24 People Describe Their Freakiest Encounters With The Supernatural (And It Will Send Shivers Down Your Spine)

It’s back — the creepy-ass posts, that is. I’m alone at the Thought Catalog office right now, spooked out of my mind. My back is open, and my eyes are blinded by this huge bright screen. I’m just going to blast some Modest Mouse and pretend everything is okay. You want to be more creeped out? Check out this Reddit thread. Don’t say I warned you (I didn’t, so this is my warning).
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Shutterstock

1. Your friend said goodbye to you…as a big ass wolf

Waiting for my daughters’ dance to finish down by Lake Ontario I decided to go near the water’s edge to check out the stars (I’m into amature astronomy and looking over the lake is the darkest sky in my city).

I’m looking at Orion and I notice a very bright “star” about 20 degrees up, due South. I thought it was Sirius except that night Sirius was more Southwest and about 40 degrees up in the sky. So I’m thinking to myself “What the Hell is that?” It wasn’t moving so it wasn’t the ISS, it was WAY too late to be Venus, Jupiter was high in the sky and Saturn was not in view. This thing was as bright as the ISS… really bright.

So I’m wondering what “it” is when I hear a noise closer to me and notice a pure white coyote/wolf (it was bigger than a normal “brush wolf” or coyote, but not as big as a wolf) walking along the water’s edge. It’s odd to see a coyote in the city, but not beyond expectations… it can happen. Since I was only about 20 feet from it I decided that it was better if this animal knew I was there so I made a bit of noise… no reaction, so I made louder noises… still no reaction at all. The thing didn’t even look at me.

It continues along and I notice the “star” I had been watching go bright, then suddenly fade to black. There were no clouds in the sky and I sail so I’d recognize a ship’s light. It wasn’t that.

Perplexed, I turned my attention back to the wolf… it was gone too. The time was 12:30 am

I shook my head and dismissed it all then picked up my daughter and drove home.

The next morning (Sunday) I was woken up with a phone call. It was my best friend’s dad. He was crying. My best friend lived in Norway (6 hours difference) had passed away at 6:30 am Oslo time in his sleep from a heart condition.

After I hung up, I realized that my buddy had died at the exact same time (6:30 am Oslo time equals 12:30 am Toronto time) I had seen my star/wolf weirdness… then a bigass shiver went down my spine.

It could be a really freaky coincidence, but it makes me feel good thinking my buddy was saying goodbye to me.

2. Are you ready to be frightened? Okay

So to preface this, my friend is a completely normal guy, and I’ve worked with him in the engineering realm for a bit.He’s definitely a smart guy, and doesn’t have a screw loose, so to hear this story was crazy. It’s still left me thinking about things like the supernatural until today.

He moved into this house in Portland Oregon, and it was always a little off. When he first moved in he heard some creaks and stuff, but it was mostly just old house noises. Then sometimes he could swear he heard footsteps, or doors creaking open or closed. The most peculiar thing about the house was that even with all the shades drawn up and letting the sun in, the house was always dark it seemed.

As some of the noises increased in frequency, so did some strange things. He asked his roommates about the noises and they all had agreed that they had heard peculiar things around the house too. In particularly the basement.

The basement had some stairs leading down and from what he described there were two rooms. The main room with the stairs in it, then another room attached that had an extra door in it on the opposite corner of the first door. He was a drummer and had his drums set up in the main basement room to practice drums.

The first of the strange things to happen would be in his bedroom. He saw smoke like stuff coming from under the door and it started moving up towards the upper corner by his door. He thought the house was on fire as the smoke like stuff began to cluster in the corner so he opened the door and was gonna bail, but when he opened it and looked into the hallway, the hallway was totally fine. No smoke, no fire, then he looked back into the corner and all the clustered smoke had vanished.

After that, some time later, he was in the bathroom taking a piss, and he heard the door open. Without looking behind him he says, “hey hang on a minute I’m almost done.” But the door didn’t shut so he finished up and turned around to one of the most frightening things he’d ever seen. Clearly in front of him was an apparition of a young girl in a plaid dress, and he looked up and up and when he got to her face starting from her feet, there was nothing there and he could clearly see through her. Just a blank face. He was so scared he said he didn’t even remember putting his pecker back in his pants, he just shut his eyes and ran to the door (that he thought was open) through the ghost but then he ran straight into it, because apparently it was closed! Frantically he opened the door without really opening his eyes and scrambled to his bed and he said he dove in like a little kid and held the sheets over his head until he went to sleep, terrified.

The craziest thing of all that happened is what’s next. In the basement where he practiced drums, he could swear that in the doorway to that extra room, he would see someone walk by the door. From one side to the other. It would happen rarely but one time he decided to go into the room.

That extra door was on the opposite corner, and he thought it was peculiar that there was door there, and that it should lead to the outside, but he knew it didn’t because there was no other way into the basement. He walked over to the extra door and opened it and he said that it gave him the most sinking feeling in his stomach looking into what was behind the door. There was a stairway that had been cemented off, but in one of the most creepy ways possible. He didn’t get into details but he basically said, “I shut the door and never opened it again because of the terrible feeling I had when I opened it.”

Now being a drummer, he had met all kinds of people in his travels because he had toured the nation. One time he was talking to a man he had met about his house and these strange happenings, and the man looked at him as serious as a heart attack and said “I can help you with this house and these happenings.”

My friend was skeptical because he doesn’t really believe in these kinds of things but he accepted the offer saying “well why not, the worst that could happen is nothing.”

The man met him at his house and brought with him a most peculiar bell. My friend described it as having the most piercing sound he’d ever heard and the man entered the house ringing it, and was mumbling something under his breath as he moved through the house. Eventually he asked my friend where the most activity happens, and my friend told him the basement.

The man goes into the basement and instantly went into the extra room. He asked my friend “This door, does this door have something?”

My friend was amazed at this man for pointing out, because my friend had said nothing about anything specific in the basement. My friend told him yes, and how he had opened it only once because it was terrifying.

The man then proceeded to open the door and instantly fell to his knees shrieking and ringing the bell furiously. My friend was totally freaked out and didn’t know what to do and before he knew it the man jumped up and ran up the stairs screaming and out the front door. My friend quickly followed him and met him on the sidewalk.

My friend said “What was that all about?” and the man looked to him and said “Whatever was in your house, I just chased it out.” My friend was bewildered, then the man handed him an octagon shaped pendant and told him to put it above his door, explaining that it will protect him as long as it’s on the door.

My friend said thank you as politely as he could because he was still skeptical and trying to figure out exactly what all had happened but he put the pendant above his door.

No joke, from that day on, all the strange noises, footsteps, doors creaking, stopped. The darkness that always seemed to loom inside the house even with the windows open, vanished.

3. Creepy time, USA

In Seattle when I was growing up we lived in a two story house with a basement. All the bedrooms were on the top floor, with the kitchen, living room and dining room on the main floor. We had a ghost who would walk up the basement steps, through the kitchen and living room, then up the steps to the second floor. She would stop and just stare into my room. She never went anywhere else. Sometimes you’d hear her walk down the steps, which was actually creepier, as you’d be in the kitchen and the ghost would just get bored I guess and walk back down to the basement from where you were. We were certain it was a woman, but never saw anything, just heard her walk around the house. My mom didn’t feel she was a bad ghost, but it still creeped me out that she’d walk to my room and look in.

More recently though in Portland I work in what used to be an old house. There’s a ghost there that normally hangs out by a bricked over fireplace, but occasionally wanders to the SE corner of the building. We’ve all heard it open and close doors, walk around, and I shit you not we heard it talk. We were standing talking and all of a sudden we heard the front door open and close, a couple footsteps up the stairs to where we were and it just stopped and cheerfully said “Hello!” So we said Hello back to the nothing that was standing there. It sounded like a woman in her early thirties. Three of us heard the thing, and we keep waiting for it to say something again. But for the most part it just hangs out by the bricked up fireplace near the back.

4. Are you alone? Don’t think of laughing children, just don’t

I was in bed with my already asleep one year old. I was in that place between being asleep and awake. I had the TV on with the volume really low because I can’t sleep without it. Just as I’m really falling asleep, every single toy in my son’s toy box goes off. EVERY toy, at the same time. Anything with batteries in it is lighting up and playing music and going crazy. I literally fall out of bed and run to turn the lights on and as I do, everything turns off at the same time. I figure with all the noise going on, my son would wake up. Nothing. Kid is sound asleep.

I grab my cell phone and start heading downstairs to call my dad and generally freak out. As I’m coming down the stairs, I hear the garage door open and the door leading from the kitchen to the garage slam. I screamed as loud as I could and ran back upstairs and locked my bedroom door. The baby and I were home alone. Who the fuck came into the house through the garage? Or, who just left the house through the garage?
I can’t get a hold of my dad and finally get my step mom on the phone. She comes over with her mother and they’re both really shaken. Now, they’re very Mexican, and very Catholic. So, my step mom’s mom brings over holy water and a rosary and comes in the house and starts praying and throwing holy water everywhere. I go up stairs to get the baby, and leave the bedroom door open. As I’m picking up the baby, I look out my bedroom door, and as soon as my step mom’s mom sets foot on the landing outside my bedroom, the lights in the house start to flicker and my one year old starts laughing hysterically. She keeps walking towards my room and when she steps inside of my room, every light in the house went off.

Needless to say, we got the fuck out of there and spent the night in a hotel. Lights didn’t come back on for days. Electricians couldn’t figure out why in the world they were off in the first place. My son and I still live in the house and the only odd things still happening are doors opening and closing on their own and floors creaking like someone’s walking on them. I’ve dealt with it by basically staying away from home until right before dark, then locking ourselves in the bedroom. Moving out next month and I could not be more excited.

5. Great-grandma

There was this lady (we’ll call her Annie) that was a friend of my mom’s and I lived with her for a few months after college.

I worked 2nd shift, so I was up late watching TV after everyone else was in bed. Annie comes walking into the living room, half asleep. I say, “What’s going on, Annie?” and she says, “My grandmother just called.”

I’m like, “Nooooo, no one has called.”

She insists that she just talked to her grandmother and that her grandmother called to tell her goodbye and now she wants to call her family to check on her.

“Nonsense,” I say. “It was just a dream. Don’t bother your family in the middle of the night. Go back to bed and call them in the morning.” And she goes back to bed.

About an hour later, I’m just getting into bed when the phone rings. No, shit. And it’s her family calling to tell her that her grandmother died about an hour ago.

The grandmother was old, but not sick or on death’s bed or anything. Annie did not remember any of this the next day and we never spoke of it. I thought about this for years and struggled with labeling it a ghost story or just an eerie coincidence. My skeptical and logical tendencies decided to label it a coincidence. The only times I have re-told this story have been to people who do not know Annie in situations where everyone is telling their “ghost-stories.”

THEN

About a decade later, Annie died unexpectedly. I went to her funeral and her brother delivered a eulogy. In it, he tells this story.

When Annie was about 4, her great-grandmother died. All the family was gathered in the house and someone noticed that little Annie had disappeared. After a brief search, they found her in a bedroom, rolling on the floor laughing.

“What on earth are you laughing about, Annie?” and little Annie replies, “Great-grandma was tickling me. She came to tell me goodbye.”

6. Heart-stopping

I lived in some really unsettling places. One of the events that stuck with me the most is probably this.

I woke up one morning and as usual I walked to the mirror to brush the teeth and fix the hair. Now, I’m in a relatively small place with a balcony and sink in the same room without openable windows. I looked in the mirror and I see one of my plants moving, like there’s wind blowing against it. I turn around and walk over to the plant – that is next to the door – and check if the balcony door is closed. It was.

For some reason, while walking back to the mirror my eye fell on one of the pens lying on my desk. When I arrive at the mirror the first thing I notice are all these pen markings on my face. My heart stops and there’s goosebumps everywhere. I cleaned up and fled the room. When I came back the door to the balcony was open.

Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy being there for quite some while after.

7. Hand prints

I’m not sure whether I’m sensitive to this kind of stuff or if there are things following me. I experienced several things at my dad’s house. From the top of my mind;

There was a hand mark on the wall in my dad’s house. Like a print from someone with dirty hands. A really big hand also, nothing extreme, just big. Every time we would wipe it off, it came back the next day.
Whatever was in my dad’s house seemingly also targeted his girlfriend. Almost every time she’s alone in the house she’ll hear noises of doors opening or faint whispering in other rooms. I heard the whispering too. Loud enough to hear, but not loud enough to actually understand what they were saying. In the shower my dad’s girlfriend felt a hand on her shoulder, when the would turn around (while being alone in the house!) there was nothing.

One other time, when she was cooking some can of beans was thrown out of the cabinet to her head. My dad also reported seeing people around his bed at night. I’ve seen a little girl in old clothes from out of the corner of my eyes several times when I was there. They now tend to keep it in control by burning incense (? not natively english) prescribed by some store specialised in rituals.

It became something quite normal to me in general, like this shit just randomly happens. I’ve experienced way more stuff unfortunately.

8. Fuck. That.

Once, I was in bed playing pokemon. A huge ass spider crawls out from under my bed (huge ass by english standards, so only 2 inches in diameter) and just sits in the middle of my room. I tried to catch it under a cup, failed miserably and it runs, realising something is up. After hiding in various places (such as a pile of clothes, that was fun to search through) it eventually went under my wardrobe. My wardrobe had 3 sides that it stood on and the front bit on the bottom had come off, This basically meant that it could only come in and out of that one section. Being clever, I plugged the whole with a towel and went back to playing pokemon.

Now here’s the weird part, about 20 minutes later, a couple of small spiders (so small I only just saw them in the dim light of a DS) crawled out from my bed, and with no hesitation, went directly towards the wardrobe and went underneath the towel to the same place the big spider was trapped.

I slept in the lounge that night. I was not up for dealing with some aragog shit the night before an exam

9. A single rose

Okay, mine isn’t creepy and it will be buried, but enjoy. My parents used to talk about the afterlife a lot. They once even had a convo about “if I die first, I will send you a sign so you know I’m okay.” They even agreed on the sign, and specified that said sign would have to occur at the same time everyday to confirm and rule out randomness. My dad’s sign to my mom was to be a single red rose.

So, years later my dad dies. After the wake, my mom was sitting on a bench outside, and a strong wind blew up and a rose, maybe from the cemetery across the street, rolled across the lot and stopped at her feet. It was 4:30. The next day, after the funeral, we were carrying the flower arrangements into my uncle’s house, and found a red rosé in the driveway. None of the arrangements had roses. It was 4:30. The next day, my mom goes to a bank to make a deposit, and the cashier name was Rose. She stamped the deposit slip, and it was 4:30.

Nothing happened for a few more days, but that next weekend, we went to a dance event, and some close friends of ours performed a tribute dance to my father. They presented my mother with a bouquet of flowers… All assorted, but with one single red rose. They did not know the story. The video is time stamped… Guess what time it was? :)

So not creepy, actually a feel good story. But I know dad is looking out for us wherever he is. And tried very hard to let us know that be was okay, and that he loved us.

10. I can’t explain this

It was in my fathers old house. This house was huge, it had 5 bedrooms and was on quite a lot of land. It was a very secluded house, it couldn’t be seen from the road or nearby park, and was surrounded by bush land. Note that it was winter, so there were no windows open and we didn’t have heaters in the house.

It was probably around 10pm at night, I was the last one awake and decided I wanted to call it a day. I did the usual routine before bed and lay down to go to sleep. I was laying there for probably 10 minutes when I could feel some kind of pressure on the bottom of my bed. I thought that maybe I was entering the sleep stage so thought nothing of it. Then the pressure started going around my legs, not on them but all around and between my legs. I freaked out, and did what any normal person does, I froze and hoped it would go away. After probably 5 more minutes of just pressure on my legs, it lifted.

I remember my heart beating so fast, and I sat up in bed to move and try to shake off the adrenaline when I felt a hand press against my face and a massive gust of air blow my hair back. I freaked the fuck out and slept on my dads floor that night. We moved soon after because my step mother started to have weird experiences too.

I’m not saying it was paranormal, it was just something that I couldn’t and still can not understand or explain.

11. I’m really scared now

When I was 12 I had a sleep paralysis experience. I didn’t know it was called that at the time. I woke up sensing a presence in my room but only my eyes can move. I see a figure in the periphery.

Then I feel gradual heavy pressure on my stomach. My head is facing to the right, I look left to see what’s there and sitting on me is a grey alien with big black eyes. Eventually I can move my body and I pull the covers up and call out for my mum. Needless to say I was terrified. Science tells me it was all in my head but it felt very real.

12. Uh, what the fuck

I was sleeping peacefully one night when I awaken to my husband in the room. He’s randomly wearing a red hat and just standing close to the door. I lift my head and say, “What are you doing?” then fall back asleep because I was so tired. He never answered me. I kind of awaken slightly again a minute or two later and he isn’t there anymore.

So now I’m struggling with just going back to sleep or getting up cause I’m curious to know if he needed to ask me something. So a couple minutes later I muster the energy to get up. I find him in the garage and ask him why he was staring at me in my sleep. He has no idea what I’m talking about. I tell him about the hat, but he doesn’t own one. He also says he’s been in the garage for hours.

I was completely creeped out and have no idea how I went back to my room that night. In the morning I realize that I was probably sleeping and just imagined the whole thing, but a small part of me still fears “the man in the red hat”.

13. The piano

I’m super skeptical but my friend does all kinds of ghost hunt things. I go along with him sometimes because it’s very different and always a silly experience.

Except once, when we were ‘going over the evidence.’

I do a lot of his sound work, and I was with him this particular time so we’re going through the audio and he hears something that sounds like a piano playing, I stick it into goldwave and clean it up immensely. It fades in slowly, and fades out slowly; it’s clear as day.

There was no piano in the house, no power in the house, no access to radio (this was in the middle of NOWHERE), and the closest neighbor was approx 1 mile away. We also didn’t hear it during the time it was playing, so only the equipment picked it up.

14. Computer wizards

I had just booted up my new computer for the first time, and plugged in my headphones. I was fiddling with some boot settings, no other programs running, clean system nothing installed yet. Suddenly, I heard in my headphones a voice “Hang on a sec. Ok go.” Then another voice started yelling “HEY HEY HEEEEEY!” (slightly raspy). Startled, I pulled the headphones off. That was it. Never heard it again.

15. How can this be?

Once, I was sitting in the living room while my brother was in the kitchen. Out of blue, I started singing this old song that we used to sing when we were little – I hadn’t even thought of that song in years. My brother comes into the living room and says, “Was I singing out loud?” I said, “No, why?” He replied, “I was just singing that song in my head, and you joined in right where the song was in my head.”

This happened again with him when he went away to college. He came home one weekend, and we were riding around, goofing off. He’s really smart, and took sciences and maths that I couldn’t even pronounce. I was teasing him about being such a dork, and asked, “What are you studying this week, [insert random impressive-sounding jumble of what I thought was mathematical nonsense]?” He just looked at me with this shocked expression on his face, and said, “That is exactly what we’re studying. We just started on it this week. How did you know that?”

One of the best ones that happened with my best friend – we were sitting on my front porch, just shooting the shit. We both settled into a comfortable silence, when another of our friends walked up, and asked us what we were thinking about. We both replied, at the same time, “Cheesecake.” We had not been talking about anything related to sweets, cheese, or food in general. We were both a little freaked out.

16. The fucking basketball

I’m gonna preface this by saying I went to boarding school for 6 years. This boarding school was in the middle of a one stop light town and on a hill 800 ft up. The school used to be an old monastery. It was hundreds of years old and huge. 4 stories including a basement where there was a boiler room and long hallways.

Not all of these stories happened to myself, but the people who told me them were reliable enough to believe. Also, the school didn’t want us telling stories to other people because they were afraid that it would make them not want to go to the school due to it being haunted.

The first one happened to me. I used to be in charge of cleaning the gymnasium at night. Every student had a job that they had to do either at night or in the morning to help take care of the school. Taught you some practical things and all.

Anywho, I was there by myself that night getting ready to start sweeping the gym. The gym had 2 floors to it. The upstairs part was the weight lifting area, and you could see it fully from the bottom part of the gym where the basketball court was. As I stepped into the gym, one of the basketballs starts rolling a bit. I look around to see if any doors are open, none are. I chalk it up to randomness, but see that it is continuing to roll. As I watch it, it makes a full circle around the entire gym and stops right next to my feet.

At this point, I’m a bit scared, but figured it was nothing. I heard a creaking coming from the second floor and look up. There is a girl there, just staring right at me. As soon as I made direct eye contact with her, she bolts to the stairs that would take her too me. She let out a scream that I can not describe. I was terrified and froze in place. Thankfully, she didn’t come to me, but took a left and bolted through the main doors of the gym. They didn’t open, she just went right through them.
I noped the hell out of there.

17. The gate

Okay, here’s my two stories.

The first, I still don’t know if there’s a reasonable explanation for it, my mom tried suggesting a few back when it happened. But nope, it still makes no sense at all.

Back in high school, me and my friend had a class that took place in a building situated outside the main school. The building had a fence surrounding it with a gate near the entrance of the classroom. The teacher was always supposed to let the whole class in through that gate. There was another gate way on the other side of the building, but we weren’t supposed to enter through that.

Anyway, me and my friend had a class there after lunch one day. We started walking to it a little early, and waited outside the gate. The bell went just as we arrived. By this time, at least half the class should have been there. My friend looked at her watch: exactly the time the class should be starting. Just a side note: absolutely no-one was there. Not even other people in the distance, which was really weird even though classes had started by this time.

We hung around for fifteen minutes, then went to the secretary back at the main school (If I remember correctly, we had some important thing happening in the class that day, which we had to attend and complete in groups, and we were a bit panicky about missing it).

Our obvious thought was that the place where class was taking place had changed and we forgot about it or didn’t hear about it. However, the secretary got the teacher on the line and was annoyed. She let us know that the teacher had opened the gate twenty minutes ago and that we were idiots who had been at the wrong gate. No, we weren’t.

We went back, and found the gate open. The teacher laughed at us when we told her we had been at the correct gate at the right time. Apparently, the whole class had been where we had been at the time class had started. After class, I spoke to another friend. Coincidentally, she had been on the second story of the building as class was due to start. A window looks out below to the gate that leads to the class. She had seen the entire class going through the right gate at the right time, and she went down and went to class. We ended up checking with a lot of people because it sounded crazy. They had all been at the same place we had been at the same time. My friend’s watch wasn’t wrong or broken (we checked). They had been at the same gate. So, although this story doesn’t have anything to do with ghosts or something like that….still freaks me out the most.

18. Handprint the second coming

It was second year at university and I was living in this creepy ass townhouse. It overlooked a giant ravine filled with trees – had a very unsettling feeling when you looked out our huge living room windows. Also, our living room was the second floor and our basement had a walkout to said ravine. So while living at this place I experienced lots of weird shit but this one rises well above the rest.

So one night I was watching television in our living room. The T.V was setup so that it was in front of the living room windows. Keep in mind, we didn’t have any window curtains cause we were broke ass poor students. So the whole time you had this eerie ravine in the background at all times. I was cooking pasta and it fogged up our windows completely (it was -20C outside Canadian Winter). As I’m coming back from the kitchen I sit down and continue watching television. Half way through my pasta my eyes look at the windows since something caught my eye. I literally drop my fork and my mouth is gaping wide open. There is a fresh hand print that has been streaked across the window from INSIDE of the house with moisture dripping down. I walk closer since I’m skeptical and my fears are realized. Someone or something just put its hand across the window. At the moment a sheer feeling of terror was all around me. NOPE! I ran the fuck outta there in my shorts and tshirt in the freezing cold to my friend’s house.

19. Scary, but beautiful

My grandmother had a giant window in her family room that looked out on the backyard. It was a good sized yard that backed up to fields and wooded area. The deer would made daily trips to her yard to hit the provided salt-lick and steal pears off the trees. My grandmother would sit in her chair and watch the deer, and it would be uncommon to visit her and not see several deer walking through the yard.

So grandmother got very old like grandmothers do, and developed a cancer that couldn’t be treated. She went from her chair to lying on the couch, still able to enjoy the deer outside.

Eventually the decision was made to move her to hospice. My father, uncle and sister were there that day (I live several states away, though I had traveled to say my goodbye not long before). It was obviously a very emotional process to take someone from their home (home of 60 years) for the last time.

As they were doing a final trip through the house (why can’t I stop crying) they went through the family room and saw 15-20 deer in the backyard. The deer were all sitting, and all looking at the house. Normally they just wander around for a few minutes and move on. But they were all sitting there, and stayed that way while my family stared back. My father, uncle, and sister all swear by the story.

Maybe it was a weird weather day, or the deer had a meet-up scheduled that day anyway, but I like to think that they came to say goodbye to a longtime friend.

20. An orb sighting

I’m walking home from a friends who lives on a country road a few kilometers out of my home town in March 2001. Another friend is with me. As we walk we both notice an orange light in a field a few hundred meters to our left. We both glanced at it but both ignored it, putting it off as a tractor or farm vehicle of some sort. We keep walking when we both get a strong whiff of ozone.

Both of us turned and looked at the field, just in time to see what we can now appreciate to be an orange ball of light a few meters round rise and then fucking rocket into the air, soundlessly.

We both stood still for a few seconds, then bolted like hell down the road, sprinting until we both nearly collapsed. We ran most of the way back to his place, and told his parents what we’d seen. They pretty much laughed at us, and his dad suggested if we had seen anything at all, which he doubted, then it was probably just “ball lightning”.

No-one else really believed us either, and there weren’t any sightings reported in our local paper. But yeah, that’s the most weird thing that ever happened to me.

21. Got ya this time

4 years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night. We had a 2-month newborn sleeping in the room next door. I had a video monitor on my bedside table, so that my wife and I could easily check on him.
So, I clicked the button that turns on the video image, and what I saw scared me like nothing ever before.

My baby boy was gone.

Now, I know that instincts should have made me run right into the baby’s room. Instead, I froze. I looked over, and my wife was sleeping next to me.

Finally, I moved. But not to run into the other room, like I should have done. Instead, I turned up the volume on the baby monitor.

I heard another woman’s voice singing a lullaby. I’m not kidding. Another woman was singing to my baby in a very soft, gentle and melodic voice. I don’t remember what song it was, something like “Go to sleep, little baby”.

Finally, my freeze broke. I jumped up, ran through the hallway and burst into my boy’s room.

He was sound asleep in his crib. No woman. No singing.

Turns out, the monitor was picking up my next-door neighbors’ monitor. They had just bought the video monitor for their own newborn (on our recommendation).

Nothing supernatural here, but I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced something scarier.

22. An EMF

Outside of Huntsville, TX, there’s a road they call “Demon Road” that runs parallel to another road. In between is an old cemetery and a dirt road connecting the two roads. Rumor has it that on Demon Road a few years ago, there was a car accident and a police shootout that left two people dead. The car was never taken from the spot it crashed and the angry spirits never left.

About four years ago, I went down there with some friends to investigate. We parked on the dirt road and a truck pulled in from the other side, KC Daylighters on, blinding me. A woman got out, I thought I was going to die, technically we were trespassing. She walked to my window and said, “you be careful.” She got back in her truck and drove off.

I got out, rubbed some dirt on my car in an attempt to reveal fingerprints, and headed down Demon Road. About 1/4 mile down the road, I felt a cold punch on my chest and froze in my tracks. I tried to walk forward and again felt a press on my chest. I turned back to my car with a friend while everyone else continued to the car; I decided something was telling me it was a bad idea to continue. About 30 minutes later, the group came back and we started comparing pictures, audio, and *EMF readings. We caught some quality pictures and EMF readings, but no audio.

One of the girls asked the guy next to her, “why did you pull my hair?” He said he didn’t and about 10 seconds later, she screamed, “something jerked my ponytail” and we scrambled back to our cars and sped back to the city. When we got back to civilization, I got out and saw handprints and finger drawings all over my car. The most compelling were the two smeared handprints on my trunk, like someone was hanging on, lost grip, and slid down the trunk. The Roman Numeral XII was also fingered into the dust.

I don’t try to make sense of what happened that night, but that will always be burned into my mind as the absolute scariest encounter of my life.

23. We do not know enough about life and death

I was in an ambulance carrying me from the hospital in small provincial town towards the big hospital in the capital. I had bad pneumonia which was not responding well to (weak, old and not very effective) oral antibiotics doctors were giving me. In the ambulance I was choking, unable to breathe from (what was later found to be) 750 grams of fluids accumulated in my lungs. The ambulance was jolting, I was short of breath, and next thing I remember was I felt SEVERE blow that kicked me out of my body. I later read stories by other people in similar near dead situations who reported seeing a tunnel and a light, but this was not what I experienced. It was just a blow, a kick which threw me out of my body. I was looking at my body from the side, and also seeing a medical sister which was trying to put a breathing mask on my face.

At first I thought that something happened with my vision and I panicked. I was seeing everything in 2D, like on a movie screen, and also nearly black and white. It was not completely black and white, it was like the colors were very darkened, as if everything was a shades of gray with very little color in it. I know that this seems strange, I mean, I looked at my body from the side and yet I panicked for my eyes and vision, but that was what I thought then. I was 14 year old at the time, and in a state of panic, and I guess my logic was weak and weird at this moment. I severely panicked for my eyes and vision and that was a moment when I thought of my mother, and in an instant, I was looking at her.

She was traveling together with my father and my uncle in a car following the ambulance on a road to the capital. It was my uncle’s car. I started talking to my mother, telling her that my eyes are not ok, that something happened to my eyes and I cannot see well. She did not heard me. They continued to talk, cursing and lambasting the incompetent doctors at provincial hospital, discussing how those doctors tried to coax them to sign some papers after the ambulance left, how they refused to sign, and how they arranged for me to be admitted in the department led by an experienced and very competent doctor with strange name (assoc. prof. Koiundurliev). This was unique name which I remembered.

At that point the gravity of situation hit me. I finally realized that something weird happened, that I shall not be in this car, and I panicked even more. I began to think of my friends at school and of the girl I liked, and as soon as thought of someone was really “sharp enough” in my mind (I don’t know how to explain this in writing), but as soon as thought about someone was “sharp enough” I instantly saw them as if I was standing next to that person in this very moment. Then the panic hit me even harder, I started jumping from place to place, from memory to memory, in an ever increasing pace, and everything became a kaleidoscope of people and places.

This jumping from place to place abruptly stopped when an old lady came. She was very old, with a white hair, white like completely snow white, not white like the grey shadows of other colors I was seeing. She took me by the hand, insisted that I looked at her and repeated several times that I should calm down my mind so that this random jumping from place to place stops. I realized that she was somehow helping me to remain calm, to look only at her and to set at rest and be quiet.

Then she proceeded to explain that now I am going to fall asleep, and when I wake up I will be at the hospital. She told me that doctors will start giving me injections, that some of them will be painful, but I shall be brave like a man and endure the pain, and that my condition is going to improve. But after two months doctors will propose a surgery. She insisted, several times, that immediately when I wake up I MUST tell my mother to refuse to sign papers for the surgery, to refuse to let them do the surgery. She told me that if they do the surgery I am going to die, and insisted again, several times, that I should explain this to my mother as soon as I wake up. She also told me that if I am a good boy and do as she told me to do, my uncle is going to bring me a lot of delicious chocolates in the hospital.

So, long story short: I woke up at the ER, told everything to my mother, she was shocked by my detailed description of what they talked about in the car, I distinctly remember her eyes grew WIDE OPEN when I told her the strange name of the doctor, and she listened to my frenetic demands from her to refuse to sign the papers for the surgery. She was not understanding what I am talking about, as at this moment no one was talking about any surgery. My mother told me that everything is going to be ok, that there is not going to be any surgery and generally tried to calm me down.

I slept a lot in the hospital, was very weak. Doctors drew up the fluids from my lungs using long and thick needles inserted through my back. It was indeed very painful. Christmas came and passed. They gave me strong antibiotic injections and I recovered. 45 days later they saw on X-Rays one particular spot on my left lung which was refusing to heal. Two months later is was still there – still same size. On next X-Ray – again. They proposed a surgery to remove this spot.

My mother resisted to them initially, but eventually, as time passed, there were many doctors insisting that surgery must be done, and my mother finally gave in to their pressure and signed the papers. But this delayed the surgery for many weeks, and when they did a final X-Ray before the surgery to see how big the spot is – it was gone, and the planned surgery was canceled. They all (my mother and the doctors) lied to me, my mother was telling me that there is not going to be a surgery, but they were actually secretly preparing to do it. I only later found out what really happened.

My mother also told me how she watched, not believing her own eyes, how my extremely stingy uncle was bringing me chocolate after chocolate in the hospital. This happened in a then socialist country (Bulgaria), my uncle was working as a driver of big truck for international transportation and that was where he bought the chocolates. On our country local market those chocolates were EXTREMELY expensive and nowhere to be found. And my uncle was (and is, to some extent, to this day) very stingy bastard. My mother told me that, above all, this particular piece of my story convinced her to refuse signing surgery papers for so long, despite the intense pressure from the doctors.

I have a lot of other weird memories from these events, but I decided to not share them, as I am not sure how reliable my memories are. I am only talking about memories I was able to successfully verify with my relatives. Years later I made my mother and father and uncle tell what they remembered, I recorded their words on tape, and I drew the line around what I consider to be the reliable part of the story and what may be the distortions of my memory from the time passed.

Note that I am not religious, my relatives are also atheists. Neither I nor any of my relatives became religious after this

24. The box

There was a series of occurrences at my parents house a couple years ago when I was home from college for Christmas break and then it stopped. These things are not overly creepy, but in the span of 2 weeks, it really scared me.

First, I was drying my hair upstairs in the bathroom. When I finished drying my hair as I had done hundreds of times before, I obviously shut off the dryer. There’s no way I could have accidentally left it on because that sound is not so subtle. The only other person in the house at this time was my mom, who was downstairs waiting for me to finish getting ready. Anyway, I went downstairs and we heard a weird sound coming from upstairs–the hairdryer just resting on the counter had been turned on somehow. This happened again later in the same week.

I was given an iHome for Christmas. Two nights after Christmas, I still hadn’t opened it up from its packaging, all of a sudden at like 3am, there’s BLASTING static blaring throughout the house. We didn’t know where it was coming from. Then I realized it was the iHome which hadn’t gone off the previous night and it wasn’t even plugged in or anything.

The final incident was my jewelry box. It is one of those kinds that wind up and play music. I hadn’t opened it in some time which was evident from the dust outline from a candle I had on top of it. Anyway, I’m sleeping and in the middle of the night, the box starts blaring music. I was super scared after this in particular. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

.sguHhgU@ :mih wolloF .golataC thguohT ta recudorP a si leahciM

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