50 Haunting, Unexplainable Incidents Retold By People From The Internet

Just remember. Any of these can happen to you. Found on r/AskReddit.

Jo Naylor
Jo Naylor

1. Cid420

About ten years ago I were on my friend’s back porch having a smoke (completely sober), when we heard what sounded like all the dogs to the left of us going crazy; not just a few, and not just a little bit of barking. It sounded as if every dog down the left side of the street was going mad; lots growling and ferocious barking that was much louder than I’ve ever heard the dogs around here before (now I’m no expert but I have lived in this area my entire life, and it was definitely unusual).

After a few minutes of this chaos it mostly stops and almost fully returns to the silence there was before it started, minus a couple dogs still raging. Then this, misty…transparent…cloudish…shape starts to float past the back of his chain link fence. Directly behind his house is an empty lot about the size of a house and small alley, and directly past that is a park with a baseball field, and those big park lights were on at the time. Needless to say, the area we were in was exceptionally well lit.

As this “mist” starts floating into view my friend’s dog starts to go mad herself. She ran up with the hair on her back sticking up, growling, barking, and biting at the fence. This worried me a bit since she was the most calm dog I’ve ever known. She was great with old people, kids, small animals, etc. I’ve never seen her like that before, and have never seen her like that since (from the time she was a pup to the day she died). For whatever the reason she went into fucking battle-mode. The “mist” eventually passed and she calmed back down, but seemed a bit jumpy the rest of the night. After it passed we heard dogs going crazy down the right side of the street just as they had done down the left only minuets before.

To this day, I have never seen anything even remotely similar to this, or anything as unexplainable either. My friend is convinced it was a ghost, but I don’t believe in ghosts. I would also find it silly to classify something that, to me, is unexplainable, as something that’s not even proven to exist in the first place.

2. shapechanger

I was at one of my younger brother’s football games, and my dad (who was a coach for the team) asked me to keep track of the numbers of the players who were currently on the field. It didn’t occur to me at first, but I could see their numbers perfectly from distances that I normally couldn’t without glasses or contacts. When I realized, I was completely baffled. I felt both my eyeballs very thoroughly to make sure I hadn’t put my contacts in and just forgotten. My dad insisted that my contacts must be in, despite the fact that I was damn sure they weren’t. I was so fucking excited that I took a walk when I got home and just looked at things, everything being perfectly crisp with no glasses or contacts. When I woke up the next morning, my eyes were back to being nearsighted, and it bummed me out for a week straight. I still have absolutely no explanation for this.

3. 788190

Saw a lot of weird shit over 2 deployments in Afghanistan… Best one was the “ghosts” that first showed up couple hundred yards outside the hesco barriers.

First time (a little after dusk):

Random PVT: “Hey there’s a dude out there” Me: “Where?” Random PVT: “Right FUCKING there. See?” Me: “You’re high, I don’t see shit.” Random PVT (stabbing an outstretched finger into the desert): “RIGHT THERE. LOOK. SEE HIM? THAT’S A FUCKING GUY.”
Now I don’t have the greatest vision in the world, but I vaguely see a dark blob in the direction he’s pointing.

Me: “You sure? Looks like a fucking shadow.” Random PVT: “SGT WE GOT A FUCKING GUY OUT HERE” SGT: “What’s he doing?” Random PVT: “Just standing there” SGT: “Where’d he come from?” Random PVT: “dunno he just popped up” (SGT comes over to have a look) SGT: “who’s this mother fucker?” PVT: “I dunno, I was talking to (Me) and looked back and he’s just standing there.”

So we watch this “person” for about 3hrs, who just stands there, motionless, with its back to us. You could put optics on it and see it was a person, adult male, average height and build. Best part: we “borrowed” a thermal monocular and this fucker doesn’t register in it. ZERO FUCKING HEAT SIGNATURE. Then randomly, just poof, gone. Random PVT spends next 6 weeks telling everyone about the ghost we saw.

Fast forward about 6 months, out on some BS patrol and driver calls out 2 guys couple hundred yards standing on top this little berm (my asshole puckers waiting for the IED to kick off). Same scenario, two guys, backs to us, frozen. LT puts eyes on ’em and calls it in. We dismount, LT calls over terp asks if he knows what’s up (genius). Terp gives blank stare and shrugs. LT decides we should go have a look-see and do some hearts-and-minds shit. I stay in the truck (which feels like 140 fucking degrees), 20min goes by LT comes back with weird look on his face and says “we’re outta here.”

Later that day I asked another guy WTF happened, he says they get within 50yds of aforementioned “persons” and, presto, gone. I ask “what do you mean, gone?” and he just looks at me with this blank stare and says “gone. they were there, and then they weren’t. weird huh?”

Lots of other weird shit, mostly at night. Voices, wailing, screaming, whispering, phantoms in NVGs. I chalk most of it up to lack of sleep and high stress environment. Those “persons” though, hard to explain a mass hallucination like that though.

4. KoalaBomb

Bush being elected twice.

5. Reeser

I am not in any way the superstitious type. I’m an atheist (not that believing in God makes you superstitious), don’t believe in ghosts, and skeptical of just about anything and everything. I definitely consider myself a man of science.
However, even to this day, and after thinking about every possible explanation for years, I simply cannot explain what happened on this one specific night in the summer of 1999:

So, my two friends and I (when we were about 12 years old), decided to experiment with a Ouija board for the hell of it because we were a couple of bored kids without a damn thing to do. My friend Tom, whose house we were at, happened to have one for whatever reason so we pulled it out and started messing around with it, expecting nothing to happen.

Man were we wrong…

So at first, it went about as expected. One of us would screw around and gently push the marker towards a letter, spelling out words like BUTTSEX and PENIS, all of us laughing hysterically..You know, standard adolescent fare. However, after a couple of minutes, we quickly got bored of this and decided to try something different…

Queue my friend dragging his younger brother in with a deck of cards. We decided to have him pick a random card outside the room we were in (so none of us could see) and write that card down on a piece of paper (which none of us could see). After he wrote it down he would yell at us from outside the room that he was ready, and we would all place are fingers on the board and ask it directly what card Tom’s little brother just chose.

Well, we all put our fingers on the board and low and behold, it moved towards a set of numbers. I don’t recall the exact number. I do however, recall the shot of adrenaline that I received after his brother walked in the room holding a piece of paper with the exact number the board moved to..What the FUCK…but okay, calm down….probably just dumb luck. After all, we weren’t asking for suits or anything, just cards.

So we did it again. And again. And again.

Each time, his brother walked in with the same number or face that we just picked, and we could only look at each other in amazement. This went on for a solid hour or two and we tried experimenting with different things. We had the brother rip off individual calendar dates. We moved to another room and had him pick a random television channel. We even took turns going outside and being the person to pick the arbitrary number, letter, or whatnot. Everything was right without fail. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

And then we decided to ask the board personal questions now believing it to be a link to some all-knowing being. I’m sure many of you can guess what types of questions we asked (being 12 and all):

1) When were we going to lose our virginity? 2) What age were we going to die? 3) What’s the name of the women that we’re going to marry?

And I remember saying aloud, “okay Ouija board, let’s get a little more abstract here. Tell us a message.”

The answer I received was, and I quote: “Hell..is only the beginning of fear.”

Never have I seen shit-eating grins of carefree adolescents turn so quickly into frowns of pants-shitting hysteria. We were done. No more.

We never really spoke of that night again and as I mentioned before, we all fell out of touch not too far after that.

Just some added info: I don’t remember every answer it gave, but for me personally number 1 was dead on. It told me 17, and god dammit, I lost it about a week before my 18th birthday. I didn’t even remember this at the time until several weeks later when I happened to be thinking about my childhood. Unfortunately, I lost touch with both of those friends so I haven’t had a chance to ask them if they were right.

The other answer I remember is that apparently my wife’s name is going to be Victoria. I have yet to ever meet a Victoria, but imagine the mindfuck I’ll give myself when I finally do (providing she is somewhat attractive and whatnot). Do I engage her? Is this THE Victoria? It’ll almost be like being thrown into the center of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I simply will not know what to do with myself.

Sometimes I just want to believe that it was my friends playing a practical joke on me and that it couldn’t have been real. But I know what I saw, and by George, I just don’t know how to explain it….

6. iconicimage

Year was 1981; we “played” with the Ouija board for several months but grew tired of it after a while. One night three of us were making fun of it at 3:00am when we heard three loud bangs on our basement door, coming from the basement. So loud they could have splintered the door. We went through the basement with kitchen knives and pellet guns but found nothing. Two weeks later my mother tripped over the stairs at the very spot where the bangs originated; she broke her neck and died on the stairs.

We didn’t have Google back then, but Google “three knocks” and see why this causes the hair on my neck to stand on end 30 years later. Tough to rationalize this as a lifelong atheist; had I not experienced it myself the world would be a simpler place. As it stands, I have to pretend it didn’t happen to maintain any sense of reality. The implications are frightening.

7. punctual

When my sister and I were in high school, we, along with our friends, started playing around with the Ouija board, as silly high school girls will do. My mother, who is a Super Christian (TM), was very opposed to this and insisted that it was a form of contacting the occult, which is explicitly prohibited by the Bible. We, being budding little atheists, laughed at her.

So, one evening, we are playing with the Ouija board in our playroom, which was on one side of the kitchen. We finished up and went into our family den, which is on the other side of said kitchen. We were chilling with our mom and the dogs when we heard an unearthly howl coming from the playroom. Just one, long, bone-chilling, demon howl. We all froze. I went to check out the room, but obviously nothing was there, and all of the pets were in the den.

We stopped using the Ouija after that. I’m sure it is some weird coincidence, like a rogue wolf somehow got into the suburbs or something, but it definitely sounded as though it was coming from inside the house, not outside.

8. nnnnnasty

Perhaps too late to be widely read, but my Ouija board experience was as equally unsettling. My dad died in May of 2008 and I missed the last week of school but never really told anybody except my then girlfriend because the whole, “Oh-I’m-so-sorry-let-me-know-if-you-need-anything” shindig makes me comfortable.

That summer we were fooling around with the board outside a friend’s house, and we started talking to somebody that said she died of cancer in the 1950s or something. We asked if it knew anything about any of us, and it crossed the board to the first letter of my name. “What do you know about nnnnnasty?” we asked. I took my fingers off the board and just sat there. It spelled out, “M-A-Y” and I just sat there. “What happened in May?” somebody asked. “D-A-D” the board spelled out, and everybody looked at me to see if it meant anything to me.

I just said, “Yeah, uhhhh, my dad died last month,” and just looked at my girlfriend at the time, who had also taken her fingers off the board when it spelled May. Somebody asked me if I wanted them to keep going and I said, “Sure,” so they asked if my dad wanted to say anything to me. The board said, “No.”
Awkward.

9. utterpedant

I was 17 and dating a girl who lived in a trailer in Indiana. She often talked about how the trailer was haunted by a poltergeist her family called Bob the Ghost. Bob would apparently do things like open drawers or push cups off the kitchen table. I hadn’t witnessed any of this personally.

I was visiting and sitting at the kitchen table with the girl and her mother. Above the table was a small, wall-mounted set of display shelves with some plates propped up on them.

While we were talking, I saw the girl’s mother glance up, and her eyes went wide. I looked and saw the entire shelf rack, dishes and all, moving straight out, off and away from the wall. It was as if it was sliding smoothly on an invisible track.
The shelf stopped and hovered two feet or so away from the wall and about a foot below the ceiling. It stood completely stable in midair – no wobbling, no shaking. The plates didn’t rattle or shift, and they should have fallen backwards off the shelves the second they moved away from the wall.

The shelf hovered in midair for a few long seconds, and then flung itself down on the kitchen table with tremendous fury. It didn’t fall; there was definite force behind it. The plates smashed, the shelf broke, and glass flew everywhere.

We all jumped up from the table. We stood there, feeling weird and slightly foolish, and then started cleaning up the glass. My girlfriend’s mother later said, “Well, now you’ve met Bob.”

I completely realize this story is insane. Occam’s Razor says either my girlfriend’s mom played an elaborate trick on me, or I’m making this whole story up. All I can do is say that neither of those explanations is true. I am at a complete loss, however, to explain what truly did happen the day I met Bob the Ghost.

10. iheartchrisyang

When I was around 9 years old, I was upstairs in my room reading some random book for class. I stopped reading when I heard the garage door open, and started walking downstairs towards the hallway leading to the garage. When I reached halfway down my staircase, I see my Dad walking down the hallway with only the nightlights shining in the hallway illuminating the hall. It was strange of him to not turn on the lights because he usually did when he got home from work. I casually said, “Hi Dad”, and climbed back up the stairs to my Mom’s room. I told my Mom that Dad was home, but she responded in a manner of disbelief and confusion. She said that it was too early for him to be back at work and that she didn’t hear the garage door open. I argued and said that I just saw him and greeted him, but she thought I was nuts. So, I went back downstairs to prove that I was right, but the whole downstairs area was vacant. I checked his office, the kitchen, the hallway, bathrooms, and he wasn’t present. It took me a good 5 minutes to realize that I had just seen something out of the ordinary, and when I did realize it, I sprinted to my Mom’s room in fear. I explained the whole situation to my Mom, but she didn’t believe me and told me to calm down. An hour later, I heard the garage door open again, but this time, the lights actually turned on and my Dad actually came home from work. So wtf did I see?

11. planafuneral

One night my mother and her friend were playing with a Ouija board when my father was out working. They were having a few drinks and just relaxing. They got spooked and put it away. No big deal.

About two nights later a ghost of a boy visited my brother demanding to be friends, scared the shit out my brother. The kid wouldn’t let up, sometimes he wouldn’t appear to my brother visually but only audibly. Well Tom tried ignoring him, and my parents though it was just your usual imaginary friend stuff. That was until the my brother started showing bruises, scratches, and clumps of his hair missing. He started wetting the bed, at age 8 and he’d never done it before. My mother would be out of the room and hear him having conversations with this ghost saying stuff like “leave me alone” and “I’m not your friend, go away” and my brother would be really insistent that this apparition should fuck off. Getting really kid angry at it.

Well one day my mother was cleaning his room and she saw a perfect noose hanging from his closet rail where you hang shirts. She was freaked out and demanded to know why Tom had made it. Tom said “I keep telling you mom, HE did it”.

They moved out the next day. From that point on my brother never had a problem with the ghost again. A few years later after I was born my mom ran into somebody at an art class who knew who the original owners were. She explained that a murder suicide happened there in the 1950s a few years after it was built.

12. nankles

I was walking down the street in Brooklyn when this teenager, well dressed in cool kids clothes, comes out of a store in front of my group of friends. Suddenly, with a burst of ninja speed and stealth he grabs a goddamn pigeon off the sidewalk with his bare hands.

We freak out and are all yelling “holy shit” and “what the fucking fuck!” He just walks past us with the twitching pigeon clutched in his hand. He says nothing…

That was pretty unexplainable.

13. [deleted]

The first 20 or so seconds I wake up I typically will see things that are actually not there. Lately I have had the same reoccurring episode where I will wake up in the middle of the night and see a girl sleeping next to me. She will then immediately roll off my bed and try taking my sheets with her. I feel like a have to physically fight someone to get my sheets back. It scares the living shit out of me every time it happens.

14. damonkay

I was traveling with my mother in the South of France. She went jogging early in the morning and I stayed in the hotel room sleeping. After a couple of hours I clearly heard someone knocking on the door. I instantly got up and opened the door. And there was my mother looking very surprised, she had her arm raised about to knock the door, but she still hadn’t knocked it. She even asked me how the hell I knew I had to open the door.

I’d say it was a combination of dreaming and one hell of a coincidence. I also used to see strange silhouettes late at night in my bedroom when I was very young. But I’m pretty much sure that was the result of some sleep paralysis I used to have.

15. Karvid

This happened to me just under twenty minutes ago, and everything you’re about to read is true.

First, for some context: I went to a school for two years, which I left last May or June when I finished my sophomore year in high school. I haven’t talked to anybody there since then. Also, I’m a guy and I have long hair.

I was sitting in bed, reading a book when I heard the doorbell downstairs. My mom opened the door, and the person outside told her that he was a friend of mine. So she told me to go outside and see what he wanted. When I saw him, I was really confused; this is a guy I’ve talked to two or three times in my entire life and whom I haven’t seen at all for over a year. He said to me, “Hey, come out here for a second, I need to talk to you.”

I step outside, and he tells me, “I need your hair.”

“What?”

“I lost my pubes and I need your hair.”

“Yeahh… that’s not gonna happen.”

“How about just this small part right there?” (pointing to some of my hair)

“No, and I’m pretty sure there are women down the street who have more hair than I do.”

“Maybe, but yours is the right color.” [I forgot to mention that I’m a white guy with light brown hair, and he’s black]

“I’m sorry, but I’m not giving you any of my hair.”

He finally left. He didn’t ask for anything else; he didn’t even say anything more than what I just wrote. Now I’m sitting here, completely confused about what just happened to me.

What happened to me?

16. kayenta

When I was a little kid of about 5 years old, I would go to bed with a lamp on my bedside table on. A few hours later when my dad went to bed, he would turn my lamp off for me so it wouldn’t be on all night.

One night, I woke up about 2 or 3 AM to see my lamp still on. I figured my dad had just forgotten to turn it off on his way to bed and I tried to get back to sleep.

As soon as I rolled over to get comfy I heard a really weird rattling sound. I looked up to see my lampshade spinning on my lamp. It did this for a few seconds before the light went out.

After screaming in terror for a few seconds my dad ran into my room and I told him what happened. He, of course, thought I was full of it, and tried to turn the lamp back on. He discovered the bulb was spun out of the socket, but was still too hot to touch with bare hands. To this day I am mystified how that happened.

17. superherojuice

I was up all night and had a two hour drive ahead of me in the morning. I fell asleep somewhere outside of the town I was departing, made it through rush hour traffic, and woke up in my parking space. I don’t have any recollection of the drive.

I’ve convinced myself there’s some brain-based explanation for this that I’m simply not aware of yet, but it has always creeped me out.

18. mikeatreddit

My wife (then gf) and I were having dinner at Arbys one night about 7-8 years ago. Having dinner at Arbys could be deemed unexplainable, but that’s not it.

We’re sitting quietly in a corner booth all by ourselves, nobody near us, and as I’m eating, I hear a whisper in a womans voice say, “I’m dying.” It was like, right in my ear. I’m sitting there for about ten seconds wondering what the heck I heard, then start eating again.

I look over at my wife and say, “Did you hear that?” She has this blank look in her face as she heard the voice too. To this day, we affectionately regard it as, “Haunted Arbys.”

19. [deleted]

About 4 months ago I was driving back from my parents house, which requires me to drive about 20 miles on a “country road.” There is a fair bit of traffic, but it was around 10pm, so not many people were out. There are no lights on the side of the road.

About halfway home, my car’s lights start flickering… instrument lights, headlight, everything. I start freaking out because my car is newer and I’m thinking the electrical system is fucked. My car stalls. Luckily I’m near a spot where I can pull off the road on to some dirt. I manage to stop the car, without brake assist. The car is dead. I turn the key and nothing, not even an ignition click. After beating on the steering wheel, I pull out my phone to call AAA.

My iPhone, which was almost fully charged, does not turn on. I hit the home button, hold down the sleep button. Nothing. It is almost pitch black and I’m starting to freak out. I open the glove box and start rooting through it for a little flashlight I keep in there. I turn the flashlight to turn it on. Nothing.

My mind is racing now. Being the scientific atheist I am, I reason that a freak electrical storm (stupid looking back) could have disabled everything in my car.

I figured the best thing to do would be to check the battery (again, stupid looking back) so I reach down to pop the hood.

Ok, reddit, remember that though my keys are in the ignition, they are on the OFF spot. What happens next, I cannot explain to this day. I have fucking nightmares about it. The radio’s lights come on, but the display is blank. I figured it’s just a short, so I reach for the volume knob. My speakers start hissing and popping, like I have a really bad phone connection with someone.

The hair on my neck is literally standing on end and I felt like I was going to have a heart attack.

There is clearly a voice, mumbling in russian or some east european language. It sounded like a woman’s voice. It was mumbling something, but I couldn’t tell. After about 10 seconds of this, it stopped and the radio went dark.

I sat in my car, on the verge of tears and paralyzed with fear for a long time. After a while, I summoned up the courage to turn my key and my car fired right up. I drove like 90 mph home and didn’t sleep a wink that night. I still have no idea what the fuck happened.

20. Hahahangmansjoke

There is a place not far from my own town that is the last dying remnant of a mining town nestled in one of the most desolate, polluted, unsettling places in the world- this place is called Picher. Don’t believe me? Google it. The place is dominated by chat piles- mountains of grey gravel and dirt that stretch up hundreds of feet, collapsed mines and sink holes, abandoned and destroyed roads and buildings. The place is an absolute post apocalyptic wasteland, other than the few people who still refuse to give up their claim of land on the borderlands of hell. And there are even less of those now, since a tornado swept through and demolished half the town a few years ago. Once again, google.

But strangest of all, there is a cult out there that hides in the chat piles and forgotten mines.

In and around Picher, things have a funny habit of going missing- pets, livestock, and even drifters. And they don’t usually show back up. Where do they wind up, you might ask? At the bottoms of water filled mines, stretching down hundreds of feet into the earth, disposed of by these people, is the most common answer. Most of the locals just call them a “Satanic cult,” but then, I know that there are a lot more things out there to worship and give tribute to than just old Scratch, who who knows. It isn’t even a scoffed at as some urban legend- the locals know that they’re out there just as surely as they know anything, and they don’t keep guns loaded by the bed for ghost stories. It isn’t ever a wise idea to go exploring the chat piles and abandoned stretches of waste at night, because the people I have met over the years that had encounters all claim that these people mean business, not hesitating to chase after or taking shots at whoever might have had the nerve to interrupt their rites. Sometimes, though, if you investigate during the day, you will come across the remains of whatever it was they did the night before. Fire pits, stone circles, dead animals, an occasionally a bit of jewelry or some other little oddity. I saw three of them once when they attempted a road trap on myself and some friends on a dirt road, but it has been much more often that I have come across those cold traces at one time or another out there exploring. A burned log here, a hollowed out dog there, and once even a ring, which upon consideration, I left right where I had found it. One thing always stood out though, stranger than the rest, that I saw.

I had seen a vertical shape in the distance, though obviously not a tree, and decided to investigate it. And the closer I got, the more and more unnerved I became at the steady realization of what it was. A wooden cross, planted in the ground, every bit of seven feet high. And there was something on it.

From the distance I thought it was actually a person on there, and that had my adrenaline racing, ready to turn and race back to my car if that was the truth of it or if I so much as heard a twig snap. But the closer I got, I realized that it was something else, some sort of animal. It was a goat.

But let me explain. It’s front legs had been cut and broken so that they could form a T, like a human, and it’s ankles had been nailed into the wood. As had the ankles of the back legs, crossed over each other. A true crucifixion. The topper, though, was the head. A crown of rose bush thorns had been wrapped around the things head, it’s horns jutting up through the center, which in a way made me think of the cartoon devil using it’s horns to hold up the halo. It’s eyes had been gouged out. And there was a silver dollar shoved in it’s mouth, keeping it propped open in a silent scream.

I turned and left, walking at a brisk pace to say the least, keeping my eyes peeled for any sign of people hiding in the trees or chat piles, my hand close to the pistol under my coat. I did hear some rocks go sliding at one point, but saw no one, and made it to my car unharassed and proceeded to haul ass out of that place.

There are reasons you don’t go out in Picher at night, or if you’re smart, not at all.

21. enthos

I have this old ratty acoustic guitar that I just can’t seem to get rid of. I got it from my dad when I was 15 or 16. It was a nice beginner instrument but I eventually outgrew it.

When I finally purchased a new one, I decided to give the old one away, as it was cracked on the side but would still be useful for a child wanting to learn to play.

Late one night, several weeks later, I was driving home after visiting my dad who lives about 2 hours from my house. I needed gas to get all the way home so I pulled into this really shitty-looking gas station.

When I was done taking a piss in the bathroom, I decided to buy a drink. As I was paying for it, I glanced over at my truck. I noticed a face in the window, just staring back at me.

Seriously creeped out, I left the drink at the counter and walked out the front door and stood there. I yelled, “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN MY CAR, GET OUT!!” loud as shit.

Then the door of my car opens and I see this lanky dude get out and just book it. I wasn’t going to chase this mother fucker so I let him go and walked over to my truck.

First, I inspected it for damage. Seeing there was at least no superficial damage, I very cautiously got into it and turned the lights on. Nothing appeared to be damaged or stolen. Looking in the back seats, I noticed something wrapped up in a blanket.

When I unwrapped it, I couldn’t fucking believe I was once again in possession of my old cracked guitar, and stuck on the front was a note. It said, “you need this more than I do.” That’s it.

So to this day I have no clue who that guy was, why he had my guitar, and what the note meant. Just a really really creepy story I guess.

22. [deleted]

My friend Shaggy and I were hanging out one day and we can across this thing people call a “magnet”. If you took the magnet and put it next to anything metal it would stick to it. It was sort of like a metal detector or something. Someone in a lab coat tried to explain it to us, but those people lie a lot so I’m pretty sure it’s a miracle.

23. Ironhalo

I thought I’d share with you all my own story, and it’s quite topical as I actually have my Mum laid up on my couch here in Sydney, Australia while she recovers from an ankle reconstruction. We got talking about this last night, so I thought I’d share it while the memory was still fresh. First off, I’m going to throw a caveat out. This story is true, I haven’t embellished it (which makes it even more creepy) and everyone in my family who visited us while living in this house backs it up. Sorry the story is a bit long, but a lot went on. Hope you packed a lunch!

It all goes back to about 1982-1985, I was but a 3-5 year old (I have a sister who is 1 year younger) and my parents had just moved into a house in Brisbane. My dad was a journalist (now passed away) and my mother is a midwife who at this stage had taken some time off to be at home with us. The house itself was a single storey at the front, and went into a double storey at the back. The front of the house had the living room, and my room, while the back of the house was joined by a carpeted landing with stairs that went up to a master bedroom on the left, a nursery straight ahead, and a bathroom to the right. At the bottom of the stairs was a side door leading onto a entertainment/bbq area with the backyard out the back. If you turned right at the base of the stairs (and not went out the side door to the concrete entertainment area) you passed under an arch frame that led into a large L shaped concrete rumpus room under the house. Inside the L shaped rumpus room (and under the stairs above) was a dark tiled laundry. At the back of the rumpus room was another back door leading directly out to the back yard. Got me so far? Good. Sorry for the architectural intro!

Dad would often work late at night, so was barely home, (do the maths on that one and work out why they later divorced….lol) so Mum was often left in this house at night with my brother and sister for company. Mum said the first thing she noticed after a month or two of living there was that our old dog Mandy would refuse to enter the house, and spent all of her time in the backyard in her kennel. Apparently if Mum was bringing in the washing, the dog would happily follow up until the back door, but as soon she reached the back door her tail would drop and she would start whimpering. Mum thought it was odd, but nothing more got said. She put it down to ‘the dog being a dog’. Then weirder things started happening. The laundry would flood for no reason, with adjacent rooms left completely dry. Mum and Dad would walk down the back of the house to find light bulbs shattered from their sockets. Mum said she absolutely detested walking in the back of the house at night, as she said that as soon as she entered the stairway/landing area, her hairs would stand on end. She told me ‘it felt like someone was watching me as I walked past or on the stairs’. As you can imagine, checking on my baby sister at night soon became an event to dread, when ordinarily she should have been happy to do so.

The weirdness continued, however it started to ramp up over a few months when Mum and Dad said they used to hear shuffling feet coming from the rumpus room below when they would be lying in bed at night. Often Mum said she would be knitting or watching TV at the front of the house by herself, only to hear laughter coming from the back of the house. She’d get up to check, but of course I would be asleep, and nothing would be there.

One night my aunt and my 18 month old cousin came to stay while my Dad and my uncle painted my grandmother’s lounge room walls one night after work. My Mum and aunt both chatted about their babies (me being a toddler, and my sister a year younger) and my aunt mentioned that my cousin was currently going through teething and was spending some nights crying. This night in particular, my cousin was a little bit in pain so my mother volunteered to drive down to the local pharmacy and pick up some Bonjela (teething gel) to help numb the pain, as we had run out. My mother said to my aunt, ‘Look Jenny, I think there is something wrong with the house, but Phil (my Dad) doesn’t believe me, so I’m just warning you, if you hear something I want you to let me know.’ Aunt: ‘What do you mean?’ Mum: ‘Well I have been hearing some weird things that I really can’t explain, and frankly, I’m a little bit scared.’ Aunt: ‘Oh rubbish! I’m a very spiritual person and I have been in a friend’s house that was apparently haunted and I picked up on it, so I can tell you there is nothing wrong with this house!’ Mum: ‘Oh…ok, well just wanted to let you know. I’ll be back in about 20-30 mins anyway, see you soon.’

Mum got back from the pharmacy to find my uncle’s car in front of our house. Sensing something wasn’t right, Mum walked in to find my sobbing aunt trying to be consoled by my uncle, while my Dad was poking fun at her. Dad: ‘Get spooked did you Jen? guffaw’ Mum: ‘You heard something didn’t you??!?’ Aunt: ‘After you left, I could feel thumps coming through the floorboards and something called my name and laughed from the back of the house. This house is bullS&%#!’ Petrified, my Mum tried to find out what was causing this. She got chatting to a neighbour who said that ‘the previous renter went a bit crazy and went downhill after a messy divorce. She got into some ‘weird’ religion and often would have people would come by the house every few weeks where they would hold ‘seances’ in the house. Being a churchgoer (at this stage) Mum said she felt a shiver go up her spine as she started realising what may have been an explanation for what was going on.

Turns out the woman was a Satanist. Mum asked ‘Where did they used to hold these seances do you know?’ The neighbour replied, ‘oh we used to see them put candles in the rumpus room windows, so they used to hold them in there.’ Needless to say, Mum was determined to move out from that point on. Dad of course really didn’t believe her so they were staying put. Needless to say, despite all our toys/trikes being in the rumpus room, Mum said I would NEVER play down there. She had just put it down to kids not wanting to leave their mother’s feet at such a young age! My older cousin, who was a year older then me, flatly refused to go down to the rumpus room when she visited. She told my aunt and Mum that ‘things down there spooked her out’.

A few more months went by and apparently I started complaining to my mum of a ‘man who sat on top of my wardrobe looking at me’ at night. She got rid of the wardrobe. A few weeks later she was getting changed in her room at the top of the house (I was down the front of the house watching Sesame Street) and when she went to get out of her room she found the door was locked. She started shaking the door, but it wouldn’t open. She called out to me, but I wouldn’t have heard her. 7 months pregnant with my baby brother (4 years younger than me) at this stage, she was forced to shimmy down the drain pipe and onto the side entertainment area (a dignified pose for a pregnant woman!). She came back up through the side door, up the stairs, to find her door wide opened and unlocked. She came and scolded me and said ‘Mark don’t ever lock Mummy in her room again!’. I apparently claimed black and blue that I hadn’t stopped watching the TV. Mum believed me.

About this time she decided enough was enough, and so she approached their local pastor to ask what to do. He suggested two options, 1. they ignore it and hope it went away, or 2. they play loud hymns and read Bible verses to try and anger whatever was there into leaving. He also said though that it could anger them, and they might throw stuff around.

My great-grandmother, who was a VERY religious person, walked into the rumpus room one day and told my mother ‘there are evil, evil faces looking at me and leering at me down there’ after walking downstairs to get a toy for me. A pastor later confirmed that, ‘take it or leave it, and you might think I’m mad, but you have 2-3 demonic manifestations/entities residing in the back of your house.’

That was the last straw. Mum packed our stuff, and started looking for another house. My Dad and her were divorcing at this stage so he was gone frequently. But this wouldn’t be the ‘evil’s’ last parting shot. My mother, about a few days out from moving, went to check on my sister (who was now 2) while she was asleep in the top storey nursery…now her room. On checking her cot, she found it to her terror to be empty. The window above it (and it was one of those old design HEAVY horizontal sliding windows with a vertical latch halfway up one side) was wide open, and the fly screen behind it had its rubber seal hanging in the breeze, with a flap of fly screen swinging in the breeze. Underneath her window was an annex over the back door, which now had a huge dent in the fibreglass of it, and its supports were broken. There was my sister crawling around the backyard, with the dog playing beside her. Mum freaked out, and rang the doctor ASAP who came and checked her out. She was fine, but had a bit of a concussion. When Mum, Dad (he was home at the time) and the doctor asked what happened she exclaimed ‘Doggy down down down!’. Evidently she had fallen (although ‘falling’ out of a window that she couldn’t climb out of nor reach, nor open seems a bit too convenient) out the window and had seen the dog running around the back yard beneath her. Needless to say, we were gone that day.

24. planafuneral

This one happened to me and a friend named Jeff. A few years back in 2002 met this guy Jeff when he came through my checkout line buying baby food for his daughter. We’d talk about music, specifically Guided by Voices as he was a HUGE fan.

Anyway one of Jeff’s favorite activities was driving around late at night listening to Art Bell. I joined him on a few occasions and it was good laugh. We’d inevitably get something to eat at a drive through as well. Good times. I started researching haunted places online in Kansas City we’d drive to them, see nothing but have a good laugh.

However, one night we went to a cemetery I read about online, I remember it was right in the worse part of the ghetto. I want to say Elmwood Cemetery but I could be mistaken.

We drove right in, it wasn’t locked and this was right around 1 AM. I thought this was odd, but hey it’s the ghetto. I heard that drug dealers would work out of there and hookers would take johns there but the place was dead quiet. We got out and walked around together but saw nothing, we weren’t even spooked. On our way to back to his SUV things got a bit odd but we felt it was nothing and as we just got back to his SUV a lady with a child approached us, looked just like you and me.

Now this next part, I don’t know how to explain it but here goes. I asked her “how are you?” and she said “i’m fine” and she asked us, “what are you doing here” and I said “looking for ghosts!” and smiled. Next she just walked off towards the gates and said nothing. Me and Jeff were frozen for about 30 seconds until he said “oh shit, was that a ghost?” I said “No, it couldn’t be”. We got in his SUV, put the brights on but saw no sign of this lady walking up the long road to the gates. NO SIGN. We then stopped and compared notes. When the lady walked away there was no child with her.

Read more Thought Catalog After Dark articles here.

25. [deleted]

Okay, here we go:

  1. When I was 8 years old, my friend Patrick and I were in the woods near our houses. We were pretty deep into the woods when all of a sudden we hear Patrick’s mom calling us. There was no mistaking her voice, since she had a very unique Austrian accent. We keep hearing her calling out to us and we finally make it to his house and ask his mom what she needed. She said she never called us.
  2. I remember chasing my own doppelganger around my yard when I was 9. When I finally though I had cornered it between a fence and a wall, it had vanished.
  3. When I was 7 or 8, I remember going to the boys bathroom at school and some writing appeared on the mirror (like when you write on the mirror after you take a hot shower). The same thing happened a few days later on the mirror in the bathroom at my house.
  4. This one is tricky, but I swear it happened. When I was between the ages of 7-9, I remember waking up one morning and seeing crawfish all over the streets and on people’s lawns and cars. It had rained pretty viciously the night before and my friend and I were running around picking up the crawfish and playing with them. They were all making their way to the streets and floating down into the sewers. My friend vaguely remembers this and my parents don’t. I can’t find record of this ever happening (newspaper, radio, etc.), however there are records of animals raining down from the sky in other parts of the world.
  5. When I went to Ireland in the spring of 2000 for a school trip, we were staying in a hotel in this little town by a beach. Everyone on the trip ended up going to this club to party it up and my girlfriend and I and another couple went to a casino/arcade to play some games. We play for a bit and call it an early night and make our way back to the hotel. Everyone else is still out partying. The next day we all wake up for breakfast, pack our bags, and get back on the bus. Everyone is there except for one guy, Gilbert. The chaperons start freaking out thinking Gilbert may have wandered into the ocean while he was drunk and drowned. He wasn’t in his room or in anyone else’s room, so the hotel management starts going floor by floor and room by room looking for Gilbert. The girls on the bus start crying, expecting the worst, the adults are all freaking out. After about an hour, the find Gilbert. He’s exactly one floor up from the room he was supposed to be in (615 instead of 515, for example). Nobody knows how he got into his room as that room was not rented out and that floor was empty except for one other guest. Everybody, including the staff, was baffled.
  6. When I was 17, my girlfriend and her parents went on a trip to Hawaii. She asked me to go by her house every few days and watch her cats, give them food, etc. One day, I’m asleep and hear a cat meowing in my dreams. I them dream about a cat being stuck in a pond. I immediately wake up and rush over to my girlfriend’s house only to find her cat drowning in a shallow pool of water in an above ground swimming pool. I rescue the cat and all is well.
  7. Before my first day of starting at a new private school in a new town, I had a nightmare involving this horrific abstract human face. Everywhere I would look in my dream, this face would appear, and it was quite an unsettling visage. I woke up ready for school, a little bit shaken up by this dream, but thought nothing of it. On Friday, at the end of the my first week at this new school, we were required to go to mass. Upon walking into the church, the face that had haunted my dreams several nights before was the same face that was on the post-modern/abstract Crucifix hanging above the alter. I had never set up in that church prior to that point.

26. [deleted]

I built my desktop PC myself. I know how computers work.

I sat down at my computer, and opened up Firefox. Clicked on my reddit bookmark, then clicked on a thread I had never opened before. It loaded, fully. Then my network connection went out, and I looked down at my network adapter. It was clearly unplugged, and had been so since I had messed with my USB cables earlier during the day.

It is the closest I have ever come to living out a real-life “THEN WHO WAS PHONE?” situation.

27. Harry_Seaward

My brother killed himself a few years ago. He lived 2000 miles away. He was cremated before he was returned home, so I never saw a body.

Before he died, he was a really funny guy. He knew some jokes, but he was a GREAT story teller. Any guy that can make a day of fishing into a gut-splittingly funny day is a GREAT story teller. Even at his worst (he was a bipolar alcoholic) he could make people laugh. A jackass of the highest order.

His funeral was in the same town he grew up in – not where I lived – and a few of us were staying at my grandmother’s house. Her neighborhood was sort of half rural – half urban. The morning of the funeral her doorbell rang at 6:00 am. I was sleeping on the floor in the living room, so I got up to answer it.

There was a Sheriff’s Deputy at the door.

“Sorry to bother you,” he said. “We’re just getting a donkey out of your yard and didn’t want to startle you.”

I muttered some sort of okay and closed the door. I laid back down and went back to sleep for an hour or so before Grandma started making her delicious biscuits.

At breakfast someone asked, sort of half-heartedly, as we had a funeral to attend that day, who was at the door. I told them. It was the Sheriff’s Office. They were getting a donkey out of the yard.

A few seconds later, my mom starts laughing. This is a woman whose son had just died a few days earlier. We sort of stared at her… “My son sent a jackass to tell us he’s okay…”

We all started laughing – partly because it was funny, partly because we just needed to laugh. It was an AMAZINGLY cathartic moment and I’m not sure we’d have made it through the day without it.

To this day I see his face from time to time. I know it’s a trick – and I suspect it’s because I never got to see his body. But I can keep from losing it – knowing my mind’s playing tricks on me – because of that early morning jackass.

28. acejiggy19

My parents were out of town and my sister and I were staying at our house (I’m 17, she’s 14) and as our clock strikes midnight, we hear our 2 German shepherds going crazy in the living room.

We go to find out what is wrong, and one of the dogs is running in a circle, with a creepy, death stare at the center of the roof and is growling and barking, hair on her back standing up. The other was sitting a bit farther back with this really scared look on his face, and whimpering.

Freaked the hell out of me… Has happened a few times since then too, but not very often.

29. junglist313

I was about 9 or so, swimming in a small pool with my sister. I came up from under water, and there was a loud buzzing noise behind me. I turned around and say what looked sort of like an enormous housefly-cicada hybrid, it had huge eyes the size of baseballs. It’s oval shaped body was about the size of a volleyball. My sister started screaming and snapped me out of my catatonia. I told her to run for the house because it could bite. The thing never moved though, it just hovered there. We ran all the way to the house looked back and it was gone.

Another story from the same house, about two years earlier. We had a swing set behind our garage and it was in a big sandbox. One day, before Nintendo, I took the hose out there and flooded the whole sand box and started patting the mud into pies. A swarm of gnats came up out of the mud. I got bored of swatting the gnats and came inside. About ten minutes later I hear my mom say “It looks like it’s going to storm outsi- Oh my god Bob get in here!” (Bob is my dad). What my mom thought was a storm cloud blocking out the sun was in fact a HUGE swarm of dragonflies.

They literally blocked the sun out and you could only see a few feet. They descended on our house. The swarm was so thick you could here it inside the house with the windows closed. They were flying into the windows so hard and in such numbers I thought they were going to break the glass. My dad and I went outside, he grabbed the skimmer for the pool and swung it through the air hitting probably 20 or so, but it made no difference. I got the hose and started trying to push it back. I can still remember the sound of the water splashing off the myriad of wings and bodies. The swarm stayed almost completely inside our yard, I would say about 25 feet or so in diameter. I distinctly remember my neighbor two doors down opening his back door to see what all the fuss was and staring slack-jawed at me and my father fighting off a black cloud of buzzing dragonfly armed only with a hose and a skimmer. After about 5 minutes. The swarm broke up and the dragonfly dispersed. We later were told that they were probably feeding off the gnat swarm I had created earlier.

30. kirmy

I worked in a pub on the West coast of Scotland in a small fishing village when I moved over from Australia. It was fairly run down and one of the first buildings in the area aside from the old “blackhouses” which are all but a memory now. It was a great place and full of characters.

One morning I was opening the pub and cleaning before opening the doors for business. As I was stacking the glasses onto the shelves a willowy woman with grey long hair in a plait walked past the window in the snug (upper level) down four stairs and around the corner to the lounge bar and past me. She made eye contact with me and gave me a withering look and walked into the women’s toilets. I got out a “Hi” before she stalked off. She had grey coloured eyes and a dark skirt on mid calf length and a white peasant blouse, sort of 1970’s style. I stood there thinking “rude bitch” and waited facing the toilet doors for her to emerge. It dawned on me a nano second later that the doors to the pub were still locked. I then got a tad scared thinking that this bampot had let herself in after me as I had come in the back door and: a) she could be a lunatic flouncing about or b) someone who had been locked in overnight and had been there all along.

Time ticks on and STILL no sign of this woman emerging from the loo. I had not taken my eyes off the toilet door as I thought perhaps this chick was a nutter and wanted to know why she was in the pub when it was closed. After 15 minutes I started to worry that something was wrong so I tentatively edged the door open and called in “excuse me are you alright in there” and was greeted with three empty toilet stalls and no sign of anyone at all. The windows are all barred as they are on ground level. I felt my stomach lurch. I looked around all of the stalls and pushed and pulled on all of the bars but they were welded in place. There were no crawl spaces etc.

Three nights later as we were closing up I told my work mate about my encounter and as we stood at the opposite end of the bar chatting over a dozen glasses slid off the shelf and into the sink as if in slow motion one after the other. None of the glasses were at the edge of the shelf, the shelf was not coming away from the wall. We put a pool ball on the shelf and it didn’t roll off. GULP! We then locked up and literally ran out without finishing prepping for the morning.

About a week later my then very annoying manager was fucking about in the back out the pub while I was hoovering the lounge bar before opening. The jukebox does this thing where it plays the last track played automatically if someone hasn’t put a track on for over 45 minutes. So I’m hoovering away and “Heartbreak Hotel” comes on VERY LOUD. I ignore it as much as I can and hurry through the hoovering and the track finishes and so do I. I pick up the Hoover and start to carry it out the back when my manager walks through and I have to back up to let her pass. We pass each other in front of the jukebox and she leans past me and turns it on at the wall. My eyes went from the switch to her face and I apparently went green. I told her what just happened and she said “Oh yes that happened a lot in your flat”! Whaaaaa?

Apparently the staff accommodation above the flat has some serious ghosty activity and unplugged radios and stereos played Elvis. At this I thought they were all taking the piss and the whole thing had been an elaborate hoax. I got really shitty with her thinking she was playing me for a fool. Fucking Elvis! Seriously!

Several nights later I am laying in bed in said flat and have left one of those safety pint glasses (one’s that don’t shatter but break into cubes when broken) on the sink (yes my crappy room had a sink in it…stained yellow naturally). I started to feel really spooked for no good reason and put my book down and look up. As I do the pint glass shattered and showered glass all over my bed and my legs. At that point I came very close to shitting my sheets. The room was heated to about 22 degrees centigrade and the windows were shut.

I moved out soon after. My experiences have now been added to a growing list of others in this particular pub. Scared the living fuck out of me! If I was conned then I doff my cap…it was a brilliant hoax and I was genuinely scared.

31. ohmygulay

Last year, after watching a movie at the local theater, I was driving down a long stretch of road with grazing fields on both sides. There weren’t any street lights on this stretch for about half a mile. I noticed there was a car ahead of me that was going very slow (40 mph in a 55 mph road) on my lane. I overtook the car and looked over, seeing it was an old Asian lady. After I did this I looked over again to see if she was flipping me off or something, but the car wasn’t there anymore.

There was a huge divider in between the lanes, which means she couldn’t have made a U-turn. The only right turn on that stretch of road was a dirt path that always had a locked gate and even if she did use this path, I would’ve seen the headlights.

32. Howlinghound

I still, to this day, do not know what the fuck happened. I swear to you I was awake the whole time and experienced it in full consciousness. However, I want to attribute it to dreaming but dammit to hell, I know I was awake… I was just a boy, perhaps 9 or 10 years old. My twin size bed lay in the corner of the room just down the hall from my parents bedroom. Next to my bed, opposite the wall, was a window facing the backyard. This window had blinds, then wood-framed windows, then a screen, and finally burglar bars. It wasn’t the best of neighborhoods, nor was it the worst.

One night, for no reason at all, I just woke up in the middle of the night. I saw movement at the window, a shadow.

Suddenly a face appeared through the window. It was my fathers face. The same father that was supposed to be sleeping down the hall, and yet it wasn’t. He didn’t just break his face through the glass…it was through the glass…as if he was immaterial though he looked solid as life itself. He wore a black beanie and had his facial hair styled just like my fathers. He looked around the room and turned to his right…to find me there, wide-eyed and freaked the fuck out. When he saw me, it was that look that he had found exactly who he had been looking for. He walked through the fucking…let me re-iterate, he WALKED through.the fucking.window! He stepped through at which point I noticed he had a maroon long sleeved sweater and black pants.

It was what you would imagine a 70s movie burglar to look like. He looked at me and gave me a very calm smile, a smile that said, “I’m was looking for you…” It wasn’t malicious, wasn’t friendly either, just a look of fact. The way a doctor tells you, “Everything’s going to be fine.” He takes a step towards me and I scream bloody fucking murder, “DAAAAAAAAAAD!!!!” This guy turns into, for lack of a better term, a stream of mist and like smoke streams into my white blanket. The blanket blew up into the air a bit like a wind gusting underneath and settled back down. Once it settled back down the white blanket…glowed. It glowed with a magnificent and glorious brightness that didn’t touch the walls or the room…it just glowed hardly an inch but it was so bright and well…beautiful. It felt like something happened to me.

As soon as I felt…something my father had run down the hall to my room in his usual garb, white socks and whitey tighties. This had all happened in mere moments. So my father comes into the room and looks around quickly, finds that everything is okay except that his son is sitting straight up in his bed wide-eyed and freaked out. He assumed I had just had a nightmare and thats why I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t talk because I don’t know what the fuck happened. He rubs my head a little bit and goads me back to lay down. I lay down, relaxed, and VERY fucking confused. My father kisses my forehead and says goodnight. As soon as the sounds of his footsteps disappear back into his bedroom, my blanket blows back up again and the stream of mist shoots back out into the middle of my bedroom. There he stood, the same man mimicking my father but in a different wardrobe.

The fucked up thing about this was that this time he had a different look on his face…a smirk. A smirk that said, “I came what I needed to do, good luck kid. You’re gonna be alright, everything’s going to be okay.” And with that he walked back out through the window and vanished. edit: this was just the first that popped into my head, I have a ton more of fucked up things thats happened but that was one of my earlier ones. I’ve had other strange things happen throughout my life but of this one…I’m still confused as to what the fuck really happened.

33. leahcimic

Once, my girlfriend and I were having a bit of a quiet night, when we decided we would make some noodles. I thought I’d make some extra to feed to my dog, who we had been playing with that night. We ate our noodles and fed the dog, and went and sat on the couch to watch some tv.

The dog had finished her noodles and came to sit on our feet.

All the doors in the house were shut + locked, and are impossible for the dog to open. We have glass sliding doors, which were also locked.

We were sitting around when suddenly we heard my dog barking. We looked outside the glass sliding door to see her staring back at us with a look that can only be described as ‘the fuck, let me back in’.

She is a placid german shepherd and I have never seen this look on her face. She was fearful and angry, and hesitant of us. We let her back in, and for about an hour she was afraid of us.

To this day, we have no idea how she got outside. No one let her outside, no one left doors open.

We didn’t even feel her get up from our feet. She was there one minute, and outside barking the next.

Strangest thing I have ever witnessed.

34. Another_Sarah

We were in FL on holiday, one of the islands i think (i was ~12 years old and my parents remember this very clearly, too). There was only one car park for absolutely ages. Turns out the parking cost $4 but we only had $3 in change. We stand by the meter for about 5-10 minutes debating what to do and the meter makes this noise… and out pops a dollar.

We fed the machine our $3 and it’s own $1 and went on our way, bewildered.

35. sociopathic

I was at a house party in Scotland, where some of my friends were squatting in an abandoned mansion. I had a few drinks, but wasn’t significantly drunk, when a girl comes up to me. She’s completely gorgeous. She had fair hair and skin, and was wearing a white slip, and drinking from a wine bottle. She said, nothing, just took me by the hand and lead me outside. At this point I was thinking sex.

But she just keeps walking, into the woods, on a path. She started singing, some kind of Scottish tune, but with a very thick accent I couldn’t understand. It was beautiful. The dew started to fall, and everything was covered in a light mist.
We come to a clearing and there’s a stump. She sits down on the stump and looks at me for the first time since we left the house. And she says in a soft voice, “Go to sleep now.”

I woke up in a ditch next to a dirt road about three miles away, with someone nudging me awake, asking if I was okay. I felt completely fine (not hung over) and had everything I came to the house with on my person. I never saw the girl again, and nobody at the party had seen a girl matching her description. In fact, they had seen me leave the house alone and assumed I had to pee (the water was turned off in the house).

36. Decateron

As a child (about 40 years ago), my mother used to live in a small town as in southern Saskatchewan called Carrot River.

The town’s income from outward sources mainly came from farming, as there wasn’t any sort of tourism to speak of. One of these farmers (I think his last name was Morris) came home to his wife and child one night and was said he was seeing things. He didn’t really go too far into it as far as I know, but if he did, the conversion didn’t really spread around.

The next day, his brother and him went out in the afternoon to check on the crops. Four or so hours passed, but his wife thought nothing of it. She assumed they had went into town for a couple of drinks (it was a common thing for most men in that area). A couple more hours passed and she decided to go check out in the field. Walking a few feet from her doorstep, she noticed her husband’s pickup out in the middle of the crops with the taillights on. She made her way over to the truck and found everything in the cab of the vehicle, including the windshield, melted. The only thing remaining inside was the steel toes on the farmer’s boots.

Over the next couple of days, the police investigated their deaths, but couldn’t figure out what happened. However, they did find a few disturbing things during the investigation. First off, both of the doors were locked and the windows were rolled up (keep in mind it was Summer). Secondly, it looked like they had been driving in circles for a good half hour by the amount of tire tracks in the field. It seems like they were trying to get away from something, but nobody’s really sure what.

37. [deleted]

I’ live in Bogotá, Colombia, and my parents live in a nearby rural county. Two years back, while, hiking across the mountains nearby my parent’s country-house I took a route I hadn’t taken in years accompanied by a pair of dogs (A German Shepherd and a Siberian Husky), I had been walking for a couple hours and was, for all effects, in the middle of fucking nowhere, in mountains that look like this. Then I see, in the distance, a bunch of guys wearing camo suits and military equipment. Now, Colombia’s got a bunch of paramilitary groups ranging from communist guerrillas to far-right “self-defense” militias… all of them pretty dangerous, so I take the dogs and climb out of the road, waiting for them to pass, just to keep my paranoia at ease.

Then, when I reach the top of the mountain I see a small guy, dressed in the way of the local peasants (a heavy wool ruana], felt hat and brown cotton pants) sitting in a rock while smoking a cigar. They (local peasants) say that when you see an apparition you should ask “¿de Dios o del Diablo” ([do you come] from God, or from the Devil?, in spanish), so I jokingly say it in an attempt to break the ice and start a conversation. The guy turns around and answers “de ninguno, sumercé, pero puedo darle razones a ambos” (“from none of them, your mercy*, but I can send your message to both”) with a voice that I can only compare to Tom Wait’s…

A second later I hear a voice behind me: it’s a soldier, apparently he spotted me hiding from their patrol and when to check me out, when I turn around the peasant was gone and the soldier didn’t knew what I was talking about, but my dogs where staring blankly at the stone where he was sitting. I have no clue who the guy was, or if I imagined the whole thing, but I swear I wan’t that tired.

38. mistressg

When I was about six, I was staying at my grandparents’ house when I woke in the night. I noticed that the dots on the wall (where posters had taken off the wallpaper) were moving and dancing. I watched for a while, then turned around to notice that a poster on the wall (of country music star Linda Ronstadt) was also moving. The image of Linda turned round and smiled at me. I turned around again, to see a man standing by my sleeping father. He was around eighteen, wearing a suit. When we made eye contact, he smiled and waved at me, then mouthed ‘go back to sleep’. I did. It wasn’t scary at all; in fact, it was weirdly calming.

In the morning, I told my parents, who assured me it had been a dream, but I was adamant (and still am) that I was not dreaming.

It wasn’t until I was about 11 or 12 that I discovered the most interesting thing about this. While helping my grandpa clear out the loft, I stumbled across a photo of the man I had seen in the room. He was my dad’s brother, who had died in a car crash aged 18. I had heard about him, but until that day I had never seen a photo of him.

I’ve heard my experience described as sleep paralysis before, which I guess could be true, although I was able to sit up and turn around. Also, it doesn’t explain seeing my dead uncle, who I had not seen a photo of at that time.

39. bookworm344

I have had many instances that I can not explain. Here are two that tend to freak my friends out.

  1. I was six years old and woke up crying. Went to my Mom and told her Great Grandpa was dead. She told me I was just having a nightmare and to go back to bed. The next morning she got a call and my Grandpa had died as I was telling her he was dead.
  2. In my early thirties I was living in a bad marriage and our home was very negative. I would consistently wake in the wee hours of the morning because I was “dreaming” a teenager was standing over me staring. He was about 18 with black hair and a green t-shirt. My son was about nine at the time, stopped sleeping. I told him he could come sleep in my room but he always said no. After months of him staying awake and refusing to sleep in my room I asked him why exactly he would not go in my room. He replied with “Because the bad boy in your closet scares me.” The hair stood up on my arms as I asked “What does he look like?” He replied “a big boy with dark hair and mean eyes. He is always wearing a green shirt.” I had not told anyone about the “boy” in my room because I thought it was just stress messing with my head. I can not explain how we both saw the same kid. Even as I type this it makes me jumpy.

40. Far2Gone

One summer, I stayed over at my best friend’s house almost every night, because we would have weights for football early in the morning. We lived in a small rural town in Indiana.

His house was around 70 years old and there were alot of things that were weird about it. On all of the upstairs bedrooms the locks were on the outside of the doors and they were all very heavy locks. In one of the rooms there was a closet with a sort of closet inside of it with a heavy wooden door leading to the second enclosure inside of it. Also both the door to the closet and the heavy wooden door had locks on them from the outside.

The basement of the house was unfinished and when you came down the stairs the first thing you noticed was that there was a hole knocked through one of the walls in the basement and on the other side of the wall there was another room, that at one time or another had been sealed off. The basement was always dark and had the creepiest vibe I’ve ever felt in my life. So I never had the guts to go look inside the other room because of my fear that my friend would slam the door and trap me in the lightless basement.

Anyway one night we were sitting upstairs playing Animal Crossing of the GameCube and he decided to go down stairs to get on the computer while I stayed upstairs in the room with the double closet. Maybe 20 seconds after he left, I started hearing a rattle and then a banging coming from the closet, I stood there for a minute gathering my courage looking at the door before darting at it to click the lock on the door, but as I moved towards it the door creaked open. Sending me down the stairs after my friend. When I reached the bottom of the stair case I looked into the dark living room where I saw what I could have sworn was him sitting on the couch. I walked towards the couch and just as I was about to sit down I heard him yell for me from the den. I jumped away from the figure on the couch and ran into the den. Where I was asked what was wrong.

2 years later after I graduated high school I was talking to a neighbor of that house and she told me that roughly 15 years before my friend moved in there was a man and woman who lived there with roughly 7 or 8 foster children at a time. She said the foster kids always looked sickly and banged up. She then told me that one of the kids killed the dad with a hammer.

I never figured out what I saw that night but the old lady gave me the closest explanation I’ll ever need to never set foot in that house again.

41. surik

So I have a bit of a weird one, probably explainable, but I’ll tell anyway. I was about 8, maybe a little younger I lived out in the deserts of southern California kinda near Palm Springs. It was at night and my room of our family’s double wide mobile home had this huge window that faced a little mountain as well as the dirt road we were off of. I don’t remember the time but sometime in the night I awoke to this soft little tapping sound against the window. My bed was parallel to the window, opposite side of the room, so when I open my eyes and look over I see this coyote like thing staring back at me against the glass. It was standing up and looking in with its face pressed up against the pane, its claws tapping at the glass to actively get my attention. I swore too that it was trying to mouth words to me.

We stare at each other for a few moments, it seemingly to mutter something and tapping on the glass when I then quickly rolled out of bed, run out my door and go to the rifle rack in the living room about 15 feet away and get my dads Winchester (I’d been shooting rifles since i was about 5, so I knew how to operate it quite well). When I came back to my room, the thing quickly bolts. I closed the blinds and kept the rifle with me the rest of the night.

What was strange about it and, least in my kid mind at the time, was that it was larger than a coyote (no wolves in the area, just ‘yotes) and had the strangest eyes. Had a weird unnatural off yellow hue to them and weren’t very candid like at all. The way it acted and how I could almost swear thinking back on the event, it seemed to want me to let it inside.

I learned later of Skinwalkers and there were a lot of reservations around the area, so thinking back on it 15 years later, maybe. Or it was just a freakishly weird coyote.

42. apullin

I used to live in an international students dorm here in Berkeley, and there was always this problem with people slamming the bejeezus out of their doors at all times of the day and night. It got so bad, that I put a little camera in a few of the hallways inside the light fixtures, and sure enough, on video, I saw them doing it.

But they weren’t just haphazardly pulling their doors closed. They stopped, put all their stuff down, got in a good position and stance, shored up their grip on it, and really winged it closed with their full strength. Hard enough that it’d shake the walls one or two floors up or down. That is, they were doing it on purpose. When we asked them about it, politely, they’d immediately get super defensive and act like we were insulting them; it was impossible to discuss it.

This was not a one-time occurrence. There were several dozen of these people every year!

It’s not totally unexplained, though. After talking with various cultural attaches, we found out that apparently, to some cultures, slamming doors is a fairly important thing : the “master” of a household would slam doors to make sure people knew he was at home, and where in the house he was. Of course, that meant that we had to put up with these folks wailing their doors closed at 4AM …. oh well… the world…..

43. [deleted]

I remember that on September 11 I was in Bali with my mum and my brothers. It was late afternoon and my brothers had gone down to the hotel bar and my mum and I were getting ready to join them for dinner. My mum had been in a really weird agitated mood all afternoon, then as she was getting ready she sat down suddenly on the bed and told me to turn on the TV because something terrible had happened. Sure enough we tuned in just in time to see the second plane hit. There’s no way she could have known, we’d been in the hotel room all afternoon and there was no radio or other people around or any way she could have known about it before we turned the TV on.

Less impressive but still kind of weird, she seems to have some kind of bizarre ability to know what I want to eat for dinner. If I’m sitting in my last lecture at night and thinking “geez I sure feel like spaghetti tonight” I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll come home to a plate of spaghetti. We were having coffee one day and I mentioned this to her once and she said unsurprised that of course she knows what I want to eat, we have a psychic connection. I said “oh yeah, what do I want to eat tonight then?” while thinking to myself ‘nachos nachos nachos nachos.’ She looks at me calmly and goes “nachos.” Not even a question, just a statement of obvious fact. It’s not like I always want nachos or anything either…it would have been at least six months since the last time I’d had them.

44. The_Cacabarn

This one time in college, my boyfriend and I were hooking up and he found a twig in my vagina. We suddenly lost all interest in sexy time and marveled over the apple-stem sized twig. After confirming to ourselves that no, we had not had sex in the woods in the past month or done anything else that would cause a twig to end up in there, we were just left speechless. I was a little bit proud actually. I am still completely baffled about that one.

45. [deleted]

I saw Chris Dodd at a Subway in Connecticut, and he ordered his sandwich in fluent Spanish.

46. s3rris

I’ve had a few times where i’ll suddenly remember a portion of a dream from the night before and a few seconds later it’ll play out in real life. No one ever believes me when I tell them, so whenever it happens I usually don’t say anything. Sometimes it just shocks me, though.

47. kidcharlem4gne

One time when I was in Vegas and asleep and dreaming in my room at around noon, I got a text from my friend(who was in California) asking if I was at a bar. I called him up and he proceeded to describe to me the dream I had just been having, including very specific details about the setting and actual dialogue that took place, only he didn’t know it was a dream – he thought it was real. Apparently he was trying remote viewing, and when he concentrated on me he got those images/sounds/experience.

Before that I had been pretty skeptical of this kind of thing, but the situation really freaked me out and made me rethink my position. I didn’t think it was possible for two humans to see the exact same thing (as in one person experiencing what someone else is feeling, seeing, etc.). I was thankful that this dream wasn’t one of my more fucked up ones. Most people think I’m crazy when I tell them the story, and I can’t blame them because it all seems totally impossible – even I would have called me crazy. Still, the scenario had a huge affect on me and greatly changed my views on the nature of that type of communication. Consequently, I have been theorizing that this type of communication might actually be possible, but as humans we are just discovering the ability and how to use it.

I’ve also had some Deju Vu-esque dreams that depicted the future (the scenes ended up happening). Typically these have been arbitrary events, like 5 seconds at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. I have been to brand new places and have knowledge about them like I had been there before. Still, I have not figured out a way to actually prove and duplicate these things, but my personal experiences have led me to at the very least believe in the possibility of these type of things being legitimate.

48. NUCCADr

I lived in an upscale apartment complex with my wife and brother about 10 years ago.

We had some friends over one night and were all smoking cigarettes and socializing out on the porch. We lived in an upstairs apartment and had a great view of the mountain range about 5 miles to the west of our complex. I remember the sun had already set, but it wasn’t totally dark out.

The international airport of our city was about 20 miles north of our complex so if you were on our porch looking out to the west at the mountain range that ran north-south, you could watch the passenger jets approaching the airport, maybe one every 5 minutes would pass by. And I could see the flashing lights of the jets very clearly.

So on this night i was the only one of seven people on our porch that was looking out west, the other six including my wife and brother were facing east looking at me or facing north. So none of the others saw what I did, they only witnessed my jaw hitting the floor when everything went down.

So, all of a sudden there was a flash in the sky that looked like lightning had struck somewhere to the southwest of our complex and out of my sight. I thought there must be rain coming. Then two more times it happened. I didn’t realize till much later that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I remember the sun had already set, but it wasn’t totally dark out. It had been a very clear evening. So clear that I could see the lights on these planes that were 3-4 miles west of us.

After these flashes happened, another passenger jet enters my view, just like the few before it, but then the jet itself flashes white and then starts to turn and descend as if one of its engines had just gone out. And this is when everyone starts to ask me, “What is it?” And just as I started to realize that I was witnessing a passenger jet falling to crash and kill all those aboard, the fucking jet stops dead in mid air and glows bright green!!!!

Not a second after it started glowing green it shot so fast in a straight line over the west mountains that it was gone before anyone else on the deck could turn around to see what I was so freaked about.

There are military proving grounds about 100 miles west of those apartments, so I always thought that there was some advanced technology that the military had that we’ll here about in 20 years or so.

Definitely a flying object that I could not identify.

49. I_TYPE_IN_ALL_CAPS

DOES INEXPLICABLE STUPIDITY COUNT?

EX-GF: THERE I WAS, STUDYING LATE AT NIGHT IN THE CAMPUS LIBRARY, WHEN A WOMAN CAME IN SILENTLY AND BEGAN WIPING DOWN ALL THE TABLES. I LOOKED UP AND WE MADE EYE CONTACT, BUT SHE DIDN’T SAY A WORD.

ME: OKAAAAY…?

EX-GF: SHE HAD TO BE A GHOST.

ME: UM. DID YOU TRY INITIATING CONVERSATION? CLEANING CREW AREN’T USUALLY ALL THAT CHATTY.

EX-GF: NO, SHE WAS A GHOST!

50. warpus

double fucking rainbow, all the way across the sky

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