Ghosts and ghouls aren’t the only things to send chills up one’s spine. Sometimes, odd coincidences and close calls can also do the trick. Here some folks from Reddit share a few spine-tingling moments that left them completely spooked. It just goes to show that, sometimes, there just is no escape from the world’s strange and mysterious ways.
1. The Tapper
When my mother was about 18, my mother had a terrifying experience. She was visited by what she calls "The Tapper". Every single night for three months, someone would tap on the window of the room she was in as soon as she was alone, even when the curtains were drawn. As soon as anyone else came into the room or went outside to investigate, it would stop, and no one would be outside.
My grandpa and both uncles were living in the house as well. After three months, the tapping stopped. My grandpa and uncles decided to take off fishing one night, and my mom stayed behind. The sun had just gone down, and my mom was sitting in the living room reading when suddenly it happened again. She assumed it was my younger uncle, Jesse, because he was a joker, so she told him to knock it off.
It continued, so she got up from the couch and went to the window, which still had the curtains drawn. She tapped on the window through the curtain. What happened next was absolutely chilling. Instead of tapping, it sounded like a hand slammed against the window in response. She went back to the couch, hoping it was a prank. Almost immediately, the phone rang.
My grandpa was calling her from the neighbor’s house to tell her they stopped in to say hi, and the neighbors offered to help them dress the fish. My mom said, "Well, take Jesse back there with you and make him stop slamming on the windows". My grandpa replied, “Jesse is here". She ran to the front door and locked it, leaving the phone off the hook.
My grandpa told her they were coming over and hung up. They ran up the road from the neighbor’s, and when they got there, what they found was seriously creepy. They saw a guy standing by the front window in the bushes. He stood up when they started screaming and took off towards the fence. The guy looked like he was a good seven feet tall. They chased him to the property line, where a wooden fence separated them from the neighbor’s.
He jumped over the fence, which was seven feet high, without using his hands. His legs went completely over the top. They climbed over the fence to keep chasing him, but he was gone. The property on that side of the fence was just dirt and grass; there were no trees or buildings. The neighbor’s house was a long distance from the fence, and there was nothing else around to hide in. They never heard the tapping or saw anyone that looked like that guy again.
2. What’s In A Name?
I was working on a construction site that was overseen by a safety representative who took his job very seriously. Once, I had to get into a very tight ceiling cavity, so I set my hard hat beside my ladder and crawled into the roof space. I had to tidy up some cable looms, which took about ten minutes, then I came back down the ladder and found my hard hat was gone.
My hard hat had veiny phalluses drawn all over it; I was an apprentice, and my coworkers were jerks. I walked around the site looking for it when the safety rep spotted me and threw me off the site for the rest of the day. I returned to work the next day with a brand new, clean, hard hat. I spotted someone in the lunchroom wearing a hard hat with large union stickers in about the same spots where the drawings were on my previous one.
Knowing that I'd always written my name underneath the plastic insert, I asked this guy if I could look at it, and he said fine. I removed the insert, and there was my name just as I had left it. My full name is fairly obscure, and my family was the only one who had that name in the phone book. I asked the guy, "Is this hard hat yours”? I also asked if that was his name.
He replied, "It certainly is". I gave him a skeptical/disappointed look, and he said, "Don't believe me"? He then pulled out his driver's license, bank cards, etc. It turned out he indeed had the exact same full name as me, and he did take my hard hat. I started pulling the stickers off to reveal the drawings. He said, "Hahaha, yeah, you got me". It was just a baffling coincidence.
3. When Push Came To Shove
My out-of-town friend's parents had this old farmhouse on property they owned. His grandparents used to live and farm there until they retired, but the land stayed in the family. One afternoon I was out on the property with my friend and his buddy blasting each other with paintballs. It was early afternoon, and we decided to take a break in the house.
An empty, somewhat eerie house was irresistible to brave, young lads like ourselves. At one point, I was standing with my friend in one of the main rooms while his friend was still in the doorway. Out of nowhere, my friend was thrown to the ground toward the door as if someone shoved him hard in the back. I whirled around and saw nothing. All three of us booked it out of there. Because of that, his parents refused to rent the house to anyone for any reason.
4. Double The Trouble
I have a twin. Occasionally, she and I will experience physical manifestations of each other’s pain or injuries. She once got in a car crash and the airbag blew up in her face. We both woke up the next morning with black eyes. I was not in the accident. I blew out my ankle and she couldn’t walk for two weeks. People think we’re full of beans, but there is no explanation. It doesn’t happen every time one of us gets hurt, but it’s happened about a half dozen times in almost forty years.
5. Blackout
My mom and I were watching TV in the living room. It had a large sliding glass door, and the shades were wide open. There was not a cloud in the sky, and the sun was shining brightly. Then, everything turned pitch black, including the TV itself. There was no light from anywhere. Both my mother and I screamed. Just as quickly as it disappeared, the light returned.
It was only gone for about two or three seconds, but we both experienced it, so it wasn't like I suddenly went temporarily blind or something. The sky was then a blanket of dark clouds, and it started to pour rain. The rain only lasted for about two or three minutes before the sky returned to bright sunshine. Nobody else that we knew experienced the darkness.
However, a friend of ours did notice that almost instantly, the beautiful weather turned terrible without notice. We even checked if there was an eclipse or something happening, but as far as any official news sources were concerned, there were no eclipses or bizarre weather that occurred that day.
6. Get A Handle On This
When I was 14, I was riding my bike and thought it would be cool to go between the two posts on a sign. As I got close to it, I realized that my handlebars were not going to fit, but it was too late to stop or turn. I wasn't wearing a helmet, either. I blinked—and that’s when it happened. The next thing I knew, I was standing on the ground on the other side of the sign safely on both feet, and my bike was just leaning against the sign. I don't know what happened.
7. Kitty Came Home
In 1996, my grandma died. A couple of years prior, my uncle had come to town for a visit and brought his cat. During his stay, my grandma accidentally let the cat outside, and it bolted away and was never seen again. On the night we had the open casket showing, we came back to my grandparent’s house. On the front step sitting by the door, was the cat. He had an ear tattoo, so we knew it was the same cat.
8. One Last Visit
When I was around 9–10, my uncle was coming down the drive and doing his usual greeting to me by throwing me up in the air and catching me again. I ran inside to tell my mom that he had arrived when I stopped. She was crying and on the phone. After she put down the phone, she turned to me and said, "Your uncle has just had an accident at work and won't ever wake up again". To this day, I have no idea how that thought/hallucination happened just moments before I learned of his passing.
9. The Powers That Key
In high school, my friends and I would sneak out of our houses and drive to the beach in the middle of the night. The beach was huge. We would run up and down and splash in the water. One night, after about an hour of running around, the friend who drove realized he had lost the car key. The key wasn't on a keychain; it was just a single key, and we knew we would never be able to find it.
We searched up and down for an hour but knew that, ultimately, we would have to call one of our parents to pick us up. I sat down on the beach while someone made the call and dug my hands deep into the sand, and felt something. I grabbed it and pulled it out—it was the key.
10. A Dirty Feeling Of Dread
While in undergrad, I was doing some research that involved soil sampling. I regularly sampled several sites in a wilderness preserve, which would take most of the day to hike through. I always brought a friend, just for safety's sake. This one site, way in the rear of the preserve, always spooked me. There was no real reason other than it was more isolated than the other sites.
However, something about it didn't seem quite "right". My friend and I were there once, and I was crouching over to sample the soil. I was looking down, and unprovoked, I felt this rising terror and had a “forget this—run” feeling. I stood up suddenly and saw that my friend had the same feeling and said, "We have to leave NOW". We ran the entire way to the car. We still have no idea why we felt that way, but I am convinced that there was a very real danger in staying.
11. A Punch In The Gut
When I was in sixth grade, I was in English class, sitting in the front row doing my classwork. All of a sudden, I felt a strong punch in the gut. Whatever happened, it was forceful enough that it made me bend over my desk in pain and brought me to tears. Then, it went away as fast as it came, and I was fine a moment later. Out of curiosity, I looked at the clock in the back of the room, and it was about 10:30 AM. Later, I learned the devastating truth.
I went home at the end of the school day and found out that my grandfather—who I was very close to as my grandparents had raised me—had died around 10:30 AM that morning.
12. A Strange Turn Of Events
When I was 13, my 9-year-old nephew, my 5-year-old niece, and I were having a pillow fight in my room. I was standing at the foot of the bed with my nephew directly in front of me, and my niece was to the right side of the bed. My nephew yelled out for us all to stop and look. I turned around and saw my bedroom doorknob slowly turning side to side.
We stood there and watched it for what felt like forever before I finally managed to work up the courage to reach out and open the door. The doorknob continued trying to move beneath my fingers and only stopped once the door was completely open. There was no one in the small hallway in front of my door. I ran out to ask my sister and granny if they had been doing it, and they said no.
The two kids and I decided to have our pillow fight in the living room after that. Once my sister and her family had left, I came back to my room and, being the scientifically-minded child I was, began testing out every possible way that the doorknob could have acted on its own. It was a hard-to-turn doorknob that I rarely turned all the way. I often had to open it for younger kids and my granny, as the mechanisms were rusted inside.
It would also not turn on the inside if you turned the knob on the outside. In the end, I concluded something had to have been moving the doorknob physically, and it would have had to have been directly beside me. That was merely the first in a long line of unexplainable events that happened in and around my bedroom over the next four years.
13. Word Of The Day
I came downstairs and saw my grandma at the dining room table. She was about to say something. The word "mongoose" was the only thing consuming my brain. No matter what she was about to say, the answer was going to be “mongoose”. I had no idea why I was thinking that or what she was doing. I hadn’t read or seen anything recently to make me think of the critters, and I couldn’t fathom why that thought popped into my head.
I looked over and saw her doing a crossword puzzle. She finally got out what she wanted to ask me. She said, "What is the animal that kills and eats snakes"? The answer, of course, was “mongoose”. That incident still bothers me to this day.
14. A Fatal Encounter
When my mother was 22, she was on spring break in Sanibel Island, FL, with a group of her sorority sisters. She and two of her roommates were walking the beach one evening to drink at a couple of bars down the way. Some of the other sisters met up with them later that evening, but they all split up and returned to their rooms at different times. My mom and her friend left at 3 AM and walked the beach back to their hotel.
When they got back to the room, they made a disturbing realization. One girl was missing. When my mother asked where she was, one of the sisters said that when she was leaving, she saw her outside the bar with an unidentified man. It seemed she had a reputation for wandering away and going home with random guys without telling people. Everyone assumed this was the same scenario.
Come morning, their friend was still nowhere to be found. While searching around the beach, one of the sisters got wind that a body had been found on the beach earlier that morning. Worried, they called the authorities and eventually got confirmation that their friend had been killed and was left on the beach sometime in the early morning hours.
The creepy part was that the investigators estimated that she was murdered around 1 AM, meaning that my mother and her friends had surely stumbled past her body in the night, completely unaware. They also could have unknowingly passed her killer as well. The authorities never found the person responsible.
15. Blinded By The Light
I grew up in Roswell, New Mexico. One Friday night in 1999—right when my clock switched to 1:30 AM—my brother and I were talking, trying to fall asleep. I was eight, and he was five. Everyone else in the house was completely passed out. Suddenly, this incredibly blinding light filled the entire room through the window. It was followed by the most deafening, metallic/exploding sound I have ever heard.
I thought I had imagined it, but my brother was crying, and I could hear my dad scrambling, my mom swearing, and my two sisters crying as well. My dad grabbed a gun and bolted outside, setting off our alarm. I followed him out. The sky was completely clear without a single cloud in it. My dad had finished a run around the house, returned to the doorway, and told me to go back inside because it was 3 AM.
I thought it was weird he said that because my clock had just hit 1:30 AM. I ignored him and ran back to my room. My dad settled everyone down, and when I rolled over to go back to sleep, my clock was shining back at me. It read 3:15 AM. I am still unable to account for that hour and forty-five minutes of my life.
16. A Bloody Mystery
One night when I was in college—after partying with friends—I stumbled back to my dorm with my suitemate, my best friend of four years. When I awoke the next morning, I noticed the bed was wet and sticky with blood. My pillow, bedsheets, and comforter were all covered in blood. The left side of my face was also caked in black, dried blood, centered around my left ear.
Panicking, I went to my suitemate, and he said that I might have had a stroke or something in the night and that we should probably go to the hospital. I agreed and proceeded to brush and take a quick shower. There was no pain, and my ear wasn't bleeding anymore. We went to the emergency room. The doctors took one look at me and were shocked.
They told me that my left clavicle had broken through my skin, I had a nasal fracture, a skull fracture, fractures in two of my vertebrae, and bleeding in my brain. The blood had punctured my left eardrum and made its way out. Additionally, the left side of my face was paralyzed. I had no recollection at all of what had happened the night before.
The hospital called the authorities because they believed someone must have attacked me. Two officers arrived and questioned my friend. He swore that he was in my room while I was getting into bed. He said I was looped and tottering on my feet, but I hadn't fallen anywhere, and no one had beaten the daylights out of me. I believed him, and I think the officers did too.
However, they went back to my school and conducted an investigation which consisted of questioning my friends and checking security cam footage. They found nothing. I couldn't have been beaten up as my friend was with me the whole night, and he would've said or done something. My room was locked from the inside, and there was no way to get into the room through the window.
I had no external bruising and no minor injuries, just the serious ones. There was no blood anywhere in my room except for my bed. My bed had no headboard, no protruding metal pieces—nothing. To this day, I have no idea what happened to me that night. I recovered from my injuries, but the fact that something this inexplicable happened to me is disturbing.
17. A Truly Black Friday
A few years ago, on Black Friday, I woke up with an eerie feeling. I was uneasy overall, and it freaked me out. It was about 2 AM, so I walked upstairs and stood in my parents' kitchen. Not even a minute later, my mom walked out and asked me if I was feeling weird. I said I was and that it was keeping me up. She says she was feeling the same way.
We stood there for a minute or two in silence. Suddenly, the phone rang, and it was my grandmother. Apparently, my grandpa woke up around 2 AM with chest pains and was being rushed to the hospital. He was about a 5% blockage away from the widow-maker and suffered a minor stroke. My mom and I were very close to them, but it still gives me the chills to think that we could have possibly felt something was wrong while it happened.
18. Knit And Run
I have experienced a lot of unexplainable things, but the oddest happened a few years ago. I was sitting on my couch knitting and behind me were a desk and a desk chair. I felt and heard someone running behind me. I turned quickly thinking it was my kid, but nothing was there and the desk chair was slightly spinning. I had a “huh” moment and looked throughout the house.
Everything was fine and I pushed it out of my mind and continued to knit. Then, from the corner of my eyes, I saw this figure staring at me, peering from the side of my couch. I looked and saw it disappear. It was a little blonde boy with bright almost glowing blue eyes, a greenish blue/gray face, and a dark purple smile.
19. Bolted Shut
A friend of mine had just moved into a new house and was hearing weird noises underneath it. He said he also was creeped out by the place and felt weird vibes from it. I was over once, and he stopped me mid-sentence, alerted me to a tapping noise, then a slam. You could access the underside of the house from the outside as there was a door underneath the back porch.
We went down and found it wide open. There was no significant wind at all. We stared at the door for a while. Nothing happened for a good 15 seconds until—to our complete and utter horror—we watched as the door swung closed and locked itself. The lock was a bolt that had to be pushed firmly through a bracket on the door frame.
20. What A Howler
I was snoozing in my room early one morning when I stretched out in my bed, lying on my back. After about 10 seconds, I felt something tap the tip of my toe three times. I sat up in bed, looked around the room, and saw nothing. Freaked out, I pulled myself into the fetal position and somehow managed to fall back asleep.
Later that same day, something told me not to stay in my room for the night, so I left the door open and slept in another room. My brother came home and decided to close my bedroom door. As he reached into my room for the handle, he said he heard something snarl at him. He slammed the door shut and came racing into the room I was in, completely freaked out.
So I called a friend of mine who was much more psychically able than I was and told him what was going on. He called an old Chinese psychic/healer lady and consulted with her. What they came up with was that I had a huge portal in my room right by my bed. For some reason, a werewolf demon came through and was hanging out in my bedroom. It sounded ridiculous and was hard for me to rationalize, but they ended up closing the portal and sending it back. I haven't had problems since!
21. And The Band Marched On
A passenger and I were driving in Seattle, WA, in the middle of the night. We weren’t from Seattle and were waiting at a light to make a U-turn to find the freeway again. We were the only car at the intersection, but we waited about three minutes while the light was red. As soon as our light turned green, a huge marching band began to march across the intersection and into the lane we wanted to turn into.
This was at 1 AM. Every single member was in costume, and they were not playing their instruments. It was incredibly eerie, and my passenger and I were just sitting there open-mouthed. We both remember it exactly the same way, but it was one of those memories that you think, "did that ACTUALLY happen"?
22. A Test Of Time
The first two years I went to college, I lived with my parents, so I had to commute about an hour each way. I had a huge final at about 10 AM and needed every second for it. For some dumb reason, I was running late. I figured I would be 20–30 minutes late, but I was a good test taker, so I thought I might still be able to turn it around.
My parents lived in the foothills, and the college was in a large valley. When I hit the valley, I also hit a wall of fog so dense that I could barely see the road 10 feet in front of the car. I had to slow my pace to a crawl and strain just to make out the yellow line so I wouldn’t be on the wrong side of the road. My speed went from about 65 mph to about 20, which was as fast as I could reasonably go.
I was stressed and mentally cursing myself for not considering the possibility that I might run into problems on the way to school. I was running through my mind different ways of begging my professor for extra time. Big mistake. I was so stressed I took a wrong turn and found myself lost. However, I was fairly confident I was going in the right direction.
So, I kept on, and after a bit of trial and error—taking this road and that—I eventually found myself on a road I recognized and found my way into town to my university. I wasn’t wearing a watch, but I knew from when I left and all the extra time I sucked up creeping through that fog that I was going to be at least an hour late.
I figured the best course of action was to go to the class and throw myself on the mercies of the professor. When I got there, I got the surprise of a lifetime. There was NO ONE there. I cursed and fumed, figuring that I had missed the final entirely. Then, I checked the clock in the classroom. I was half an hour EARLY. I have run this thing through my head hundreds of times, and there is no rational explanation for how that could have happened.
23. Forest Fright
A few summers ago, I went prospecting/camping with my significant other and his dad in a national forest in southern Oregon. Our claim was miles away from the nearest town, up some truly scary forest roads. We set up camp close to a stream in a big clearing. One night we were playing cards, and I heard an almost guttural scream. My significant other and his dad had been drinking and were being so loud they missed it.
After getting them to shut up for a second, I heard the scream again but from a different location. The second scream sounded more feminine. That night, we heard what sounded like someone putting their arms in the stream and lifting them out repeatedly, like they were washing something. We also had rocks thrown at our tent. I had never been so scared. What made it worse was that I couldn’t put a reason behind any of those occurrences.
24. We Kept Our Eyes On The Ball
When I was 13 or so, I was camping by the Kern River with my dad. We had met this dude, Jeff, who we became fishing buddies with, and he ended up setting up camp with us at our site. One night when we were sitting around telling stories, my dad got tired and went to bed. Then, it was just this dude and me talking. Everything was going fine—but then I experienced the strangest moment of my life. I looked up to see a fuzzy white ball about the size of a volleyball coming slowly toward us.
I asked Jeff what it was, and he said he didn’t know. It came closer and closer to our fire. I remember it was moving the grass, but only the tops of the grass were pushed down as it came along its path. It came right up to our fire. It was solid, but the edges were diffuse, almost fuzzed out. We were three feet from it.
It stopped right before going into the flames, went around to the opposite side we were sitting at, then floated right on up a hill and disappeared over the top onto the road. At that point, we were both sitting there breathing heavily. After a few minutes, we got up to look for it and ran up to the road, but it was gone.
My dad told me on the car ride home that if Jeff hadn't seen the same thing, he would never have believed me. I will never, ever know what this thing was, and it bothers me to this day.
25. His Balls Just Split
My grandfather was an amazing lawn bowler and was a contender on a national level. It was his life after he retired; he loved the game. About ten years ago, he lost his life from a severe brain tumor. The day after he was buried, his bowling balls disappeared, and to this day, we can't find them. It is pretty eerie but awesome.
26. Terror Struck
When I was about 14 years old, I was asleep, dreaming that my sister, my friend Sarah, and I were playing in the woods in the back of our house. Suddenly, storm clouds rolled in, and the sky turned dark. I looked up at the clouds, and lightning began crashing all around us. I yelled to my sister and Sarah to run back to the house.
We were running as fast as we could, jumping over rocks, and constantly dodging lightning. When I saw my house, lightning hit me and held me inside the beam of light. I was trapped in a shell of electricity, and it was painful. I was trying to pull myself out when suddenly, I woke up. The overhead light bulb in my room was on, even though it was off when I went to sleep. But that’s not all.
The outer shell that housed the lightbulb was shattered all over the bed and me. I tried to get out of bed, and as I did, I immediately fell on the floor, unable to get my legs underneath me. I crawled into my sister's room, terrified, and tried to wake her up. I was unable to and fell asleep on the floor of her closet. In the morning, I was fine, the glass was still shattered on the bed, and no one believed me.
27. No Believing Their Defense
When my mom was in her 20s, she went on a six-month boat trip with her boyfriend and another friend. One night, they were just sitting at the front of the boat when they saw a light in the sky. It was glowing brighter and brighter, then shrank down to a small dot in the sky. It then zoomed off. The next day, an Army boat was passing by and asked them if they had seen anything strange.
They told them they had. The Army men told my mom that it was just them practicing launching missiles. However, it was the only Army boat they ever saw during their six-month trip. She still says she doesn't believe it was the Army practicing.
28. Should’ve Been Gone
When I was 19, I got rear-ended by an 18-wheeler. The responding officer said the truck hit me at about 30 mph. I was stopped, and the force of the impact broke my seat in two at the hinge point between the base and back, pushed my bumper through my gas tank, and bent the body and frame so badly that neither door would open. Somehow, without any earthly explanation, I walked away. The officer, EMTs, and ER staff all said I should have been gone.
29. A Trip To Zombieland
I had this really intense and vivid dream that involved hills of broken red rock and a cabin. I ran to the cabin because there were zombies everywhere. I get into the cabin and find my best friend in there with a trunk full of ammo. He wordlessly hands me a shotgun, and the rest of my dream was spent warding off the zombies.
I woke up and ran over to my buddy’s place. I was so totally pumped from my awesome dream that I couldn't wait to tell him about it. When I got to his place, he was all shaken up and looked terrible. He told me that he had this horrible nightmare about being trapped in a little shack in this place made of broken red rock, and he had to fight off zombies all night long with me. I had never heard of “dream-sharing" until that day.
30. Something Took Me By Storm
When I was a small boy of about 9 or 10, my family was camping. A nasty storm rolled through unexpectedly, and the tornado sirens went off. We went to the storm cellar with everybody else as quickly as we could. The storm was ferocious. I'd never heard so much thunder or seen so much lightning. Like most powerful storms, it moved through the area quickly.
When we surfaced, my mom made a disturbing realization. She remembered that our dogs were tied to our trailer. They didn't have doghouses, so they'd been out during that storm. We rushed back to the trailer, and both chains were broken. The dogs had run free. We found one right away, but the other was missing and wasn’t responding to our calls. My mom decided that we should break up and search the campgrounds.
The storm was moving off, but we were still getting flashes of lightning and peals of thunder. I was running around asking if anyone had seen our spaniel, but no one had. I was heading back through the playground when I saw a puddle that may have been too big for me to jump over. So I sped up and headed straight for it.
I pushed off just as another bolt of lightning struck to the east, and mid-jump, everything went pitch black. I felt a pause in my arc, and when the blackness vanished, I landed on the other side of the puddle and immediately stopped running. It was noticeably darker out, darker than it should have been. I turned and looked at the puddle and realized that with my best jump, I should have clipped the far side at least a little, but I had cleared it.
Something had just happened, and I couldn't explain it. I booked it back to our trailer, and my mom greeted me with, "Where have you been"? I told her, "I ran down there to ask those trailers if they'd seen him. They hadn't". She said, "Really? You've been gone 15 minutes, and you covered THREE trailers"? My face registered complete shock. I told her, "Mom, I swear I've only been gone five minutes". I don’t know what happened that afternoon.
31. What In The Dickens Was That?
I was a law enforcement officer in London, UK, back in the 80s. I was on protection work guarding a government minister’s home. It was 2 AM, and I opened the front door to check the perimeter. I saw a young boy standing in the street. He was dressed in Edwardian clothes of a flat baker boy cap, a jumper, and knickerbockers and was bouncing a football.
He smiled at me, and at first, I thought there was a film crew nearby as this part of town had many Victorian mansion-type properties in the area. I said, "Hi. What are you doing around here”? He just carried on smiling and bouncing the ball. Then, I noticed that the ball wasn’t making a sound. I then noticed a lady standing about 10 yards behind him.
She also was dressed in an Edwardian-style dress. She waved at the boy, indicating to him to follow her. He turned and looked at her, then turned again to smile and wave goodbye to me, and they both vanished. It was as if I had walked into a time slip. I know that I was awake as I asked my control for a time and radio check.
32. Holy Heavens, My House Was Haunted
I was watching Lost in the living room of my house, home alone with just my dog. Suddenly, I heard the back door open and then close. My dog lifted her head and stared into the hallway. From where I was sitting, I couldn't see into the kitchen, and neither could my dog. I paused the show and said, "Hey, who's home"? There was no reply.
Then, I heard footsteps moving toward the living room, stopping just outside the hall. I got up and slowly poked my head around the corner, and nobody was there. Friends and family would also tell me about other creepy things that happened to them in that house. One day, my friend was spending the night in the room my sister and I shared.
My grandmother used to sleep in that room when she stayed with us, but she had passed several years prior. My friend woke up in the middle of the night, and an old woman was standing at the foot of her bed, staring at her. She screamed and woke me up. When she described her to me, I showed her my grandmother's picture. Her reaction was chilling. She told me it was her.
Then, when I was about 11, I started walking down the stairs. There was an old man, all dressed in black with a black hat on and white hair, standing on the bottom step, staring at me. I ran up the stairs to get someone. When I went back, he was gone, but there was a BIG arrow, in white, drawn on the wall behind where he was, pointing to the haunted side of the basement.
A few months later, I was in church with my family. The seat behind me was empty. When it was time to shake hands with the people around us, I turned around, and the same old man dressed in the same outfit was behind me. He put his hand out, and I shook it. It was as cold as ice. When I turned around again, he was gone.
Poltergeist II: The Other Side Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
33. Wedding Day Jitters
My aunt's wedding was held at my house. My aunt was getting married for the first time at age 51. My grandmother (her mom) had passed approximately 16 years prior. All day weird stuff kept happening, like doors flying open, then suddenly getting stuck shut. The strangest was when the doorbell, which had been disconnected for months, kept ringing repeatedly. My aunt chalked it up to grandma, making her presence known.
34. Stop The Clock
My husband and I spent two weeks house-sitting for my aunt. One night, I was startled awake at 3 AM by a voice shouting, “YOU”! I assumed it was nothing and went back to sleep. Around six in the morning, my husband and I suddenly woke up sweating buckets. All the animals in the house were going nuts, barking, meowing, and climbing on the bed.
We realized the air conditioner had turned off, and all the clocks were blinking. The power had gone out at some time during the night, and we had no idea what time it was. My husband checked his phone, but the time was synchronized with what was on the blinking clocks, which was odd because it hadn't been plugged in and cell phones kept time automatically.
We got up, figured stuff out, and got ready for work. I didn't think about the power outage again until late that night. I was on Facebook and I noticed my aunt had uploaded a photo of my grandfather's grave. It was the 12th anniversary of his passing. I got a weird, tingling feeling. I ran up the stairs to the bedroom where I had not reset any of the clocks.
It was about 10 at night, but all the clocks were about four and a half hours behind, which meant that they had been reset at around 4:30 in the morning. That was the exact time of my grandfather’s passing 12 years prior.
35. This Creature Left Us Stumped
When I was about 11 or so, I was spending some quality time with my brother. He and I were close, but it was rare that we ever just sat around and talked about life. We had a swing set that my father had constructed for us. My brother and I sat on the swings and spoke to each other. We didn't swing; we just rested and enjoyed the weather. It was very nice until the peacefulness was interrupted by an indescribable noise.
It was a blood-curdling, human-feline hybrid-sounding scream. It had torn the silence and calm chatter in a split second. He and I jumped up and turned around, trying to figure out what it had been. We found our German shepherd barking like crazy at something in a tree. I had never seen her in so much defense. Seconds later, whatever she was growling at had lost its grip and fell.
At that moment, my heart dropped. Unable to get a good look at the thing, I depicted it to look like a large, hairy, black feline—nothing native to central Ohio. The one attribute that stuck out most was that it was the exact size of our full-grown German shepherd. It stumbled upward and darted down the woods, yelping and screeching and climbing up another tree.
My brother and I glared at each other in unison, wide-eyed, and sprinted home. We returned five minutes or so later, and nothing was there. To this day, I haven't been able to figure out what that creature was. It most certainly was nothing my brother or I had ever seen.
36. Where Dreams Come True
When I was little, I always treated my slightly older cousin like my sister. I didn't have a sister, and my cousin was the funniest and smartest person I knew. When I was about 14, she disappeared for a long time. My crazy aunt started rumors involving a cult or an accidental pregnancy, but the truth was that nobody really knew where she was.
Years later, when I was 18 and about to graduate high school, I had this weird dream. It started off with my parents—who were divorced and had been for a long time—my brother and I walking around Disney World. I was lagging behind a little, as I always did at that age. I glanced over to a little shop on the street, and there was my cousin.
I checked to make sure nobody saw me, and I ran over to her. I began barraging her with questions, and all she said was, "I'm working at Disney in Orlando. Please let the family know I'm safe". I gave her a weird look and ran back to join my family. I woke up from the dream, remembering it like it actually happened. A few months later, I came home from work late one night, and dad told me they had found my cousin.
He said, “She's working in Orlando at Disney". I was floored. I hadn't told a single person about my dream. I talked to my cousin about it, and she said she was praying for God to send someone a message at that time, but I'm an atheist. I have a logical explanation for everything, but this was beyond logic. I'm still baffled to this day.
37. Curtain Call
My grandmother would always fuss at my grandfather for not closing the miniblinds in the formal living room the right way. Apparently, the "right way" doesn't let sunlight reach the carpet. In her final days, my grandmother was unable to use the stairs, so her bed was set up in the formal living room. Several years after she passed, I was house-sitting by myself while my gramps was out of town.
After arming the alarm system, which covered every entrance and exit, I closed the blinds “the wrong way” and closed the curtains. The next morning I came downstairs to find all the curtains open, and the blinds turned the "right way". The alarm was still engaged. All exterior doors had deadbolts that did not have an external key. They could only be opened from inside the house. It freaked me out.
38. That Bull Had Me Jumping
I was in the countryside with a friend, and we thought it would be a good idea to climb a fence into what looked like an empty field. When we reached the middle of this field, we saw a huge bull, and it charged at us. We immediately panicked and started running back to the fence. I tripped, but my friend didn't notice, and he kept running.
I got up, and this bull was still charging. I ran full speed to the fence and jumped over it without touching it. I had to climb this fence to get in earlier; it was at least 6 feet tall, and I was only about 13 years old. Somehow I managed to clear the whole thing in one jump. My friend said it was the craziest thing he'd ever seen; I still have no idea how I did it. I guess when you think your life's on the line, you can do anything.
39. It Was A Real Fair-Scratcher
My family would go to the Irish Fair on Harriet Island in St. Paul every summer. In order to buy food at the festival, you have to go to a tent and buy food tickets. My sister and I were standing a good 50 feet away from the tent, talking, and waiting for my parents to come back with the tickets. I still can’t explain what happened to me that day. I randomly felt someone lightly scratching my back.
Normally, my sister and I would do this to each other from time to time because we both liked it. About five seconds later, the scratching stopped. I immediately turned around to ask my sister to continue, only she was at the tent, standing next to my mother 50 feet away, and there was no one else within at least 30 feet of me.
I had turned around too quickly for anyone to run that far away from me. The scratching continued to happen randomly throughout the rest of our time at the festival that day. It scared the daylights out of me each time it happened.
40. Out Of Left Field
A friend of mine used to work on what I'd call a corporate farm. He was sent out to do fieldwork with a tractor, but it was at night. He was out in the wide-open area of the field when something hovered over the tractor and illuminated the spot he was on with a powerful orangish light. It hovered for a bit and then was gone. There was no sound accompanying it. It scared the daylights out of him.
41. One Step Ahead
One night, I had friends coming over, but I didn't know exactly what time. I was sitting at a table next to the door with another friend, just chatting, when suddenly I decided to get up and open the door. I really could not explain why; I was just compelled to. Our other friend was outside the door and had his hand raised to knock. He was frozen in shock that I'd opened the door one second before he was going to knock without any prompting.
Later that evening, we were at dinner, sharing some appetizers. At one point—again, I really couldn't say what compelled me—I grabbed the bottle of ketchup and handed it to my friend—the same one that I opened the door on—one second before he started to say, "Please pass the...Wait, how did you know I was going to need that"? It was super creepy.
42. Halloween Light
My best friend and I were hanging out one Halloween night. It was late, trick-or-treaters had gone home, and there was nobody awake on the street. We were still hanging out in her driveway, just looking at the stars, chatting a little, but mostly silent. I had my head cranked towards the heavens when she nudged me and said, "Look", and pointed across the street.
I had trouble making out what she was showing me, but I saw it eventually. It was a small, cylindrical light floating about ten feet from the asphalt. It wasn't stationary but moved with the breeze. It was emitting a faint golden glow, almost the size of a glowstick. We watched it for a while before it did a little circle in the air and disappeared upwards.
Shortly after that, we saw another floating light, but this time, it was a purplish-blue sphere about the size of a tennis ball. It was moving faster than the previous light, and as we watched, it pitched itself forward so that it zoomed past our heads and into her neighbor’s side yard, which was visible from where we were standing.
The light it gave off was reflected on the pale stucco wall, so even though we couldn't see the object, it was still there. Eventually, it faded, leaving me frightened and her more curious than I liked. I dragged her back inside before we were abducted or something. It was the only unbelievable thing that's ever happened to me.
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989), Return of Myers
43. Look What The Cat Dragged In
I lived in a very homogenous area. I knew everyone on my street and almost everyone in my neighborhood. Everybody was white middle-class. I had recently gotten a cat, which I loved, but it was an idiot of an animal. One day, she ran up a tree with no branches, sat at the top, and would not come down. I lived next to a contractor who had helped get her down from another tree in the past but couldn't do anything this time.
The tree was too thin, and the cat was 20–25 feet high. I was pretty upset. I sat there waiting for her until about 2 AM, then had to go home. I passed out on the couch, and at 4 AM, I heard a loud knocking on my door. I opened it to see a man fully decked out in camo gear, including light face paint. He was holding my cat. In a thick Russian accent, he asked, "Is dis yours"?
I asked him, "How did you get her down"?! He told me, "I climb". I was shocked since the tree had no branches. He continued, “In my training, I learn climb. Eet no problem". I offered to pay him, but he shook his head and walked away while I was in mid-sentence. I never saw him again. I never even saw another person with a Russian accent near my neighborhood. My cat stayed indoors after that.
44. Bitter Feelings
My dad had lung cancer, and I had a trip scheduled with my boyfriend. I decided to take the trip because my dad seemed fine; he was going to the doctor, etc. On the sixth day of my trip, I woke up sobbing at 3 AM. I had never once cried in my sleep, not even when I was a little child. My boyfriend kept asking what was wrong, but I didn’t know.
In the morning, I called my mom to check in, and my little brother answered the phone. He told me that our dad died at 3 AM. The weird thing was that I was never extremely close to my father. There was always a strange bitterness behind our relationship because I could remember all the terrible things he did to my mom.
45. Animal Cruelty
I lived on the edge of city and country. Five minutes one way were cows, and five minutes the other way was one of the biggest cities in VA. My neighborhood was built 20 years later than the neighborhood behind us, which was a bunch of shacks on a dirt road. The people there were nuts. They would drive their four-wheelers through our property, leave junk everywhere, and were constantly trashed.
There was one neighbor in particular who was just insane. He beat up his family and animals to the point where bruises could be seen on everyone. He was kind of a cult leader, and during one of his get-togethers, his dog was barking like mad. So, he went around back, brought the dog to his get-together, and “sacrificed” it.
I was born after this crazy man left the neighborhood, and at the age of two, I began having horrific night terrors. It was of this dog that only had a head and no body, and it would be sticking out of a window at the top of my front door. He would try and take the bodies of other people because he had no body, and it was just horrifying.
I was terrified of my front door; I would point it and cry "dog-eee". This went on for ten years. I constantly refused to go up our stairs alone until I was 12 because it was right next to the front door. Every night from the age of 2 to 12, I had horrible night terrors about this dog. It was a different dream, but the same dog and the same ordeal. Then one day, when I was 12, we "made up".
The dog apologized for terrorizing me for years, and he became my protector in my dreams.
Only after telling my mother about these dreams did she connect the story. The dog breed was the same as the dog that was brutally slain by the crazy neighbor.
46. The Scream
Back in high school, my friend and I liked to do what we called “urban climbing”, which essentially consisted of going out late at night and finding a way to climb onto the roof of one of the various schools scattered around my suburban neighborhood. We never vandalized anything, but it was fun just to hang out up there.
One of the times, we went a bit earlier than usual. We were sitting on the roof of the gym about two floors off the ground. The school had a flat roof with a short wall running along the edge so that if you lay flat, no one could see you from the ground. Just as we were chilling, looking out over the neighborhood, we suddenly heard voices. We took cover to make sure no one saw us and got us in trouble.
We quickly realized that this was not something we needed to worry about as it was a pack of high school students a few grades down from us talking loudly and yelling at each other. This is where we got an evil idea. My friend had the ability to make an extremely eerie scream. So, we hid from view, and he screamed very loudly.
The group went instantly silent, and he screamed again. It took about five seconds; then we heard someone booking it out of there at record speed. The fact that the sound of them running carried over 300 feet through some trees should tell you how fast they were going. We almost gave away our position by laughing too hard.
47. Everyone’s Memory Cut Out
One day, my sister was scratching at her arm and had a little bump about 5 cm (2 in) up from her elbow. We asked her what it was, and she replied that she didn't know; she had just woken up with it. She sat down, and we were all curious by this time, so I asked her what she was going to do about it. She said she wanted to cut it out.
She was a nurse, so she got a scalpel and some gauze and asked me to hold the gauze in case it started bleeding. She only had to make a tiny little cut because she was going to squeeze out the goo. What we found was so bizarre, it’s unforgettable. When she squeezed, no blood came out, just a tiny little bit of metal. It was about one-fifth the size of a grain of rice.
We were all pretty confused. We put it in a container that she had in her med bag so that we could have a look at it, and she could take it to work to ask people what it was. Well, it gets weirder. A few days later, I asked her what had happened to the bit of metal. She had no idea what I was talking about. She did have a tiny little mark on her arm, but none of the four other people who were there remembered it except for me.
48. Was It All A Mirage?
I was driving west while in the Nevada desert—not Area 51—and I saw someone lying down on the side of the road. So I pulled over, got out, and went over to him. When I got there, the person was actually a mannequin. All of a sudden, I blacked out. I woke up the next morning in the hotel I was going to in California, about 80 miles away from where I was.
My GPS company said I drove all the way from my house to the hotel. I know I wasn't looped, and there was nothing missing, not even my car. Not only that, but the hotel manager said I wasn't the one who checked me in. He said I looked asleep, and I was checked in by a very tall man in ragged clothes.
49. The Missing Link
A few of my friends and I were going to a party in the middle of nowhere. We got lost on this long country road we were driving on for 20 minutes. There was not a gas station or house in sight when, suddenly, an ambulance came out of nowhere and flew past us. One of the doors came open, and a small cooler came rolling out the back and almost hit us.
We turned around and stopped to look for the cooler. What we found was seriously gruesome. It was half open with some ice dumped on the ground. We opened it, and found a human finger in it. We panicked, closed the cooler, and sped up, trying to catch up with the ambulance. We stopped at a gas station to call emergency services and explained to the dispatcher what had happened.
She started yelling at us for playing a prank, and we were a little confused. We asked her why she thought we were playing a prank, and she said that they didn't have any ambulances out in that area. We were floored and thought there was a mix-up on her end, so we drove to the closest hospital. We handed over the finger, but they didn’t have a patient with a missing finger.
The hospital called the authorities, and we all gave our statements. We went home, and about a week later, a detective called and gave me the biggest shock of my life. He said that they never found the ambulance or the person missing the finger. They checked all the dispatching records and no emergency vehicles were out that night.
50. Fiery Phantasm
When I was just under two years old, we started renting a tiny little house out in the boonies. Shortly after we moved in, I started having awful nightmares, something I'd never suffered from before. I would wake up screaming, "Fireman! fireman" and point out the window. Since we were in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, there were no firemen outside, nor did my parents recall me ever being scared by sirens, fires, or firemen.
The nightmares and fear were new and inexplicable. We moved a lot back then and did not live in the house for more than five or six months, but I had the nightmares consistently the whole time we lived in this one place. After we moved, they stopped immediately. Years later, we moved to another town 30 minutes away. My mom stayed friendly with several people from the small town we originally lived in and was visiting with one of them.
Somehow the topic turned to the house we rented, and my mom mentioned how it hadn't been a great place to live for a lot of reasons, and she also happened to mention my nightmares.
The woman she was visiting was horrified. She told my mom that the previous owner of the home had set himself ablaze after building a campfire in the side yard. He had passed from his injuries.
The place where he had burned to a crisp was the same place I pointed to every time I had the nightmare. I wasn't terrified of firemen; I was terrified of the fire man, the one I somehow saw outside the house every night.
Sources: Reddit,
