Gather around our digital bonfire, dear Pandas, as we tell scary stories in the spirit of Halloween. The spookiest event of the year is roughly two weeks away, so to get you in the mood and make your October even more haunted, we compiled a whole list of real-life creepy stories.
To find them, all you have to do is scroll down. Just be careful, don’t lose a finger in there. Wink wink.
#1
Grandma’s great aunt and her two kids died on the Titanic, went to a Titanic artifact exhibit where replica tickets were being given out, I got my grandma’s great aunt.
Image source: anon, Museums Victoria
#2
When I was 16 in the mid 90s, aka the “I know everything, I’m invincible and you can’t stop me” age, I got in a fight with an acquaintance while a whole bunch of us were hanging out at his house. Stupid fight, can’t remember what about, but I decided f**k it, I was going home. I lived about 5 miles away, but I didn’t have a car, and since it was 2am, there were no buses. I was going to walk home.
In the middle of the night, though a not-as-safe-as-it-seem neighborhood, as a tiny 16 year old girl.
So I did. I think, in hindsight, my friends either didn’t believe I was going to do it, or were too startled by the sudden argument to realize what I was doing. I left the house and started hoofing it. About a mile out, the suburban housing neighborhood melted into a main street, with highway access. I started to notice a greyish minivan following me. It would follow me, pass me, turn a corner, and about 3 blocks later, it would do the same thing. I mean, really really obvious what it was doing. I crossed over to the other side of the street so I was walking the opposite of traffic flow, and thus no car could come up behind me. It kept doing it, on the other side of the street. About a mile later, there was a 24-hour Fred Meyer (west coast USA chain grocery/all-purpose store), lights bright, but parking lot emptyish. I immediately crossed the parking lot and went to head inside.
Just before I got to the doors, the minivan that had been following me, pulled up into one of the parking spots. A guy called out from the driver side and said:
“I don’t want you to walk over here, just stay there and listen. I just wanted to let you know what I was doing. I saw you walking a while back, but I also saw a dark car that was following you. A couple of times you went to turn around, or stopped, so it started following you down a parallel side street. When I saw it, I started to follow you both, just to make sure you were safe. Go inside the store, and call someone to come pick you up, please. I haven’t seen the car since you headed across the lot.”
He waited until I was inside the store, and then pulled away. I didn’t have anyone to call, so I just let the night cashier know what was going on, and hung out with her for about an hour and a half. Then I finished the walk home. I’ve never forgotten the incident, or that man, whoever he was. During the walk, I never saw the dark car he mentioned, but I’ve always been convinced he saved my life that night.
Image source: jwiley84, MD ARIF JAWED
#3
Not to me, but to my sister.
Her husband and her had just had their first child a few months prior. My brother in law was working the graveyard shift at his job as my sister stayed home taking care of my nephew. Around 2am, she heard loud knocking on her back door. She went to go check it out and saw a lady banging on the door asking for my sister to let her in. The lady told my sister that her husband had just beat her down the street and was looking for her. My sister was hesitant to let her in since she had a newborn in the house and didn’t want to interfere. She told the lady that the best she could do was call the police for her. The lady told my sister to not call the police and to let her in. This is where my sister got suspicious. She went to get her phone and called 911. When she went back to the door, the lady was gone. The police arrived a few minutes later and they told my sister that the same situation happened a few streets down. Apparently the couple would do this act to get into peoples homes.
I’m sure this is very common but having it almost happen to my sister and my nephew just creeps me out. Some real Clockwork Orange s**t.
#4
One night, about ten months ago, there was a pretty heavy snow storm in my area. All of the roads were closed and a curfew was issued for everybody except emergency medical personnel.
I had been shoveling snow for most of the day and was dead tired come nightfall. Didn’t have the energy to do much of anything besides eat dinner and lay down. I fire up some OG Star Trek and begin to doze off.
A couple of hours later, around 1AM, I hear the sound of a door rattling and a slight whisper saying my name, “vladimir_pwnin”. I sit up a bit and realize it’s coming from my parents’ room, becoming fainter with the passing time. After 10 minutes or so, I gather up the courage to see what the hell is going on.
S****y folding knife in hand, I peak out into the hallway and don’t see anything. The noise is still coming from the room next door, the rattling becoming more rushed as I approach. Cautiously, I open the door and sneak inside. It’s pitch black and I can’t see anything.
My eyes are taking entirely too long to adjust to the darkness. I’m shuffling forward, and all of the sudden, something grabs and pulls on my leg. At this point I was so freaked out I jumped back. As the whispers continued, I recognized my dad’s voice. He was asking me for help.
He had a stroke while walking to use the bathroom around 1AM that night. After he fell, he was able to use his left foot to rattle the door to his bathroom. My mom fell asleep on the couch in the living room and wasn’t around to help or hear. I was able to grab the house phone and call 911, and despite the weather, the police and an ambulance arrived within 10 minutes.
That was the scariest night of my life. The doctors told us there wasn’t much hope for my dad before going into surgery, since he had a hemorrhagic stroke and there was a massive amount of bleeding.
Fast forward 10 months and my old man is cognitively the same, just paralyzed on his right side. He had every infection under the sun while in the hospital, but he staved them off and is still with us today. He was my best friend before the incident, and my hero after.
Tl;dr: heard some rattling and whispers, freaked out, found my dad lying on the ground after a massive stroke.
Edit: Well, this got way more attention than I had thought it would. Thanks for all of the kind replies!
Image source: anon, Ian Taylor
#5
Growing up, my bedroom was the only one that faced the front of the house/street. When I was about 8 or 9, I woke up to my dad calmly but firmly telling me to get up, go in the bathroom, and shut the door. I was annoyed because I was half asleep, but I listened. Apparently I was more tired than I realized, because I feel asleep on the bathroom floor. The next morning I asked my mom what happened. She seemed oblivious and confused. I looked at my dad like she was crazy, and I asked him why he had woken me up. He denied doing it. I was becoming frustrated to the point of tears, but I ultimately let it go.
Fast forward to college. I was home one break, and I decided to ask again. I had thought of that night off and on for years, and it still bothered me. This time, my dad goes, “Ha! I was wondering if you even remembered that.” Turns out that a lot of houses on our block were being vandalized and robbed all those years ago. Someone had broken into the garage and was inside the house. My room was partially over the garage. My dad heard it happen and quietly got me to safety. Police were called, the guy ran. He was never caught, however, and my parents didn’t want a terrified kid on their hands, so for years they pretended like nothing had ever happened. It wasn’t supernatural, but it was unsettling for sure.
Image source: Call_Me_Egg, Aedrian Salazar
#6
This is not paranormal, but was immensely creepy at the time:
I was visiting my hometown and decided to pick up my old high school friend from his house and take him to dinner and a drink to catch up. He is kinda stressed and tells me that his ex, with whom he had broken up with over 2 years prior, has been stalking him and harassing him.
I drive him home afterwards, and it starts to drizzle. As I drop him off at his house (the neighborhood was dark and quiet by now), we both notice a bag tied to my side view mirror…it was likely attached when we were at the restaurant. We open it to see a poorly taken photo of a tree taken at night with flash. There was a brief letter, obviously written from his ex, that said: “I buried our first love letter under this tree years ago. This tree is growing from our love.” I made sure my friend got into his house all right and got the heck out of there.
Image source: nehala, Jovan Vasiljević
#7
When I was a kid, I woke up in the middle of the night to my bed shaking. Normally that would scare the c**p out of me, but instead I was just kind of annoyed. I rolled over and muttered, “Stop it.”
The shaking stopped immediately. Then a male voice speaks right beside me, saying, “Sorry.” That’s when I freaked out. I’m pretty sure my childhood house was haunted.
Image source: NinaLaPirat, The Yuri Arcurs Collection
#8
I’ve had multiple times when i’ve woken up in the middle of the night and was sure I could see a figure in my room until I turned on my bedside light.
Usually this scares me a bit but my most memorable one was waking up thinking I saw some short figure at the end of my bloody bed and saying “f off I’m trying to sleep” then returning to burying my face into the comfort of my pillow.
Seems like it worked.
Image source: Tudpool, Francesco Ungaro
#9
When I was around 16 my rapidly growing family finally moved from the house I had spent my entire life in. As you would expect, we spent a lot of time fondly remembering things we used to do in the house as we were packing everything up. At some point I decided to go into the downstairs closet with a flashlight and read, something I used to do when I was younger to get some peace and quiet.
Now, this is one of those deep closets that goes under the stairs; it went back around 8 feet and then had a left turn into a very low maybe 3 foot high space. This space was largely occupied by a mountain of old blankets and stuffed animals. Of course, this is the most fluffy spot to sit and read.
About an hour in I shift a little to get comfortable and I hear a low, slow, warped, hoarse voice say “you always make me happy”. I flipped my s**t, hit my head on the low ceiling, and practically broke the door down getting out. After hyperventilating and explaining to my family why there was no color left on my face I went back to see what it was. It was my stuffed Little Bear from when I was 3 or 4 years old that I happened to lean on juuuuust right to press his belly. When I pressed his stomach again though, nothing. This poor bear I hadn’t played with since I was a toddler used the last of it’s power, used it’s *dying breath* to tell me I made it happy.
You make me happy too little bear.
When you’re not making me p**s myself.
Image source: WybieLovat
#10
I work in law enforcement (prosecution side of things). Domestic violence 911 recordings tend to be the scariest, creepiest, and most unsettling things. You really don’t know what fear sounds like until you hear someone scrambling to get away from someone who is, quite literally, hunting them, often in their own homes. Hearing the doors getting knocked in. Hollywood can’t (and really shouldn’t try) to reproduce the fear you hear then. It’s… well… primal I guess is the best word.
The worst, however, is when those cries suddenly cut off. That silence is deafening.
Image source: SMHeenan
#11
I preface this by saying that I am not religious and I do not believe in the paranormal. That said:
It was the month of November and I was visiting Edinburgh, Scotland. It was cold and I was layered in a long sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, and winter jacket. In the evening, my friends and I decided to go on one of the haunted walking tours that takes you through the vaults beneath the city. They are, of course, rumored to be haunted by the poor, destitute, and deplorable people who died gruesome deaths therein. One underground vault is said to house a particularly demonic spirit. It is said to be trapped within the confines of a circle of stone built by wiccans to protect the living from its unfettered evil.
While standing alongside the stone circle, my friend, who herself is wiccan, began chanting barely intelligibly under her breath.
I suddenly felt a flurry of wind at my neck. Then, nails dug deeply into the flesh of my back and dragged down my body from my shoulders to my waist. I was completely frozen in fear, too shocked to scream although I was filled with white hot pain.
I spent the rest of the tour petrified and when we emerged from the tunnels I ran over to the bathroom of a pub where I pulled off all my clothes (which themselves were perfectly intact) only to see bright red marks lining the naked skin of my back.
I’ve told my friends and family this story and they think it should be enough for me to cave and believe in the supernatural. I still don’t…but I also can’t explain what happened in those tunnels underground.
Image source: anon, Evgeni Tcherkasski
#12
When I was a kid my mum was driving me to school one morning and we were stopped at the lights. Light goes green, mum doesn’t move. After a second or two I tell her the light went green. She goes, “yeah. I know, the car won’t move.” I could see her pressing down but the car wouldn’t go.
As she says that a truck flies through he intersection, nearly hitting the car in the other lane. Then my mum presses the gas again after a few seconds and mysteriously the car goes again.
Image source: gkieran
#13
When I was 10 or 11 I had pneumonia. Towards the end of my week off from school my mom started leaving me alone at home so she can go to work. So Id wake up and the first thing I did is turn on my n64 and play no mercy. I use to sit on the edge of the bed right in front of the tv. One hour into playing I clearly feel someone sit next to me. I freaked out and ran out of the room to call my mom on the phone. Later that night I learned my grandmother had passed away in the morning.
Image source: awesomexpossum, EyeEm
#14
My brother and I were probably about 7 and 5, respectively. We used to wake up every weekend and play computer games before my parents woke up. One day, we turned on the computer, and got an eerie message that was directed to us, it said:
“Hello Kid A and Kid B, this is your computer talking and I. AM. ALIVEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Do not run and tell your parents, they cannot help you now!!!”
Turns out my dad had programmed the computer to say that upon start up.
This was mid 90s.
Image source: AGKontis
#15
I’ve posted this story before, so here’s a cheap copy/paste:
*TL;DR* Suddenly dead grandfather watching my back making sure I’m safe.
Back when my grandfather died, his children and some of the grandchildren took turns in staying over at grandma’s house. We’d spend the night and help her out around the house, while also having some time alone in the house we all love and spending some final moments with grandpa, his (embalmed…?) body in the living room where his big old desk used to be.
The house was on a pretty big plot of land with a nice big barn, and while grandma loved her gardening, grandpa used to take care of the lawn. One day he had felt a bit weezy while mowing the lawn, so he went inside and eventually ended up calling the doctor and going to the hospital. He unceremoniously died three weeks later, unwilling to fight the cancer that had formed in his gut over the past few years.
As one of the older grandkids, I stayed over one night as well. Bluntly speaking, I was a bit on edge with just having a dead body in the house, but nothing really eventful happened that night. Said goodnight to my grandfather (ya, felt weird) and went upstairs to rest.
The next morning my grandmother was already preparing dinner for all the people that would be coming by to pay their respects. She, quite sternly, told me she wanted to do this particular thing alone, so I decided to start the day by mowing the stretch of lawn my grandfather never got to finish. I knew how big he and grandmother have always been on having the garden in top shape whenever there were people over and I didn’t want to let him down. It wasn’t a small patch of grass, but I figured the electric push-mower should be more than enough. I hooked it up using a long, orange extension cord and got to work.
Now, you have to know, my grandfather was a skilled, but supersafe, handyman. He was an electrical engineer by trade and always working on the house or tinkering in the barn, doing the bigger gardening projects my grandmother couldn’t do, making us toys or fixing our bikes, etc. We always got to help him out, but he always kept an eye on us with whatever we were doing, making sure we were using the tools in the correct way, weren’t running around with screwdrivers in our pockets, *teaching us how to work with the electric mower and how to handle the long extension cord to not run over it with the mower*.
When I was mowing the lawn, I was thinking about all of that instead of actually minding the extension cord. I f****d up. I ran over a coil of it, slightly damaging the cable down to the copper, but not cutting it in half completely.
The safest way to proceed would be to unplug the cord, roll it back up and get another, not-damaged one. What I did puzzles me to this day;
I was nearing completion anyway and decided to continue a bit longer, (now…) carefully avoiding the cord. After finishing up, I went to roll up the cord around my arm, as I always did, as my grandfather taught me. I was thinking about him, how hard this was on grandma, and I stopped minding where I grabbed the cord. I grabbed straight into the exposed copper. I felt a short, sharp jolt in the palm of my hand and immediately realised what happened. I tried to let go but my hand and arm cramped up. At the time, naively, I thought I was gonna die, and I thought how stupid I had been, and how this would impact my already grieving family.
It must’ve only been a split second, but it felt like I had stood there for ten minutes. Suddenly the reflexes in my arm kicked in and I threw the cable to the floor. I took a moment to breathe and stood there, dazed out of my mind, listening to the wind in the trees and trying to figure out what had happened. I made my way into the barn to unplug the cord from the wall.
*It wasn’t plugged in*.
I figured I must’ve yanked it out of the wall with my (not-so)Ninja reflexes, but quickly realised the angle for me to be able to do that were all wrong, and besides, there was a tonne of slack in the cable.
I checked in and around the barn, but there was noone on the property. I could see my grandmother through the kitchen window, still working on preparing meals for the tens of people that would come around later. The dog was still in his own enclosed section of the garden on the other side of the house, ears pointed, tail in the air, eyes fixated on me and the barn behind me, nervously whimpering and pacing back and forth.
I had never believed in something of a spirit world, an afterlife, souls or ‘energy’ staying behind in the physical world, any of that. But as silly as it sounds, on that day I did.
On that day, I was convinced my grandfather was watching my back to make sure I wasn’t doing anything stupid.
Alright so it turned out to be quite long, and I’m sure this will be buried (as opposed to my grandfather; wrapped in cloth and cremated on nothing but woodboard, his choosing) but it felt good to write this out.
Image source: Y00pDL, senivpetro
#16
We rented a house that never felt like home. You always felt creeped out walking in there like you were being watched. My bf and our roommate both worked nights so I would be there by myself a lot.
One night I was doing my usual stuff and watching some TV before bed. I had this overwhelming feeling all night that I should avoid the hallway and not look directly down it, it was creepy. The feeling of being watched and terrified lasted or about 2 hours before I decided to suck it up and make my way to my room. I left the hallway lights on and went to bed. Just as I turned of the side table light I heard a drawer being pulled out and hitting the stopper. I turned on the light and nothing was out of place. This went on about 6 times before I decided I was sleeping with the light on. I curled up under the covers and waited for the bf to get home.
He comes rolling in about 3am. He’s laughing at me for being such a p***y gets into bed and turned the light off and that’s when all hell broke loose. All the doors down the hallway slammed shut 1 by 1 then our closet doors started rattling. The sound coming from inside could only be described at total destruction, it sounded like the shelves the pole and everything in there was being tossed around. The bf joined me under the covers and we were both terrified. After it stopped it took 5-10 min to convince him to go check around the house. Nothing was out of place and our roommate had drove 3 hours back home that night to be with his family so we knew it wasn’t him. We slept with the light on the rest of the night and moved out soon after. I still can’t drive by that house without being creeped out.
Image source: nomorepumpkins, Sizel C.
#17
My exes mom told me that when she would be in bed just about to fall asleep she would hear this little girl talk in her ear. This went on for awhile and scared her every time. They moved and she stopped hearing the little girl. A couple of months go by and just as she’s about to go to sleep she hears “I finally found you”.
Image source: _Sweater_Puppies_
#18
On my previous job when our building was still under construction, the only floors that were occupied were the 1st,2nd,5th,6th and 7th. One time I was alone inside the elevator going from 1st to the 6th floor when suddenly it stopped and opened on the 3rd floor. Normally I would just disregard it but rumors where all over that a ghost child was playing around on the vacant floors. So I pressed the closed button as I fast as I could. When it closed I heard noises like someone was tapping their fingers on the walls of elevator.
Image source: sizzlorr26, Derrick Treadwell
#19
My friend died in a car accident and they towed the car pretty early in the day. We were teens so we thought we should go collect all her things that were ejected from the car when she hit the tree.
After about a half hour, I was overwhelmed and just sat down and started crying. I had my two friends with me cleaning stuff up, and they just let me get it out for a bit.
Someone started rubbing my shoulders in the deepest massage I have ever had, and it was really helping me get control of myself and relaxing me. I let them rub for a few minutes and then I put my hand on theirs to let them know I was appreciative.
There was no hand, just my shoulder. I turned around to say thank you to whoever it was, and there was nobody. I looked up at the car and my two friends were standing there talking about something.
SOMETHING had been TOUCHING me!!
I ran to the car and asked my friends if it was them. They looked at me like I was crazy. I made everyone get in the car super fast and we left.
I think a spirit was comforting me in my loss, and I am grateful and freaked out for it. I can still remember how it felt, and it’s been 22 years.
Image source: anon
#20
I was home alone once when my parents were out of town. We had just moved into our house, so there was an empty lot next to our house, with a house half built. My parents were the types to leave the outdoor side garage door unlocked, dumbasses, I know. Well, while they were gone I was watching tv, and all of a sudden the door that leads into my garage from the inside starts to wiggle. I put my TV on mute and I listen again, I see it actually move that time.
I start freaking out and I’m kind of in shock looking for the phone, can’t find the house phone, so I search for my cell. Remembered I left my charger in my parents car so I’m frantically looking for the house phone. Our house was so new, my mom hadn’t even put blinds or drapes up in the kitchen or living room. Well, whoever was wiggling my garage door k**b starts banging on the windows in my living room. Again no blinds or phone, and at that moment I realize this guy is seeing my every move, so I shoot upstairs. Again looking frantically for the phone and also trying to figure out how and where I’d jump out of my house to get away from the maniac that’s outside my house if I needed to.
He then starts pounding on my front door. I can tell at that point, he’s using something metal or plastic by the sound of the thumps. I really thought he was going to shoot my door open. I remember at that moment I was pissed at myself for being a d*****s teenager that frequently talked on the phone because I always just left it lying around, never putting it back on the base. I wanted so badly to push the the button the detects where my house phone is, but I thought if he heard where it was, he’d break the window nearest to it and take it.
I then remembered I left the phone in my moms room, and as I pass the hallway to her room I see two people pacing in front of my house. I’m freaking out trying to find my dads gun in my parents bedroom. I find the phone and call 911. As I’m on the phone, the window breaks. I’m upstairs and am scared to death. Suddenly everything goes silent. I’m waiting in my parents pitch black closet for what seems like an eternity, then I hear the sirens.
Cops show up but there is no one to be found. I figured that they hadn’t gone too far since it had just occurred. Cops never found my tormenters. On the plus side, the company building the house next door, same company that built ours, hired over night security to stay on our street until the house was built which was definitely refreshing.
EDIT: Wow, I did not think this story would blow up. It was definitely a scary experience, I was 17 at the time.
I did suffer from night terrors for about a month, then recovered.
TL;DR: Two guys try to break into my house while I’m home alone. Torment me for was seems to be eternity, call cops, don’t catch the perpetrators, gain overnight security because of experience.
#21
Walking towards a pack of howling wild dogs on the other side of a bushline (going to get rid of them to protect cattle)….. several hundred metres away they got our scent on the wind. Those howls turned to growls and snarls… 10 year old me booked it back home.
That moment you realise they know you and where you are was creepy.
Edit: Obligatory “this blew up” “posted when I went to bed” “highest rated comment”. ^^and ^^minor ^^text ^^fixes
To clear something up for everyone asking, I was with my Dad and 17 Year old brother. They were both armed. When we got in growling range and heard them, I freaked, looked at dad and said “I’m going h^o^o^m^e ” and legged it down hill toward my house. Dad said later he didn’t even think my legs touched the ground I was going that fast. I remember coming to a barbed wire fence and not even slowing down, just dove into an army roll under it and kept going.
Dad and my brother continued on, when they go around the corner of the trees and in sight, 1 adult and 4 half grown pups charged them. Brother froze. Dad saw that the Alpha was still sitting and growling so he had a quick pot shot. Just missed but it was enough to scare them off.
Image source: SlappaDaBassMahn
#22
Although nobody believes me, I know what I saw. And it wasn’t a stealth bomber.
I was about 14, and at about 10:30 I was in bed trying to fall asleep on a school night. I started to hear a hum that quickly began growing in intensity, as whatever was making it got closer. So I bent the blinds on the window behind me and peered out. Something bright was steadily approaching, and it was flying very low.
As it got closer, I began to see more detail. In the middle was a bright white sphere. It had long shafts coming out radially from this central sphere. At the end of each of these shafts (maybe 10-15 in total) was a smaller sphere, each illuminated with a different color (noticeably dimmer than the central sphere). It zoomed right overhead – couldn’t have been more than 20 feet over my house.
I ran downstairs and told my parents. They told me to go back to bed. Next day I told my friends and teachers. They laughed at me. They suggested it was probably a stealth bomber because there’s an AFB nearby and stealth bomber sightings aren’t rare. This thing was the opposite of stealthy.
So I have no idea what it was, but I’ll never forget the night I saw the psychedelic sombrero.
Image source: JustPlainSimpleGarak
#23
Back when I worked Night shift as a Security guard, I would experience mild hallucinations due to my poor sleep schedule. I was doing my patrol and I was feeling particularly out of it, so I kept getting those flashes of movement in the corner of my eye, but I was convinced it was just my brain f*****g up. At the site I was working, there is a large warehouse filled with chemical waste that has only one light on in it. As I’m going along, I see a pale shape on the ground and quickly recognize it as a body. My adrenaline spikes and I nearly pass out.
Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a CPR dummy the workers left out for training.
Edit: Since it seems to be a point of interest, I figure I’ll clarify. “Pass out” is probably not the best description of my reaction. It was more like my mind blanked and it took a second for me to regain my senses. I was truly scared that I just found a dead body, as I am not an armed guard and was over a mile away from any assistance. Definitely, it was more my imagination overworking what was actually a simple situation.
Image source: anon
#24
This one is not too scary but…
My aunt and uncle moved into a 19th century home in a small town in Maine a few years back. Think something from Steven King. Their neighbors warned them about previous paranormal incidents. Since they moved in, many more incidents have taken place. These incidents include but are not limited too:
An in-your-face chocolate smell in the kitchen when no one had been cooking.
Random items appearing in places they shouldn’t be. My aunt was a school administrator, now retired, and she has a filing cabinet full of old documents in the basement. One night while I was visiting, a binder from that filing cabinet was underneath my bed when i woke up. The filing cabinet was in the very back of their storage space and would have required someone to scramble over camping equipment, old furniture, etc. to get to it. Weird.
Levitating objects. Super skeptical of this one.
My aunt was home alone running on a treadmill in her basement. Unexplained banging noises came from the ground floor. She yells, “For heaven’s sake shut the f**k up already,” and the banging subsides.
The most memorable incident for me was when my uncle noticed that his medication went missing. My aunt yelled to the “ghost” that his medication is important and is the one thing that is not to be played with. They later found his pill bottles standing upright underneath the bed. Standing upright. The couldn’t have rolled underneath. Never happened again.
The ghost has not really done anything harmful and from what I have heard can even be described as playful. We have affectionately dubbed the ghost “Gracie the Ghost”.
Image source: fenway_fighter
#25
A few years ago I partook in a group meditation session. For one of the activities we had to partner up; one of us sat in a chair while the other stood behind & used their hands to guide energy around various parts of the body. I don’t know much about it, but a little reiki-ish, I guess?
Not long into my session on the chair, I noticed a strange pain in my lower back. It wasn’t a physical pain though… it’s hard to describe it but it was more of an ‘internal’ pain right at the base of my spine as if my mind was making it up as part of the meditation process. Over 5 minutes or so it gradually got worse, to the point where it became throbbingly uncomfortable. In my mind I said something like ‘I need this pain to stop now!’ and it did. The rest of the session went by without a hitch.
Afterwards we discussed our experiences. As I told my story about my lower back pain, the woman who had been using her hands on me became visibly emotional and started to cry. I thought it was a strange reaction but didn’t look too deeply into it.
A few weeks later the organiser of the meditation group emailed me to let me know the woman who assisted me at the session had passed away overnight. She’d been battling cancer of the lower spine for years and it got the better of her.
I’ve never felt so creeped out like I did that day when it clicked that I may have somehow been channeling her pain.
Image source: anon
#26
This would probably be scary to some people but I found it hilarious (I had stories of a building we were in that had uhh, issues where multiple people saw/heard things but I like this incidence better–you can go back in my comments if you really want to read the other ones).
For about a month during my 3rd year of college, I was seeing a lot of people that weren’t there (never got it checked out, I suspect I might have been having mini-seizures) and among the few incidences was this weird situation where, for a week, I decided to not wear pants while sleeping. I’ve ALWAYS worn pajama pants or shorts but a girl friend mentioned how awesome it is to sleep in just panties so I decided to try. I’m Chinese so my parents are very proper and would never be okay with me not wearing pants in the house but I thought it would be okay if I locked my door when I was going to sleep so they didn’t come in.
Every night for that week, I would wake up in the middle of the night to a guy sitting on the couch in my room, directly facing me and looking at me. Weirdest thing was that this “guy” was blonde, late teens, and… caucasian, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans. Above average handsome (like 7/10) but nothing to die for. I mean, I’m Chinese, right? My closest friends are asian, why would I be seeing a white dude of all things? Anyway, my first response was not “Oh my god there’s an intruder in my room.” it was, “Oh my god, there’s a guy in my room… and I’m not wearing any pants!!!”
I’d get up and walk to where he was sitting because my clean laundry is usually folded on the couch he was sitting on, all the while he’s just staring at me, and I’d grab a pair of pants, pull it on, and climb back into bed… and go back to sleep.
This consistently happened for the week that I experimented with wearing no pants, always the same guy, always the same place on the couch, always the same reaction from me where the only thing that bothered me was that he was male and he was seeing me without pants on.
Yes, I’d wake up with pants in the morning.
When I told my mom, predictably, she said, “Didn’t I always tell you that you should sleep with pants on! What if there was a fire? You’d run outside with no pants on!”
I guess the possibility that it could be an actual person who broke into my room in the middle of the night to watch me sleep wasn’t as important as not having pants on.
Anyway, for that month, lots of other things like this happened, different “people” but always turned out to be not there. Never happened again after.
Image source: lunchesandbentos
#27
It happened last night.
I picked up a nasty cold last week visiting Boston. I’ve been all coughy and phlegmy and mucusy and gross. Sleeping is obviously difficult; my spouse says that I coughed for hours when I though I had been soundly asleep, so I’m sleeping in the other room.
Last night I woke up in the middle of the night, completely unable to breathe. Not like “my nose is stuffed up, breathing is difficult” but “I’m literally choking and zero is moving through my body and my brain is beginning to starve for oxygen.” My guess is I rolled onto my back and my respiratory system got blocked with mucus or something.
I stood up and still couldn’t breathe. I ran to the main bedroom and dropped onto all fours and still, not a single molecule of air was moving into or out of my body. I’m there for what felt like an eternity, like I’m underwater or someone is strangling me, completely incapable of taking a single breathe. Finally, after probably 45 seconds, the phlegm or whatever moves just a little bit and I’m able to draw in a tiny amount of air and begin coughing. I was in full on tears and thought I was going to die right there. All I could think about was my dear childhood friend who passed away last year in his sleep in what seemed like a simple flu, at the age of only 37, and that I was about to follow him from a stupid cold.
I can’t imagine what would have happened if I had been 60 or 80 or whatever and had that experience, or maybe even just unhealthy from lifestyle or some other disease. I might not have been able to write this post this morning.
Image source: N8CCRG
#28
I was watching scary movies and I got hungry so I decided to go out for a late night Taco Bell run. I lived alone at the time so it was quite a shock as when I opened the door a hand was reaching in after me! I slammed the door on the offending arm and ran and grabbed a butcher knife. After closing all the blinds and sitting in the dark for an hour I worked up the nerve to look outside. I was shocked to find a bunch of Chinese food menus for a new restaurant scattered all over the ground.
Image source: Nick357
#29
My family told me this.
I had fever very often when I was young. The medicines didn’t help. One day, a stranger on the street asked my mum if I was always sick and who was the elderly following me. My mum was confused as there was no elderly nearby. The stranger pointed into the air and described my dead paternal grandmother’s look, the hair style and clothes she wore to her grave. My dad was from a different town and my mum would have known it if the stranger was a mutual friend. The stranger instructed my dad to call my grandmother to go back. My mysterious fevers stopped.
Image source: Reddit-Loves-Me, Ahmed
#30
Sleep paralysis. The worst is when you can feel something sit down on your bed.
Image source: DMTMH
#31
Strange occurrences seem to have followed me my entire life. From time to time things happen and I can’t quite explain them. Here are some examples.
An old girlfriend and I were living in basement apartment in a house that was 100+ years old. Our kitchen/dining area had a little eating space in the form of a bar along the wall where she had propped two framed photo collages she’d had of herself and friends. During a particularly heated discussion one night one of them went off the counter where it stood and smashed on the floor a few feet out. We thought perhaps it had fallen off until we saw the other take off with some force. It went through the air about 4 feet and smashed against a book shelf. Neither of us could come up with a fitting explanation.
In the same apartment a few months later I was sitting on the couch reading at home alone. The entrance to the home had a small area when you came in the door with a set of steps up to the main house and a set down to our space. On the wall here were some hooks with some brooms and such hanging from them. As I sat there in silence our dog started barking up the stairs towards the landing. I called her over and she came to lay with me on the couch. A moment or two later one of these brooms came flying down the stairs as if it were thrown. To get the broom off the hook you would have to pull it out until it was horizontal and lift up. Again, I could come up with no reasonable explanation and I was the only one in the house apart from the dog next to me on the couch.
I lived nearby a friends grandparents home and he would stay with them often. Naturally I would also stay rather often but that house was… unusual. Perhaps most un-nerving was in the room I stayed there was a mirror that faced out into the hallway. The hallway had wall mounted lights every few feet the whole way down. When Laying in the bed, you could see what appeared to be shadows occasionally moving up and down the hallway in the reflection. If you looked down the hallway itself, no such thing could be seen.
Lastly for now, just two days ago in the apartment my wife and I share, she was standing in the washroom and I stood in the doorway talking to her. The kitchen is immediately behind me and as we spoke the ceiling light fixture that hadn’t been touched since I replaced a bulb a month or two ago, suddenly came off and exploded sending glass everywhere. Perhaps the threading in the s***w holding it in place had let go but that doesn’t explain the various utensils that had been on the counter a few feet away that were now lying on the floor.
There have been many other strange experiences in my life but I still don’t truly believe in the supernatural, oddly enough. I assume there are explanations for all these things, I’m quite possibly just too dumb to figure them out.
TL;DR s**t just breaks around me sometimes for no reason.
Image source: frankeneggo
#32
When I was about 7-8 years old my family rented a house close to the beach for a week. The drive wasn’t very long but as an 8 year old by the time we got there I really had to feed the porcelain stallion a brown bone. We pull into the driveway and are met by a middle age woman who owned the house and showed us the place and told us about the town and what to do etc. My first instinct is to find the bathroom so I ask and she tells me it’s the second door on the right after the kitchen. Go inside and open the bathroom door to an older guy just standing there looking at me. I kinda duck my head down, say sorry, and went back outside. They noticed I was back pretty fast and I told them there was someone in the bathroom already. That’s when it got weird. The lady looked at me confused and said there’s no one else in the house. I explain that I definitely saw someone in that bathroom. After searching the house we find no evidence of anyone else being there. After awhile the lady told us her dad owned the house and lived there and recently passed away. She inherited the house and wasn’t sure what to do with it so she started renting it out. Pretty sure I saw that dude.
Image source: thugnastyanal
#33
This is a true story. Even though I’ve told this story several times, I’m not sure how well it will translate to text so bare with me.
My ex-wife and I had a small, second story apartment. Her then 3 year old daughter also lived with us. Struggling to make ends meet while taking care of our small family led to working opposite shifts at our jobs and not much time together. I frequently pulled long shifts at work, sometimes going in shortly after midnight and not getting home until after noon.
She would constantly tell me about the weird vibes she felt in the apartment when I wasn’t around. Shadows that she would always catch out of the corner of her eye. Voices and noises that were always just out of earshot. I always passed everything off as lights from passing cars playing tricks on her or overhearing neighbors, etc. As we spent more time in the apartment, she grew frustrated with me always doubting her. The activity in the home never escalated nor did anything strange ever occur when I was around – at least not that I couldn’t explain away. The skeptic I am knew that this absolutely was not a paranormal phenomenon.
One night, somehow we were both at home, which is strange enough in and of itself. Her daughter was asleep in her room. It’s difficult to paint a picture of the layout of the apartment. We’re on the couch, in the living room, eating junk food and watching TV, the small hallway is behind us – the kid’s room to one side, our room to the other, bathroom in the center, and laundry room opposite the bathroom. There wasn’t much need for a nightlight in her room as the streetlight in the parking lot was plenty. In the space where the TV goes to black before a commercial, we can clearly see the light emanating through the window from the kid’s room reflecting in the TV.
One commercial break we saw the light, then it was gone, then it was back. We both saw something block that light and she knew it. This being the first minute thing to happen to us both she was ready to start in on the “I told you! I know you saw that! Blah, blah, blah.” I was just as ready to try explaining away whatever blocked that light coming through our second story window. Maybe it blinked? Maybe a big a*s bird? I got up to go investigate.
I hadn’t left the couch before some toy in the kid’s room starts making noise. “I told you! This is what happens to me every night that you’re at work and you NEVER believe me!”
“It probably just fell. It’s nothing. I promise. Why are you yelling?”
Now three toys are chiming out the alphabet, and numbers, and what sound a cow makes. “DID THEY ALL FALL TOO?”
I walk into the room to find all the suspect toys in different areas of the room. They didn’t fall. Maybe they’re all faulty. Weak batteries make toys act funky, don’t they? I can explain this.
We moved to our room to continue this argument. We’re having a legitimate argument about ghosts – not only ghosts, but ghosts in our apartment. To this day, this is the most ridiculous fight I’ve ever had and it only escalated from there.
After several minutes of very heated arguing, and no more “paranormal” activity I might add, she has decided that she’s grabbing some necessities and going to her mom’s. This, of course, escalated the fight even more.
“Do you realize how crazy you’re going to sound banging on your mom’s door at 2AM because our apartment is haunted?!” Lesson learned. Don’t, under any circumstances, ever call a woman crazy.
She began throwing a week’s worth of clothes into her bag, then onto toiletries… We take this fight to the bathroom. She’s tossing her shampoo, toothpaste, etc. into the bag.
At this point I’ve had enough of this ludicrous altercation. “THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS GHOSTS,” I yelled and SLAM my hands down on the counter.
No sooner did my palms touch that laminate countertop, the lights in the bathroom, the hallway, the laundry room, and our bedroom turned off.
“Go to your mom’s…”
She took her things, grabbed her daughter, and left. I stayed in the apartment a couple days by myself and nothing else happened. She eventually came back without further incident, and we eventually divorced. I don’t think it had anything to do with the ghosts, but who knows. It’s only relevant so I can fast forward a bit…
After we had been separated for almost two years or so, we end up running into each other around and talking a bit. I ask if I can take her and her daughter to lunch one day just to catch up and be amicable. I go out to her new place which was in the same town and pick them up. I take the road our old apartment was on as it was one of the main streets out of town.
The daughter speaks up as we pass the place. “That’s our old house!” she says.
We both half-smile, “yeah…”
“I didn’t like it there,” she adds.
“Why,” I ask looking in the mirror to gauge her response.
“The mean old man in my room.”.
Image source: mugzy86
#34
On a way to a camping trip, I passed by an old, painted up car with decorations of muppets and stuff on it. Obviously owned by a crazy person who couldn’t drive over 50mph.
Without stopping, we passed the same car 40 minutes later.
Image source: MonkeyCube
#35
My parents hiring muscle to hurt me and my wife, slashing the tires on my car, sending me texts with photos of me taken from hiding, I had to go underground, leave my job, move to somewhere they don’t know, they’re still looking, the police doesn’t believe they would hurt their son, I don’t even order food using my real name, I don’t know when or how they’re going to find me, but I’m trying to leave the whole country, how’s that for a real life scare? I had a phone interview last week and I’m still terrified it could be a private detective out hunting me, three of my relatives died and I found out by chance, including my grandfather who died thinking I was dead, they even had a funeral for me.
Image source: anon
#36
One day my friend and I decided to go camping at a hot spring that was closed due to a recent fire. We arrived there and set up our tent, it was about 8 PM. We stripped completely naked and went up to the hot spring, I brought a machete and a bag of goldfish. We had to climb up to it and the only way going down was going back the slippery way we came. We hung there for about 2 and a half hours when a flashlight came on from above our heads. There was someone right above us. Keep in mind it’s 10:30 at a closed down site when it’s pitch black. So we are in The worst possible position; wet, naked, cold, alone, dark, and all we have is a machete and a bag of goldfish.
Well this person walks around the area for about 45 with a flashlight before it suddenly stops. My friend and I still decide to stay there for a bit and now it is 1. Then we run out when it’s 30 degrees so we’re shivering cold. We get our pants and unlaced shoes on. He packs up our tent while I walk around with a machete on watch. Then we begin to run through the black burnt forest and since we were so scared we thought that everything was something. I thought the wind was a distant laugh or a branch was a face. But eventually we made it back to the car after an hour of traversing the forest.
A week later on the news a dead body was found in the river nearby.
Edit: added naked to the list.
Image source: Fridge68
#37
Waking up in the hospital one night with my hands in oven mitt-looking things and my wrists tied to the sides of the gurney. I had been in an induced coma following a car crash, brain surgery and other procedures, and I didn’t remember any of it.
I asked a nurse who came by where I was and why. He answered then got on the phone to my mom. “He’s back.”
But think about that for a moment. I wake up, highly medicated, with no idea what put me in that situation. For the hour or two that followed, I kept trying to finagle my way out of the gloves as if to make an escape. Didn’t happen.
Image source: aresef
#38
One night around 5 or so years ago I had a few friends over to drink at my moms place. The house was around 110 years old. So we finish up at around 2 or 3 and everyone leaves so I go to bed sufficiently buzzed but not overly drunk. I must not have slept long before being awoken to seeing my friend Sydney standing at the foot of my bed wearing a red dress. I was pretty confused and being that I was half awake and kind of drunk I couldn’t be sure what I saw but I do remember saying “Syd what are you doing here still? Just go home I’m trying to sleep.” She just stood there by my bed not moving and staring at me and I just put my head to my pillow and went to sleep. I think I brought it up with her the next day and she says she was never there and we both thought it was extremely weird but we agreed I was just drunk.
Anyways fast forward a couple months. I had to go pick my sister up from a party at around 2 AM. I get her and we drive home and as we pull up to the driveway she asks. “Hey do you have friends over tonight?” “No why?” I replied. “Well theres a girl in a red dress in your window, it looks like your friend Sydney.” I explained to her what happened a few months prior and we kinda freaked out a bit. That house had some strange goings on.
Edit: I should also add that she was smiling at me but not in a menacing way, more comforting. We saw a lot of really weird stuff there but very rarely did we feel scared or threatened.
Image source: IBangedYourMom69
#39
When I was younger, I used to get sick a lot. Strep throat and ear infections often bring about very high fevers. High fevers lend themselves to hallucinations and mine have never been benign. My mother was no stranger to me spinning wild fantasies while lost in these dark reveries. I once told her I ate glass and was absolutely convinced that it was true… so much so that my mother started to believe me and grew panicked until my father was able to talk her off the ledge.
I digress. I was 11 or 12 years old and on vacation with my family in Hawaii. Naturally, because I’m always the party downer, I develop a terrible ear infection, complete with a dangerously high fever. Hallucinations struck at about midnight, when I woke up most probably from the pain in my ear.
I was sleeping on a convertible couch in the front room area of this little grass house and saw, though the sliding glass doors, an elderly woman rocking in a rocking chair on the porch. She was shrouded in a dark cloak so that I couldn’t see any of her features, but I knew intuitively that it was an elderly woman. She slowly stopped rocking and turned to face me directly and then reached a skeletal hand up to lower the hood of her robes. As the moonlight revealed her features to me, the idea of an elderly visage melted into the bared bone of a skull. Her eye sockets were empty, but I still knew that she was staring straight at me. Seeing me. I’m not sure how to describe a skull grinning, but she did in that moment. Then, she stood up, collected her scythe, and stalked off the porch.
I looked out of the living room window that my “bed” was situated under to watch her stand a little ways away and watch a procession of people make their way down the beach. As the party of people drew closer, I saw that they were carrying a casket. A little boy was trailing behind the procession, looking downtrodden. The casket was set beneath my window by the group of people and the lid was opened… to reveal the same little boy that I’d seen. He was bearing witness at his own funeral. It was in that fever-riddled moment that I understood I was going to die someday.
Thinking about what I saw that night still leaves me with a ball of fear spinning wildly in my abdomen… two decades later and that memory turns me right back into a terrified little girl.
Image source: Kaelizilla
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