passed from cancer back in 2002. We were incredibly close in every way and we spent the majority of our free time together. Almost a year after she passed, I was in my apartment sleeping and my phone rang around 3 am. I was very groggy and picked up the phone from my nightstand and looked at it. It made a shiver run through me.
I saw it was my friend’s number. I immediately became alert and awake and answered the phone, very curious. I said hello a few times, but all I could hear was very loud static for about 30 seconds. Eventually, the call ended. At this point, I was freaking out and called the number back, only to get an automated recording that this number was out of service.
I then called her mother’s house to see if possibly her older sister may have had my friend’s old phone and might have called me by accident, but there was no answer at my friend’s mother’s home. I come to find out the remaining family was away in Miami.
After they came home a few days later, I took the phone to them and showed them the call log and they were in disbelief. They went to my friend’s room and got the phone out of the drawer where it had been sitting for months…the battery stone cold drained.
15. Grandpa Is Looking Out For You
My daughter was born with mild tracheomalacia (soft wind pipe). The only "trouble" it ever caused was that she would make a whistling sound sometimes when she was breathing, especially when she was excited or upset. Fast forward to when she was about four months old and fast asleep in her crib one evening.
Her older brother had the stomach flu that day and had been throwing up. We thought the baby hadn't caught it. But a little while after we put her to bed, we suddenly heard her softly sputtering on the monitor, then silence for a few seconds, then a HUGE loud wail, which made both my husband and I run even faster to her room.
By the time we got to her, she had fallen eerily quiet again. We saw she was gasping for air, choking, unable to clear the vomit from her throat or get a clean breath. Even after we picked her up and cleared her mouth, she continued to gasp. She turned blue, then grey as I drove with her quickly to the ER.
She had partially recovered by the time we got there. They gave her O2, chest X-ray, and then a clean bill and we left. Fast forward about two hours later when I'm back in my bedroom with her sleeping upright in a baby seat next to me on the bed. My husband and I talked briefly about what would have happened had the baby not cried out so loudly.
Would we have reacted so quickly? Would she have recovered? I'm in and out of sleep myself because I kept checking her. One of the times, just before I had fully awoken, I looked out in the hallway and saw my grandfather, who had passed a few years prior. When he was alive, he was not the most involved granddad. Still, when he met my husband (my boyfriend at the time) they had an instant connection.
When he passed, his last coherent words were, "I'm not going to make it to the wedding, am I”? He loved my husband dearly. Anyway, I see him out in the hall this night. He is just standing there in khakis and a polo with his hands in his pockets. In my dream state, I see all my children, except the baby, pulling at his arms and playing with him.
He has a simple smile on his face, and he looks over toward the baby's room and back at me and says, "I'm sorry I made her cry, but I'm glad she's okay”.
16. The Writing On The Wall
When I was in high school, my family had to move from Central Texas back to West Texas for my dad's job. We were under a lot of stress and there were other family issues at the time as well, but that is beside the point. My sister and my mom were painting the upstairs walls as we got the house to get ready.
My mom was on the wall to the far right, there was a blank wall in the middle, and my sister was on the far left. I was downstairs packing up things into boxes. Suddenly, my sister comes downstairs looking scared out of her mind. She asks me to come upstairs. On the wall in between them, for no apparent reason, this "writing" appeared.
Looking closely enough, you can see it was not written by accident, but rather by broad strokes made by a human hand. Problem is, the handprint is too big for any of us three to make it. The longer we stayed in the room, the more freaked out we got as we realized that nobody was playing a prank on anyone else. I still have no explanation to this day of what it means.
17. A Lingering Presence
I don't remember all of the details because my dad told me this story several years ago, but here it goes. When my dad was younger and still living in Poland, he and a few friends took a trip and one night decided to stay at a bed and breakfast type place. Everything seemed normal until he suddenly woke up in the middle of the night.
He told me he felt some sort of presence behind him, so he slowly turned around but there was no one there. He swears he could feel someone there on the bed with him though, along with a slight shift in pressure on the bed. It went away after a few minutes and my dad went back to sleep. But that wasn’t the end.
The next morning he found out that a man had died that bed about a week or so prior.
18. No One To Hear You Scream
Stayed at my friend’s house every week since we went the same high school and I was very close with him and his family. His house was like a second home to me and I slept there all the time. Whenever I was in his basement alone I would feel cold air rush down from my neck and down my spine. I kept feeling like someone was watching me.
Every single time I used his basement shower alone I would hear knockings on the bathroom door. My friend kept telling me it wasn’t him—and I know it wasn’t him because I would bolt out of the shower and nobody was there. He was also a big guy so I would have either seen him slowly trying to run or I would have heard his loud footsteps.
This was a reoccurring thing that was happening to me over and over again. I swore one of the times I was in the shower I heard a female voice. But it got worse. This one night I was sleeping in one of his spare rooms upstairs and I woke up because I was having this bad nightmare of a spirit of an old lady chasing me down.
I woke up from it and ran downstairs and checked the clock. It was a bit past 3 am. I decided to go back upstairs and go back to bed. But as soon as I fell asleep I heard a demonic female voice scream in my ear. I felt the pain and cold rush down into my ear, so I know it wasn’t a nightmare this time.
I asked my friend’s mom if she knew the past history of the house, and she had no clue. I told her and her boyfriend about the bathroom door knocks and the ghost lady. They did not believe me at all, not even my friend did.
19. Peering Inside
I was a junior in college and was living in a dorm that had a reputation for being haunted. Of course the RAs spread this around and we had a fun time scaring ourselves for the first month or so of school. The floors that had the greatest reputation for being haunted were the second and fifth floors. My room was on the fifth.
I lived on the "International" floor, even though I myself was not international, so my roommate was from Tokyo. In this dorm, each floor alternated a single, a bathroom, and a double, so three people would share a bathroom. This setup was called a "suite" and the person who lived in the single (or the double, if you were in the single) was your "suitemate". My suitemate was from Cairo. Really fun ladies, it was a great year.
So I come home at about midnight after a long night of chatting online, and my roommate has the curtain shut between our halves of the room. She hears me walk in and says, "Oh, I'm so glad you're here! While I was in the bathroom, the door opened by itself”!
Now, I enjoy a mystery as much as anyone, but I like to be practical about things, so naturally I think there's a rational explanation. I walk into the bathroom. The curtain over the bathroom is drawn closed, so I peek under it. Sure enough, the window is open about an inch. I figure it must've been a draft.
I walk back out into the room and tell my roommate, "Well, the window’s open about an inch, so it probably just blew the door open". My roommate is greatly relieved and says something to the effect of, "Whew! I'm so glad to hear that”! Total time transpired: about 20 seconds.
I turn around and go back into the bathroom so I can take out my contacts and brush my teeth...and stop my tracks. The curtain, which had previously been closed, was now open. But it wasn't drawn open, like someone would do to see out the window, but rolled to each side, like one would roll up a newspaper. Just as if someone had been sitting in the window.
I looked at that for about 30 seconds. Turned out the light. Walked back out. Went to bed, contacts and all. The next morning, it took me a few minutes to unroll each curtain and flatten it out so it would lay flat again.
20. Just Around The Corner
I played football with this guy Matt in college who served in the Air Force, and he used to run security details for bases—all-night jobs where he and his squad mate, Craig, would drive around in Humvees searching the perimeter of the base. It was one night and Matt and Craig were doing an average patrol, driving through these Kansas plains searching the area around their base.
I remember Matt telling me how out in Kansas, there were tons of old abandoned houses that were left during the dust bowl and other problems. Seeing an abandoned house was a normal occurrence for these guys so they never thought anything of it. But it was this particular night that Matt's squad mate, Craig, was feeling adventurous and wanted to check one out.
After a few minutes, they found this old abandoned house planted in the middle of the fields and drove up to it. As they got out, Matt told us he had a very bad feeling about it. "Just one of those feelings deep in the pit of your stomach that you don't like, you know”? he said to us, and we all knew what he was talking about.
Naturally, Matt went against this gut feeling and jumped out of the Humvee with Craig, who, if I remember, was extremely eager about this whole situation and scoping out this old house in the middle of nowhere. They parked about 30 meters from the house he said, and slowly approached it, lit only by moonlight.
As they got closer Matt said that feeling in his stomach began to get worse and worse, yet he still ignored it. The two walked up to the door, porch creaking and all. As the two approached the door, they knocked and to everyone’s surprise, no answer. When they got inside, the chills increased.
The one thing that Matt said that stood out was the house was completely intact on the inside and it looked like the previous owners had just up and left one day, leaving everything behind. The table was still set and all. Upon seeing this, Matt began to feel uneasy.
As the two proceeded through the house looking around, Craig suggested they go upstairs to see what was up there, but Matt was to take the lead. Feeling uneasy about, he did. He said as he crept up the stairs with weapon shouldered it began to get colder and colder. As he entered the first room he came upon, he noticed something odd.
Two beds, laid out in what looked like a little girl’s room. What Matt told us then has stuck with me since that fall night. Matt told us that what pushed him over the edge to leave the house was that there were clothes laid out on the bed, as if they were set up for school the next morning, but that morning never came.
At this point, Matt wanted to get the heck out of the house, yet Craig was still feeling adventurous. As the two were about to exit this house, Craig spotted the basement door, slightly cracked yet not fully ajar. And Matt told us he saw a glimmer in his eyes, like that "oh we're definitely doing this" look.
Matt wasn't having any of this, so he told Craig to take point. Craig eagerly did. Craig began to crack the door open, and proceeded down the stairs. Matt was a few steps behind him. But suddenly as Craig reached the bottom of the steps, he turned a corner and stopped in his tracks. Matt was still behind the corner, not knowing what was behind it.
He asked Craig, "Well, what's down here”? Not a word from Craig. Matt turned around to look at Craig and noticed his face had turned ghost white, with a thousand-yard stare on his face. Craig proceeded to push Matt out of the way, nonchalantly walked up the stairs, and walked out of the house, not looking back.
Matt followed behind him, not looking around the corner. As the two got back in the vehicle Craig said not one word for the rest of their shift. NOTHING! no matter how many times he asked him what he saw, Craig said nothing. Until this day, Craig will still never talk about what he saw when he turned that corner, and he is the only one who knows what was in that basement.
Matt told us that whenever it is brought up, Craig turns that ghost white and quietly sits there with a blank look.
Flickr, New York National Guard
21. We Didn’t Stop The Fire
A few years back I was camping in Lake Havasu with my brother and a few friends. My brother and I were working on building a fire while the other guys were on the boat mooring it to the shore. We had a hole we dug where we had our previous fires that trip, so my brother and got the fire going and sat down around the pit.
The fire was burning for a good 10 minutes and was at a decent size—before the most bizarre thing happened. The fire just went out, completely extinguished, as in no more flame. The embers were still there emitting heat, but the flame was gone. My brother and I looked at each other, then back at the fire pit.
A few seconds go by then the fire re-ignites to level it was at before it "went out". We are totally confused and we just start screaming for the guys to come check out what happened.
22. Biting Off More Than They Can Chew
In seventh grade, my friends and I went over to my friend Mary’s house intent on playing with her mom's Ouija board that night. None of us had played with one before. Mary's mom was an extremely spiritual person who believed in energies, witchcraft, stuff like that. Before we used the board, Mary warned us that her mom would be really angry if she found out that we were playing with it because Ouija boards can attract bad spirits into the home.
With full knowledge of this, we decided to proceed anyway. This Ouija board was not like the average Ouija board you have ever seen. Along with the usual characteristics (the alphabet, "yes," "no," "goodbye"), there was an entire array of symbols and signs that were all arranged in a circle. This was some seriously intricate stuff.
We started just goofing around and "communicating" with random spirits here and there until we finally met one that had us in tears the entire sleepless night. First, we asked the spirit if it was a man or a woman, to which he replied "M-A-N". Then we asked how he died: "M-U-R-D-E-R". That freaked us out only a little bit but we were mostly excited. We were about to regret it deeply.
All of a sudden, before we even asked another question, the glass goes to the eyeball symbol, then spells out "I-N", and goes to the water symbol. We didn't have a clue what that meant. It wasn't too scary until the spirit spelled out "S-H-O-W-E-R" and my best friend realized that the spirit was trying to get us to look into the shower.
We froze. I've never been so scared in my entire life, especially sitting directly in front of the bathroom with the shower curtain all the way closed, faced in my direction. We all screamed and promised on our friendships that we had not moved the Ouija implement ourselves. I felt like I was being watched and my friends thought so too.
It was only four of us and I believe with all my heart that none of them had moved it because we were all too nervous to do anything. I'll never use a Ouija board again because of how crazy and intense that night was. I understand that people say Ouija boards are controlled by your subconscious but screw that. I know I felt something in that room with us. I know it was dangerous.
23. A Bridge To Another World
I was on a college ghost hunt with a guy named Chris. Cool dude, we did all the normal college ghost hunt stuff, walking to supposedly haunted dorms and experiencing some cool stuff, but nothing crazy. The city we were in had this special place called the Ghost Trestle.
It was basically a Railroad bridge in the middle of a corn field that had a dirt road underneath it. Anyways, during the ghost hunt with Chris, we told him about this place. He was pumped and rushed through the rest of the college ghost hunt. He and his assistant and a few of my friends took two cars with all his equipment to this ghost trestle.
When we got there a train was coming so he interviewed us on camera to tell the story about this place. So back a long time ago there was a farm house and a farmer, his wife, and son escaped a fire in the house. Also on fire were the horse stables. The farmer ran in to try and rescue the horses before they succumbed to the fire, while the wife and son went to wave down a train that was passing by.
The story ends with the farmer dying in the stable fire, and as the wife and child were waving down the train they were struck and perished. To this day, if you park your car under the bridge while a train crossed you above it’s supposed to open up another dimensional world.
Well, we show up and of course to our luck there is a train coming. We all freaked out and got pumped while the medium Chris attempted to communicate. We were all taking pictures and began to experience weird technological failures. My camera, which was my own, began flashing and taking multiple pictures.
At one point we began to see stuff mostly out of the corner of our eyes, and Chris attempted to communicate, but whatever spirit was there seemed more intimidated. He (Chris) believed it to be the spirit of the little boy. We would every now and then see a figure poking its head out from behind a concrete wall under the tracks. It seemed like it was playing hide and seek.
That's when I snapped a photo. You can see a bright ball of light and mist when zooming close. I can honestly say that I was young and thought this stuff was hoax and just fun for college kids to pretend. Until this night.
Fast forward to a year or two after this event. I came to this same place for the first time since the night we went with Chris. This time it was just me and my then-girlfriend. I parked under the bridge, turned off the car and lights, and took the key out of the ignition. We were joking together about how we were getting too old for this stuff.
And when I looked in the rear-view mirror, I saw a black shadow flash by the rear window of my car followed by some noises that sounded like someone running towards my car. My heart never raced so fast to put my key into the ignition and peel out and get out of there. Whatever it was, it didn't seem like it wanted us there and I have yet to drive under or by the bridge since.
24. In The Dark Of The Night
I wake up in the middle of the night, and there is a tall figure standing next to my door—and beside it, a glowing blue orb about the size of a human chest floating beside it. I couldn't see anything of the figure other than that it was slim and was humanoid. It was completely black in my room so it had no color.
I tried to move to no avail, and then speak to no avail. Eventually I was able to move and shuffled my foot around. The figure turned, and slowly walked out the door, the blue orb following it. I have no idea what I saw.
25. Some Eerie Advice
My friend and his wife once had a son who, when he was three or so, somehow got hold of the pistol the friend kept in his nightstand. He accidentally fatally shot himself. He and his wife grieved, and a few years later they had another son.
Fast forward another three or so years, he's sitting in the living room watching TV when his son runs into the room and slams a pack of matches down on his leg and starts backing away from them. He inquires as to why his son seems frightened by them, to which the son responds, "The boy with a hole in his head who lives under my bed told me they were bad”.
26. Lady Grey
My dad JUST told me about a ghost that frequented our house when I was young. We bought our house from an estate sale because the woman who had owned it since 1943 had lived in it until she passed my parents’ bedroom. He said multiple times he felt a presence, but one night it hit a fever pitch.
He was awakened to see a woman that he describes looking a little like Barbara Bush—stately, put together, and a little snobby. She was wearing a distinguished-looking striped jacket. Her eyes met my dad's and she gave him a look that he says was fiercely disapproving. She then passed across the bed, brushing her coat along my stepmom, and dissipated.
The next morning, my stepmom said she knew something terrifying was there but she kept her eyes shut tight because she did not want to see what it was, until she calmed down and went back to sleep. The scariest part of all of this is that where my dad watched her brush my stepmom was a red rash covering the entire area.
Needless to say, I was thankful my dad saved that one until I was in my 20s and moved out of the house. Although he did say that her visits stopped after we remodeled the house.
27. The Voice
It's about 1989 and my dad is helping with a Christmas pageant rehearsal at his church. Someone was filming the rehearsal from the back. Keep in mind it was a fairly small church so you would have heard anything that was said. All of a sudden, the lights turn off and it's completely pitch black.
About 10 seconds later the lights come back on and they continue with the rehearsal. Upon watching the film of them performing the pageant, they discover something that gives me chills every time I think of it. At the part where the lights went out you hear a satanic-sounding voice laughing. My hair is standing up on the back of my neck as I'm typing this. Very terrifying.
28. Knock Knock
One of my high school friends lives in the oldest house in town—I think he told me it was about 150 years old—and there were all kinds of rumors about ghosts. His sister would always have sleepovers there with her soccer friends, since they all wanted to have a sleepover in the "haunted house".
Now, the door to the bathroom on the first floor often got stuck, so being locked in there wasn't uncommon, and at least one girl per sleepover would get locked in at some point. Still, you could always force it open from the outside. One night during one of these sleepovers my friend’s dad comes down for a glass of water or something and hears the typical banging and screaming coming from the bathroom.
He walked over reassuring her, "It's okay. The house isn't haunted. The door is just stuck” while he works at the door. He manages to open the door, looks inside...and no one's in there. He goes to the living room and does a head count. Everyone's in their sleeping bags. I have no idea why they still live in that house.
29. The Tree Of Death
My father-in-law was originally from Mexico. His family owned a very large farm when he was growing up. Every day when he would come home from school, he would take a shortcut through the fields instead of going through the roads. This worked out well for him since he could get home and help his parents out quickly, however there was one problem.
The tree in the middle of the field. Every time he rode his bike past the tree, he would suddenly feel very heavy, tired, and scared. He tried ignoring the feelings or telling himself that it was nothing and silly, but no matter how hard he tried he still felt that way when he passed the tree.
He finally told his dad what was happening to him and asked what it was. His dad told him that he should not have been going by the tree because it was well-known by locals that a ghost lived by that tree and would mess with anybody who went too close. If you stopped to rest and get over the feelings you were given, it would snatch you up and hurt you.
30. Hearing Double
When I was in the eighth grade, my family and I had just moved into a new house. All through middle school and part of high school my dad would come up to my room every morning around 6:30 to wake me up. I had heard knocks and things during the first few months, but attributed them to my sister or dog walking around at night.
Once in January I woke up to my lights on and my door closing loudly. I assumed it was my dad waking me up for school so I set about on my routine. I got up, took a shower, got dressed, went downstairs. That’s when I noticed something was wrong. It was actually 3:20 in the morning and both of my parents were asleep with their door locked.
I had this insane rush go over my body. I panicked and ran back up to my room and slept with my lamp on. The next morning I asked my dad if he had come up and played a joke on me and he said I was "probably just dreaming". After a few years I had myself convinced that this was the case…until I had a friend stay the night.
In the 11th grade I had my friend Sam over to stay the night. Sam was an awesome guy, but he had a serious snoring problem. I decided to sleep on the couch downstairs in the living room and I let him sleep in my bed. At four in the morning I woke up to Sam sitting on the arm of the couch patting me on the head. "Nice try, jerk,” he was saying.
He thought he had caught me in a prank. He told me he had woken up to my door slamming and the lights on. I told him what had happened to me a few years earlier and needless to say I slept on the couch for the remainder of high school.
I know it isn't a full body apparition or something terrifying, but this has stuck with me and still gives me chills to this day. I lived in that house for around seven years and throughout that time a lot of weird stuff happened. The story that really got to me about the house, though, came from my sister.
We had just moved in a week or so earlier and my sister had to go to the bathroom. To get to the bathroom from the living room you have to walk through one hallway, the dining room, and then the bathroom is at the end of another hallway. She walked through the first hallway and into the dining room.
The lights were off but she could see what looked like my dad standing across at the opposite corner of the table. She didn't think anything of it and walked straight to the bathroom. When she got there, the door was locked. And my dad was in it. From the living room I could hear her just completely breaking down in tears. I had never seen her as broken up as she was.
31. I Think We’re Alone Now
We lived in a one-story home with three bedrooms on one side and a kitchen, laundry room, garage, etc on the other. On my 16th birthday, my parents let me turn the "finished" garage (really more of a family room at that point) into my bedroom. It was awesome. So awesome that my dad spent a lot of his time in there with me playing video games.
One night my mother ran into the room, extremely startled. She asked if my father had just walked through their bedroom on the other side of the house. Of course, my father and I could both attest that he had been in my room, which made her even more panicked.
She claimed that she was awoken by the door opening and a man entering the room. She spoke up, thinking it was my father, and asked him if he was coming to bed. She said that my "dad" replied, "Nooo. What do you want”!? in the most awful tone. He preceded through the bedroom into the master bathroom where he TURNED ON THE LIGHT once out of sight.
My mother became upset with how rude my “dad” was to her and walked into the bathroom to ask him if something was wrong. When she entered the bathroom, there was no one. She opened the master closet...nothing. The linen closet...no one was there.
After hearing all of this, my dad got up and searched the house. All the doors and windows were locked and there was no one there but the three of us.
32. Fire In The Sky
I'm not remotely superstitious, and I know that there must be a rational explanation for what I experienced, but I've never been able to figure it out and at the time it was genuinely frightening.
Back in the mid 1990s, me and a guy I used to go to school with were walking his dog in the woods out the back of his parents’ house. It isn't a particularly remote spot, but it's far enough away from the nearest town that it gets virtually zero light pollution, and we wanted to go right out over the fields to stare at the stars.
As we headed up an access road leading through the woods, it started to snow pretty heavily. The hill we had to climb to get to the best star-watching spot is the highest point for miles around, and it tends to have its own weather system. The strong winds which come off the coast whip over the top of the hill and get pushed high into the atmosphere, which rapidly cools the water vapor and causes it to rain and snow pretty much all the time.
This has to have something to do with what happened to us next. It was the strangest and most unnerving experience of my life. As we got to the end of this long road, the snow started to swirl in a geometric pattern—a bit like helicopter blades. There was an electric charge in the air, which we could smell like static on nylon. As it swirled faster and faster, the snow started to make a buzzing sound, like something mechanical. We just stood there and watched these amazing patterns spin above our heads.
Then the dog, which had been running off and reappearing briefly, only to dash off again exploring, suddenly decided there was something it didn't like out there. She clung close to us and started to nervously whine. As she did, the spinning shapes started to flash, as if there were thousands of LEDs scattered through the snow, but not in a random way.
They seemed to outline the boxy, unnatural shapes in the snow swirls, and they were flashing different bright colors. The buzzing sound became louder and louder, until we had to shout over it to one another. After about 10 minutes it started to ease off, until eventually it completely stopped.
We just looked at each other, like "What the heck just happened”? and started to walk back home. Everyone we told about it later on said we were imagining it, but it really did happen. Many years later, in a weird twist of fate, long after my schoolfriend's parents moved out of the area, a guy I used to work with and occasionally socialize with, bought the same house.
One night, I was telling him about what happened to me when I was a teenager, over in the back fields. As I told him more and more detail of the story, he started to stare at me in disbelief. Then he told me a skin-tingling truth. He'd lived in the area all his life, and when he was a kid, he and his brother took a tent out to the same spot to camp in the woods, but they didn't stay all night because they'd been woken up in the middle of the night by a strange whirring sound and flashing lights in the sky.
They were so freaked out, they left the tent and ran back home. We stayed in touch after we both got different jobs, and often dare one another to go back out there one night and see if it happens again. We've scoured the internet for explanations of strange weather phenomena, but none of the ones we've found exactly match the description of the geometric shapes with the buzzing sound.
I'd love to know what it actually was, because there has to be a natural explanation for it. But even knowing that, I still get a chill down my neck when I think about how eerie the whole experience was.
33. The House Comes With Its Own Security System
My grandparents live in a very big, very old house. It is generally accepted within my family that it is haunted, to different extents depending on who you ask. Everyone will tell you they've experienced a piano playing from an empty room, or the creaking of a rocking chair. I wish I were so lucky.
Around 10 years ago I was asked to house sit while my grandparents were gone. The guest room that I was sleeping in was upstairs at the end of a hallway with many lockable doors. When I went to bed, I locked each door behind me. Hours later I was rudely awoken by the sound of a door slamming.
Then again. And again. Getting closer now, then multiple doors. I got up and looked down the hallway to find all the doors repeatedly opening and slamming shut. I calmly (somehow) made my way to the end of the hall and closed and locked them all again. But then came the eeriest part. The next morning, I noticed the creepy porcelain dolls my grandma used as decoration were all upside down.
I fixed them and headed for the door to go home. Keep in mind I was always under the impression that this place was haunted, so none of this surprised me as much as it probably should have. What happened when I got outside was more than I bargained for, however. I get to the back patio and the door closed behind me. It was by no means cold outside, but all of a sudden I become colder than I have ever been in my life.
All my hairs stand on end and my breath starts to condense. Suddenly, pain. Crippling, fiery pain. It ended as fast as it began, and I lifted my shirt to find three fresh, deep scratches across my chest. Nobody believed me, regardless of my newly acquired physical evidence. Not until the next night, when I made my cousin go back with me.
We both slept downstairs because I wouldn't go up to the guest room. That night he got up to go to the bathroom, opened the door, and froze. Not two feet away from him was a white cloaked figure without a face, making its way down the hall and to the bathroom. He said the feeling he got that seemed to emanate from the apparition made him incredibly happy that it didn't notice him.
When it disappeared through the door, he came and got me and we both got the heck out. We left the house unattended for the rest of my grandparents’ vacation (only a couple of days), figuring anyone breaking in would probably get what they had coming.
34. Nice Throw
My friend and I are hanging out in his room watching Scary Movie 2, so not expecting anything to happen whatsoever. His room was in the corner of an unfinished basement with two sheets acting as a third and fourth wall. So "room" was a misnomer.
The basement had the lights off and only the glow of the TV was illuminating our immediate vicinity, but even it was being drowned out by darkness further into the basement. Imagine that one of the sheets is low hung, so you can partially see the blackness beyond the makeshift room.
Randomly, out of the pitch blackness comes a fat green grape flying over the sheet and into my buddy’s lap way too perfectly. Almost like it was guided into his lap. He then picks it up, looks at me with confused disbelief in his eyes and says, "It's still cold…" My mind couldn't even register what had just happened, so we went upstairs slowly, not really knowing what just happened. We get upstairs and notice that his mom already left the house an hour earlier.
35. I Am Afraid Of The Dark
This is a story I do not often tell. I promise, sincerely, that this has scarred me for life and although I have looked into psychological explanations for what I heard and natural explanations for what occurred, they remain unsatisfactory.
When I was a child, I was scared of the dark. I swore to my mother I heard voices in it. They were not evil, but they were not familiar and so they scared me. It was not uncommon in the middle of the night for me to wake up and hear "whispers," as I would call them when asking my mom. She figured they were just "bumps in the night" and typical kid’s nightmare material. I tried often to explain to her that it was more than that, that they sounded different from one another the way people's voices do.
On some nights I would get so scared from these "whispers" that I would sleep in my mom's bed with her. It was an added bonus that the bathroom was directly outside of her bedroom door for my late-night tinkles.
I should add at this point that when walking out into the hall to go to the bathroom, you looked directly down the stairs that would lead you into my living room on the first floor (as my mom's bedroom was on the second floor).
On one such night, around Christmas, I awoke and felt the need to relieve myself. I walked out from the door and distinctly heard the phrase "Look”! I couldn’t believe my eyes. To my astonishment, a red light, almost like a spotlight, was cast upon the wall at the very bottom of the stairs. The light had no other source, it was by itself, and I was transfixed by it.
Being a little kid, and it only being a few days from Christmas, I KNEW what this light was. IT WAS SANTA!!! How else could he get into my house to know I was being a good boy? I was so excited I began walking down the stairs to greet him, picking up my pace after the second step as it began to creep off the wall and fade into the darkness in my living room.
That's when I heard him. A very strong, masculine voice. Different from the first. Not at all like my father's—not to say he isn't masculine, it was just distinctly different. It said "Stop! Right now. Go back up those stairs".
I listened, turned around, and what happened next I am not sure I would believe if someone had told me this same story. After reaching the top of the stairs, I heard a very loud CRASH that sent me running back to my mother's bed, where I jumped straight under the covers and stayed there the whole night.
When we awoke the next morning, the poinsettia lights (little Christmas flower lights that glowed red) that my mother had put on the railing down the stairs were pulled straight down to the bottom of the stairs. Some were broken from what seemed like a forceful tear, and they were laying in a single pile. The dry sink in my living room had also fallen from the wall. My mother could not explain it. My father was worried we had been the victims of a home invasion. My sister was crying.
There was nothing missing, nobody had broken in, there did not seem to be any reason this had happened. And then I saw it. I kept quiet about it because I was so afraid that I could not force words out of my mouth.
But there, on the edge of the wooden dry sink which had been facing up, were three indentations where the finish on the wood had been worn, almost as if in a forceful grip. Something down there had GRABBED IT AND THREW IT DOWN. That was what the bang was.
I was mortified. I do not like to imagine what was waiting downstairs for me that night, if it was anything at all, but I can tell you that the reality was that something had physically acted upon two things in my house near the bottom of that stairwell.
After this, I had never heard another whisper again. Which is sad, because in some ways I would have liked to thank the man who had stopped me from going down those stairs. This happened when I was seven.
I am 20 years old now, and because of this incident I am still afraid of the dark. ESPECIALLY shadowy stairwells.
36. One Last Job To Do
This happened 22 years ago when I was 11 and living in the Philippines. The night us still very vivid to me to this day. This happened around 1 in the morning. My grandpa was in his deathbed in a hospital so me and my brother were left in the house with a family friend while my parents and the rest of our relatives were in the hospital to say goodbye to our grandpa.
Me, my brother, and the family friend were all still up this late because we were aware that this was going to be the last night my grandpa would still be alive. Now when he was alive and healthy, my grandpa lived with us and he was notorious for being the very first person to be up early. And you KNOW he’s up because you can hear him sweeping our driveway as part of his daily routine.
That night we were all in the same bedroom talking about our grandpa. All of a sudden, we all stopped talking and sat on the bed with a frozen look on our faces, as we can distinctly hear someone sweeping our driveway. We were all freaked out at this point because we know the sweeping noise was distinctly coming from our driveway and that no neighbor of ours is up that early to sweep their own driveway, let alone ours.
Even our dog who was staying outside was so freaked out he was howling as if he literally had seen a ghost. This went on for a good 15 minutes and we were all holding each other in the corner of the room, scared with the lights on.
An hour after it stopped at maybe around 2:15am, a family friend who was also at the hospital came to our house and broke the news to us that my grandpa had passed.
37. Goodbye And Good Riddance
I lived in a house in Florida that my grandma owned, and the previous tenant passed in the bedroom I used. I used to hear scraping in there like furniture was being moved and a knocking on the walls. The man who lives there previously had dementia and would move the furniture around and tap on the walls because he thought there were people communicating with him through them.
It was quite spooky. I only lived there for three months, as my grandma left after a year of living there.
38. From Father To Son
I was about 15 or maybe 16, and at a Bible camp for Christian kids. I had a friend there, who—and a lot of us forgot about this at the time—had a dad who was fighting against cancer back in town.
I was hanging out with this kid one day. We were in one of the cabins, and something hit me like a ton of bricks. Out of completely nowhere I get an absolutely overpowering urge to tell this friend "Your dad wants you to know he's OK and he's not in pain...he just really, REALLY wants you to know he's OK”.
I cast the thought out of my head as being a random morbid thought, or macabre. I just thought it would be inappropriate and possibly hurtful to say something like that to this kid when his dad is fighting for his life, and me here, full of hot hair, trying to say something that makes him feel better for no other reason than to make him feel better.
This camp was in 1997 or 1998, and we were in the bush in Alaska, off a dirt road covered in ice and miles and miles from the nearest civilization. No radio, no phones, no email, no communications at all, as we were a few valleys over from the nearest cell service area.
We headed back into town after the weekend, and I came to find out that exactly 10 minutes—or less—after the moment in the cabin with my friend, his dad was declared dead in the hospital. There was no way I could have known this, and I honestly didn't even think about this guy's situation much, but that event was truly profound.
39. Rest In Pieces
I had some friends over for my birthday party and we decided to end the day by going for a walk to the old graveyard. Everything was normal until we went to leave. Three minutes in, I hear whispering coming from the woods. I tell the other guys to shut up and ask them if they can hear anything.
The moment I did that, the whispering started growing louder and louder, then it started moving, like with every whisper it was getting closer. The whispers felt like they were within arm’s reach and the sound was starting to feel like it was coming within my own head. Plus the closer the voices got, the colder my body felt,
So I did what anybody would do: I screamed as loud as I could with as much rage as I could muster. The whispers disappeared immediately and were replaced by eerie silence. Not even the insects made any noise. My friends, clearly freaked out, were ghostly pale and were muttering underneath their breath, likely summoning their courage or warding off whatever the whispers were.
Flickr, Smabs Sputzer (1956-2017)
40. Moaning Myrtle
I was 13 when it happened. I was hanging out with my classmates in the bathroom, doing idiot teenage stuff. We were splashing water in the sinks, and I ran to the end of the washroom to avoid some of the splash. As I did, I looked into the last stall of toilet. That’s when I saw it.
A girl looked bit startled and hid behind the door to look at me. At first, I didn’t think much of it. I just assumed I caught her when she forgot to close the bathroom door while using the toilet, and I told my classmates that there was a person who forgot to close the door at the last stall.
Instead, though, my classmates looked frightened. They told me there was nobody else apart from us in the toilet. I went to look again, and there was no one.
41. There Are Monsters Under The Bed
When I was a toddler, my family lived in a house in a place in the UK called The Isle Of Sheppey. Anyway, some mornings I would go downstairs and ask my mom: “Who is the man in my room who tries to hurt me”?
Instant alarm bells. My dog at the time would never go in my room and always bark at it. One time, my dad was home alone for the night while the rest of us were staying at my aunt’s, and he said he could feel breathing down the back of his neck as he went upstairs and the dog would not stop barking at my room.
Unsplash, Vidar Nordli-Mathisen
42. Pulling Double Duty
My fiancée and I are currently living with her mom and partner. Unfortunately, both my fiancée’s uncle and grandfather have passed. I was stood in the kitchen doing the washing up, and I noticed to my right in the living a room a tall white figure walk across towards the stairs. I knew what I had seen, and it terrified me.
I went upstairs and asked my partner “How tall was your uncle”? And she said, “Around six feet, why”? I replied, “I think I just met him”. I freaked her out, but it was a very calming presence. Coincidentally, her nan came over the next day and said she felt like somebody was with her last night (she lives alone), like her deceased husband was there with her, again calming.
But it’s kind of creepy they came and checked on the family at the same time.
43. The Jackal
I was friends with this kid in my neighborhood. He told me there was a spirit of an old man who passed in his townhouse from old age. He told me he called the spirit “Jackal” and that it was a friendly ghost. I did not believe him one bit and thought he was nuts.
One day he invited me over. He and I were the only ones in his bedroom and also the only ones upstairs. He called the ghost by its nickname “Jackal” and that’s when a breeze of cold air rushed into the bedroom. There was no AC on, though it was summer. All the windows were closed.
Nonetheless, the burst of wind was so cold it was like winter air and it turned the whole bedroom cold. The kid’s bedroom door started closing and shutting on its own right in front of our eyes and there was no one behind the door or in the hallway. We both heard loud knockings from each of his bedroom walls.
I freaked out a bit and go downstairs and tell his dad. His dad only confirmed the kid’s story. Apparently every single night the spirit likes to shake the doorknobs and open doors as the whole family is sleeping. I refused to go inside there again.
44. The Smallest Movement
My plastic curtain started blowing into my bedroom while locked in place. The AC was off. No one was in the living room. Everyone was asleep. I still have no earthly explanation.
45. Don’t Talk To Strangers
One day a girl was walking home late night after work. It was dark and around midnight. She lived an apartment where they had elevator. She got in the elevator and when the door was about to close, a strange man with very red hoodie entered the elevator. He apologized for scaring her and asked which floor she is heading to, without making an eye contact.
She told him out of fear and the man casually press the button and the one below. As they were on the way, he asked her for her cell phone, so he could use it, but she declined out of suspicion and isolated herself in the corner. After seconds of silence, elevator arrived at the floor below the one girl was heading to and the door opened.
The guy slowly walked out of the door and turned around facing toward the elevator and the girl. He just stared at her without any movement. Slowly the door started to close and from the gap, she could see him turning around heading upstairs…and pulling a knife out of his jacket.
46. My Parents’ Ghost
This happened to me about four years ago. I was sleeping in my room in the basement and suddenly I see a young woman in my room just looking through the stuff on my desk. At this point, I think I'm dreaming so I sit at the edge of my bed and rub my eyes. Sure enough, the woman is still there.
I get up abruptly, thinking I'm not completely awake and sure enough the woman is not only still there, but she turns around to face me. I am now in my room standing about five inches from the face of an old woman. I'm thinking that my dream is way too realistic at this point and start getting scared, so I pick up a pillow and try to strike her with it.
The pillow goes straight through her and the old woman's face transforms into something grotesque, like her eyes and mouth turn pitch black. I get the heck of the basement, yelling ''WHAT THE HECK, WHAT THE HECK, WHAT THE HECK” on my way upstairs. I spent the rest of the night surfing the web to find out what the heck that was.
I was 21 at the time, and I was only visiting my parents’ house for the weekend and boy was I ever glad to not have to sleep in that room for a while. I still sleep with the lights on when I sleep in my old room.
47. The Boy In The Hole In The Wall
I work at a hospital, on the hospice/oncology floor. I've only experienced it once, but I've talked to many nurses who have had the same type of thing happening. It always seems to happen with the patients with cancer metastasis to the brain or those who are just too far gone to be completely oriented.
I was in a patient's room giving medication when she looked at me and held her hand out like she wanted to give me something. I held out my hand and she opened hers like she was dropping something, but nothing was there. I said, "I don't see anything...what is it”? and she said, "It's my last breath. Give it to that boy over there”.
By this time, I'm obviously super creeped out and am ready to get the heck out of that room, but my curiosity gets the best of me. I ask, "What little boy are you talking about”? and she said, "The boy with the red hair and face. The one that's in that hole in the wall”.
We've had lots of incidents of patients saying that they see a little boy following the nurses around, or that they see a woman in red in their rooms.
48. Milking It
To this day, I have no idea what happened. Have you seen those yogurt commercials starring Jamie Lee Curtis? As near as I can tell, the primary appeal of the product is that it will help you have a safe and happy bowel movement. That's fine, and I suppose it might be a major selling point for some people, but any time I see that particular brand of curdled dairy, all I can think about is...well, you get the idea.
This is relevant, I promise. So, I'm at the grocery store one day, intent on purchasing the supplies necessary to make the most amazing BLT on the face of the planet. Once such ingredient is cream cheese, which, coincidentally, tends to be stocked right next to the yogurt. As I was searching for a suitable supply, this odd rumble became audible, almost like the growl of a wild animal laying in wait.
At first, I ignored it, thinking it was nothing more than a piece of unseen machinery activating, but as it grew in volume, it took on a sense of being undeniably alive. I remember looking around, wondering if someone's service dog had detected a threat, but I was alone. That's when things got terrifying.
The growl grew in intensity, and I could swear that I heard words accompanying it, saying something to the effect of "COVER YOU IN POOP”! As the last syllable was uttered, the yogurt exploded at me. Packages and serving-size containers came flying off the refrigerated shelves, while the growling voice repeated "COVER YOU IN POOP”!
Suffice to say, it did not help my association with that particular product, and it reduced me to a screaming mess. Someone must have heard the commotion, because an employee came running to check on me. When I described what happened, he got this really nervous look on his face...and apologized to me. There I was, expecting to be chastised for vandalizing the display...and learning, based on the worker's reaction, that this sort of thing had apparently happened before.
Now, when I've described this in the past, people have offered the suggestion that someone—maybe a crazy homeless guy—had gotten into the back of the store and was enacting his bizarre vendetta against yogurt. There's only one problem with this theory: The area in question was one of the sort that was stocked from the front, not the back. Supposedly, there was nothing behind the shelves but a concrete wall.
49. Get Your Hands Off Me
This friend and a few of his college buddies were going on a ghost hunt, and had heard about some graveyard where these children whose mother had offed them had been buried. The graveyard was located off the main road, so my friend parked his car on the side of the road, and the group (5-7 people I believe) got out and followed the small path through the woods for a couple minutes to get to the graveyard.
Once there, nothing exciting happened for the first 10 minutes or so, and they had tried everything the website or wherever they heard the story told them to do, with no results. They got bored, and this is where they made a huge mistake. Being typical college kids, started taunting the supposed ghost of the mother.
This continued for a few minutes before they tired of it and decided to go back to the car as one of the girls had to go to the bathroom. Once they got back to the car, my friend tried opening the handle without unlocking the car, because he hadn't locked it in the first place. But now he found it locked. He attributed this to bad memory at the time.
The group drove home, laughing and talking like normal. After he had dropped all the others off at their homes, he went back to his own house. He got in at the same time as one of his roommates, who stopped and waited for him to pull in. The roommate had his phone out and shined the light in the window when his friend pulled in as a joke. Then suddenly, a sight shocked him.
What he saw was tiny, baby-sized handprints all over the windows. As soon as my friend got out, he went into the house without saying a word to the roommate. The roommate, confused, went back to the car and tried to rub one of the handprints. They were on the inside of the window.
To this day, my friend will not speak of his drive home after he dropped off his other friends, and has since sold the car without ever driving it again.
50. Little Girl Lost
When I was younger, I used to have vivid “dreams” about people I’ve never met and places I've never been. My mom used to brush it off as an over-active imagination, and I would go about my day as normal. One day my mom found me in the lounge—I didn’t have a habit of sleep walking—and I was sitting cross-legged on the cold floor.
She said that I suddenly stood up and she noticed my eyes were closed. I walked to the kitchen and picked up a knife. My mom, fearing the worst, took it from me and took me back to bed Here's the chilling part. When I woke up and started crying my mom was baffled and asked what was wrong.
I said that I was playing with a girl the same age as me (seven), and her dad called her. When she got to him, he started hitting her and I took a knife to give the girl. But I was taken away and she screamed for help until she stopped making noise and I woke up. My mom was horrified and never told me this story until I was like 21.
Sources: Reddit,
