Some experiences simply can’t be explained by science or logic. These are things that defy common sense and make all the crazy nightmares from horror movies seem plausible and real. These bone-chilling, spine-tingling paranormal events, as experienced and shared by Redditors, will make you question everything you thought you knew about ghosts, spirits, monsters, and apparitions. Don’t read this in the dark!
1. This is Really Freaky
So I was in the house of my religious grandparents when my little brother’s nose suddenly started bleeding, and he said that it felt like a nail. We were alone, so I helped him out. 20 minutes later, I needed to charge my phone, so I went to my room, just to see the hand puppet of my brother that our uncle had made...with a nail on his nose!
2. Scent of a Father
On the day my father passed, I was alone in the apartment we lived in while everyone was out mourning at my uncle’s place. I stayed home because I didn't want people to stare at me sobbing. Anyways, I'm in the living room and I hear footsteps in my mother's room that has a balcony. I straight up hear the balcony door open so now I'm like sobbing and shouting asking who's there.
I go check it out and there's no one there except a strong smell of nicotine in the room (my father used to puff on the balcony). Never told anyone about it and just kept it for myself. I later learned my mother got blamed for my dad's demise (even though they loved each other since they were teens and my dad was simply a victim of cancer) and a massive brawl broke out at my uncle's.
I just thought of it as my dad coming home because he couldn't be bothered to hear people arguing.
3. Who’s Down There?!
I was a kid, maybe 10 years old or so. I came inside in the evening after playing outside in the backyard. I stopped by the exterior door to take my shoes off and just happened to notice that the basement door across the room was closed and deadbolted (It was an old door that didn't stay totally closed unless deadbolted).
I look down to untie one of my shoes and I hear a loud BANG and look up to see the basement door wide open. I noped the heck out of there with my shoes still on. My parents were in the other room and didn't hear a thing. I went back later and the door and lock were totally undamaged. I have absolutely no idea what caused it and can't really come up with any rational explanation.
I was pretty afraid of going into the basement for a while.
4. Mothers-in-Law: Even Scarier in Ghost Form
About five years ago, my husband and I went to visit his grandmother. She lived in a big, beautiful two-story house. I was going to head upstairs to put some pajamas on and saw a woman walk across the top of the stairs. It was only my husband, young daughter, and his grandma in the house, and whoever I saw, it wasn't granny.
I went into the living room and told them what I saw and his Grandma goes, “Yeah, that's Laurie. She visits a lot.” Laurie was my husband's mom who had passed on when he was 11. I was so freaking spooked after that I barely slept the rest of the time we were there.
5. An Eerie Coincidence
I live in a city now, but I grew up in the country. I was walking home with my partner and looking at what few stars I could see, and mentioned that my dad used to drive us into the middle of the field at night and we would stargaze from the bed of the truck, and we would always see shooting stars. It had been a long time since I had seen one.
Fifteen minutes later, a bright one shot across the sky, flashed twice as it broke apart, and then extinguished. It was amazing.
6. An Unnerving Out of Body Experience
It must have been some kind of hallucination, but it really scared me. I was sitting in my bed watching YouTube for a couple of hours. I got up and reached forward to set something on my nightstand or whatever. I had this strange, indescribable feeling that I hadn't actually moved from where I was sitting at all. I quickly turned around and looked at where I was sitting seconds before, and there I was, still sitting there.
I was outside my body. I could see the shocked, horrified expression come to my face at such a strange sight. I quickly sat back down right in the same spot and nothing strange happened again.
7. Sharing a Bedroom With a Sibling Sucks
When I was in high school, my younger brother and I shared a bedroom in our house. His bed was on one side of the room, and mine was on the other. My brother was an avid sleepwalker and would also talk in his sleep all of the time. Sharing a bedroom with him, it was unsettling at first, but I eventually got used to it.
One night, it’s about 3 AM, and I suddenly wake up from a deep sleep, instantly alert. I had this urge to look towards my brother’s bed. I felt a presence in the room. When I turned my head, I saw a tall, skinny shadow/human-like figure and it was reaching its hand down towards my sleeping brother’s face. Its hand got maybe an inch away before its head jerked to the side and looked at me starring at it, frozen.
The shadow then faded and moved up into the air, vanishing through the ceiling. Immediately, my brother shot up out of his bed, stood, and walked to the light switch. He turned it on and looked at me. In a very calm and solemn voice, he says, “Did you feel it? Did you feel the hand?” He then turned off the light and went back to his bed.
I hid under my covers the rest of the night. My brother doesn’t remember any of it.
8. Don’t Call Me By My Name
I was in the living room with my grandma. We were the only ones home. She was working on a crossword puzzle, and I was messing around on my iPad. Television was off, windows were closed. All of a sudden clear as day I hear my name being whispered, but since it was so quiet it sounded loud. I looked up to my grandma, thinking it was her asking her if she said something.
She said, “No, but I heard your name.”
9. Tethered to Its Past
I work with donated human tissue. We process stuff like bones, tendons, and skin for transplant. The Controlled Work Area where we process the tissue definitely has weird things happen in it. Small stuff like repeated or inexplicable equipment failure, tools falling off flat surfaces, and sometimes the tissue itself will react strangely to processing (i.e. a young donor whose tissue will fall apart or exhibit other poor disposition for one reason or another).
Sometimes a donor will have so many problems befall their processing, that it just feels like they really did not want their former body parts to be transplanted. I have definitely got strange vibes while working. I'm not saying that they are knowingly or purposefully haunting us, but there is an energy that is hard to deny.
10. Does a Ghost Dog Bark or Just Go “Boo”?
A few years ago, about a year after we moved into our house, my mom and I were home alone with our dog. I was in one bedroom and my mom was in another right across the hall. I heard my dog’s toy squeaking down at the end of the hall, so I figured she was playing with it, no big deal. Then my dog came running into the bedroom, without a toy, but the squeaking continued.
My dog was running around like crazy, in and out of the bedrooms as if she was trying to figure out where the squeaking was coming from. I figured my mom was teasing her, trying to get her to play. It continued for a few minutes and my dog was getting crazier and crazier until my mom called across the hall for me to “stop squeaking the darn toy, you’re making the dog crazy.”
So I stepped into the hallway and said, “I don’t have the toy, I thought you were squeaking it.” At this point, the squeaking had stopped, and we were both freaked out, standing right next to each other with the dog sitting between us. We looked down the hallway and the toy was sitting there, nothing touching it. Suddenly it started squeaking like crazy as if someone were jumping up and down on it.
The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up and I was frozen in place, completely unable to move. My mom almost started crying. The energy was just so weird, I can’t even explain it. Turns out the previous owners had a dog that passed on in the house, and they told my parents that the ghost of the dog comes around from time to time.
Now, I’ve always been iffy about the existence of ghosts but I swear that ghost dog was playing with my dog’s toy.
11. I’ve Heard of Time Flying By, But This is Ridiculous
This happened to me seven years ago and I can't figure it out but I lost an hour of time in what felt to me like minutes. At the time I was working from home after a serious illness diagnosis. I had settled into a routine: up at 7 AM and do house stuff and shower then at eight and start prepping my work and laying out my day. Phone calls and emails from 8-9.
This is all I remember: it was 7:55 AM and I brewed a cup of Keurig coffee in my kitchen, located on the main floor of my house. I went upstairs to my office and turned on my computer to settle in and realized I forgot the coffee in the kitchen. I went back downstairs and got the coffee as soon as I realized I forgot it.
It couldn't have been more than the time it took for Windows to boot up, but I took a sip and the coffee was ice cold. Not warm, but actually cold. I thought my Keurig was broke but I looked at the clock and it said 9:14. So whereas I expected it to be 8:05 max, somehow an hour and 10 minutes passed without explanation.
It was very bothersome. I have no idea where that hour went. I have never had any blackout before or since, no seizures and the meds I was on shouldn't have caused a lapse like that. I don't think I fell asleep because I distinctly remember typing my password and saying out loud, “Shoot, I forgot the coffee.” It left me a bit uneasy.
Nothing like had ever happened to me before or since.
12. Where Has The Time Gone?
My girlfriend and I had a bizarre experience a year ago. Our phone alarms went off at 6:30 AM like usual. We got out of bed and we did our usual morning routine to get ready for work. We showered, got dressed, and I texted a co-worker at 7 AM saying that I would meet them at 7:45. They replied and said “OK” at 7:30. Then my girlfriend and I had our morning coffee together and I went to get my shoes on.
Then I looked at the clock and it was 9 AM. I totally freaked out because I was late for work. I thought my phone clock was off, but my girlfriend’s was the same. We both had missed calls and texts from the span of 7:30 until 9 AM. We were both weirded out by the situation. 1.5 hours passed while we were in the kitchen for 10 minutes.
13. Trying to Make Contact
After my dad passed on, my stepmom kept asking me if I found the book he was reading in his last month(s). She didn't know the title. We looked all over the house for it. Eventually found it with a stack of magazines, where it definitely didn’t belong. My stepmom recognized it immediately when found. The title of the book was Hello from Heaven.
I also received a phone call two days after he passed on. The phone call was from his phone number. For some reason, I was too scared to answer. Asked the only person who had the phone (my stepmom) if she had called from it. She said she left it in the garage where he always worked. This was 14 years ago. I still regret not answering the phone.
14. Wild Imagination or Something Even Wilder?
I was in my laundry room, and I heard someone come up behind me. I swear they whispered. I screamed so loud and thought it was my husband playing a prank on me. When I turned around no one was there, and it was so freaky. Also, when I was a teenager I was sitting in my room at my computer desk, and piece of paper and pen went up in the air and slammed back down.
I ran downstairs to tell my mom, and I was crying hysterically. My mom thinks I just hallucinated it.
15. Prisons are Scary Places
I work in a prison. Before my job there changed, I used to have about 1.5 hours of downtime before it was time to punch out. My sergeant at the time asked if I would cover the 11 pm count on one of the blocks. He didn’t care what I did before or after, just do the count. No problem. I’m sitting at our “Times Square” area; one hallway leads to four blocks, and another hallway leads to the other four.
I’m sitting in front of one of those hallways. I hear someone walking towards me from behind. But I realize I don’t hear keys; we all have keys, except inmates. I turn around, no one there. I think, ok maybe I just imagined it. Guy sitting in the area with me asks who it was...I guess I didn’t imagine it. Alright then.
11 pm comes, I go to the block. No one is letting me in. What’s going on?! I go back to the Times Square area to call and let the officer know not to panic, I’m coming, I just can’t get in. As I’m on the phone, I feel someone behind me and they lean into my ear and whisper forcefully “Whaddaya doin’?!” I wave my hand back to signal to them to stop.
I hang up and turn to yell at who it was...no one is there. No one is in any hallway, I’m all alone.
16. An Unexplained Presence
I used to live in a town that was pretty strange as a whole, but our house was even more so. Most of my elder family members who grew up there have also had weird experiences. I remember one time, I got up to use the toilet, the bathroom was next door, which was across the way from my bedroom, then something happened that took me by complete surprise.
I kid you not, a woman in a full vintage nurse's outfit came running out of the bathroom with a washcloth and into my bedroom. That is the good side of it though, there's a lot more, you'd even sit there sometimes and have this awful feeling of a bad presence, as if somebody was staring at you, eyes burning into your soul kind of feeling, you know? Freaky stuff.
17. A Mysterious Rearranging
It was my daughter’s prom. We had bought a beautiful gown and shoes to match and they were hanging safely in her wardrobe. The evening of the prom she went upstairs to get ready and shouts down to me, “Thanks for getting everything ready for me mom.” Well, I hadn't been in her room at all. When I went up to see what she was talking about I found her dress laying on the bed, her shoes next to her dresser and perfume was on top.
I didn't say anything so she wouldn't freak out, but holy cow, it sure as heck spooked the life out of me. After that, there were other instances like a certain perfume appearing on her dresser, wardrobe doors closing by themselves, etc. After a while, we got used to it and would just say thank you when anything happened.
18. The Cardinal Way
My deceased father’s favorite animal was the red cardinal. Those red cardinals always seem to find me no matter where I am.
19. This is Hella Frightening
I used to live in a house that was built on old farmland. I slept in a bedroom that had no door, except for the door leading up to the attic, which had a little sliding lock on it. Every single night, I'd close the door and lock it. The attic frequently had birds and such get into it, and I didn't feel like having them fly out.
Yet, every single morning, it'd be unlocked and slightly ajar. During the night, I'd wake up and have sleep paralysis. It was pretty frequent, and I got used to it. During said sleep paralysis, a figure would open up the closet and slip out. All black, sort of shadowy and wearing what I can only describe as a farmer's hat.
It'd stare at me for a moment, just stare. Sometimes it'd take a step over before turning and walking out the entrance to my bedroom, which lacked a door, but I had set up some beads. They'd knock together. I can still hear it to this day. I had always been told I had an overactive imagination. I never spoke of it to my parents or family since they'd probably make fun of it.
One summer, my cousin came to visit. She took over my room since my family thought she deserved a larger room for whatever reason. She came down for breakfast in the morning white as a sheet and said I could have my room back. When my mother asked why she told her she had sleep paralysis and saw basically what I had. I had never spoken to her of this.
Years later, once we had moved out of the house, my mother told me something. Her bedroom was off the same hallway as mine, and she always slept with the door open. She told me some nights she'd wake up, just to see a figure pass by the bedroom quickly. She stopped getting up to check it after the first few times, but the house always gave her the creeps.
I don't really know if it was a shared delusion or what, but it still scares me a bit to this day.
20. A Cursed Skill
My friend Ed was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in April of a certain year. By July of the same year, he had been in a hospital bed for about a month. His wife told me that the night before, he told her the strangest thing: He had seen his father, uncles and other relatives who had already passed on, standing around his bed and smiling at him.
I told my wife to pack a few bags because, within the next two days, we would be getting the message that Ed has passed on. Sure enough, almost two days later Ed's wife contacted us to tell us he had passed on. How did I know? Ed was about the fifth person I knew personally who had contracted cancer, then perished from it.
Each one of them had mentioned a day or two before they finally passed on that they had seen departed relatives standing around their beds or standing in their rooms smiling at them.
21. Spooky Crashing Dishes
My niece was sitting in the kitchen doing her homework. I was outside playing Plants Versus Zombies on my phone and my mom was doing laundry or something. I heard an awful crashing noise and I ran inside to see dishes shattered all over the kitchen and circling my niece. We asked her what happened and she said the dishes came flying at her.
There was no way she could have done it because like I said, the dishes were circled around her and she couldn't have sat down that quickly. It was weird.
22. An All-Knowing Son
After my mother passed on, I went to her grave a few times a week. I usually had my kids with me, and this one day, as we passed by the older part of the cemetery, my eldest son, who was six at the time, asked “Mom? What are all those people waiting for? Why are they just standing there?” The cemetery was empty and not a single human was there.
When we got to my mom’s grave, he held my hand and said, “Don’t worry, grandma is with mom-mom and they are happy!” Mom-mom was my mother’s sister who passed on before my husband and I were even married. My son knew nothing of her or what we called her. He also would tell us when someone had passed on in a house. I really can't explain it.
23. Spine-chilling Stuff
I didn’t see a ghost until I was 19 years old and did not believe in them until then. I had the mentality that, “I'll believe it when I see it.” I was at my friend’s rental house, who had a baby and they kept talking about how their house was haunted—particularly the room the baby slept in. A woman would be seen in white, walking into the baby's room at night.
A few times, my friend’s husband would be alone with the baby at night while she was at work and he would see the women walk by the open door in the hallway towards the baby's room while the baby slept. He didn't think anything of it at first because he thought it was his wife, then he would remember she’s at work and haul butt to the baby's room...only to find the kid crying and no one there.
Fast-forward to my encounter: I was hanging out with my good friend at their house while the husband was at work and helping out watching the baby. We started hearing a ton of noises, and my friend said she just wanted to get the kid, get in the car, and leave. I laughed and tried to tell her it was nothing, but I complied.
We get to the car and she tells me she forgot the dog and asked if I could go back and get him. I approach the window at the front of the house, peer into it, and see the dog standing at the sliding glass door, completely stiff with its tail pointing straight out, barking his butt off. I then look at the reflection and my heart skips several beats...I see the bottom half of a reflection of a woman in white.
I nope out of there and tell her I can't go in there and tell her what I saw. We eventually go back inside once the dog slowed on the barking. When it comes to ghosts, I am now a true believer and since that day, I have had a couple of other encounters.
24. Well, Tickle Me Pink!
It was about 10 pm on a Sunday night in February 1994 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Driving toward home with a friend along Route 215 southbound at the point where a wall of mountain was to our left, and we were up high enough to see across the entire valley to our right. It was dark as a normal night, street lights, building lights, but everything dark enough for sleepy nighttime hours.
Suddenly, the entire Valley lit up BRIGHT pink, as bright as day. It was evenly lit as far as the eye could see from horizon to horizon. Both my friend and I saw it, we verbalized it to each other and it lasted no more than five seconds, then everything went back to normal night color. No sounds ever occurred, just a normal quiet night before, during, and after.
This was back before the Internet and we saw nothing about it in the newspaper the next day or the next and, being college-aged working girls, we were too busy to watch television news or consult the newspaper every day to follow up. No one else mentioned it or noticed it. Seemed like we were the only ones out that night.
But surely someone else must have seen it too...?
25. They Never Truly Leave You
From pretty much the first night after my dad passed on, I started seeing him in my dreams. I didn't think anything of it at first because I figured that's a perfectly reasonable subconscious response to losing a loved one. The weird thing, though, was that he looked seriously real; everything else in my dream would have that strange, cartoonish vibe to it, yet I could look at my dad and count the individual hairs in his mustache and on his head.
In one of the dreams, I became lucid and realized I was asleep. I asked my dad point-blank, “Are you visiting me or is this just a figment of my imagination? I need to know!” He smiled, hugged me and said, “I'm here with you right now son, and I always will be. I love you.” I woke up suddenly and as I did, I saw a very light shadow.
Had it not moved, I wouldn't have seen it. It was a head and shoulders, leaning through the doorway and into my room. As soon as I saw it, it quickly moved away and backed out of my room. Somehow, it was calming rather than scary. I was absolutely amazed because that's exactly what my dad used to do when I was little and he left really early for work.
He'd pop his head in and say goodbye. The way this shadow moved was exactly the same. I'm convinced it was him checking in on me. Then, if that wasn't strange enough, my mom called me downstairs that same morning. She tells me to go into the living room and look at the floor. I go in and weirdly, dad's reading glasses have somehow ended up smack bang in the middle of the room.
That 110% confirmed it for me.
26. The Terrifying Tree
Let me preface this by saying I am one of the most skeptical people you’ll ever meet. I’m not religious, I don’t believe in ghosts or aliens or any of that. This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever encountered and I have no real logical explanation for it. No illicit substances or booze were involved. My friends and I went camping up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire most summers in middle and high school.
Now, being a bunch of unorganized teen boys/manchildren, we always took forever to get in gear and actually get going, usually not leaving southern Massachusetts where we lived until late afternoon, early evening. One year, we got up there at about 10 pm or so and decided rather than hike into the woods, we’d just sort of camp out in the parking lot and start the hike in the morning.
After a bit of unwinding and some food everyone went to bed except for me and one other dude. We ended up wandering over to a small wooden footbridge over a river. It was a perfectly clear night filled with stars and a fairly bright moon, and we were chatting for a good couple hours about all sorts of stuff, movies, games, life, etc.
It had to be well after midnight by this point. As we were chatting, we both got this creepy feeling of something being there. Something...sinister. Looking at the far end of the bridge, there was this MASSIVE dead tree (no leaves, just clawing branches) silhouetted against the sky. We both were like, “Man, I swear that tree is creeping me out, but that’s silly right?”
At first, we tried to dismiss it, but both of us kept feeling more and more unnerved until I finally was like, “Screw this, I’m a grown man, I’m not afraid of a darn tree, I’m walking over there.” I get like two-thirds of the way across the bridge and it feels like something reached in and grabbed my pounding heart. Just went totally ice cold.
I backed up and was like, “Yeah, I’m afraid of a tree. I seriously think I’m not coming back if I go over there.” We retreated from the bridge and decided to go to bed back in the sleeping bags by the car. Next morning, after breakfast, we decide to hike into the trail by going across that bridge. Halfway across, my friend freezes. “Uh, dude....”
I look across the bridge. It’s a clearing. There are no trees there.
27. Dinner and a (Scary) Show
My husband and I were having dinner at a very small restaurant in the basement of a 16th century Amsterdam canal house, and there was a single lit candle on the table. In the middle of eating, the candlestick and its base fly off our table onto the floor, as if someone had knocked it very hard with their hand. The waitress turns around and asks if we did that, and we say no.
We all get very creeped out and nervously laugh. Food was great, though.
28. A Stick-Like, Perhaps Slender, Figure
I have experienced plenty of weird stuff and it usually doesn’t bother me, but there is something around the area I live in currently. It's pale, tall, and built like a stick; everything seems scared of it. It usually shows up around dusk and then slinks off at dawn. Whenever it’s around, the animals will hide and or freak out; I know that it has come up to our windows before and I know it stalked me at least once.
My automatic assumption when I first encountered it was that it was a mountain lion, but I have seen it since then and it walks on two legs, but crouched, and runs like an animal. If this were a bear it would not be so stick-like. It’s unexplained and possibly paranormal. I hope it’s not paranormal because some larger livestock have, gone missing only to be found shredded later.
And no it can't be coyotes, because even the coyotes are scared of this thing.
29. Fearful Fever Dream
I had a cold coming on the night I was supposed to go to my friend’s party, and I went anyways. By the time I got there, I felt full-on sick. My friend told me to drink a double shot of gin to flush it out of my system, so I did. This sent me into a full-blown fever, so he told me I could go upstairs to rest—there was a spare room being used for nothing at the time, just a mattress on the ground.
I laid down on top of it and passed out. When I came to, I swear to God, I saw black, 3D silhouettes of these tall men in trench coats standing all around the bed and looking down at me, but I could still hear the party going on downstairs. Probably just the fever, but I shut my eyes and passed out again and they were gone.
30. House Hunters: Haunted House Edition
When I was younger (about sixth grade), my mother and I moved to a new city and we started to check out new houses. After a long day of going from house to house, we found one that my mom and I instantly fell in love with. It was time to go into one of the last rooms, and I remember walking into this small pale blue room. Nothing out of the ordinary.
I got this weird feeling throughout my body and had to run outside and throw up. My mom and the realtor followed and that’s when she asked how we knew what happened. My mom, confused, said: “...knew what?” The realtor told my mom that someone had just recently passed on in that room. I still have dreams about that room.
31. An Uneasy Feeling
There’s a cabinet near the top of my staircase and I had placed my water bottle on it, not on the edge but in the middle, where in no way would it be able to fall off on its own or due to any “breeze.” I’m sitting on the couch, which is a couple of feet away from the cabinet, when the water bottle simply flies off the cabinet like someone sucker-punched it and goes soaring down the staircase.
I was home alone, it was 1 AM, and I have no clue why it happened. Don’t want to think about it, I just keep living my life.
32. A Hallucination or Something Else?
I was working in London for two weeks, staying in a flat owned by a friend of a friend while he was out of town. About halfway through the job, I got food poisoning and was pretty sick for three days. Still had to work though. I got home one night at about 12 and was chilling in the front room reading a book before going to bed when I felt somebody else was in the room.
I looked up and there's a Native American dude stood in the middle of the room. He is wearing some kind of vest or waistcoat and I see dark lines running up his forearms. He raises a hand, says some stuff directly to me and then just vanishes. It wasn't scary, just a bit strange. I went to bed. A few hours later I woke up and wasn't sick anymore. I drew a portrait of him in my sketchbook.
A few days later I was back home, sitting on some stairs and waiting for my girlfriend, when the name “Little Crow” popped into my head. I wrote it next to my drawing. About six months later—I hadn't mentioned this experience to many people—the original friend (who's friend's flat I stayed in) gave me a book of Native American history.
The book was Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee and there's a chapter about a Dakota chief named Little Crow. The photo of him looks like my drawing. He always wore long sleeves, because he was shot by his brother when he was young and the slug passed through both his arms—the wounds became infected and left ugly scars that he was embarrassed about.
33. Watching Over Us
I don’t really believe in ghosts, but I once saw a mist on my chair that kind of vaguely looked like my deceased pop-pop just casually rocking in the chair. When I told my mom about this, she told me a story that took place about 25 or so years prior. She had the record player (knowing mom it was probably Bob Dylan or Fleetwood Mac) in her room rather loud.
Her mother told her from the other room to turn it down a little, my mother responded, “Yes Mom” to her mom, but then she suddenly stopped in her tracks...she realized that her mom had been deceased for a year or two. My mom, who is slightly religious, says that her parents still look after us from the grave. If her parents do, that is rather kind of them.
34. Apparitions as Warnings
It's not a great story, but my family has a long history with mental illness. Therefore whenever we get calls from family members, we assume the worst. It happened multiple times. First, my cousin was pregnant and she was super excited for the birth of her baby. It was around the five-month mark that my mother and I started to hallucinate and see dark figures in the shape of a baby around my house.
Since it happened to both my mom and I we both got scared but did nothing about it. About a week later, my cousin had a miscarriage and we stopped seeing these “apparitions.” Secondly, my grandma was very sick and my mother and I started hallucinating again. This time, instead of babies crawling around corners we saw a slumped figure.
Not even a week passed and my grandma was declared dead after they told us she was recuperating. Finally, and probably why my mom and I are not scared of these apparitions. My sister has been diagnosed with depression for a long time. Since she is older, she lived in another country. My mom and I were in the kitchen and the hallway lights were off, then we simultaneously freaked out.
We both saw a figure that immediately reminded us of my sister. My mom took this as a warning and called my sister immediately. Her roommate answered and my mom asked her to check on her. Turns out my sister had tried to overdose on sleeping pills and her roommate found her just in time to save her life. Ever since then, I believe that whatever this apparition is, it is probably someone or something that is trying to warn us beforehand.
35. A Memorable Holiday
Last year, I was on a cycling holiday in Tuscany. I know the bloke who runs it as he's also my coach and runs a national race team. We're a close-knit bunch on the holiday as most know each other from riding together back home. Later in our trip, the coach is talking about something strange that had happened to him the night before.
I didn't hear him at the time, as I was using the climbs as training and pushing on. Anyway, we stop for lunch and he starts talking about his experience and I ask him what he's talking about. He goes on to explain that he was asleep one time when all of a sudden he heard talking. It just a quiet din, and he thought, "That’s weird, I’m alone in this part of the villa" (it's a massive place that has been split into apartments). As he goes to sit up he gets pushed back down.
In the morning he calls his wife back home and she’d said she felt something when she was out there with him earlier in the week, like she was being watched. Now, upon hearing this, I start mocking him and back at the villa, I carry it on. Two nights later, it's still a topic for jokes. We go to bed and I crash, then at about 2 AM I wake up and can't sleep so just lay there.
Then I hear talking and I think it's just my mate in the room next door who I'm sharing the apartment with talking to his wife back in England. I think nothing of it, then about 30 minutes later I'm tossing and turning when out of nowhere I feel like my head is being pushed into the pillow and someone is holding my shoulder down as well.
I absolutely freaked out. It stopped seconds later, but it felt like so much longer. As it stops, I hear a laugh. I didn't sleep again that night. I told him in the morning what had happened and he thought I was winding him up. We've since found out that the villa has history of strange things happening. Also, his apartment and mine are joined by a door, the rest are completely separate.
We're back there again next month. I won't be mocking anyone this time around!
36. When Dreams and Real Life Overlap
One night, eight-year-old me, being stuck on the eighth gym badge in Pokémon Sapphire, went to bed super frustrated. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking I was dreaming of a person sitting on the computer chair spinning in the corner of my room playing my Game Boy. So, thinking it was all a dream, I woke up—but when I checked my Game Boy, sure enough, I was past the gym I had been stuck on the night before.
Still, to this day, I have no idea how it happened or what happened, but eight-year-old me was very thankful.
37. Lighting Up the Night Sky
About 20 years ago, I was standing outside a famous casino in Las Vegas with about 30 other people, watching lights in the night sky do things that they absolutely should not have been able to do. They were zipping back and forth across the night's sky, way high up. Then, they'd stop for a few seconds, and then zoom across some more.
There were three or four lights doing this, and we were all watching it, wondering what in the world was happening. I've always liked aviation, planes, etc. and so even back then I knew a lot about planes, rockets, helicopters, all that. What I saw—and a whole crowd of people along with me—shouldn't have been possible.
38. A Daughter Knows
One day I was with my friends and suddenly my head started getting heavy. My vision began to white out at the point where I couldn’t see anything at all. I immediately thought that someone could’ve drugged me and asked my friends to help me walk to a place where I could get some air and sit down. My sight was coming back but I couldn’t speak or express anything, couldn’t respond or answer what my friends were asking.
Somehow, I got into a trance and it felt like I was seeing my surroundings from an overhead perspective, outside of myself. My friend called my mom and she picked me up, I still couldn’t respond until I got home and went to the bathroom. Three days later, my mom received a call from my grandpa and I immediately knew what was going on.
He told her that my dad had passed on and was found lifeless in his bathroom. I live with my mom and my dad used to live in another state. The forensic report showed that he died on that exact date and probably around the moment I had that episode.
39. Man’s Best Friend
My stepdad found our puppy Eddy on the side of the road. Someone had thrown him out of a moving car, and he had broken legs, broken teeth, a swollen and closed eye, and was severely dehydrated. My stepdad took him to the vet and paid quite a bit of money for surgeries to get Eddy fixed up. He got attached to the doggo, so we ended up adopting him.
After that, even though he was the family dog, he was best buds with my stepdad. Anywhere my stepdad was around the house, you could find Eddy tagging along. Eddy and I grew up together. He died while I was in college, and my parents buried him in a pet cemetery. Since it was sort of sudden and I was far away, I didn't get to say goodbye.
A few months after that, I had a dream where Eddy comes and finds me. His hair is matted and dirty, and his flesh looks kind of rotted, but he's wagging his tail and seems really happy to see me again. Eddy starts leading me down a hazy path, and the farther we go, the faster his tail wags. Finally, we get to this giant wall of mist that extends across the entire horizon and rises higher than I can see.
Eddy gets real close to it before trotting back to me. He licks my hand, gives me a couple of nose boops and whines a little. Then, he turns around again and starts to do that happy dog prance toward the wall until he finally passes through it. I can sort of see his outline jumping up and down excitedly next to a human-shaped figure.
I jog after Eddy and reach my hand out to touch the wall, hoping I'll be able to pass through it, too. That's when my cellphone rings in real life, waking me up. When I answer it, my mom is on the other end crying. My stepdad had just died of a heart attack.
40. Haunted by a Boy in His PJs
Not long after I met my current boyfriend I would spend the night at his house. Normally I fall asleep as soon as I hit the pillow, but at his house I would be awake super late feeling creeped out. I blamed it on being in a strange house. After a while, I used to fall asleep at a decent time, but I would wake up around 2 or 3 AM and try to let my eyes adjust to the darkness (small town = very little light pollution).
When my eyes adjusted, I felt like I could see a little boy on top of the grandfather clock. This would happen every night for a while. I never felt scared just confused. It looked like a boy wearing older style pajamas kicking his legs on top of the clock. Still, I would blame it on sleep paralysis/dreaming or my imagination.
When I would go back to my parents’ house for school nights I would start waking up in the middle of the night seeing the same apparition sitting on the dresser or ledge in my room. I slept alone in the basement of the house, and after months of seeing the “little boy,” I wanted to sleep upstairs again, as I figured my mind was just getting to me.
One evening, I was home alone as my brother and parents were gone to some appointment. I happened to fall asleep on the couch in the living room, only to dream that the little boy was knocking down my mom’s ornaments that were on the coffee table. I woke up in a cold sweat and looked at the table: sure enough, the ornaments were broken.
Of course, they could have been broken beforehand and I never noticed. It started to get chilly in the living room so I moved to my mother’s bedroom to watch television before they came home. In her bedroom, I kept seeing stuff out of the corner of my eye that looked like the “little boy,” but I never really had a full-on view.
At this point, I was sure it wasn’t sleep paralysis/dreaming because I could move when I woke up and sometimes I would be wide awake. I fell asleep in my mom’s bed and woke up to the little boy laughing and running in the closet. Friday of that week, I went to my boyfriend’s house and he knew something was up but I wouldn’t tell him out of fear that he would think I was crazy.
That night, I was helping his mom bake and I happened to mention that I was having really weird dreams about a little boy and she asked me if he “was a young one with his jammies on?” She knew what I was talking about. She told me that their house was pretty old and all throughout the time they lived there strange stuff would happen such as stuff being moved or hearing voices or laughter, but the past six to eight months, things had stopped happening.
It’s been three years and I’ve moved out with my boyfriend to start post-secondary. I’m still seeing, sensing, and dealing with whatever it is. Things are still being moved and voices are still being heard.
41. A Nightmare Come to Life
My room wasn't very large. A typical square room, mostly taken up by a dresser, bookshelf/tv stand combo and my twin-sized bed. The bed bisected the room, separating the entrance door from the sliding-door closet. As I was young and I liked having the fan on, I had one of those long extendo-chains for the light, so I could turn off my light and still enjoy the fan at night.
I was in my room, messing around, not long before bed. I have always been an active person, and in my childhood, I was never anywhere in the house without a trusty toy sword or toy sword stand-in close at hand, and tonight was no exception. I don't remember why I swung, because again, small room, but I swung my sword and it struck the long chain for the light.
Anyone who has ever accidentally whacked their chain knows what happens next. The chain goes flying into the air, wraps itself endlessly around the light fixture and turns off the light. In an instant, I was plunged into darkness. Annoyed, I clambered onto my bed and began to tentatively reach up. I didn't want to stick my hand in the fan blade, but I needed to reach really close to it to begin untangling the chain.
I froze when I heard a shuffling sound...and the groan. It sounded close by, in my room with me. It sounded like the closet door sliding open on its old track. I kept trying to reach up, but now the hair on my arms was standing on end. The groan of the door finally stopped, but what replaced it was a heavy, throaty breathing.
I imagined it, of course. I had to have, because what little boy doesn't have an overactive imagination? All the same, I was terrified. I gave up trying to untangle the light chain and instead reached for the top of it, where the chain fed directly into the light fixture. The breathing was closer now, and my brain was happy to provide the louder sounds and the horrifying image of everything they belonged to, creeping towards my bed.
I found the chain and I pulled. I know I pulled. I heard the click, but perhaps I just wanted to, because light did not flood the room and banish away the darkness of my fears. I pulled again, and again. Surely the chain was too tightly wound to activate the light. Surely that was it...right? I could not wait to find out.
I dove off my bed and lunged for the door to my bedroom, flinging it open and allowing light from the hallway to spill into the room. I whirled around, toy sword still in hand, but there was nothing there. The gloom of my bedroom stared back at me. Bed, dresser, bookcase with my TV and Xbox perched on top of it. No monsters.
I re-entered my room and climbed on the bed once again. I reached up and, with the aid of the hall light, pulled firmly on the base of the light string. With a loud click, the light turned on, and my bedroom returned to normal. I unwound the light chain from the light fixture and climbed off the bed, sunspots dancing in my eyes from looking at the light, and feeling a little woozy from the past few minutes.
But it was ok. It was all my imagination. There was no monster. The light wasn't turning on because I was pulling it wrong. I could explain everything, very easily...except for why my closet door was open.
42. Demons in the Basement
My extremely Catholic grandmother owned a house in rural New York. We'd often go there when we went to camp or for family holidays. The place always had a weird vibe to it, as it was over 150 years old. I had several paranormal experiences like seeing what I believed to be a spirit of a man in a brown coat and top hat in the kitchen.
I would also hear children's voices in the bunkbed room when nobody was home, as well as light fixtures acting strangely, like bulbs going out on holiday lights one by one in sequence instead of all at once. Anyways, these experiences were never particularly emotion-inducing or threatening, just weird things I was convinced I saw...
...until one day when I was about ten. I was there alone while my grandmother went shopping and was just watching Avatar the Last Airbender and playing with Legos, pretty standard. I went to the bathroom at one point and noticed the door to the basement. I never thought anything of the basement because it was always closed and off-limits, but being unsupervised and the bold kid I was, I opened the door to get a peek.
It was pitch black down the stairs, but within about three seconds I felt an intense chill and an absolutely terrifying feeling of pure evil wash over me, like a primal fear. Every instinct in my being and soul went into full panic mode as I felt the presence rapidly approaching up the stairs. I shut that door and locked it as fast as I could and ran to the common room and grabbed a cross, convinced it was some sort of demon.
Upon telling my grandmother this, her face went white, as if she wasn't as shocked as afraid, and as if she knew something about it. She called a priest into the house and had him bless the place. When he opened the door to the basement he stopped abruptly and slowly descended. He performed his blessing down there and confided in us that he had felt the same feeling of dread, but that the house was protected by the lord now and we had nothing to fear.
I was always wary after that, but never experienced it again, and certainly never went near the basement. As I grew up, it weighed less on me, and I thought that maybe I was just a kid who spooked himself, maybe I had a grandmother who was so religious that she thought a non-existent demon was present, and maybe the priest felt what we were telling him we had felt, and it wasn't real.
Unfortunately for that theory, and the reason I share this, is because I learned a few years ago that the family that had moved into the house after my grandparents moved to Florida had abruptly moved out. They had forfeited their down payment and left immediately because, and I quote from the realtor's report, “The demons in the basement were terrorizing their children to an unbearable degree.”
So I don't know what was down there, but it wasn't human, it wasn't benevolent, and it wasn't make believe.
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