Not everyone believes in the supernatural. Many skeptics think there is always an explanation for the unexplained. However, even skeptics turn into believers when they find themselves in the midst of strange and—dare one say—ghostly occurrences. Keep reading to hear creepy tales from Redditors who had spine-chilling supernatural experiences that left them scratching their heads and scared for their lives.
1. A Gastly Ghost
When I lived on my parents’ farm, one day, my sister was looking out the kitchen window which overlooked the barn and the rest of the yard. Suddenly, I heard her gasp. She told me to come to see something freaky. I looked out, and there was a shadow moving back and forth slowly between the fuel tank and the little shed. I told her since it was windy that night, it was probably a shadow that the yard light had cast.
She said, “Okay”, and went to bed. There were other normal, calm nights when we would see that shadow. We noticed it liked to hang out near the fuel tank, so we joked and named it “the fuel tank ghost”. We'd even play around and “talk” to it while gassing up machinery. We had never mentioned this to our parents or friends because we didn't think it was actually a ghost— just a shadow that was cast from the yard light.
Then on one random summer night, my best friend came to pick me up at around 11 PM. She was waiting outside for about 10 minutes before I got in the car. She looked at me and asked, “Why is your dad still outside? I thought your parents went to bed at 8 PM or something”, which was true. I asked her what she was talking about and where he was.
She pointed to the fuel tank. She said she saw a man walking by the fuel tank, who had just disappeared into the dark. No one fuels up after dark anymore.
2. Better Bee-ware
When I was very young, we lived in a townhouse in Surrey, Vancouver. My dad was away at work, and my mom was home looking after me. She told me that there were a few reasons we moved from that house. My mom and dad had this coffee table that belonged to her grandmother. It was left to my mom upon the grandmother’s passing.
My mom would place the table, which was more of a side table, next to my dad’s sitting chair in the living room. Then we started noticing something bizarre. Every other night or so, this table would move by itself from one corner of the room to the other, often near the window on the other side of the room. My parents do NOT sleepwalk, and I was too young to do anything but drool in my crib.
My parents would often be woken up by voices in our living room and basement. Because of this, my mom would send my dad down to the basement to check it out. The basement was completely bare, with just linoleum flooring. It had no leaks, no animals, and only boxes. But my dad always found something chilling: He always said he saw watery and muddy footprints on the floor leading up the stairs.
By the time he returned to clean them up, they would be gone. Then, one day, my mother put me down on the kitchen floor to play while she did laundry in the other room. She left me alone in the kitchen for not even two minutes and came back to find a giant crack in the wall with bees swarming out of it. I was covered in them from head to toe, and she immediately called for help. By the time the first responders arrived, the bees were flying out the kitchen door and off of me. I wasn't stung once.
3. Was It Real Or A Snow Job?
When I was 17 or 18, I remember seeing a girl about my age who got hit by a car. I was home alone and sneaking drinks from my parents’ stash. It was late and snowing out, and I'm pretty sure the driver had been drinking and didn't see her. She must have assumed the guy would notice her and let her cross, but he clearly didn't. That terrible sight still haunts me.
She was hit by the car and must have flown a good 20 feet into the trunk of a big oak tree. I didn't actually see her get hit. I had just looked outside because I liked the way the snow looked and saw her contorted body laying against the tree with blood soaking her light blonde hair. I grabbed my phone and ran outside to see if she was still alive.
The body was gone, but there were footprints in the snow where she had been walking, a mark in the snow where she was laying, a dent in the tree, and a smattering of blood trickling into the snow. I was confused, but I saw footprints leading away from the body. I must have been too far from my house for the cordless phone to work, so I had to go back inside to call the authorities. But this nightmare was only beginning.
I turned to my house and noticed that it was completely dark. I was a little freaked out already, but I forgot to put on a jacket, so I forced myself to go inside. I tried the lights, and the power was out. All of the other houses and street lights had power, but it was about 1 AM, and I didn't want to bother my neighbors. I tried the cordless phone again, but it didn’t work.
I went to the hardwired phone, and that line was out as well. I grabbed my jacket and a flashlight and immediately got out of my creepy house. I looked around for the girl and noticed that the tracks were leading both toward and away from where the girl was lying. Further investigation showed that there were two sets of tracks leading to the road—one set of large bootprints and one much smaller set.
Someone must have come looking for her and brought her inside. But a feeling deep down told me something was wrong. I was tired, cold, and pretty shaken, so I decided to brave my house again. I remembered a spare cell phone my parents had for emergencies, so I slowly made my way to the stairs, stopping at the bottom and turning my flashlight off.
The light was casting a host of moving shadows, each one competing for my startled attention. I let my eyes adjust and climbed the creaking stairs to my parents' room. I opened their drawer and heard a whoosh behind me. It was the wind belting the side of the house. I grabbed the cell phone and tried to turn it on, but it didn’t have any power. I took it downstairs with the charger and sat on the couch waiting for it to charge.
The next thing I remember was sudden uproarious laughter, and a flurry of lights and colors as my eyes flew open. I had fallen asleep on the couch, and the lights came back on, along with a late-night episode of The Nanny. I grabbed the cell phone and practically ran outside with my shoes half on, only to see that the marks in the snow were completely covered. I examined the tree, and the blood was gone. I was thoroughly convinced that the event was real, but nothing remained of it.
4. Holding On To A Grudge
When I'm stressed, I get chronic sleep paralysis where one is still dreaming but believes they are awake, and their body hasn’t woken up yet, so they’re unable to move. One can also hallucinate a tormentor is responsible for this temporary paralysis; mine was the woman from The Grudge or Samara from The Ring. "Literal nightmare" doesn't even cover it.
Once, when I had an important exam, the ghost woman from The Grudge came up from under my bed, making that grating noise and intense eye contact. I was frozen with fear and couldn’t move an inch. She continued to make her way toward me slowly, and when she was about an inch from my face, I snapped out of it.
I thought I had gotten out of bed to shake myself out of it because I felt like I was awake. As I moved for the door, I started to get lower and lower to the ground until I was lying on it. I was again unable to move. Then, the ghost woman emerged from under the bed again towards me; except that time, I felt I was awake. It was horrifying.
I woke up just before she got me and turned on every light. I went straight to the balcony to get cold and make sure I was up. I didn’t sleep for about two days after that.
5. Game Over
After a long night of gaming on the computer, I saw a flash of white from the corner of my eye. I was in a dark, empty room, with only the monitor light. I thought nothing of it and went back to gaming. I saw it again, only that time, I caught a longer glimpse enough to make out a slender weasely form. I thought at first my roommates' ferrets had escaped.
I became annoyed, checked the ferrets and made sure they were in their room, and returned to the computer. The white flash sprung from one dark corner to the middle of the room, about five feet from where I was sitting. That's when I finally got a good look at the "thing." In that flash, I saw red eyes and a furry form. I shrieked and toppled backward in the chair. All I could think is this was the end. I never saw it again, but the vivid memory of it still scares me to no end.
6. The Ghost Of Christmas Eve
I used to work at a cheap movie theater that got all the movies after they were done at the bigger nicer cinemas. We always joked about a ghost that haunted the place because we always heard whistling. You could whistle part of a song, and you would hear someone whistle the rest. We kind of laughed about it and went on with our lives.
One day I was up in the projection area, and I heard someone say my name. I yelled back, "WHAT"? But, there was no answer. I walked downstairs and asked my coworkers what they wanted. They were slammed busy at the front desk, so no one had come upstairs. I thought I was just hearing things. My family doesn't celebrate Christmas so I would always volunteer to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
On Christmas Eve, I was working the night shift alone. I was waiting for a couple of people to finish watching Lord of the Rings so I could go home. After the movie was out, I ran upstairs, stopped the projector, and ran back downstairs to clean the theater. No one else was in the building at that point. Halfway through cleaning the theater, I suddenly got this terrible feeling in my gut. One of those "I shouldn't be here right now" feelings.
I looked up and saw a man-shaped shadow in the projection booth. I ran out of the theater, turned off all the lights, and ran out the door. I turned around and saw that there was a neon sign behind the snack bar that was still on. I worked up some courage and ran back inside to turn it off. I jumped over the counter, turned the light off, and jumped back out the door.
By the time I was out the door, I turned back around and saw the light flickering back on. I ran back in and turned it off again. I turned to my right and saw a flash of light coming from the middle of the dark lobby. I turned, ran, and never looked back.
7. We Were Taken On A Strange Journey
I was part of a Rocky Horror cast based at an old movie palace-type theater in my hometown. Before it was a theater, it was a hotel. Several travelers took their own lives there over the years. A few years ago, one of my good friends actually passed there. One of the theater managers who had worked there for years refused to be there alone.
I knew dozens of people who claimed to have seen weird things occur. These were people who I trusted and were level-headed. We had professional paranormal investigators come in and look around. I don't believe in anything supernatural; however, there was one chilling thing that I just couldn't explain. I was there with some friends late one night around 3 AM.
For some reason, the lobby was lit with blood-red lights, and my friends and I were hanging out there. On a whim, I went into the actual theater part of the theater. None of the houselights were on, but the theater had murals lit by blacklights on either side of the screen. I was standing in this cavernous theater, with the red lights fading to black behind me and a ghostly blue light ahead.
The screen was pitch black. Looking into that darkness was like staring into an abyss. I was driven to keep going forward and kept stumbling toward the darkness even though I could feel unbridled animal terror in my gut. It was as though I was hypnotized. It was terrifying.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show,Twentieth Century Fox
8. He Got Under My Skin
I was with my girlfriend and her family at a going away party for some members of her family who were moving away. It was 3 PM on a Saturday, and the weather was pretty sweet. We were watching Tangled, and it had just ended. When it finished, my girlfriend’s nephew took the remote and hit a button causing it to change inputs and go to static.
My girlfriend’s niece who was three stared at the static blankly for a few seconds and whispered, "Skin taker, skin taker". I promptly freaked out, snatched the remote from the nephew, and turned the television off as fast as humanly possible. To this day, that kid creeps me out.
9. Southern Charms
Before I was born, we used to live in a large house near Fairfax, Virginia, on the old Civil War battlegrounds. This house was built next to a building that was used as a field hospital back during that time. Our house itself was built over an officer's residence. On many nights, my parents swear they saw figures walking around outside and would occasionally hear sounds in the house.
Doors opened, sinks turned on, etc., but there was nothing violent or disturbing. The figures were scary but never did any harm and would not hang around long. At that time, my sister was still a baby, so my parents had a baby monitor. One night, my sister started to cry in her crib. While my parents were arguing about who would go comfort her, they heard a sound that stopped them in their tracks.
There was a “Thump, thump, thump, crreeeeeaaaaakkkk”. Over the monitor, you could hear the door to my sister's room open. My dad, freaking out, grabbed it and quietly moved to her room. Then, he heard the monitor utter, "Shhhh". Her crib mobile started to turn on its own, and a kindly, southern voice soothed her. After she was done crying, the voice was gone, and all was silent.
The rest of the time living there, small benevolent acts were done by this gentleman ghost. My family thinks it was an old officer from back in the day who was being kind to the people who now lived there.
10. Bright Lights, Big Scare
In 7th grade, I was walking with some friends. We looked above a cornfield and saw a bright light floating around. Then, it started moving towards us, so we booked it into the nearest neighborhood and screamed the whole way. The rest of the night was uneventful, but the next night was my terror. I had just gotten up to go to the bathroom, and 15 minutes after I laid back down, my entire vision blanked white.
Panicking, I ran out of my room and into my living room where my mom was reading. I stayed with her until she went to sleep, then reluctantly went back to my own room. I didn’t sleep for days because of the fear of the white light.
11. Yeti Or Not, We Were Done
When I was 18, my buddy and I were spending a weekend at my grandparents’ house to go deer hunting. On the first morning, at around 3:00 AM, we left the house and headed out to the woods. We were both kind of groggy, and when we walked out the door, there was what appeared to be a medium/large white dog up on the hill behind the house.
As we were walking down the driveway, the dog stood up, morphed into a humanoid-shaped figure, and took off running into the woods. At that point, I stopped and started wondering if I was still asleep. My buddy looked up at me and asked if the dog just stood up on two legs and ran away. I don't remember what I said, but we turned around and went back inside.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Warner Bros.
12. Shadow Man
As a kid, I used to hear random voices in my house when I was completely alone. I didn't tell anyone for a while because I didn't want to seem crazy. However, once I mentioned it to other family members, they told stories of the rocking chair I had as a baby rocking by itself at night.
It would only stop when someone came up the staircase to see why I was awake and would find an empty chair. Other times, I would lose an object for months at a time.
One day, I lost my ski mask. After coming back from dinner the mask was inexplicably sitting at the doorway to my room. Everyone in my family swore they didn't put it there and had no clue where it was. However, that still wasn't the weirdest thing that happened.
That was when my dog would get up, look at the front door, and just growl for no reason. One day, we took a picture of our staircase and looking back at it, you could clearly see the shadow of a man walking up the stairs even though no one was there.
13. The Moment He Took Flight
When my dad passed, my brothers, my mom, and I were all there. As he was in the process of his last agonal respirations, we knew time was short. He took his last one at 12:00, and what I saw rise up from his chest at that moment, I cannot explain. Something white and translucent floated/rose/drifted from his body. It was like watching a helium balloon take flight in a wind that had no specific direction. No one else saw it. After that, he would visit me in my dreams, telling me things are fine.
14. Forest Of Illuminations
My boss and I were metal detecting on a set of trails. We had started about 30 minutes before dusk, made our way to the back of the trails, and started returning as the last bit of waning light was disappearing into the darkness. Because it had become hard to see at that point, we were both walking with our heads down, looking at the trail directly in front of us.
Curious as to how much further we had to walk, I looked directly forward, and something caught my eye. I started to yell, "What…" as my boss called my name and said, "What is...what the”? About 75 feet in front of us was a glowing form levitating five feet off the ground in front of a tree. It looked like a floating ghost decoration you would see in somebody's yard for Halloween, except it was illuminated from within.
As soon as we started making noise, it floated down the trail away from us, then whooshed to the left into the forest at a rapid rate. I said, "Was that a fl...", and he cut me off and said, "Floating illuminated blanket that just shot into the forest at 30 miles per hour"? Shocked, I replied, "Yeah". The hairs on my body were standing up on end.
We hightailed it out of there, gripping our spades and shovels like we never wanted to let go until we were inside the truck and out of the parking lot. We've been back a couple of times, trying to provoke it to happen again, but have been unsuccessful. I'm still not sure what it was, but it was definitely the creepiest, most inexplicable thing that I had ever seen.
15. Hands Off The Ouija Board
When my mom was in high school, she lived in a big old farmhouse in a rural area. It was allegedly haunted by a farmhand who lost his life in an accident 50 years prior. My mom, her sister, and three of their friends decided to contact the spirit using an Ouija board and talk to it. They put an entirely blank sheet of paper in the far corner of the room with a pencil, and all had both hands on the board centerpiece.
After attempting to contact the spirit with little success, my aunt suddenly started screaming. Despite the fact all of their hands were on the board, my aunt had a large, red handprint on her arm as if someone with large hands had hit her, and that's what she said she felt. The piece of paper that was across the room was now a few feet from where it was originally and had a large "L" on it.
The next day, my mom and her sister went to the library to look up who the late farmhand was His name was Lawrence. After that, Ouija boards were banned at my parents’ house, and my brothers and I were forbidden from "attempting to contact the deceased or rousing any ghosts".
16. Fire And Brimstone
My cousin, a friend, and I were driving down a road we had covered many times before. All of a sudden, I was in some type of inferno, or at least what my imagination must have thought it looked like. It was all red, with fire, and a giant devil-looking thing way off in the distance. When I came back to myself, we were on the side of the road, and my cousin asked if anyone else felt that.
We both nodded and then got back on the road. We never discussed what we experienced or ever spoke of it again. I wasn't religious before that happened and still wasn't after, but it was still very odd and seriously creepy.
17. Dream Weaver
Years ago, my classmate was telling me about her dream from the night before. I stopped her and told her that she had already told me it, and she said she hadn’t. Then, I finished telling her what her dream was about and she was speechless. I’ve had some serious déjà vu feelings in my life, but that one stood out the most.
18. This Didn’t Sit Well
When I was little, I used to have a stool in my room. It was a heavy thing made of solid wood that had originally been a chair until the back had been sawed off. One evening as I was lying in bed asleep, it dragged itself across the floor. Not far, just a foot or two. Unfortunately, I didn't see it occur since it was behind my bed, but I heard it on the hardwood. When I called for my mom, I asked her, "Didn't that used to be over there"? She had heard it as well and agreed that it had in fact been further into the corner.
19. Scaredy Cat
I was sleeping in my room when I heard scratching at the door. This was normal because I sleep with my door closed and my cat loved sleeping on my bed. I got up to let her in, and for a second, I thought I saw a person out of the corner of my eye. I stood there for a minute but didn't see it again. I got back into bed, and my cat started meowing. That alone was strange because she almost never made any noise.
She jumped up on my bed and tried to crawl under the covers. I knew right then something was seriously wrong. That cat absolutely HATED being under anything. She managed to crawl under the blankets with me and started growling. I looked under the blankets and tried to calm her down. When I looked back up, I saw a human-shaped form standing about three feet away from my bed.
I couldn't look away, and I couldn't move. It slowly backed away, and my cat kept growling, then I passed out. I woke up with the cat in my bed and the door to my room open.
20. Too Many Kooks In The Kitchen
One night, I came home late from a club. I was sober as I had work the next day. I pulled up outside my house at around 3 AM and found my mom waiting at the door. She didn’t look right, but I figured it may have been because it was so late. She turned right and went into her bedroom, but while she was closing the door, she also went straight down the corridor into the kitchen.
I thought I was seeing things, as I had just clearly witnessed her walking into the bedroom and she was still closing the door. So, I walked down the corridor into the kitchen, and there was my mom with her back turned and looking out of the window. She was swaying ever so slightly from side to side. I had this sudden burst of goose pimples, and I said, "Mum”?
She turned around with this really creepy toothy smile, and when our eyes met, I swear I heard thunder and collapsed. Everything sounded like I was underwater and I couldn't move. I must have been screaming because my sister ran into the kitchen. She looked messed up and creepy too. My dad came running in, he put his hand on my forehead and said stuff I couldn't understand.
Then everything was gone. I lay there sobbing and shaking as I had no idea what had just happened. After that, I was prone to freakish nightmares, and to this day, if my mom is in the kitchen when I visit her, I won't walk in.
21. A Dark And Lonely Road
I was driving in my hometown of Lake Luzerne in the Adirondacks of New York. I was in the thick of it, driving down lonely forgotten roads. Within the next twenty miles—in both directions— there were no buildings or cars pulled over or cars that I had even passed. While I was going around a bend, I saw what looked like headlights. As I drew closer, I realized something didn't make sense: They were coming from inside the woods.
There were two large columns of light. They were decently far in but very bright. The shadows cast on the forest were unlike anything I had ever seen. I had such a strange mix of emotions; I just wanted to get away. When I passed the point most perpendicular to the road, I did not look at them and did not look in my rearview mirror either. I've never felt that way before or again in my life.
22. Room And Doom
My family and I had moved into a new house. We sold our old house and rented a house right across the road from it. My family was to move to another country, and I was to stay in the city for college. I picked the room on the top floor, and it seemed perfect for me. I had my own bathroom and bedroom that was right across from this old attic where we stored some of our stuff.
Everything was fine in the house. It was a bit old and creepy, but nothing out of the ordinary. Or so I thought... Two or three months later, things changed. I thought I must have been paranoid or nervous about college or something, so I never took it seriously. Then, one night I was in bed watching Whose Line Is It Anyway? on my laptop.
I was trying to fall asleep, but being a teen, I woke up at 2–3 PM in the afternoon that day and couldn't shut my eyes. I closed my laptop and went to bed. Suddenly, a rush of anger went through me. It wasn’t anything I had felt before. I stood up and touched my lamp. The light was on the weakest level, but I saw a shadow of a man leaning toward me.
It lasted about a second, but long enough to know what I saw. I thought I was just tired, so I tried to go back to bed. About five minutes later, my lamp went from level one to two, and then ultimately three. My TV and laptop went on and off. This happened at least two or three times. I ran and slept in my sister's bed that night and never slept in that haunted bedroom again.
23. Who Was That Masked Man?
I was on a volunteering trip in Sudan and was staying in a medium-sized village with a few hundred people. On the first night, we had a nice meeting period and got to know the village. Everything was going well, then on the evening of the third day, things changed. I woke up in the middle of the night and could hear the fire cracking and saw the moon shining through my hut.
I heard some mumbling and became curious. I crawled out, poked my eyes through, and saw a few men seated towards the fire with their arms loosely hung on the ground while a man in a tribal helmet danced holding a staff and throwing objects into the fire, creating random colorings. After about 15 seconds, the masked man suddenly looked directly at me and stared. I felt panic race through me.
He made a loud hiss and howl and stopped. I booked it back into my bed and attempted to go back to sleep. The next day, one of the English-speaking elders came up to me privately and softly said, "It is best to sleep at night". I said, “Okay”, didn't think much of it, and went about my day. However, I could feel a nervous tension towards me around the village.
At dinner that evening, the elders were separated from the majority and seemed fearful and angry toward a few of the others. Things started to get heated, but cooler heads prevailed. Strangely, that night I awoke again, which was very unlike me. My eyes were wide open, and I felt like I never went to sleep. Then, I heard a deep, dark voice bellowing out from the window.
Next, I heard what could only be described as the sound of skin being wiped on glass. It was extremely loud. I was truly petrified. Nervously, I crept out of bed, having no idea what I was looking for or why. By the time my eyes met the fire, I felt a deep mulch in my stomach—a sharp pain of fear and confusion. I was staring at two levitating men facing the fire, hovering, arms raised, legs dangling.
The masked man had his staff rooted to the ground, was throwing objects into the fire, and was mumbling and growling, almost tongue-twisted. I was speechless. I just felt darkness, pain, and anger surrounding me. Eagle-eyed, I just gazed in a trance, fixed on what was occurring. There was a sudden loud crack similar to one of a tree snapping that you would hear during a storm.
The levitating men immediately dropped like rag dolls. Instantaneously, the masked man snapped a look right behind and directly at me. Naturally, I rushed myself back to bed and prayed hoping nothing would happen to me. The next morning I was politely and without any excuse, asked to leave. There were no goodbyes—nothing. I left, and that was that.
24. That Was Some Vacation!
When we were about 13, my cousin and I—being of scientific minds—really wanted to have a supernatural experience. So, when we were in Mexico staying at our grandma's house, we decided we would sleep in the room where supposedly all the creepy stuff went down. The first few days nothing happened. There was just your odd noise here and there, but we thought, "It's an old house, of course, it’s gonna go bump in the night".
We stayed there for about a month with no ghostly interference. Obviously, we were disappointed. On our last week, it was about 2 AM, and we were up talking when we heard something—or someone—coming down the stairs leading to our room. It sounded like a kid jumping from step to step all the way to the bottom. We looked at each other.
We were both terrified, but we didn't want to make any noise. Because I was scared, I said we should both sleep in the same bed. He agreed, and when I got up to walk over to his bed, the bed shook violently. It looked like we were having a major earthquake, but it was only affecting the bed. The force knocked him off the bed, and we ran upstairs. Needless to say, we didn't sleep in that room for the rest of the vacation.
25. Strolling Through The Garden’s Pearly Gates
Several years ago, my parents’ house was being remodeled, and the wiring was being redone. The house was on an orchard, and we were in and out of the house often because it was harvest time. One afternoon after returning, the electrician mentioned to my mother that my father’s father had dropped by and enquired about my father.
My mother asked how he knew it was my grandfather and he told her that this little old gentleman with a bald head had walked into the kitchen, told him his name—Raphael—and asked if my dad was there. The electrician told him he wasn’t sure where he was and that his best bet was to look in the orchard. At that point, the old man said, “Thank you,” and left by walking around the corner.
My mother calmly asked a few more questions regarding his appearance to confirm who it might have been and said nothing more to the electrician. A similar event had occurred in the garden the summer before with a friend of my mother’s who hadn’t met my grandfather. My mother walked back with drinks for her, and her friend remarked on the lovely conversation that she had had with Raphael. At the time both incidents occurred, my grandfather, Raphael hadn’t been alive for almost 12 years.
26. A Fairy Tale
A few friends and I were hanging out in the woods at this cool rock that had a two-inch "X" carved into it. We noticed what we thought was an odd fluorescent blue insect flying very slow at about shoulder level. Upon closer examination, the only word I can think of to classify this thing as is a fairy. It was humanoid in shape and appeared to be dressed in a flowing robe and had some sort of headgear or antennae.
I cupped my hands around it to get a closer look, and as soon as I unclasped them, it flew straight up into the trees through my hands. I scoured the internet to see if there were any insects close to that or even the same color, but there weren’t. The town had a history of paranormal anomalies, including unexplained stone chambers thought to be constructed by pre-Columbian Celtic Druids. I'm skeptical by nature but to this day, my two friends and I are baffled by what we saw.
27. The Scream
I was pulling an all-nighter. It was 3:45 AM and my dogs were barking, so I got up to settle them down. I did and after a few minutes, there was this horrifying noise like no animal I've ever heard. The best way I could describe it was as if someone was screaming in horror mixed with a moaning cat or dog. I stood there listening and couldn’t tell if it was coming from the outside or the inside.
After a few minutes, I went back into my room and I heard it again, closer. This time, it sounded like it was outside the door. I knew better than to go investigate, so I just sat on my bed and listened for about another five minutes, when it stopped.
28. Some Things Are Cellar Left Alone
I worked at an antiques shop in a Victorian house that was haunted. I never felt anything, but customers would feel it. People would go upstairs and come back down, hesitate, then ask, "Is this house haunted"? One day, a guy came in and told me that every time he drove past, he wanted to come in but was afraid. The shop had been there a long time and he had come in with his mother when he was about ten.
There was a sun porch in the back and he said he wanted to walk back there because when he'd been a kid he had passed out in that room. He said he walked into the room and "smelled wet burlap", like it was over his face, and then passed out. This was a big guy. He started down the hall but couldn't make himself go in that room.
There was a cement cellar under that room, with cement stairs. It had like a storm cellar door on the outside that you would pull up on to open. The door was rotted and was no longer attached; it just lay over the steps. I had the idea to take a flashlight and go take a look. Once I stood on the top step, there was no way I was going down. All I could think of was that someone may have done something down in that cellar.
29. Something Was Astir In The Kitchen
I was on vacation, staying at my uncle's house. At that time, I was used to stay up late at night on my phone. Midnight came and I heard the front door closing, though it was very faint. I didn't think anything of it since we had three dogs, and they would have started barking if something was off. After 30 minutes, I heard someone—or something—body slamming the door.
We were all sleeping at the same room. I almost started hyperventilating because it was so scary. However, none of my uncle's family woke up. After that, I heard the screen door from the other room opening. Minutes passed and nothing was going on. There was just complete silence, and I was contemplating whether to wake my uncle up.
Then I heard pots and metal stuff in the kitchen being dropped and still, no one was waking up. After that, I fell asleep. I told my cousin what happened that night, and the next night he said that he heard a knife scraping on the wall.
30. It Was Written In The Clouds
My grandfather was a horrible man. He was emotionally void and always hid behind the Bible. One day, I was doing dishes at my kitchen sink, and out of nowher a crow flew down and landed on the branch outside the window I was looking out of. Then, a second crow landed beside the first, then a third. All three stared at me. I got really creeped out.
Then, they all flew away, and I watch them go. Up in the sky was the scariest cloud. It looked like the head of a sick old man with his eyes bulging out of his head. Coming out of his mouth, was a perfect cross. The site of this cloud was so unsettling I grabbed my phone to snap a picture of it. As I held up my phone to snap the picture, it rang in my hand. It was my sister calling me to tell me our grandfather had just passed.
31. The Clairvoyant
About a year before I was born, my father was very sick. Doctors tried all kinds of tests, but they couldn't diagnose him. They thought he had HIV or something along those lines. So, my Cuban mother decided to take him to a psychic in downtown Miami. My father thought this all was a load of nonsense at the moment. The psychic said that he was going to be fine, but then the crazy part happened.
The psychic began to describe my father's grandfather in extreme detail as if she knew him. She said he was 5'4, Irish, had a cane, etc. This freaked out my parents. A month later, the doctor told my family that my father was fine, but it was still a mystery as to what caused him to be so sick. Sometime later, my Cuban grandfather was placed in hospice care after his kidneys failed.
A few days before he passed, he called my grandmother into his room. He began shouting, "Julie! Julie! Come quick! My father is here"! My grandfather was 81 at the time. His father would have been well over 100 and long gone by then. My grandmother played along, pretending that she saw his father too. He ended up talking to him for hours before he disappeared.
32. Stranger In The Night
My mom’s friend was visiting. She told us that one day, she opened her eyes in the middle of the night, groggy, and couldn't really see. She felt someone watching her. She regained focus and saw a man "crouching in the corner of the room in a frog-like position", grinning at her. He stood up and was about 8 feet tall. His legs were really long and his body was short compared to them.
He proceeded to walk past the foot of her bed grinning at her the whole time. He walked right out of the room and about four seconds later, she heard her 9-year-old daughter scream bloody murder. She rushed out of the room to her daughter who was inconsolable and said between sobs, "She saw a scary man walk past her door".
33. Footsteps In The Field
In the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school, I was at camp for a week. It was located in the secluded farmlands/woods of Pennsylvania. There weren’t any towns within 30 miles of the place. One afternoon, I was lying in the field at the camp, relaxing and enjoying the nice summer day. It was a pretty big field that was used for sports and other things.
As I was lying there, I shut my eyes for a few minutes but didn't fall asleep. As my eyes closed, I could distinctly hear the sound of footsteps running away from me into the cornfield about 100 yards away. As soon as I heard the noise, I opened my eyes and sat up to see who was beside me and more importantly who had snuck up on me so quietly.
I sat up and found I was completely alone. No one was within 100 feet of me, let alone within earshot. I sat up and I heard the footsteps running into the field, but with no body attached. It was much too loud to be any sort of small animal, and I would have been able to see anything larger.
34. He Was Left Unplugged
One night, my TV switched on all by itself at 2 AM. I always switched it off, and I was sleeping in my bedroom with the door closed. I woke up annoyed and totally scared. There was a poker game on and someone kept saying, “Come on Paul, it's your turn”. It happened again after two weeks. Since then, I unplug my TV before I go to sleep.
35. Roadside Revelation
My sister and I were driving down the road after school one day. When we got to one particular spot, she said she had a really bad feeling about the area and pointed to the side of the road. I asked her what she meant by that and she said, "I don't know. I just have a bad feeling". Later that night, we saw on the news that a body was found wrapped up on the side of that very same road in that same location.
36. He High-Rolled It Out Of There
My friend worked at a Harrah's Casino in Maricopa, Arizona. That particular casino is out in the middle of nowhere on the Native American reservation. My friend is a normal, emotionally stable guy. He was working late around 3 AM on the casino floor, but was wide awake since that was his normal shift. The casino was empty and he was walking into the vacant men's bathroom on the opposite side of the floor.
He walked in, did his business, and turned around to go wash his hands when he noticed someone standing at the sink staring into the mirror. He thought to himself, "that's strange, I didn't even hear anybody walk in". He got closer to a sink about five rows down and began washing his hands. He glanced over again to realize it was not a man that was standing at the sink but a woman in a red dress.
Right when he was about to say something about her using the wrong restroom, this "woman" turned her head slowly toward him. He just stared at her in disbelief thinking this chick must be inebriated or blind to not realizing she was in the men's bathroom. As her head slowly turned, her eyes were a dark glowing red. He described it as the red eye you would get when taking a photo of someone.
He freaked out, didn’t know what was happening, and looked down to notice she didn’t have any legs. Instead, she had what he described as the bottom half of a deer for legs and she was walking on hooves. As this thing turned towards him, it starts to move aggressively, and my friend ran out of the bathroom obviously scared to bits. He had his buddy review the surveillance tape of that area around the bathroom, but all that was seen was him going in, then him running out.
37. Keep On Truckin’
I'm not one to believe in ghosts, but some strange things have gone on while on the highway. I was driving home one night from a friend's place. It was about midnight, and ahead of me was a slow-moving white pickup doing about 50 mph. I closed in fast and passed him. A moment later, I glanced back in the rearview mirror and his headlights disappeared. There was no way he could have turned off that quick, because there were no roads intersecting the highway there.
I slowed way down to see if he had trouble, but nothing. I didn't pay much mind to it until about a month later—on a different highway—and there was a slow-moving white truck ahead of me again. I went around to pass, and the same thing happened. The truck's headlights disappeared when there was no way he could have turned them off. To this day I'm sure that those trucks were the same and disappeared into thin air.
38. The Lilith Myth
When my son was born, he would sleep in his crib in our room. One night, my wife and I both woke up suddenly, at the same time. Our room had a large mirror over the dresser. Coming out of the mirror was a black-scaled, bare woman. My wife shouted, “Go Away”! This apparition, or whatever it was, looked straight at me, then sunk back into the mirror. We immediately turned on all lights, grabbed our son, and drove to her parents’ house.
We both saw it and were completely freaked out. Being the geek that I am, I started researching what it could have been. I even spoke with several professors with backgrounds in folklore. One of them pointed out a book by Joshua Trachtenberg about Jewish folklore, more specifically, the chapter on the “Lilith” myth. Lilith was a first wife of Adam who will try to take away the soul of uncircumcised baby boys.
She appears as a dark woman who enters homes through “vanity” in mirrors. My son was uncircumcised and that completely freaked me out. To protect against Lilith, you ask the three angels Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangolef to retrieve her for Adam and protect your son by using an image depicting the angels. I guess being scared can make you believe in some things you wouldn't ordinarily believe in.
39. A Sixth Sense
My mom got up one morning and felt weird. She told my dad she felt something bad had happened, so she needed to hurry up and get dressed. While in the shower, my aunt called and said her mother-in-law had passed. My grandmother and I also have weird premonitions that come true. My weirdest one was when I called my mom to see if she wanted to go see my grandmother—her mom—who lived 30 minutes away.
I told her I had just woken up and felt I really needed to see her. My mom told me she was at the beach with her sister. A few minutes later we got a call, and my grandmother was being rushed to the hospital because she had a heart attack.
40. Check Please!
I ran a restaurant out of a location where the previous owner had passed in the building. Others had claimed to have experienced ghostly events, but I had not. One night after closing, two other employees and I were walking out when one of the check presentation trays lifted itself off the counter and tumbled to the floor. All three of us witnessed it and none of us denied it.
41. A Date With Dr. Doom?
I was in the hospital. I woke up in the middle of the night and to the left foot of my bed, there was a shadowy figure standing there. I was half asleep so I was looking at it like "what is this”? Then, about two seconds after I was staring at it, an arm came out of it and pointed straight to the door. It wanted me to get out of the room. I said, “NOPE" and went back to sleep.
42. Cross-Country Connection
I went to California from NY to work for the summer. When I got there, the job turned out to be really sketchy and I had no place to live. I was miserable, I was still living out of my car, and sleeping on the floor of a friend's hotel room when my car was broken into. My computer, digital camera, iPod, etc., were taken. I absolutely lost it and was on the verge of tears.
Shortly after it happened, my sister called me asking what was wrong. We very rarely called each other, but she said she had a sudden, sinking feeling that something had happened to me, and she needed to call me. To this day I still have no explanation for it.
43. Ms. Flynn Blew In
I am the eldest of two adopted sons. The house I grew up in was originally a boarding house during the early 1900s. It had been lifted a level and had an addition put on the back, so that the section where my adopted grandmother lived was almost like a separate house on top of my parents’ place. That section was haunted.
I was having my first Christmas party with my girlfriend's family. Everyone except her mother was very Catholic/conservative. The rule was not to talk about religion, politics, other countries or races, and no drinking. The conversation somehow turned to supernatural stuff and I started talking about the ghost we had in the house.
I explained how we would see her and her cat every once and a while, and how windows would open. My girlfriend’s grandmother cut me off and blurted out, "The curtains would fly shut"?! It turned out she grew up down the street from the house I grew up in and she knew "Ms. Flynn" for years before she passed in the bed that was still attached to the upstairs bedroom floor. By the end of our conversation, the whole room was silent.
44. Graveyard Giggles
I don't believe in ghosts, spirits, demons, the devil, etc. I come from a Catholic-Christian home so they all believe in that stuff. One day, I was telling my cousin that I am not scared of any of that and he thought I was just trying to sound tough in front of his girl and other relatives. I said, “No, really. I'm not scared of any of that”. So he said, "Let's go leave you alone in a graveyard for a few minutes then".
I said, “Sure”, which he was not expecting. Around 1 AM, we all got in his car and we drove 30 minutes to the nearest graveyard. They dropped me off and told me they would be back in around 10 minutes. They left and I started following a path. About three minutes later, I heard footsteps and some little girls laughing in the distance. I didn't think twice about what that was at the time. A few more minutes passed and nothing interesting happened.
They came to pick me up I said it was boring. We all went home and went to sleep. The next day, I found out that my aunt was in a car crash coming home after picking up her daughter from a sleepover that she didn’t want to be part of anymore. This all happened around 3 AM. My aunt survived, but her daughter, unfortunately, did not. I never did figure what made those little girl laughing noises and it got me thinking.
45. Coq Au Verte
I lived in Paris, and across from my apartment was an office building that was only three stories high. One day, on the top of that roof, was a chicken. Chickens were never seen in Paris and especially never seen on rooftops. Even stranger was that this chicken was entirely green. A few hours later, the chicken was gone and never seen again.
46. Man Or The Moon?
I entered the bathroom in the middle of the night. There was a bright, white, crescent-shaped light shining through the window in the eastern sky. I was about to dismiss it as the moon, when it blinked. It would blink for one second every two seconds. I stood with my face into the window, watching, and it stayed in the sky for about 10 seconds, then disappeared with no other sign. I still stood there, waiting for another stray light or something that would give me evidence to say it was a man-made occurrence, but there was nothing.
47. Drowning In Sorrow
I had a cousin who drowned when I was much younger. At the time, he was off at college, so nobody knew about it until the next day. His parents were taking care of his 2-year-old niece. The night he drowned, she woke up screaming in the night and would not go to sleep. She just kept pointing to a picture of him that was on the nightstand. His parents gave it to her, and she hugged it and wouldn't let go of it all night.
48. My Theory Went Out The Window
My girlfriend suffers from pretty intense night terrors and sleep paralysis, and has since she was a kid. Usually, they are about a shadow man at the foot of her bed, or snakes in her room/bed. It gets to the point where she scares herself so badly, she bruises herself while dreaming. She has had some small terrors before, and I am usually able to calm her down quickly, convince her that nothing is there, and she just goes back to sleep.
We recently celebrated Valentine's Day by getting a hotel room, some pizza, candy, and drinks, and relaxed the night away. The night went great, and when we finally went to sleep, I was out like a light. Fifteen minutes after I passed out, she whispered, "There's someone in the room with us. I can see him, he's right there".
This hotel wasn't exactly the nicest, and it wasn't in the best area, but I felt safe. I assumed it was just another one of her night terrors. She then started screaming that he was coming closer. I bolted awake, and it was much darker in the room than it was when I went to bed. I flicked on the light, and no one was there. My girlfriend was sobbing, curled up on the bed.
With my heart racing but still unconcerned, I checked the room to calm her down. I looked everywhere, including under the bed. When I went into the bathroom, my blood went cold. The window was open about three inches when I specifically remember closing it before I went to bed; neither one of us had gotten up during the night. I didn't tell her about the window, cuddled her close, and didn’t sleep at all for the rest of the night.
49. Body Of Evidence?
When I was 10, I was dragged to school by my mother for student-teacher meetings. We weren't allowed in the classes with them, so all the sorry kids that were brought there had to wait in the office. In the office, there was no one keeping an eye on us, so we just started running around the school—to all the parts that we weren't allowed to go to.
A week before, a girl had taken her life in the woods by the school. After they found her body, it disappeared. No one knew where it was. They saw her hanging, brought her down, and did all the official stuff, but then the body was gone. While we were running around, we were in an area where all the lights were off. Suddenly, two girls ran away from the cafeteria area screaming their heads off.
So, this other guy and I went to see what they were looking at. My ten-year-old mind swore there was a body in the dessert refrigerator—her body. Everything was dark, but that fridge was lit up. I didn't sleep for a week and refused to tell my parents what I saw. Out of all of us there that night, six of us swore that we saw it. I don't know if any of them ever told anyone, but they found the girl’s body the next morning; however, no one ever said where. It was spooky.
50. The Haunting Of Emily
When I was 18 and had recently graduated high school, I was waiting for a date to go to basic training. I spent a bunch of time with a friend I had known for five years, named Gus. Gus was a really funny, smart guy but had a lot of issues at home with his parents. We used to go play trivia together at a local restaurant and hang out.
After one of these outings, I noticed something had changed. He was visibly shaken and not acting like himself. He wouldn't tell me what was wrong but insisted we meet the following week and quickly left, leaving me confused. The following week when we met, he told me the past few years he'd been having dreams where a little girl named Emily would appear and hurt him or just scare the daylights out of him.
What freaked him out so bad the week prior was that he started seeing her while he was awake. She'd follow him around and whisper things into his ear. I asked him if he had been taking anything, which he denied—except for doing some weed—but nothing else. He clearly had a big issue with telling anyone this but didn't know what to do about it.
I encouraged him to speak with a doctor and maybe go see a psychiatrist. He assured me he would. I didn't have much contact with him for a couple of weeks since I was getting busy before leaving. We found some time and I spent the weekend at his apartment. I asked him if things were any better about his issue. He told me they weren’t, and he hadn't had any help from the psychiatrist he went to see.
We spent most of the afternoon playing video games. Everything was pretty normal. Eventually, our friend Tanya showed up and the subject of Emily came up again. Gus told us one of her favorite things to do was take his childhood stuffed animal—a Beanie Baby cat he received from one of his parents—and hide it. He couldn't find it anywhere and asked us to help.
After searching for a good 30 minutes, we found it under a pile of clothes downstairs. I rolled my eyes at him, thinking he was just playing a joke, but he insisted he never takes it downstairs. We decided we were hungry and made plans to go eat. I looked at the cat, shrugged, and set it on top of his computer monitor, then went out the door.
I was the last one to leave and locked the door behind me. We come back from dinner, and Gus opened the door. I was enjoying a good chat with Tanya when Gus interrupted and asked me where I put his cat. I stepped through the door, preparing to point to his monitor and say, "There", when I noticed he was staring up at the ceiling fan that hung roughly 14 feet off the ground. I looked up, but I wasn't prepared for what I saw.
The cat was sitting on the edge of one of the blades, positioned so it was staring straight down at the door. We all stood in awkward silence for a few moments. Gus thought this was proof enough that Emily was moving things again. It was late, so we threw some clothes at the cat to knock it down and decided to call it a night. That night, I had the worst sleep I've ever had in my life.
I dreamt that all three of us were at a cafe, drinking coffee when my phone rang. I looked to see who it was and it simply said “Emily”. I didn't want to answer it but the dream kept going. I looked at Gus, told him who it was, and he and Tanya both agreed that I should answer it, so I did. The line was quiet for about two seconds and then a mind-piercing scream emanated from the phone, causing everyone to cover their ears to block out the sound.
It didn't help. I shut my eyes and when I opened them Emily was standing over me, screaming over the bodies of my two friends. I screamed and woke up, covered in sweat. Tanya and Gus were already awake and came rushing downstairs, asking me what happened. Tanya looked at me and told me I was extremely pale. At that point, I was trying to catch my breath and make sense of what had just happened in my dream.
I started saying "I had the scariest dream I ever had last night," only to be cut off mid-sentence by Gus asking if I had dreamt about Emily. When I said, “Yes”, he asked if I had accepted a call on my phone from her. Starting to realize things were getting weirder, I again said, “Yes”. They each described their own dreams exactly how I had mine, except from their point of view.
Everyone stood around pale. A few years later, I saw Gus again. He started fresh, trying to get away from the past. Apparently, it had gotten very bad and Emily wouldn't leave him alone. He couldn't sleep and after days of insomnia, he attempted to take his life. Gus said the last time he saw her was in the hospital afterward, where she giggled and said, "That was fun! Maybe I'll be back to play sometime". He didn’t see her again after that.
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