Everybody’s had an eerie moment that has made us think the matrix is glitching out, and almost everybody has dismissed this odd experience as just a blip in our own minds. But what if something was so creepy, so chilling, or so paranormal that we simply couldn’t ignore it anymore? Well, these Redditors know that feeling, and they’re sharing their most terrifying paranormal moments.
1. Nighty Night
A few years back, I was talking to my parents late at night. Their room leads to a corridor, which has a door to the bathroom and a door for my room. I said goodnight to both of them, and they responded each with "good night". Then I closed the door to their room and walked down the corridor to mine. When I was by the bathroom door, a voice whispered in my ear "good night" with deepest, raspiest, and spookiest voice I have ever heard.
I froze for a second, opened the door to my parents again, and asked if they had spoken to me. They both denied it, so I calmly closed the door and then bolted to my room. I cried myself to sleep that night.
2. Paper Trail
Yesterday, my husband texted me to tell me he'd paid for my car service. I texted back, "How bad was the damage?" as in, how much did it cost. About an hour later, I opened a notebook on my desk that I hadn't touched all day. When I opened it, my face went white. Written on the first page, then erased but still clearly visible, was "How bad was the damage".
I 100% didn't write this. I hadn't opened the notebook; actually I hadn't opened that page all week. It absolutely creeped me out, and I haven't stopped thinking about it.
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3. Dark Double
This not only happened to me but to almost everyone in my class in my junior year of high school. So basically, one of our teachers was checking attendance for his class, and he noticed that one girl in our class was marked "absent" for the previous day. He asked her why, and she said that she was sick, or something like that. This sent a chill through the entire class.
It left me (and probably 80-90%) of the people in our class bewildered because we could have sworn that we SAW her in class and in school the day before. I really thought I saw her walking right outside our classroom, too. The next 10-15 minutes was pretty much almost everyone saying that they could have sworn that they saw that girl in question the day before, and giving their accounts of where they saw her.
It turns out, that the girl really wasn't in school. This still creeps me out to this day.
4. A Helping Hand
I work as a summer camp counselor every summer at a sleep-away camp. Although I'm a counselor now, I grew up going to this camp as a camper. This story takes place when I was 12. This camp is basically in the boonies of Missouri, next to a gorgeous river and surrounded by forest. One of the activities at this camp was "exploring" this cave that's a short drive away from the camp.
A long-time employee of this camp who has worked there for over 60 years always takes the kids out to the cave and teaches them about different cave formations, salamanders, etc. We will call him B. At the end of the caving trip, it is tradition that B takes everyone to a very back room of the cave and tells a scary story. Pretty much all of his stories are creepy. He is one of the most fascinating people I have ever met.
Anyways, he leads me and the rest of my cabin to the story room. We are all getting settled down, excited to hear which story he was going to tell us. Just as he starts the story, one of the girls who was much younger than the rest of us gets scared and wants to be taken out of the cave. B asks one of the counselors to take her out to the front of the cave and wait for us to finish with the story. All of our flashlights are out and the cave is pitch black, to set the ambiance for the story, of course.
Someone says "I'll take her" and the two get up and leave. B tells the rest of his story and we all head out to the front of the cave. On the trek to the entrance of the cave, he counts everyone to make sure that nobody got lost. Since the two left before the story, we should've been two people short. However, we were only missing one person. When we got to the front of the cave, the camper was just sitting on a large rock, playing with some of the mud from the cave.
Completely alone. We all asked her who brought her out here and where they went, and her response was one I will never forget. "This old woman walked me out, she sat with me and talked for a bit but then she said she had to go. She just kind of walked off into the forest". Who was that in the cave with us? She certainly wasn't with us when we went in.
5. Defense Mechanism
I had been dating this guy for a few months when I had this dream about him. In the dream, I was sitting in a completely dark room under a spotlight, and he was sitting in a chair facing me, and we were having a conversation. It was one of those things where you know a conversation is happening but there is no actual content. I briefly looked away from him and all of a sudden I felt this pang of fear.
I looked up and he was smiling at me, but not a normal smile—his chin tilted down, he was staring at me through the top of his eyes, it was nothing short of demonic. He didn’t say anything, just stared. I knew something was wrong and I was terrified. I then became conscious I was dreaming, which was the only time that has ever happened to me, and I said over and over again, “You can’t hurt me this is a dream, you can’t hurt me this is a dream".
And then suddenly he disappeared into a pile of sand on the floor and I jolted awake, completely beside myself. That relationship ended up being entirely harmful. After I ended it, he stalked me for a little while and I had to get a no-contact order. I think back on the dream frequently and I’m pretty sure my subconscious was picking up warning signs even then. It was pretty symbolic of how the relationship turned out, which creeps me out.
6. A Ghostly Presence
This happened at my Granddad's funeral the other day. I was carrying my five-year-old nephew around the church because he asked, "Where is the room for the kids to play?" He was asking to go to Sunday school, I guess. So I was going to show him the kid's room was empty to show he had to attend the service. At the kid's room, I said, "See? Empty".
As he's looking around he goes, "Aww...—Oh, I see a teacher!" pointing to the desk at the room. So I look around and don’t see anyone. He almost immediately said, "Aww, he left, why'd he leave?" I noped the heck out.
7. A Different World
I was five or six, spending time at a safari lodge. It was just after sundown and everyone was gathered to watch some animals. Being quite young, I got bored. There was another little girl, maybe seven or eight, whom I had befriended. We went off to the side, away from the people. I don't remember exactly what led up to it, but she asked me if I trusted her and if I wanted to see something.
I said yes, and she told me to close my eyes. Then open them. The world was different. Everything was silver and gold, there were no other people, and we were in a softly lit gold grass field with silver dewdrops. And when I looked at her, she just smiled and said, "I know, it's beautiful". Then it was over. The viewing was over, we were back in our world, and that was that.
But the memory, the beauty, has stayed with me for over 20 years. I hope one day I can visit again.
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8. Nickel And Diming
A habit I picked up while extremely poor, which I still maintain today, is I periodically gather all the spare change I can find in the house and I store it in this green dish I keep on the windowsill. Oftentimes, if someone wants a candy bar or something, we will dig around in the dish and grab some quarters. Pretty convenient. Well, one day a few weeks ago, money was tight so I was gathering up quarters so my husband could buy some snacks to eat at work.
I had picked up every quarter in the dish except for one, which I tried to grab but proceeded to fumble and drop on the floor. I heard it clatter and everything. No big deal. I put the rest of the quarters in a baggie and squat down to look for it. Strange...I can't find it anywhere. I didn't hear it roll and where I was standing was in a corner, so it couldn't have gotten far anyway.
I was beyond confused. It was just gone. Finally, I gave up, stood back up, and glanced at the dish. There was a quarter, right on top of the rest of the change. Perfectly centered and I swear it wasn't there before.
9. Now You See Me…
About six years ago, I was driving one night around 10 pm down a dark road. It was in a valley, so the only light was coming from my car and the car in front of me, no streetlights. This car in front of me is probably 75 feet ahead. We go around a bend in the road, which leads into a straight shot of road for about a quarter of a mile. When I go around the bend in the road a few seconds after them, the car is gone.
I’ve driven on that road hundreds of times, and I know for a fact there was absolutely nowhere the car could have turned. It was just gone. I even turned around to make sure they didn’t go off the road and needed help. There were only trees around the road, and there was no damage to any of the trees. I have no idea what happened.
10. The River Runs Red
When I was young and had just begun taking showers on my own, I very specifically remember turning on the shower, and the water coming out blood red. It remained that way for about five seconds before returning to normal, so I never told my parents about it. It wasn't rusty pipes, it was darker and thicker than that, plus that shower had been used many times before.
None of the other possibilities I've read make sense either, and to this day I haven't been able to figure out what happened or what caused it.
11. Time Loop
I remember being pretty young, like nine or 10, and I was in the car park of a pub in England. I remember seeing someone in their teens in the window of a house looking over the car park. They waved at me and I felt like I knew them somehow. My parents asked who I was waving at, and I said just some lady in the window over there. Didn’t think much of it.
Fast forward 10 years, and I was at my grandma’s new house. I remember walking into her room, which I never was allowed to do, and going to the window. I then realized I was in the same house looking over that same parking lot and remembering that interaction years before. Then a girl around nine or 10 who was in said car park waved at me and I waved back.
I felt like I knew her. I could not explain it and have never told anyone about it. It freaked me out.
12. Between A Rock And A Hard Place
I think I was around 12 or 14 at the time, and I went on a camping trip with my parents. They were in one tent, and I was in another. One morning, I woke up and exited the tent. My parents were up at this point and told me something along the lines of, "You're not sly". I was confused and asked what they meant. They motioned toward the small pile of rocks sitting in front of their tent.
They had assumed that I stacked the rocks during the night to try to scare them, like what happened in The Blair Witch Project. I had no idea where the rocks came and swore up and down even to this day that I didn't do it, but they don't believe me at all. It was kind of my own fault since I am always doing something to mess with them, but this time I really didn’t.
13. An Open And Shut Case
It was in the locker room after gym class in middle school. We were waiting on the coach to dismiss us, and I thought it would be funny to try and open the lock on the locker I was leaning up against. I elbowed the guy standing next to me and said, "Hey, check this out". I turned my head to the side, spun the dial a few times, and randomly stopped and reversed direction to enter three numbers without even looking.
I pulled the lock, and it opened. I don't remember who the guy was, but somewhere out there I have a witness. It was the only time I ever tried something like that, so technically I have a 100% success rate in randomly opening combination locks.
14. The Black Menace
It was the first Christmas I spent visiting my husband's parents, as well as the first time I met either of them. I was pretty nervous because of that fact and being shy by nature, and I mostly kept to myself the entire evening we were there. We had a nice dinner and afterward my husband, his dad, and myself retired to the living room where my husband and his dad played guitar together.
The way their house was situated was that it was very small with a kitchen connecting to the living room (where we were) through one doorway, and in the back of the kitchen, there was another doorway leading out to the hall, which also fed into the living room. Where I was sitting on the couch I could look down the hall and see straight into the bathroom.
To the right of the bathroom was another room, his parents' room. I remembered getting up and walking through the first doorway (living room doorway) and asking my husband's mom if she needed help doing the dishes that she was doing. She shooed me away and told me to return to the living room and she'd take care of it all. So I did.
After a few minutes, I needed to go and use the bathroom. Just as I was about to get up to do so, as I looked forward down the hall to the bathroom, I saw a very tall, very dark, human-like figure dart through the first doorway from the kitchen and rush into the parents' bedroom. It was not a hallucination. It was as real as seeing any person in front of me.
Panic set in and I could not take my eyes off of that location. I waited for it to re-emerge, convincing myself it must have been my husband's mom. The figure was so darn tall, though, and tracing my mind back, could she have been that tall? Was she wearing a large black sweater? It had to be her and a trick of my eyes. Except...Then my husband's mom walked through the other doorway to the living room, asking us if we wanted any dessert.
It was not her. And no one else was in the house. Eventually, I did get up to use the bathroom, but when I looked around the area and into their bedroom, nothing was there. It took me months to say anything to my husband about that. We were dating at the time and I thought he'd think I was crazy. His reply stunned me. He had had similar experiences, only his were even worse.
He believed me and even told me about how his father had seen things in that hallway as well. Their thoughts were that when they bought the house, a family friend of theirs was working on some trimming in the hall at the time and had ended up having a heart attack and passing. They assume he felt he left a job unfinished and sometimes comes back. The feelings from that sighting made me feel almost ill, however, and I believe it was something pretty menacing.
The whole house has a really bad vibe to it and a not-so-great history, so who knows what it was.
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15. In Memoriam
My best friend passed on a few years ago when we were in our early 20s. Back in junior high and high school, we used to pass letters back and forth to each other between classes, and I saved all of the ones she wrote me. I literally have hundreds of them. After she passed, I wanted to feel close to her again so I went to my mom's house to get some letters.
I only grabbed a couple, took them home, and read them. In one of the letters, she had written the lyrics to a song and said, "This is the theme song to my life". I didn’t recognize the song so I looked it up on YouTube. I listened to it and while I knew I had heard it before in my life, it definitely wasn't a song I had heard a lot, since it was really old.
The next day, I went to the bank with my boyfriend but waited in the car. In the parking lot was a guy working on his green, older model car (her car was a green, older model too) and the song she wrote about was blaring from his speakers.
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16. Without A Trace
My aunt and uncle supposedly perished in a car accident back in 2011. They had a head-on collision with a pickup truck. But there was something even more terrifying about that day. The two cars and all the damage was there…but their bodies weren’t. The car didn’t catch on fire, the windshield wasn’t broken enough to show that they had been ejected. Just gone.
My uncle’s wallet was found by a guy mowing someone’s yard 23 miles away about a month later.
17. Invisible Hand
My eerie story involves a nightstand. My nightstand has three drawers and the handles are floppy in a way that you have to use your whole hand to open a drawer. Mind you, they are made of heavy metal. One day when I was around nine years old, I woke up around 7 am, long before my parents. I decided to read to get some homework out of the way, and all of a sudden the middle handle of my nightstand when from down to up, to the point where the whole underside was showing.
Since it's kind of old furniture, I heard the creak of it and it sounded as if someone grabbed it with force and just flipped it and left it there. My two hands were holding my book so I was completely freaked out. I might add that I only have a ceiling fan, but the air it gives out is DEFINITELY not strong enough to flip a handle from down to up; for that you require an actual human being.
I left it like that for the next few days and it hasn't happened again since almost 10 years later.
18. Lightning Strikes Thrice
Back in 1996, when I was 14 years old, I wandered into the local general store by my house. I started browsing the magazines because back then I never actually bought anything, I just read it in the store like a delinquent. I was into ghost stories and paranormal stuff back then, so I picked up some tabloids. It was one of those newspapers where the cover story is usually something like "Woman in Newark Gives Birth To BatBoy (Exclusive Photos Inside!)"
It must have been around the end of the year or the beginning of 1996, because the cover story was a list of predictions that were going to take place that year. It showed a map of the United States and blurbs that pointed to where major stories would take place. There were several, but three of them stood out to me: a blizzard in the New England area, an explosion at the Olympics in Athens, Georgia, and a plane crash in the Atlantic Ocean near Long Island.
I put the magazine away, bought some candy, and put it out of my mind for the time being. As much as I was into the paranormal, I didn't really buy into any real predictions like that. Well, there was a blizzard in February of 1996, which was the largest snowstorm in NYC history. Something felt off about it, like there was something I was supposed to remember about it, but I was more focused on the fact that school was canceled for a week and a half.
Being 14 at the time, the fact that the world was covered in snow and the multitude of snow days given to us took precedence in my thoughts. Then on July 17, 1996, there was a plane crash off of Long Island. TWA Flight 800. It happened pretty close to where I lived at the time and it was a pretty big crash, so it was all over the local news. It suddenly became very clear what was going on.
My best friend, Veronica, called me that day and we were chatting on the phone about random things, and then the conversation turned to the news. I took a chance at her calling me crazy and told her at that point what I had read a few months earlier. I informed her that the blizzard was the initial warning I overlooked, and that now there would also be an attack at the Olympics.
We didn’t know what to make of the weird circumstances but decided to wait and see what happened during the summer games. Even today, I feel a bit guilty about Flight 800. There’s a big memorial set up at Smith Point County Park Beach, with a list of all the people who perished that day. I’ve been to it several times. It’s so eerie walking around there, wondering if I could have done something to prevent it.
I was just a kid then, though, and I didn’t have much to go on (a blizzard in New England during winter? What are the odds?). I’ve been told since then that there were probably several people who read that same tabloid and were in a better position to do something, but it’s still kind of haunting even now. In any case, I remember watching the parade of nations coming in on Opening Day during the 1996 Olympic Games.
It was this weird feeling of dread, because I knew what was going to happen. I felt like I was watching people walking to their doom. I had no idea how big the attack would be, but it was really weird to sit there and watch everyone walk in cheering and to just know in the pit of my stomach that things were going to go horribly wrong. I sat there and prayed everyone would make it out of the situation alive, because there was just so little I could do.
About a week into the games, I received the news—there was indeed an explosion at Centennial Olympic Park—two people tragically lost their lives, and 11 were injured. That day, I got a call from Veronica. She asked me if I saw it. I was sitting in front of the television, watching the news coverage, and told her that yeah, I saw it, and yeah, I knew it would happen.
She asked me again how I knew and I told her that all I knew was that I read it somewhere. Since that day, I’ve tried to go back through the Sun, National Enquirer, and any other tabloid-ish magazines I could think of that the stationary store would have stocked. I can’t find that many back copies though, so I haven’t found much of anything in the past decade and a half.
I haven’t told many people about this because it was just too weird. I don’t have many explanations for what happened. The only rational way I can explain it other than the wild idea that these tabloids really do have psychics working for them, might be that since these things were man-made disasters (other than the giant blizzard), that someone might have caught wind of people high up plotting them, tried to go to the regular newspapers and was written off as a conspiracy theorist.
In the end, maybe the only newspaper they were able to use to tell the world were these tabloids. I did have a shrink once who my parents forced me to go to because I was having physical problems the doctors all thought were caused by stress. The shrink was a bit of a Jesus freak and I’m not sure how he got a counseling license, but I told him about it because the anniversary of Flight 800 was coming up and it was on the news.
He got this wary look in his eyes like, “Oh, she’s reeeeally crazy, I’m gonna have to prescribe LOTS of pills for her,” and asked me, “So, you think you can see the future, then?” Apparently, the belief that one can see the future can be attributed to so many different mental illnesses. I just rolled my eyes at him, because he clearly hadn't been listening to me at all.
“No. I don’t think I can see the future. I think I can read". That all happened 21 years ago. It was the strangest occurrence of my life.
19. Dear John
Something I cannot explain or understand: In high school, I had a friend, we'll call him John. John and I played football together, and we would always get extra lifting sessions in at the high school gym. We remained friends after high school and even worked together for a bit. He ended up getting into selling pills, and our relationship deteriorated to the point where we were no longer speaking.
Fast forward a few years later and I have this dream. In my dream, I am back at my high school gym lifting weights with John. We were just chatting about random stuff, having a good time, and then he suddenly says that he has to go. I tell him I don't want him to leave because I want to keep hanging out and I missed him. He just says he's really sorry but has to leave.
I say "OK, see ya later" and he replies with a nod and a "See ya". I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing. I see it is my mom and answer it. She tells me that John passed last night and is asking if I am OK and other mom stuff. She had heard from John’s mom, who called in saying that John’s siblings would not be at school the rest of the week because of his passing.
My mom was a secretary at the school they went to. I can't help but think that something paranormal had happened to allow me to make peace with and say goodbye to my friend and have some bit of closure. He was 25 when he succumbed to excessive substance use and was the first person truly close to me who had departed. This idea simultaneously unnerves and consoles me.
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20. Animal Instincts
I grew up in a fairly rough area. When I was eight or nine-ish, I was walking down this wide series of alleyways by the back garden of a relative's house. It wasn’t a dodgy alleyway with low visibility, it's more of a large path that connects the back gardens of the terraced blocks on both sides. You're in plain sight of pretty much every window, so I felt very safe.
I was a few dozen feet from the back gate to the house, and I don't know what came over me. I didn't hear, see, or sense anything. I just twitched and my head and flung to the side—narrowly missing a large rock that a rough, mentally unstable kid had thrown at me. If that had hit me, I'd have been either screwed up really badly or worse. I had no reason to believe it was coming. I still think about it to this day.
21. There Is A Light
So this is kind of deep. In high school, I was going through some serious depression. One evening, when I was completely distraught, I had planned on ingesting excessive amounts of pills in the solitude of my room. I was at a low point. I had a handful of probably 50 different pills in my hand, and right before I took them I asked God one more time—I’m not overly religious but grew up with a background—if there was a reason for me to live, show me now because I didn’t see a reason to live.
And I swear on my life, everything that took electricity went off in my room. Lights, TV, even my radio all shut off all at once. I thought it was a power outage, but my hall light was still on so I realized it was only in my room. A few seconds later, all the power to my room was restored. That to me was a sign from God that I needed to go on. A few years later in college, I had hit rock bottom again.
I thought my life was meaningless and on campus, I went for a walk super late at night. I was to my breaking point and I was sitting under a street light crying, asking God if I should just end it all. All of a sudden, the street light above me went out. That was the only streetlight within a couple of hundred feet that went out. Mind you, there were probably 50 of these poles.
That was a sign to keep on going. It’s unexplainable, and to the average person it sounds super unbelievable, but to me, those momentary power failures told me I needed to live and God didn’t want me to end my life. I still struggle with depression and I know those are just little things, but I’ll always remember them. I just encourage you all to pay attention.
22. Night Rider
One early morning around 2 or 3 am, I was driving home on some back roads from my girlfriend’s house when I was 17. There was a truck behind me for about two miles before the driver started getting closer to me, closing the gap between our cars and eventually getting into the oncoming traffic lane and speeding up again. I figured he just wanted to pass me since it’s a one-lane road, so I let off the gas to make it easier for him.
When he gets beside me, I look over and make eye contact with this dude. It was dark and I didn't actually see his eyes, but I knew he was looking back at me. This is when it gets weird. He slows down a little to stay next to me for what I guess was one or two hundred feet, and then gets back behind me. I was terrified, but started planning to lose him and defend myself.
Where I'm from, the roads twist and turn through the woods, so the next time a curve separated us, I floored it and found a pretty hidden driveway to pull up in and cut my lights off. I was waiting for him to drive past me…but he never did.
23. Restless Spirit
One evening, I was driving to my then-boyfriend's house from work. It was early dusk, so still bright out, and I was driving a route I was familiar with. As I crossed a set of old train tracks, all of a sudden I saw a woman sitting in my passenger seat. I did a double-take, and as I looked the second time she was gone, but standing outside the car about 20 feet away, waving and sort of sadly-grim smiling.
I remember every single detail of what she looked like—50s, mid-length brown hair with dirt and leaves stuck in it, red shorts, white T-shirt tucked in, white fold-over socks, Keds. I had never seen her before, and haven't seen her since, but the moment I crossed those train tracks, I was certain beyond all doubt that she had met her end there and her body was laid to rest in that very place.
As freaked out as I was, it made me really, really sad and I wanted to pull over to find her. Realistically, I couldn’t have, but something in my brain desperately wanted to. I burst into tears and called my boyfriend, sobbing about the train track lady and how I wanted to help her. I had to explain to him what happened over and over. To this day, I have no idea if he ever believed me but I know what I saw and I am pretty sure I know why I saw it.
I moved from that area a few years ago and I still hope someone finds her so she can rest.
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24. Tropical Demon
My family stayed in a pretty awful condo in Hawaii when I was around 12. After a few days, we agreed it felt “weird". After a few more days, we start waking up to all the kitchen cabinets being open. A little while later, my sister says she woke up in the middle of the night to a tall, dark figure standing over her, which only disappeared after she had properly terrified herself and shut her eyes.
Near the end of our stay, my mom nervously tells us that before her morning run, she was leaning into the bathroom mirror and saw a dark figure rush past the hallway behind her. My 11-year-old sister and I decided we’d had enough, and that we had seen enough spooky ghost shows to get to the bottom of this. Mostly jokingly, because I think neither of us wanted to admit that this condo was truly horrifying us, we held hands and tried to make contact late one night. It’s just us and our mom—I remember her begging us not to do it, that it wasn’t funny...sorry mom.
A couple of minutes in, I interrupt my sister because I am hearing a noise just outside the room, on the patio. It sounds exactly like someone scraping or dragging their foot along as they walked, but the patio was lit and nothing was there. My sister goes to say something, I say SHUT UP because I’m freaking out. Then, the room speaks to us.
No joke. It might have been a foreign language, I’m not sure, but in English, it sounded like “I hate you". The sound of the voice is burned in my brain—it was like an angry, hiss-like whisper but somehow also a shout. As I said, it didn’t come from anywhere in particular, but the entire room. Long story short, my sister runs off sobbing, I freeze in fear and probably a puddle of my own pee, we get the heck out of Hawaii, and I try to tell myself that I did NOT just interact with a tropical demon.
Yes, this really did happen, and no, I can’t really explain it. I think I’ve cried a couple of times thinking about it because that voice we heard was so, so chilling. If I remember correctly, the man who used to own the condo passed there—make of that what you will.
25. My Ghost Cat
I have never owned a cat, my current apartment has had a zero-tolerance policy for pets since it was built, and unlike most neighborhoods in Tokyo, I've only ever seen one feral cat, and it was bright orange. For the past six years or so, there was been a brown/dark grey cat that I see sitting inside my apartment entranceway, walking down the hall, crawling under my kitchen table, etc.
And sometimes, at all times of day, I'll hear a faint purring too, like there's a cat sitting just out of view. Other people have seen or heard it, and I had a full mental health check-up recently, so I'm not hallucinating either. I named it Sconey, and now feel bad when I have to go on business trips because my "cat" will be all alone. My ghost cat.
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26. A Chilling Pattern
When I was maybe 15, my brother, who was 17 at the time, and I were driving home, pretty late at night. The road to our house had a lot of hills, so it was hard to see oncoming traffic or anything else until you topped one of the hills. When we got just over a big one, we saw a figure just standing in the middle of the road. My brother swerved out of the way and nearly went off the road to avoid hitting them.
We looked back and saw nothing behind or around us. It thoroughly freaked us out though, so we called 9-1-1 and reported it, thinking it may be someone trying to take their own life or something. Nobody ever followed up with us about the report. A few years later, my brother sends me an article he came across about other similar sightings and occurrences happening on the same road.
Except some of the earliest ones had dated back decades before we ever saw anything.
27. The Room Of Requirement
I was snowmobiling with my brother and father at the time in the cottage areas of Northern Québec. Basically, think of cottages with only gravel roads (if at all) separating them and no vehicular access in the winter months unless on a snowmobile. I was maybe 10 at the time, my brother was 12, and this happened in the early 90s. Our Ski-Doo broke down on the middle of a lake, and even though it's an easy fix, easy becomes relative at -30 Celsius before the wind chill factor, and in the dark to boot.
So as my dad was swearing at the Ski-Doo (as French Canadians are known to do) my brother spots a little cottage on the bank of said lake, suggesting we seek help or shelter. At this point, the sun was beyond the horizon and temperatures were dropping. Figuring it was better than failing on the engine, we cross to the cottage to find it unoccupied, yet unlocked.
Not too keen on the idea, but still preferable to an almost certain outcome of both his children freezing, my father decides to enter. It was a small, simple yet quaint one-room cottage with a basin for cooking and washing (of course, no running water) lined by a counter, a kitchen table with four chairs, an old but clean sofa, and a single bed. But most importantly, a functional wood stove.
My dad lit some candles, lit a fire in the stove, and told us to settle on the floor while he laid down on the couch and we went to sleep. We didn't use the bed for fear of a lack of respect for the owner. The next morning, we cleaned up our stuff, did a quick sweep, and left a quick thank-you note explaining our situation. We went back to the snowmobile, which my dad managed to fix in the daylight (it was also much warmer), and headed towards our own cottage.
The weird part? My brother and I wanted to show the cottage to our older sister afterward, so we grabbed the Ski-Doos and headed over. It was maybe an hour Ski-Doo ride. We saw our old tracks, we saw our footsteps to and from the lake bank...but the cottage was half burnt and what was left of the roof had caved in, covering the one and a half remaining wall left standing.
All rotten with moss grown over it, which means it had been standing abandoned for a few years at least. ...We did find our note, though, in pristine condition.
28. The Uninvited
When I was a teenager, my family lived in a big 115-year-old brick house. Plenty of creepy stuff happened, but one night I was heading to bed when the door between the first-floor kitchen and the basement stairs absolutely SLAMMMMMMED shut. It had a unique sound that I recognized immediately as the kitchen/basement door.
There were no windows open that could've caused a draft, and our dog was asleep on the second floor. I was also on the second floor, and my parents were both asleep in the third-floor attic that had been converted to a master bedroom. None of us could've shut the door. Terrified, I mustered up the courage to go investigate, clutching my laughably tiny pocket tool for protection.
As I went downstairs, I turned on every light. When I reached the kitchen, the door was wide open. Even more freaked out, I ran back up to bed. A minute or two later, I heard a definite "Sssshhhh, ok, ok" from downstairs. I lay in bed and was ready to accept my demise. Eventually, I somehow fell asleep, and in the morning I was the first downstairs and found that the lights were all off and the basement door had been shut again.
29. We Are The Hollow Men
Shadow Men. Sometimes called Hat Men. I've seen one twice. The first time, I was at my uncle's house at night watching some TV. The way his living room was set up, the TV was against the east wall, and the west wall had the couch against it facing the TV. The north and south walls had chairs facing into the room, so you could talk to anyone on the couch or other chair, or you could watch TV.
Beside the TV was the door leading to the hallway running east, where the bedrooms were. Sitting on the couch, watching TV, you could see down the hall. One night I was visiting. My uncle had recently gone through a divorce and his kids (my cousins) were coming by for the weekend, but this was the night before, so it was just the two of us.
We were watching television and I saw something cross from one of my cousin’s rooms to the other across the hall. I started staring down the hallway. My uncle noticed my response and asked me, "You saw him didn't you?" Turns out he saw him pretty often. On another visit, I awoke early one morning after my uncle had gone to work. Again, my cousins were going to be there later that day, so I was the only one in the house.
As soon as I opened my eyes there was a solid black silhouette of a person wearing something like a fedora standing at the foot of the bed. I blinked and it was gone.
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30. The Bystander Effect
Years ago, I was waiting at a traffic light. The light turns green, so I let off the brake and slowly start to go. The car to my left started to do the same, but someone decided to enter the crosswalk at just that moment. The driver taps the horn, which drew my attention. I look over and the pedestrian quickly goes around the car and enters it from the passenger-side door.
The female driver looks distraught and drives away somewhat quickly. To this day I'm not sure if I witnessed a carjacking or a kidnapping.
31. Like Hitting A Brick Wall
I was walking through my house at night, on my way to bed. I turned the kitchen light off, then opened the door to go upstairs into a pitch-black room. I took a step into the room and stumbled back. It felt like I'd walked into something like a big piece of material—I immediately smacked the light switch on, and there was nothing there. I ran up the stairs, leaving all the lights on overnight.
32. What Lies Beneath
When I was 12, my family lived in a house that had a very large pond behind it. Think, less of a pond and more of very small lake. So when we first moved to this house, the neighbors’ son was always out at the pond fishing. When I would talk to him, he would swear that there was an absolutely huge catfish in the pond. He really wanted to catch it but was never able to.
He said he knew that it was there because he had seen it eat some of the baby ducks and geese that lived there. Apparently, he watched them get sucked down under the water while swimming on the surface. I thought it was interesting that a fish could eat baby ducks, but never really gave it a second thought. The neighbors’ son eventually moved out, and he never did catch the catfish.
After living there a few years, when I was probably around 16, I finally saw what my neighbors’ son was fishing for, or at least saw its effects. My friend was spending the night, just hanging out playing video games all night on some random weekend, when we heard the ducks on the pond completely losing their minds. This was around midnight and normally we didn't hear the ducks inside, so we had to see what was going on.
At first, we didn't notice anything. It just seemed like the ducks were going crazy every once in a while for no reason. Around 10 to 20 would fly off the pond for a little while and then come back down, the whole time freaking out. Then we noticed it. Ducks were being pulled under. We watched as several ducks were pulled under the surface by something, and all the ducks around it would flip the heck out and move away from that spot.
It was insane. I have seen ducks dive for food before and this was not that. They would kind of struggle as they were being pulled down, throwing their wings and head up as they went down. It seemed like something was grabbing their legs and pulling them down. And let me clarify, these were not baby ducks. These were full-grown adult ducks being pulled under and not resurfacing.
The next day, we told everyone and very few people believed us, as these things usually go. Never really saw anything like it again, and I had stopped thinking about again it until one night something else...happened. It was a cool summer night, and I had my window open, playing a game on my Nintendo SP, when I heard something outside.
It sounded like someone with big sloshy wet boots was stomping through mud. I was sitting on my bed next to the window looking at my SP when I first heard the sound. It sounded like, whatever it was, it was walking down the fence line to the pond. I jumped off my bed to go look out the window. When I looked out, I saw what I can barely describe.
At the end of our fence, about 20 feet away from the pond, was this giant brown and black mass of something. The size of it was around a small car and it was rounded with two shiny black eyes near the top. It was also looking right at me. As soon as my eyes met its eyes, I collapsed with fear. I have never felt anything near that level of fear before in my life.
One time I almost got into a fatal accident from car surfing, and the fear I felt then was a drop in a bucket to what I felt when my eyes looked into whatever it was. I lay there on the floor, unable to move, unable to breathe, and listened to the creature "walk" to the pond. I heard splashing and that was it. I laid there for what seemed like hours and eventually moved to my bed and stayed awake in fear all night.
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33. I’m No Hero
The university that I went to was in a large city that had small hills and large mountains in the distance, some near, some far that wove in and around the city. One morning, I parked in the lot in the first aisle of the second parking lot as I always did. As I got out of my vehicle, I was overwhelmed by a compulsion to physically look at and go to a specific point in one of the hills that you could see from the campus.
At one time or another, I had explored every one of those hills and mountains before that time, and the point that I felt compelled to look at and go to was nothing special. The area was low rolling hills, quite visible for miles, with no boulders nor trees nearby. With nothing of note to look at, it was quite a boring area. It was only hours after I had been on campus that I heard that a student went missing the day before.
The student was from a completely different major and someone whom I had never even heard of. We had absolutely no connection other than we went to the same large university at the same time. I have no idea why, but the second that I heard about the disappearance, I connected it to the compulsion that I had felt to look at and go to that one point in the hills.
The person remained missing, and news about the disappearance had waned long, long before, yet every day as I got out of my vehicle and when I went back to it each afternoon, I was compelled to look at and go to that one point in the hills. I was far too busy with school to heed the compulsion to go. Quite frankly, I was also too scared to tell someone because stories had come out in the news that the authorities had framed innocent people who had come forward with information.
Every day as I was parking in the morning and every night as I went back to my vehicle, I was called to look at that point by something, even though I couldn't see even the outline of the hills in the dark. I tried desperately to distract myself for a few days, but it didn't work and I finally just gave in to looking at that one spot in the hills twice a day and silently apologizing over and over.
I wished that someone else would go to that spot and look around because I knew that spot had something to do with the disappearance. I don't remember how long it took, but it was a long time, but they finally found the remains of the body at the exact spot that I had been compelled to look at every single day and night the entire time.
The authorities had withheld certain details, some of which that came out when the body was found. The detail that struck me the most was that the night that the student disappeared, their vehicle had been found in the second lot, first aisle, the same one that I always parked in. I still have to silently apologize whenever I think of the experience.
34. She’s Got The Look
One night I was driving home pretty late, probably around midnight. My house is just outside of a pretty small town. There are a lot of houses in the area, but they're all fairly spread out. My family alone lives on three acres, and there's a good amount of area between roads in the area. As I was approaching the road that led to my driveway, I noticed a person on the side of the road with her back to me.
She was basically standing exactly where my road meets with the main road. She saw my headlights and turned to look at my car and stared me down as I slowed down and turned onto my road. I will never forget the way she looked at me. I drove home terrified that she was going to follow me and sufficiently freaked out when I got home. I know it doesn't sound that weird, but this is a place you rarely see a hitchhiker in the middle of the day. And just the way she looked at me was so weird. Still freaks me out.
35. You’re Not Supposed To Be There
A few months ago, my boyfriend and I were going to run an errand. He had left his backpack with his laptop in it on my coffee table, and for some reason I was insisting he take it with us, saying he might need it or someone could break in and take it. But he didn’t want to and was being very stubborn. So we leave and decide to take his truck instead of my car.
Fast forward. We’re home and he wants to start doing some homework but he can’t find his backpack anywhere. We are both so confused as to where it could be because both of us clearly remember him leaving it on the coffee table. We search high and low. We even go look in his truck like maybe he just instinctively took it with him (we don’t live together).
Then, for some reason, I had the urge to go look in my car. The one that hadn’t been driven in days, and that he doesn’t normally ride in. It was sitting right there on the driver’s seat. I cannot explain it as hard as I try.
36. Back To The Future
I was in high school and had an essay project coming out later that day based on a randomized prompt. I was chilling on the couch, then very abruptly found myself in the classroom with a prompt mentioned wondering what the heck just happened—then I realized that no, I was still on my couch, and was back in my living room. I spent the rest of the morning studying the prompt I'd seen.
When I got to class, it was the same prompt, and it was the same everything. I could have mentioned something to the teacher beforehand, but I was honestly just so bewildered by the whole thing that I was too afraid it would end up somehow creating a time paradox.
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37. Running With The Devil
A few years ago, I got a call from a friend on my cell phone. When I answered I heard no tonality, so I hung up. Right after I hung up, I get a notification that he left me a voicemail. That's when it gets weird. The voicemail was a seven-minute-long guitar solo that sounded like a recording from TV or something. Keep in mind that the whole, "pick-up the phone - hang up - voice mail" process was only 30 seconds long.
I called my friend back, and he said he didn't call me. I'll never know what happened but I still wonder sometimes. Still, yeah, everyone has this horrific story about shadow people and ghosts and here I am with my wannabe Van Halen phone-tergeist. Still scared me though.
38. Weird By Numbers
The most recent unexplainable event happened last month, actually. I was in the middle of my math final when I found a note in the plotting menu of my graphing calculator. All it read was "Little man wishes you a nice meal". I had thought it was a joke from one of my friends, as it’s somewhere along the lines of an in-joke we have, but our calculators were cleared at the start of the test and I had been separated from all my friends for an hour at most.
39. It Runs In The Family
While I was at work, I was suddenly overtaken by a sense of dread, as if something horrible had just occurred. For some reason, I thought of my mother, with whom I am not completely amicable with, but we still talk and stuff, so I snuck out of work and called her. She said she felt the very same feeling, and that she could have sworn she heard my voice whispering downstairs.
She knew there was no way I would have been there, so she just locked her bedroom door, thinking that someone might have broken in. While on the phone with me, she got another call. It was her sister, telling her that their mother just passed. It freaked me out when she came back to the line, crying.
40. Welcome To The World, Little Man
The most unexplainable thing that’s happened to me took place while I was deployed to Iraq. I had this really vivid dream that my sister had my nephew, and I got to hold him. I remember specifically looking into his eyes and thinking he had the most beautiful smile. I woke up, lay there a moment, and thought about how cool of a dream that was. I hadn’t talked to my sister in about a week, but there was about a week left before his due date.
After I had gotten ready and was just putting boots on to head on the mission, my squad leader walked in with the Red Cross message—he was born. I can’t explain it, but it’s probably the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me.
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41. Double Trouble
My mom and I were driving up a parking garage. We pass an orange car that has blue headlights with a man driving down the parking garage. We continue up to the next floor…and there is the exact same car with the same man heading down the parking garage. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if my mom wasn’t also there freaking out about it. The weirdest glitch in the matrix I’ve seen.
42. A Quiet Place
In middle school, we had a group activity. We were all talking more than working and making tons of noise as restless youngsters might. Then…we all stopped. It suddenly got quiet as a classroom of 22 10-year-olds faced their assignment all at once and started working. Including me. Five seconds later, we all looked at each other in half disbelief and half amusement at the chance of all of us deciding to get work done at the same time.
Our teacher was all terror though. They didn't come to class the next day and were always uneasy in that room. I talked to her before graduating, and she said she thought she heard a piercing noise before we all collectively faced our work. She was always a bit nutty though, so only half trusting her sounded good to me—but still half nonetheless.
43. Blinded By The Light
A couple of years ago, my friend and I were sitting in another friend's kitchen. Their dad was there too and cooking us lunch, and we're just chatting. It's a normal, sunny day, and it's about 3 pm. Suddenly, my entire vision goes completely white. It was as if the entire room filled with whiteness. It wasn't painful like looking into a flashlight, and it wasn't the sun reflecting off something and into my eyes.
I just couldn't see anything except pure whiteness. Naturally, I freaked out a little, but just assumed my vision went whack or something. I didn't want to seem weird, either, so I didn't mention it to my friends. A couple of minutes pass, and then the friend's dad goes "...Did anyone else see that?" Turns out we ALL lost our vision for a couple of seconds to the same blinding whiteness.
We all described it exactly the same way: We couldn't see anything, pure whiteness, lasting three seconds. We all proceeded to freak out, but no one could offer any explanations. I went outside to see if there was a plane overhead—maybe the metal reflected the sun into the room?—but absolutely nothing. No planes or clouds.
Also, we were all facing different directions in the room, so a light couldn't have been able to reflect into everyone's eyes. To this day, we still have no idea what caused it.
44. Even Ghosts Need To Sleep
This happened multiple times. I was left home alone a lot around the age of 10. No big deal. But sometimes I could hear someone snoring really loudly in my parents’ room, only there was no one there when I checked. This kept going on for about two months, then it stopped.
45. Baby On Board
I had a dream once where someone brought a random baby to me and I kept thinking to myself, “Who the heck’s baby is this?” and it was like the main focus of my dream. I woke up to find out my cousin had her baby that night.
46. Sixth Sense
I tend to have moments where my brain tells me to do something with presumably no insight. For example, I was walking past a drink machine one day when I was overcome with the sensation to press a button. Hard to explain, but it was an intuitional feeling. I pressed a button, and out popped a drink. Honestly, it was really strange even though it might sound normal.
47. Tabling The Issue
I watched a table just slam to the ground from a standing position in the middle of the kitchen. My mom was there too and saw it happen with me. It changed my perspective on some things.
48. This Old House
My husband had some terrifying experiences in his house growing up. In this story, he was about 10 at the time, I think. When they first moved in, his parents gave him the choice of one of the bedrooms upstairs. The house was three bedrooms, one being downstairs. He immediately had weird, scary vibes towards one of the bedrooms that he says instantly caused him to choose the opposite bedroom.
He couldn't say exactly why it was he didn't want to sleep in that room. It just thoroughly creeped him out. So anyway, one night his parents were out and he was alone, and he basically started to hear thumps overhead. Loud banging. Loud thumping. Naturally, he was terrified because they had no pets that could cause the noises and as far as he knew, he was the only one in the house.
So he mustered up some courage, grabbed a baseball bat from the crawl space, and headed towards the stairs. The minute he stepped one foot up a stair, he heard a loud growling sound that intensified the closer he got. Except there was nothing up there. His mom also had similar occurrences while home alone. At one point, they did get a cat and while alone one day, her cat began to shriek and freak out near the stairs looking up to that very room.
My mother-in-law recalled hearing the same loud bang and thumps and it terrified her so much that she took out a bat herself and headed up to look, again finding nothing. There are just so many bad vibes in the house, mostly in that bedroom. The neighbors ended up telling them eventually that the guy who owned the house was a really miserable person that lived alone.
He would go weeks without venturing out and eventually his body was found in that bedroom. So that might explain the creepy vibes of the room.
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49. Two Places At Once
Our upstairs neighbor was ringing the doorbell in the middle of the night, waking up the whole family. I went out of my room and saw my mom talk to the man upstairs and he asked for a glass of milk. The day after, my mom asked his wife if her husband was thirsty the night before, because he asked for a glass of milk in the middle of the night. She looked shocked to hear this.
The wife said that it couldn’t be him, because he was visiting his parents on the other side of the country 15 hours away. He had been there for a week and came home again a week after. My whole family saw him and remembered it, and we had known him for years because us kids were at their house all the time because of his kids. But nope, he was 15 hours away.
50. Eerie Timing
I was getting ready for work and was walking from the shower to my room. I overheard my brother speaking—I assumed on the phone—and for some reason, I stopped to listen. I never really eavesdropped, but this time I felt compelled. He was telling someone something, and all I heard was “...I think I’m just going to go to sleep". I knew this was around 3:00 pm, because I was getting picked up for work at 3:30.
Right before I left, I knocked on my brother’s room and told him I was leaving. He didn’t answer, and I assumed he had, in fact, gone to sleep. I soon found out the disturbing truth. The following morning, we discovered him lifeless around 8:00 am. He was sitting up in bed, facing his laptop; The scene is etched in my memory forever. After piecing everything together, we found out he was already gone when I heard him talking to someone.
His last communication on his cell phone had been around 1:00 that afternoon. My sisters still think I got the timing wrong, but I know exactly what time it was precisely because of my work schedule and from the time I had messaged the Uber to pick me up. Otherwise, I would have second-guessed myself, too. I also had no idea he could possibly be gone, so there was no reason to hallucinate his voice.
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