Mysterious figures in the night, disappearing objects, or spirits of loved ones. Sometimes, things that happen in life just can’t be explained. These Redditors shared their stories of when an absolutely mystifying encounter made their blood run cold.
1. Calling For Help
My mum is a type one diabetic, and one day, she began to act extremely strange. She looked really off and wasn’t really responsive, so I went to pick up her insulin needles to see if she would react to that and she didn’t.
I panicked and phoned my Nan who told me to put the phone down and dial for help, for some reason I was so frightened and confused I didn’t. I sent my little brother outside to get help while I tried to get my mum to respond to me. My brother came back in crying saying he couldn’t find anyone and then about five minutes later, this woman just walked into my mum's bedroom, called me by my name, and my brothers, and said she knew my mum and help was coming.
She was calm, soft-spoken, and had a warm feeling about her, I didn’t recognize this woman and neither did my brother. Shortly after, the ambulance arrived and got my mum’s sugar levels back up. And when I went to find the woman, she was gone. Like literally gone. When my mum came around, I explained to her about this mysterious woman and what she looked like. Her reaction sent chills down my spine.
My mum had absolutely no idea who she was, and we never saw her again. Still gives me shivers now.
2. Only Once A Year
This happened when I was 18 and I still can't explain it. A friend and I were traveling in Europe. We were walking along a pleasant, quiet street in Rome one day and saw an elderly homeless man sitting on the street. He bet us that if he could guess our date of birth, we had to give him some money. Of course, we said okay. And he did it! He told us both our correct dates of birth! We never met him before and never saw him again.
3. The Tailor Upstairs
I was at my mother-in-law's flat in Hungary when strange things began to happen. I tend to go to bed later than my wife, and for the first couple of nights, I had trouble falling asleep because around midnight I could hear the neighbor upstairs walk in high heels, which was very annoying. I could also hear little objects fall on the floor, and I told my wife it sounded like the plastic buttons you have on some clothes.
She looked at me funny and told me her niece hated to sleep in that room because she was scared by the noises coming from upstairs. I said that was a bit exaggerated—but later, I learned the disturbing truth. The next day, my wife told me the flat upstairs had been empty for the past at least four years. Turns out the neighbor had passed on years before that, and guess what? She was a tailor, always nicely dressed and wearing high heels.
4. My Big Brother
This one experience still haunts me years later. When I was a kid, I participated in Big Brothers Big Sisters, which is pretty much just a mentorship program in the US. I basically just hung out with this dude Chris for a couple of hours a week. We'd go to the movies, out to eat, he'd help me with my homework, that kind of thing. One day, he tells me that he was going to Baltimore for a couple of weeks and when I should expect him back.
The day rolls around and I give him a call to see if he's back yet. A man whose voice I didn't recognize answered and I asked if Chris was there. He said no. I asked him when Chris would be back, just kind of thinking it was someone staying at his house or watching his dogs or something. But he said that I had the wrong number, that he and his wife had lived there for years, and there was never a Chris there.
I double-checked in the phonebook to see if it was the right number which it was because I had it circled. I was confused so I just said sorry and hung up, and I never heard from Chris ever again.
Freepik, azerbaijan_stockers
5. Was It The Dog?
I wasn't really weirded out about being home...until this happened. When I was 17 years old, I used to be left alone from Thursday to Sunday with our family's dog, who was pretty small and starting to have trouble climbing stairs in his old age. I'd be working every morning while my parents were out of town. I came home from my shift on Friday and make a chilling discovery. Everything about the kitchen table was a mess. Napkins were taken out of the holder, all of the mail was thrown on the floor, salt and pepper shaker on the other side of the kitchen but together, and one of the chairs pulled far away from the table.
Our dog's never done anything like this, and I'd be especially surprised if he was even capable of climbing on top of the table. I reset it all. On Saturday, I come back to find the exact same configuration. Don't have the pictures anymore, but every detail was just as I found it the day before. Pretty much the entire night I'm convinced there's going to be a ghost coming to get me and I sleep horribly and barely rest for work on Sunday.
I leave for work and make sure the place was orderly when I left, because I knew my parents would be back before I was out of work. When I go on my lunch break I call my mom and ask about all of the details from the past two days, and she just goes "Yeah, why did you leave such a mess?" She didn't get pictures so I can't verify how similar the mess was, but regardless, I can't believe my old dog would have done that.
The details were the same for three consecutive days, and I don't even know if he was strong enough to move the chairs or climb on the table. This was the only time anything like this ever happened while I was left alone.
6. Not-So-Imaginary After All
When I was a child, I had “life-size” Power Ranger dolls — about the same size as I was at the time. I usually kept them in my room stationed around my canopy bed to guard me at night. One day I was planning to take them all to preschool for show-and-tell. As I was preparing them to come downstairs with me, the Red Power Ranger “came to life” and pushed me down the stairs.
I only vaguely remember this incident, but when I brought it up recently at a family gathering, my mom said that it wasn’t the first time I had mentioned the Red Power Ranger being lifelike, and that I had frequently been heard talking to people in that particular apartment. The incident of me being pushed down the stairs apparently frightened my parents so much that they took me away and we stayed with my grandmother until my parents could find a new apartment to live in.
Needless to say, the Power Rangers did not move with us.
7. A Late-Night Visitor
My brother and I were alone at home while our Mom was away somewhere, probably for work or something. It was like 1 AM and it was raining like crazy. I was about to head to bed and I saw my brother had turned off his room's lights as well. I went to bed and fell asleep. My sleep was promptly interrupted by a loud banging on the glass. It was coming from our living room’s glass door.
I was scared a little but decided to check. I open my door a tiny bit and take a peek through our almost pitch-black living room toward the glass door. What I saw made my blood run cold. Someone was on the other side of the glass standing in the pouring rain. I couldn't really make out what that person looked like and I didn't really try to find out, as I immediately pulled myself backward to prevent him from seeing me.
The banging didn't seem to stop and it was mind-numbingly loud. It really felt like the glass was about to crack at any moment. I got on my knees and hands and tried to crawl toward my brother's room to check if he's okay. There were some chairs in my line of sight towards the floor so while crawling, it would've been hard to spot me. I got to my brother's room and opened it.
He was terrified sitting in his bed in the corner of the room. And just as I was about to grab the phone and call the police, the banging stopped. I decided not to call because I am introverted as heck and I honestly was just really tired so I went to sleep. To this day, I do not know who that was.
Freepik, creativeart
8. Monthly Money
Every month around the 5th, I get a letter with exactly 23 dollars. No note, no return address. I’ve asked family, relatives, friends, the two past occupants of this apartment. Nobody knows anything about it. It is not addressed to me, but to my unique postal address. The total is now exactly $1,886, I have just stashed it all in a box. I do not want to spend it in case it is cursed.
9. The Girl In The Bathroom
My school bathrooms had really loud, heavy doors. The door to the bathroom and the stall doors were so creaky there was no way you wouldn't hear someone coming in or leaving. One day my friend group was on the benches near the washroom so at some point during lunch I go to use it. I was in one of three stalls probably browsing my phone or something when I hear someone come in crying and shut herself in the stall furthest from me.
I asked if she was okay but didn't get a response, she just kept crying. I finished my toilet business and left my stall to go knock on her stall door and see if she was okay. What I found left me stunned. The bathroom was empty. The stall doors were all open and I didn't hear anyone leave either the stall or the bathroom exit. I even walked into the stall I thought she was in and checked.
Honestly when this happened, I thought I just wasn't paying attention and didn't hear the girl leave...But then about a week or two later it happened again in the same bathroom. My friends knew I didn't believe in ghosts but when I told them they could all tell I wasn't joking.
10. A Ghostly Glutton
When I was 10 or so, I was staying at my grandma's place over the summer break and we were having breakfast. We barely started eating when the phone rang. She left the dining room and I followed her thinking that maybe they were my parents calling. When we returned, most of the food was gone. She asked me if I ate while she was on the phone and I said 'no'. There was no one else home and there were no pets. My grandma just shook it off saying we might have eaten more than she remembered but I am absolutely positive that I had at most two bites of my toast by the time the phone rang.
11. A Bloom In Winter
My grandmother always loved roses and had them growing in her backyard. She passed in December and when we were gathered at her house for the funeral, my father happened to look out the back window and saw a bright red rose had blossomed even though it was a cold winter. It stood out brightly against the snow. He brought it in and put it in a vase on the kitchen table—but that’s not the strangest part.
We all left for the funeral and when we came back, the rose was on the living room floor. No one had been in the house while we were gone. My father is the most hard-headed person alive but he was convinced it was his mother's way of telling him she was all right.
12. Cats Are Liquid
We have a built-in wardrobe in our bedroom. About a month ago our cat had managed to get herself inside and I must have closed the door. I heard her meowing and I opened the door and she jumped out and walked off. Silly cat. I closed the wardrobe door firmly, and less than five minutes later I hear a meow in the wardrobe.
I open the door and to my surprise, our cat jumps out again and walks off. My partner and I were both stunned as there is no way into the wardrobe with the doors closed. Neither of us have any idea how this happened.
13. Reality Jump
I had just picked up a co-worker from her house heading to work. We are just talking and chatting, "how’d your weekend go" type of stuff. I still can’t explain what happened next. We are maybe five miles away from her house, when all of a sudden, we realize we are in town pulling into work’s parking lot. We both kind of look at each other not sure what was happening.
We had gone almost 20 miles in a blink of an eye. And what cemented this experience as something that actually happened, and not just simply losing track of time, was the time! It should have taken us almost half an hour to get to work. Instead, the time from when I picked her up was 2:30. And the time when we got to the building was 2:40. There is no way in heck we could have gotten there that fast.
From that point on we both called that experience the time when we jumped, like from the movie Jumper. I have no explanation why. I don't believe in the paranormal or supernatural, so this experience is one of those things that makes me question my own sanity.
14. Songs In The Night
I was coming home from work one day when my family was out on vacation. I worked the closing shift so this was around 3 AM. I opened the front door and heard a radio playing music for two seconds before being switched off. I checked every corner of the house. I’m not superstitious, but that one scared me good and I have no idea what it was.
15. Turn It Down!
My neighbor was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We had studio apartments with a shared wall. We were pals, but he always complained that my television was too loud. No issues; I would turn the volume down whenever he asked. The day after he passed, I flipped on my TV. The volume control on the TV screen popped up and it appeared like someone was pressing the button to lower the sound.
I wasn't touching the remote. I tried two or three times to increase the volume and again the sound decreased by itself. This had never happened before or since then. I wasn't scared or surprised. It's like my neighbor was wishing me goodbye.
16. Sniffing It Out
I was at home by myself on a call with some friends when all of a sudden, my dog begins to bark like crazy. It was odd since it was the middle of the night and he's usually sleep. I go downstairs to check on him, and what I found left me terrified. He was barking at our hall closet. I grabbed my bat that I keep in my room just in case and open the door.
There was nothing out of the usual at first, but then I look down and notice a familiar-looking object at the bottom of the closet. It was my mom's necklace she had lost six years ago. I showed it to my mom at breakfast, and she was just as shocked as I was. I still have no clue how it got there or how my dog knew it was in there. It was definitely one of the oddest occurrences of my life.
17. The Doppelganger
I wasn't home alone, but I was awake by myself one Saturday morning in the 80s when I was around seven or so. I believe my mom was the only one home because my dad went to the lake to go fishing that weekend, and I'm not sure where my older brothers were. Anyways, my mom's sleeping in, and I'm in the living room by myself, watching Saturday morning cartoons and making a fort out of sheets and cushions.
Something made me turn around and I saw my dad in his pajamas standing in the hallway entrance with his hands on his hips, looking the mess I was making and shaking his head. He then turned around and walked into my room, which was just off the hallway entrance. Dude. I didn't even look, I just booked it to my parents' room and woke my mom up.
I don't remember what happened after that, this was around 35 years ago. And it wasn’t even a bad omen or anything, my dad was absolutely fine and nothing had happened to him.
18. The Night Hound
Back in high school, I'd usually be up all hours of the night playing games. I had a large dog at the time that would sleep in my room at night. It was 2 AM and I was finally headed to bed, but my dog wasn't with me so I ventured out to find him. I made my way across the house to the kitchen/dining room combo. I'm standing in the only door frame that leads to that side of the house.
We had an island in the kitchen with a stool that the junk mail was usually kept on. So, I walk up, call for my dog, and see him walk from behind the island to behind the dining room table set, knocking all the junk mail down as he did so. I huff and flip on the light. But there was no dog. I freak out, scramble back across the house, and end up finding him in my parent's room.
I regale the story the next day to my parents and younger sister, who often claimed to see stuff in the house. My sister’s reaction was horrifying. She pipes up and goes "Oh, that's the tall black thing. Yeah, sometimes it likes to crawl around on all fours".
19. The Bell Tolls
I was in my family home by myself and I kept hearing a small bell ringing. I'd lived there for years and never heard the bell before or since. I searched around the house and it was coming from my mum's bedroom. On the window ledge was a small porcelain bell but it didn't have the ringer inside. I went back downstairs and the bell ringing started again.
I rang my mum at work and asked her if she knew where it could be coming from. She broke down crying and said years before I was born her and my dad had agreed to ring the bell if anything had happened to let the other person know. Turns out, my dad had died just earlier. I'm almost certain I never knew this story beforehand either.
Freepik,freepik
20. A Radio Signal
My mom died unexpectedly when I was 19. About a week before, I was driving her home from the hospital. It was about a 30-minute drive. Whenever there was a break in our conversation I would kind of subconsciously turn the radio up. She kept on turning it down and saying “Let’s just chat”. And I just replied “Oh sure”. I didn’t even realize I kept turning the radio up.
About a week after she passed, I was driving that same car by myself and experienced the radio turning itself down. Which had never happened before. I was surprised but like you, not scared. I’ve thought about that for a long time now, told my family right away and all
21. A Figure In The Dirt
I got up in the middle of the night to go to the washroom and happened to glance out the window to my backyard to see a glowing yellow figure that looked like it was collecting soil samples from my backyard. I absolutely freaked out and bumped into the sink. The figure stopped what it was doing and looked at me. I bolted back to my room and woke my wife but when we went back, it was gone.
Funny thing is, I've told this story to other people—and one person had an unforgettable reply. The wife of a friend of mine burst into tears and said she had seen the same thing when she was a child but nobody believed her. It looked to be about seven feet tall as when it stood up it was well taller than my fence. I couldn't make out any detail because it was glowing so strongly and my adrenaline was pumping like crazy.
22. Shared Dreams
When I was around five years old, I had a nightmare, so like any child, I went to my parents. I lay in between them and just stared at the ceiling. It was pitch black, and out of nowhere, I see the devil’s face form on the ceiling, so I just close my eyes and try to force myself to sleep. Fast forward about 12-14 years later, I’m in my room playing games online.
I’m facing away from my TV I have muted but on for the background lighting. I had been playing for hours and for whatever reason, I decided to turn around just to see what was on screen. It was unsolved mysteries, showing the “upcoming” after commercials. My TV was muted so I didn’t hear what it was talking about but I just see a story about a child staring at the ceiling and a devil's face appeared to them.
I unmute and wait for the commercials to end, and it was pretty much the same exact thing that happened to me as a child. From what I recalled, there was a few reports around the country of children having this same experience with no explanation.
23. The Night Runner
I grew up in a very rural area, and our house was on the end of a road in the middle of Midwest farm country. In high school, I was in cross-country and track, and found it easiest to run in the late evenings on nights when there wasn’t practice. One night, which was fairly well lit by the moon, I was running the last quarter mile to my house and I saw someone else running toward me on the road from the direction of my house.
I live at the end of road. There is nothing but the field behind it and it definitely wasn’t my mom running. It surprised me so much I stopped for a second to consider what I was seeing. I remember exactly what the runner was wearing and I watched her run another five or six strides toward me before she disappeared or blended into the night like the Predator or some such.
Now it could have been exhaustion or dehydration I guess, but I’ve run a lot farther and a lot longer than I did that night without seeing anyone materialize and evaporate. I never did again either on that road or anywhere else. It was the scariest thing that ever happened to me. I ran home crying, panicking, tears everywhere like a cartoon, and I am not ashamed to tell you about it. I couldn’t bring myself to run at night again for a month.
24. The Magic Keys
When I was still living at my mum's, one night we were both home and we heard the sound of keys entering our front door. That was scary enough...Until the door actually opened. Myself and my mother are the only people who have a key to that front door so we were absolutely terrified. Luckily, it was only our neighbor's totally slammed daughter who'd gotten the houses confused. But that’s not the weirdest part.
Thing is, we had no idea how she had used her own key to her house to get into ours. We checked the keys, they were completely different and we even tried it several times to see if it was just luck. No amount of force or twisting and wiggling could open that door with her key. It was definitely some inebriated magic.
25. Grandfather’s Clock
My grandpa had built a grandfather clock by hand for his wife back in the day. About 16 years ago, I inherited the clock when he passed. The chime mechanism on the clock is broken and my husband has tried to fix it but hasn’t gotten it to work. It has chimed the hours only twice over the years. The first time was late afternoon after my husband had met Chuck Yeager at an air show.
My grandpa had been a test pilot during and after WWII and my husband semi-jokingly asked Yeager if he knew him. My husband came home from the air show and was telling me about this conversation and the clock started chiming. Coincidence? In initially thought the only other time was completely random. It chimed one morning and caught us by surprise.
I said out loud “I haven’t forgotten you, Grandpa” and went about my day. The next day I mentioned it to my mom. She said: Oh, that makes sense. His best friend passed yesterday. My best friend’s wife had called my mom to let her know the day before. I guess there hasn’t been any event since then that Grandpa has wanted us to take notice of.
26. Smoothing Things Out
I took care of my mom during her final years with dementia. Every day was hard, but others seemed impossible. On really rough days I'd go into the garage to decompress, cry, rage, scream, and sometimes hit trash cans with a baseball bat. Well, one particularly hard day, I was in the garage sobbing and mumbling incoherently to myself when I said out loud to my late father; "Dad, I need help, what do I do?"
Suddenly the garage door into the house swung open on its own and I went into some kind of trance and was able to clean up the house without having a complete meltdown. I can't explain it, but I'm pretty sure my dad was guiding me through the worst of it all.
27. Impromptu Road Trip
I was on the couch in my apartment once watching TV. I guess I dozed off, cause when I woke up, I made a disturbing discovery. I was in the car, driving. I was terrified because had no memory of getting into my car, go to go anywhere, or anything. I didn't drink or use any sort of medication either. The strange part is that I knew what time it was when I sat down on the couch. It was around 8:00 pm or so.
I know this because I looked at the cable box and it told me. I was watching a specific show on the Discovery Channel. When I "woke up" driving in my car, I was inexplicably almost two hours away. I lived in the north Tampa area and I was just outside of Gainesville. But the time only said 8:38 pm on my clock. I didn't know where I was, I was just on the highway.
So, I took the next exit just to pull off and figure out what the heck was going on. That's when I realized where I was. I have zero way to account for leaving my apartment, being inside my own vehicle, or heading north out of the city for no reason at all. I was single and living alone at the time, and to this day I have no idea what happened.
28. Flashing Before My Eyes
When I was six or seven years old, I was swimming in my grandma’s pool and seeing how long I could hold my breath underwater. I stayed under too long at one point and scrambled for the surface. I remember fear I remember my lungs burning I remember seeing the water surface a few inches above me. My vision went black but I didn’t pass out, I breached the water surface and finally got oxygen.
But in the seconds when my vision went black and I surfaced I had, I a vision like an old memory but not of anything I had done. It was so vivid that after more than 30 years, I still remember every detail. It was a vision of a child’s hand making an orange-red clay pot and there were adult hands helping with the clay.
It was like a picture in time, and it’s hard to explain, but it felt like a memory of a past life. Even as a kid I was like “What the heck was that? That wasn’t my memory, that wasn’t my experience”.
29. Who’s There?!
I used to work security for a secure building. I worked at night and there were only three doors in the entire building, but only one was used on a regular basis. The other two were magnetically locked. I’m not one of those people who believe in ghosts, but I kept hearing what sounded like somebody moving heavy objects around in the building when there shouldn’t be other people there and I had already checked and secured the building.
I’d hear the sounds often enough that I stopped checking because I wouldn’t ever find anything—until one night when things got even more intense. The officer above me was doing his rounds, and came to check I was at my post. In the middle of talking to him and reporting that the building had been cleared and checked every hour for the past nearly six hours, we hear the noise.
He asked why I reported the building clear if somebody is there and I told him the sound happens regularly and it must be an HVAC thing or something. Then we clearly hear somebody yell, and the sound stops abruptly. We both checked that building floor to ceiling and nobody was there. We checked closets and under desks and nothing.
He made me call the day security team and tell them we had a breach, only for them to not be able to find anybody either. This was a big deal because the information in the building was very sensitive and nobody was allowed to leave until we found the person. But nobody ever found anyone.
30. A Bump In The Dark
I was living in this house a few years back that was notoriously weird. One night I was sleeping when I felt something touch me. Thought it was my brother because we shared a room. It was not. He was at his girlfriend's mom's place. In the room alone. Feel a hand on my back again, then a sharp pain. Unexplained scratch down my back.
There was nothing on my bed, and it was a memory foam mattress with a pillow top underneath with no springs. Even if there were springs, I slept on my stomach. So obviously I sit up. And I see this mass. Like a three-foot mass run from the bedside out the door which opened more than it was, and into the living room where I never saw it again. I had single-handedly the worst panic attack I have ever had.
31. Soaring In The Sky
In my 20s, I wanted to have a lucid dream, so I could fly. It was a fun experiment, call it a hobby over a few months that takes no money and barely any time investment. There's lots of information online to do this. It was fun to do and I wrote down a lot of really weird dreams in my journal. After a while, I did have a few lucid dreams and it was super fun.
Eventually, I found a girl and I had a huge crush on her. She recommended me a book, so I obviously bought it and read it being the guy I was. The thing is, I recognized a scene in the book word for word. It was extremely specific with many details correct. I had written it down in my dream journal months ago before ever reading this book. The name of the book was The Book of Flying.
32. A Sudden Storm
About 30 years ago when I was about eight, my father took me my brother and mother deep into the woods at his hunting cabin. Unfortunately, our flashlight went out. My mother and brother decided to circle back to the truck to retrieve batteries. While they were gone, a very powerful thunderstorm came. I remember at one point I looked up over the lake and there was just this pitch-black circle hovering in place.
I turned to my dad and he was looking right at it. There were lightning strikes around the lake and it made no sound whatsoever. I remember thinking "He'll explain to me what that thing is, he's been coming here his whole life!" Nope. We just stood there staring at it until it vanished into the storm clouds. My mom and brother returned after it disappeared. I recall this whole deal happening because my dad refuses to talk about it with me to this day. Freaked us both out.
Wikimedia Commons, ForestWander
33. Lego Lovers
I grew up in a haunted house. One time, me and my family had come home from being out. Family stayed outside to clean up a bunch of toys and bikes we had left out in the front yard. I went into the house to for the bathroom, and as I’m in the bathroom, I can hear someone sloshing their hands back and forth in the big box of Legos my little brother had in his room.
I finish up and I’m like “Aren’t you supposed to be outside helping everyone clean” and as I turn into his room, I see the box of Legos in the corner with the lid on, no one there, still making the sloshing sound. Ran out of there as fast as I could.
34. Last Words
My dad was terminal. He was in his 60s and was at my childhood home, in bed, asleep. The day prior, he had been loaded up with morphine or something similar to "let him go peacefully." I was a college kid at this stage of life and a total mess. I loved my dad dearly and he was a great man. Before I went to the house, I picked up a drink. I didn't know how else to numb what I felt.
I went into his bedroom as he lay there asleep. Just me and him. I started sipping and sat there thinking about how much I loved this man. I went through most of the bottle and fell asleep. Me in a chair beside him. Just us two. I woke, and I had no idea how much time had passed. I looked over at my father and he had reached his hand out to me. I held it.
He then reached for his other hand and took a ring that he wore for years off of his finger then brought me close to him and said "I love you" and put the ring in my hand. Something he had never said. It wasn't like I didn't know it. He just never directly stated it. It was a signature ring with his full initials. Then he took his last breath.
I sat there with him with his heart not beating anymore and cried quietly. After some time, I walked out of his bedroom to where many family and friends had gathered and said, "He’s gone". I always thought that his coming to consciousness after days of sleep and saying goodbye to me was extraordinary. Thank you to anyone who reads this. It was great to think and talk about this special moment in my life.
35. A Sibling Connection
When I was a kid, like four years old tops, I woke up crying in the middle of the night. At the same time, my sister woke up, got up, and, without a word, started closing the windows. I calmed down, we settled back to sleep. There was no talking about the reason until breakfast, when she started talking about a nightmare she had.
She dreamt of huge black dogs, climbing over the fence and under the gate and trying to get into our windows. I started filling in the details and we ended up taking turns describing the exact same nightmare. It never happened again. My sister is 10 years older me.
36. Post-Shower Surprise
I was in my college apartment and my roommate had just moved out. Her room was directly across from mine with the living room between us. I had cleaned out her room and then closed the door. I left my bedroom door open when I went to take a shower one night. My bathroom was connected to my bedroom. I also happened to leave the bathroom door open.
While I was in the shower, I thought I heard a woman talking. I had never been able to hear my neighbors talking before, but figured they just happened to be talking in their bathroom which shared a wall or something. When I got out of the shower, I was surprised to see a black void when there should have been the bright white closed door of my old roommate's door reflecting the moonlight.
I figured I just forgot to close the door and went and closed it. The next night I once again went to take a shower and left my room and the bathroom door open. But this time I checked to make sure the other door was latched and the front door was double locked. When I came back out, I once again saw the void with the door wide open. I slammed my door closed and locked it so fast.
I convinced myself there was a logical explanation, so the next night I once again checked all of the doors and then closed my bedroom door. This time, I came out of the shower and MY bedroom door was open along with the other door. I showered and slept with my bedroom door locked from that point on. This took place over several nights home alone and I may not have even been alone.
37. A Very Bright Night
I woke up one night after a heavy snowfall and there was a weird glow outside. I went outside and everything. The air itself was infused with this pastel-like green-purple glow. It was easily bright enough to read a book at like 1-2 AM. The heavy cloud cover blocked any full moon. It was like a magical faerie world. As best I can tell, the white cloud cover, along with everything blanketed with snow made whatever ambient light just ping-pong all over the place and light everything up.
I’ve never seen anything like that before or since.
38. The UFO
When I was a kid, probably 7 or 8, I remember going out back late one night after a power blackout in the town I grew up in. This was a town about 10 miles outside of an air force base. I wanted to check out the stars with no light pollution, so I was just hanging out in the yard, looking up at the sky. Out of nowhere, with zero sound, this "thing" just flies past.
I don't want to call it a jet, because it wasn't. It was huge, flying low, and most creepy, didn't make darn near any sound outside of the sudden gust of wind that came in its wake. No jets, no roar of engines, just the sudden ambient noise of something moving past the house, and the rustle of the wind. I likely wouldn't have even noticed it if I hadn't specifically been looking up at the sky.
The thing blocked out half the stars in the sky. To this day, I have zero idea what it could have been. We've got some pretty awesome flying tech, but not a one of them could fly that close to the ground without making any sound at all even today, much less in the early 90s. Scared the heck out of me, and still gives me the creeps to think about it today.
39. Visitor In The Basement
In grade nine, my best friend and I were having a sleepover at my house. My parents and younger brother were visiting family so we were home alone. After it was dark outside, we started watching a movie. We were laying on separate couches, watching the TV that was situated next to a door frame that leads to the kitchen, bedrooms, and basement.
In a matter of seconds, I see a feminine figure standing in the doorway, facing me, and for some reason, I instinctively said “don’t leave me!” My friend laying on the other couch also saw the figure and said to me “don’t worry, he’ll go away in a second” thinking it was my younger brother. The figure just faded away, kind of like mist, into the other room.
We looked at each other and realized what had just happened, then quickly turned on all the lights and sat on the same couch. We’re 28 now. Still have absolutely no idea who or what that was or why I said that, but I still think about it often.
40. Midnight Checkup
One night, I wasn’t feeling very well, and the upstairs had a larger bathroom, so I figured I might as well sleep in the guest room. My wife did not have a problem with this as she had work early the next day and I was constantly getting out of bed with food poisoning. At some point in the night, I awoke to the door slowly creaking open and a female voice asking if I was feeling alright.
I assumed it was my wife and replied “Yes honey I’m fine, see you in the morning”. The door never closed and no footsteps went down the stairs as I would’ve heard them in this 1800s home's original wood floors and stairs. We were alone in the house that night. I asked my wife about it the next morning and she said never came up to check to on me let alone wake up during the night.
I was facing away from the door when it happened and the unexpected silence following the question made me turn over to check. The door was wide open, no lights were on, and no footsteps.
41. Who Let The Dog Out?
My dog literally vanished one day. We locked the house with the dog in it to go get some food. When we came back half an hour later, he wasn't in the house anymore. There was no possible exit for him, no windows, no holes, nothing. He was definitely inside the house before we left. The only explanation we have to this day is kind of crazy and we can't prove it, so we'll never be sure.
One of our neighbors was an old lady. We were nice to her despite the fact that she was kind of a cold type of person. Sometimes, we did some mutual favors, like in a typical neighbors' relationship. But over time, she started to become weirder and weirder. Later, we learned she had developed a form of dementia. It was quite sad to watch her become crazier and crazier. In the end, her son put her in a mental institute for old people.
A few years later, we started connecting the dots. Before she drifted into insanity, we once gave her a set of our house key so she could water the plants and take our mail during our vacations. She kindly accepted, and that year, we brought her back a nice gift from our vacation to thank her, and she gave us back our spare keys. But now we think that, at that time, she was already starting to lose her mind without anyone really noticing it.
Because a few months later, coming back from the grocery store, we found her inside our house. We've locked the house, yet she found a way to get inside. It was really disturbing, and we discovered that she had another key. The only possible explanation was that she had a copy of our key done while we were on vacation. So, back to the vanishing of our dog. Our theory is that this crazy lady had, in fact, multiple copies of our house key and that she let our dog out.
That's the only possible explanation we have found after all those years, but it's so crazy that it's hard to believe, even for us, and we just can't be sure. As for the old lady herself, she sadly passed a few years later in the mental institute. I was angry with her for a time of course. But ultimately, her story was mainly sad and painful. She was a victim of her own decaying brain, and there was nothing she could have done against it.
42. Here One Day...
When I was in 7th grade in the 90s, one of my best friends just up and disappeared with his entire family one day. Like, I was over at his house on Saturday. He wasn’t at school Monday, and when I asked my mother to drive by it on Tuesday it was totally empty. None of our mutual friends knew anything. Teachers at school didn’t know he was leaving.
I even still had some of his SNES games he’d let me borrow. I’ve made numerous attempts to look him up on social media. Nothing. I’m convinced they were in witness protection, but who knows?
43. In A Trench Coat
I used to sleep with my door closed and I had no idea what time it was, but I had heard my door creak open. What happened next still creeps me out. When I opened my eyes, I could only make out a figure of a strange tall man with a hat and a coat, who just sat on my bed and stared at my door. This went on for a few minutes before he got up and left. I don’t have many memories of my childhood but this one I can relive very well.
44. A Shattering Surprise
I was staying in a garage for the weekend that had been converted into a pretty nice studio apartment rental. There was a mini-kitchen on one side of the living room with a wood counter, mini fridge, sink, etc. I had four one-liter bottles of unopened sparkling water in the mini-fridge and two heavy glass refillable bottles of still water on the counter, without caps.
At about 1 AM, one of the sparkling bottles exploded in the fridge and half a second later, one of the open still bottles exploded on the counter. We woke up thinking we were being shot at. A year later, I still absolutely cannot comprehend how those two bottles could have exploded at the same time. One in the fridge, one not. One sparkling, one still. One sealed closed, one sitting open.
And the other bottles around them were just fine. It just doesn’t make sense.
Freepik,freepik
45. The Forgotten Farm
There is a family day trip to the mountains from my childhood that my parents don't remember. We visited some farm that seemed to be a historic site or something. There were lots of other people touring it too. For some reason, in the corners of the farmhouse there was a bunch of sand. Like beach sand, which is weird because this was in North GA USA, nowhere near a beach.
Both my parents say they don't remember anything about this. I remember the exact road you turned off on to get there,) and I can picture the turn exactly in my head, it was a gravel road with dense line of pine trees on both sides, and completely unmarked. The thing is as an adult I drive this highway a lot. I know it REALLY well and nowhere on it is anything like this.
My best guess as to when this happened was sometime prior to 2005. Something about it always gave me weird vibes.
46. Feline Senses
I was 14 or so, and it was my first night alone in the house when my parents were out. I was lying on the living room floor reading, my cat sleeping next to me. Suddenly, my cat wakes up, stares intently into the dark corner of the room behind me, hair on end, growls and then bolts out of the room and upstairs. I look behind me and see nothing, but follow cat upstairs and hide under the covers. Freaked me out.
47. Totally Losing It
When I was in my early teen years, around 2011, my best friend and I used to walk around and go into different stores just for something to do. There was a Rite Aid, a retail and pharmacy store, that was in our neighborhood that we would frequent a lot. Whether it was to buy drinks and snacks, look at makeup, or just to use the bathroom.
Fast forward to 2022, I’ve been dating my boyfriend for about a year now and he’s been the assistant manager at that same Rite Aid for about three years now. One day, he called me and asked me if I had ever lost a phone or an SD card in that Rite Aid. I hadn’t. I have absolutely no memory of ever losing an SD card of mine, and I’ve never lost a phone.
If I had, I know it’d be something I’d remember because it would’ve been a very miserable time for me as my parents wouldn’t have been able to get me a new phone for a while. Or if I had lost an SD card, it would’ve also been a very miserable time for me because that means I would’ve lost all of my pictures, downloaded music, contacts, etc. and as a teenage girl in 2011, those were very important things in my life.
I told him no, I’d never lost either of those things, and definitely not in that Rite Aid. I asked why. He told me he was cleaning out the lost and found drawer with his coworker and they came across an SD card in a little clear, plastic box. His coworker was able to put it in his phone because he had an android, and my boyfriend wasn’t really paying any mind to it.
But when his coworker started telling him what he was finding, which were videos and pictures from concerts, and also that “There’s a bunch of pictures of a girl with blue hair”, my boyfriend’s ears sort of perked up. I’ve had blue hair on and off ever since 2011. What he saw was seriously shocking. He looked at the photos and they were of me. From 2011. This was an SD card from one of my old phones, from 2011.
It is now 11 years later that he’s finding this. It’s been sitting in that lost and found drawer for 11 years, and my now boyfriend, out of all people, just so happened to find it. I have no recollection of losing an SD card, especially not in a Rite Aid. I even searched my social media from around that time and there was nothing. Surely, I would’ve tweeted about losing my SD card and being upset about it.
But there was nothing. I do not know where the card came from, I definitely don’t know how it ended up in that lost and found, and I don’t know how or why it’s been sitting in that drawer for 11 years.
48. A Terrifying Tangent
When my daughter was about two or three years old, she was babbling on as usual about something and I was half listening. Then I heard her say, “But that’s when I used to be a boy”. I asked, “You used to be a boy?” And she said “Yes but that was a long time ago”. I asked her what happened when she was a boy. She said something bad happened.
I asked what, and she responded, “I don’t know. But there was blood in my mouth.” She then continued on about something unrelated and never mentioned anything like that again.
49. A Miraculous Survival
I survived a car accident. The car got wrapped around a pole on the passenger side. I was the passenger. On impact, I blacked out. When I woke up, I just started screaming. There was less than four inches of my seat left and I was still in it. After four hours of rescuers prying the car open, I was out. But the craziest thing is, I walked away with a small cut on my knuckle, a light concussion, and a newfound ability to better socialize with people.
Sometimes I think that I didn't make it out of that accident and actually woke up in the next adjacent universe.
50. The Malls Are All Gone
I moved back to the area I grew up in after a couple of decades away. I was showing my teen daughter places we used to go, and went to the mall which was almost completely defunct. The signs on the outside had been taken down, the theater had closed. We went inside, and what had been a big mall and the food court was gone, carousel was gone, and there was only an “As Seen On TV” store and a Nordstrom outlet store left.
I went home and told my husband how melancholy it was. He couldn’t believe it; he said it had been so vibrant. The next weekend he and I drove down there so he could look. I was shocked by what we found. We pulled in to a very full, active parking lot. The mall was fully open, outdoor signs intact, theater open, food court open, carousel still running. This was a few years ago, and I still feel as dumbfounded today as I was then. I was speechless.
Then, I went home, got my daughter, and drove back, and she was speechless. I have no explanation, just none.
Sources: Reddit,
