28 Creeped Out People On The Paranormal Activity They’ve Experienced IRL

Halloween will be here before you know it. In order to get in the spooky spirit, read through these terrifying tales from Reddit. They’ll give you a scare you’ll never forget.

Audrey Reid
Audrey Reid

1. My friend had a premonition about a stabbing

My best friend dreamed about my stepfather getting stabbed.

My family was pretty white trash, and on one particular evening my uncle and stepfather got into an altercation outside of our house wherein my stepfather got stabbed in the back. He fell on me coming back inside and in the process I got coated in blood. The cops were called and he was taken away in an ambulance as my mother and myself drove to the hospital. This was about 1am.

This is before the internet and cell phones and all that jazz, so there was no way anyone beyond our next door neighbors knew about this. When we returned back to the house at about 4 or 5 in the morning, there was a message on the answering machine from my best friend crying, apologizing for calling so late, but asking me to call her right away because she had dreamed of me being covered in blood. The message was time stamped as the same time the incident occurred, about 1am. We had missed her call because we were outside with the paramedics.

2. My wife saw a dead man’s ghost at the hospital

I have a good one. Technically happened to my wife not me, but a good story.

My wife is an RN and she was on float to another unit helping out (she normally worked cardiac but she was helping out in the Alzheimer’s unit). She was saving a particular patient for last as the patient was known to be a real pain. Very old, mean to everyone and just generally tried to make the nurses miserable. She and the respiratory therapist got to the patients room at the same time so they decided to tackle her together. They got into the room and the patient had smeared shit all over the walls of the bathroom and the hospital room, she was standing on the bed screaming and jumping up and down on the bed. The two of them somehow got the patient calmed down, got the horrible mess cleaned up, and got their jobs done. She said it took about three hours. They then got went out and put a do not disturb sign on the door to make sure the patient could stay calm and get some sleep. They were standing one person on each side of the door (herself and the repertory therapist) catching their breath and proclaiming how much that sucked when they spotted someone. A big farmer looking guy wearing a John Deere baseball cap, overalls, a red plaid checkered shirt and big work boots coming down the hospital hallway (and he looked kind of annoyed). He walked right past them into the patient’s room slamming the door open. My wife caught the door on the back swing and marched right into the room after him (respiratory therapist right behind her) planning on dragging him back out and giving him a piece of her mind. When she got in the room he was not there.

No sign of the person she followed in.

She looked under the bed.

She looked in the bathroom.

She checked behind all of the curtains.

She even made sure the window still would not open.

No sign of the farmer at all. She then noticed the patient was sitting upright in the bed just kind of staring off into space. So she asked her: “Did you just see someone come into the room?” The patient said “Yes, it was my daddy; he said he was coming to take me home tonight and that you mean people won’t be able to hurt me anymore.” She responded with: “That’s great, how about you get some rest before he comes to pick you up.” The patient then lay down and went to sleep.

The patient died that night.

My wife and the respiratory therapist swapped stories to make sure they were not crazy, they both saw it.

3. The baby’s crib collapsed

My grandparents went to a party being thrown by a friend of theirs when they were just married. It was a few other couples, and as they were sitting around, the hostess mentioned she just got a Ouija Board but hadn’t tried it out yet. So my Grandma, and a few of the other ladies set it up and started asking questions. There was nothing too spooky the first few rounds of questions being asked. Eventually one of the women asked a question and the board spelled out ‘Go Home’ thinking it was the hostess making a joke everyone laughed it off. Everyone else asked their questions without much of a response until it got to the same woman, again the board spelled out ‘Go Home’. The next two questions she asked all she would see was ‘Go Home’. Everyone swore they weren’t moving the piece so the woman being freaked out got her husband and they left. When they got home they found the babysitter passed out on their couch and their baby’s crib had collapsed. The baby only had a couple scratches and was fine.

4. I saw the ghost of a crushed tunnel worker

I should preface this by saying it was, by far, the scariest experience of my life and it’s bringing tears to my eyes typing about it.

Basically, on the hill above the city I live, there are a string of rather large defensive forts. My grandfather was the curator and lead tour guide of one of these forts. They date back to Napoleonic times when the British were afraid of a French attack on the city, because of it’s importance to supplies and the navy.

They’re not incredibly creepy places – maybe that’s because I’d spend every weekend roaming the tunnels or doing errands there – but this one event left me shocked and incapable of going back down there alone, even 12 years later.

As I mentioned, under the forts are a network of tunnels that descend, in places, up to 100 feet below the chalk. Some of them are to access the defensive trenches that form the fort’s outer boundary, some of them contain gun emplacements. All of them are gently sloping, hewn from rough chalk and lit dimly by the only kind of lights that work so far underground – those dim mining ones that rely on the weakest electrical current.

All of the tunnels were familiar from me – they could all be accessed from a radial ‘hub’ that was right in the depths of the fort – except for one. I had always been forbidden to walk down it. The tunnel was of rougher construction than the rest, unlit, and never used. Other than that, from the top end, it was fairly unassuming – just something I was never allowed to see.

That was until I pestered my grandfather so much he decided to show me it. He grabbed a torch and we started down the tunnel. Immediately I regretted my decision – I wish I had photographs of it – but the smooth chalk walls I was used to in the other tunnels were replaced with this jagged texture that threatened to draw blood if you scraped them with an unlucky limb. My grandfather, curiously, was aiming the torch beam at the left wall of the tunnel, searching for something. He found it, perhaps halfway down. There, inscribed in the chalk, was a rough cross and a date that was nigh illegible.

“This is why you’re not supposed to come down here,” he said. “This tunnel was supposed to be condemned. Someone was crushed right here.”

A chill ran through me and I asked to leave. My grandfather chuckled and carried on, saying that there was nothing to worry about.

I started to get a bad feeling from then on, as if someone was following us. Eventually we reached the bottom – a fairly regular gun emplacement met us. Then we turned to leave.

The nature of the tunnels meant you could see all the way up to the other end, where a door-shaped piece of light meant the security of the radial hub.

What me and my grandfather saw chills my bones and, like I said, means I can’t go down there any more.

We were 100% sure we were the only people there – it was out of hours, and my grandfather always locked the main gate behind us when we entered the tunnel system to stop people trespassing and stealing the cannons or old munitions.

I swear to you Reddit, we saw the silhouette of a man slowly walk across the top of the tunnel, turn to face down to us, and then carry on. My grandfather is a brave man but he looked visibly aggrieved. What was worse – we knew we had to run UP the tunnel to get out, or be stuck in a 100 foot trench in the middle of winter. We had to pass the cross of that crushed tunnel worker.

I’ll end my story here – obviously I made it out alive – but when someone tells me they don’t believe in ghosts I tell them this story. Sorry for my verbosity. I have tears in my eyes right now.

5. My dog was staring at a ghost

When I was around 13, we had a huge German shepherd who was 7 at the time. This dog was a beast. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Ever. Constantly following me to school and waiting for me to come home at the foot of our driveway. All around a great great dog. Again, let me re-emphasize: this dog wasn’t afraid of anything.

Anyway, we bought this house we were living in at the time for super cheap because the previous owner had hung himself in the downstairs coat closet and it wasn’t selling fast enough. One day, I walk down the stairs to see my dog staring at the closet. Just staring. He was standing up, tail between his legs, not moving an inch, just staring at it. The door was open, which was weird, because people in my house are usually good about closing things up. I go over to Rodney (my dog) and try and see if there is something in the closet from where he is looking. Can’t see anything, but the closet is super dark. I try and snap Rodney out of it, but he won’t budge. He just keeps staring and staring. I had never seen my dog like this.

The most horrifying part: Rodney’s head is moving slightly from left to right, like he is following the movement of something hanging in the closet.

6. I found a dead body in the forest

When I was in about the 6th grade, a friend and I went to another girl’s house, which was in the country, a few days before Halloween. We wanted spooky things to happen, so we did the typical pre-teen girl creepy slumber party activities, like playing with the ouija board and doing Bloody Mary. The next evening, the girl who lived there told us she heard of a crazy lady who lived nearby, and threw plates at people. We decided to take their golf cart and try to find her, and videotape her throwing plates at us.

We didn’t. We got lost in woods instead.

All of a sudden, I saw something, or someone, floating in the distance. My friend turned on the video camera and we got out of the golf cart to creep closer. We were scared, but curious at this point.

“it’s a person,” I remember whispering, when we were close. “He’s dead”. “No, it’s just a Halloween decoration!” My friend insisted. It wasnt a Halloween decoration. It was a dead body, hanging from a tree. At first we thought he was murdered, then put up on display. We were freaking out. The concept of suicide was not well formed in our heads. But the knocked over ladder and the note tacked to the tree (which we didn’t read) proved otherwise.

My friend called the cops, when they arrived we were told to leave immediately. I remember tons of police cars and at least ambulance arrived. They made us turn off the video camera, which had been rolling the whole time, and call her mom, to get us back to the house. The parents tried to convince us, as we sat in the kitchen crying, that it was simply a Halloween decoration. But police don’t send kids home if it isn’t a dead body. Every year before Halloween I have nightmares sparked by this event. I’m on a hill in the dark. There are dead trees surrounding me, with a dead body hanging from each one.

7. We were paralyzed after we saw a ghostly woman

About 2 years ago me and buddy decided to go on a drive. It was a hot summers night and we were bored out of our minds, so we picked up some cigarettes and went on a late night drive. We decided to drive to the top of the mountain, the base of the mountain is about an hours drive from where i lived and it takes about another hour to drive all the way to the top where they have a restaurant/bar. This is in Norway by the way.

It was pretty late, around 3 am in morning, we knew the bar would be closed but we thought we would just chill on the benches, have a smoke and take in the view at first light.

So, we get to the base of the mountain and start driving up and round, the road twists round the mountain untill you get to the top, so when you reach a turn you can barely see round the corner. It was pitch black darkness, only the road was visible due to the street lights, but apart from the road, the edges and mountain side were barely visible.

We had been driving for about half an hour, everything was pretty enojyable, absolutely empty roads (guess all the sane ones were asleep in bed ready to wake up and go to work in the morning), complete silence, it was just relaxing.

As we turn one of the bends, i get this very uneasy feeling as i see something, definately a person, sitting on a boulder at the edge of the road. My friend see’s this as well, but keeps driving, and im thinking, wtf bro, but i realise that he is turning the car round and going back because its pretty treacherous to reverse on that road.

So we head back, slowly, and i realise that he is fine! He’s not getting any bad feelings, he is in his normal mood. So i convinced myself that im acting weird and that its probably just some crazy hiker.

We park the car right opposite this figure, engine still running, and my friend calls out, “hi there, are you ok” (i have to admit i was still pretty scared so i didnt say anything). No response.

The figure then looks up in our direction and we get the fucking shit scared out of us. We saw that it was a woman, wearing a plain white dress, with very long, beautiful hair, but her face was three time the length of a normal persons face, her eyes were completely blank and she had a smile on her face.

I swear to god we both felt so fearful that we were completely paralyzed. We couldnt yell, or even communicate, not even a single word, it felt like we couldnt move.

I dont know how he found the courage to press the gas and get the hell out of there. But i do remember that when we both got home we had a very high fever and we were like that for a couple more days afterwards.

8. A strange voice spoke to my daughter

My twins were two months old and barely sleeping through the night. As most nights go my wife and I, whose room is adjacent to the nursery, were woken around 2 am to some crying coming from one of the cribs. It was my turn to get up, so I saunter over to Gabe (one of the twins) and I hear a woman say “Its ok Gabey.” My wife goes, “did you hear that?” She didn’t say it, I didn’t say it… to this day we have no idea where the voice came from. It wasn’t my wife’s voice.

9. My cousin was saved by a Hawaiian spirit

This event happened to my younger cousin. It is a bit long but worth the read. My cousin Kim is about six years younger than me. She has since birth, the ability to see spirits. They appear whole and like a normal person and not like a wispy apparition. When Kim was around five her family moved to a valley on the eastern side of O’ahu, a place known to contain Hawaiian burial grounds. Kim became the perfect child. Going to bed on time, eating her veggies and cleaning her room without having to be asked. My aunt asked her: “Kim. Why are you such a good girl?” to which she replied: “The Green Man told me to.” My aunt figured it was a childhood imaginary friend and left it at that. Kim’s brother Shane who is three years older than Kim would often tell his mom that Kim was crazy because she would spend time in her room talking to herself. My aunt took Kim to an O-Daisan, a Japanese medium who told her that Kim was communicating with a Hawaiian spirit and that she called him the “Green Man” because that was the color of his malo (loin cloth). The O-Daisan advised the family that the spirit was benevolent as if he was going to do something evil, it would have already happened. The O-Daisan instructed the family to put a bottle of gin as an offering in the corner of Kim’s room where she saw the Green Man as a show of respect. They did this. About six months after visiting the O-Daisan my aunt, my grandmother and Kim were in a four car accident, their car being in the middle. My aunt was then pregnant with Kim’s younger sister at the time. My aunt, my grandmother and Kim were all in the front bench seat of the family’s station wagon without wearing their seat belts when my aunt heard tires screeching. She looked in her rear view mirror and saw a young Hawaiian man sitting in the back seat smiling. At the moment of impact the front bench seat reclined so that when the cars hit they were in a prone position. The station wagon was totaled, smashed like an aluminum can yet no one including the baby was injured. My aunt knew the junk yard operator and she asked him about the seat claiming it must have broken right before impact. The operator checked and told her the seat worked fine. That the lever was tripped. My aunt visited the O-Daisan and told her what happened. The O-Daisan explained that the Green Man was Kim’s guardian angel and that he had to perform a good deed before he could be released from the spirit world. Kim never saw the Green Man after the accident but 30 years later we still talk about the incident in hushed and reverent tones. This is one of many true paranormal experiences that has happened to me and or my family.

10. I saw Death in my bed

I was sleeping at my inlaws house. At around 1am I awoke and DEATH was by my bed (Hooded Skeleton, the whole bit). I could not breathe and I felt the most profound sense of peace. I spoke to DEATH telepathically and said, “I am ready to go” and I was truly unafraid and I was ready to die. DEATH said, “I have you, but not yet”, and vanished.

I went back to sleep and tried to recapture that dream…that sense of peace. I had stupid cartoon death dreams for the rest of the night. Nothing like the first one.

Woke up at 6:30 to hear my Father-in-law screaming. His wife had died in her sleep. Time of death: 1am.

I am an atheist and lifelong skeptic. This experience shook me. I can accept that I had a dream, but that sense of peace, that resignation to my own death, I have no experience or believe to base that on. Then there’s the coincidence of my mother-in-laws death at precisely that moment. Sure, it can all be explained as coincidence. My story isn’t proof of anything, but it shook me.

I can honestly say my life changed that day. I live better and care less about things.

11. We heard our piggy banks shaking on their own

Holy fuck do I have a story for this. When I was growing up, my parents moved into a newly remodeled home. Apparently it used to be a funeral parlor, and because of its location (not too terribly close to anything) it was a pretty great price. Now, the first thing you have to know about my parents is that they’ve never been known to lie to my brother and I.

Even though I was young, I remember that house vividly. It was small, and all the rooms were tiny, though there were a lot of them. Even the stairs were kind of funny, tiny steps that snaked around the far wall of the home, and made loud sounds when stepped on. During the day the house was tame, albeit old. However at night when my parents would put my brother and I to sleep, shit got real.

The pans downstairs would clank together, and then loud booming as someone stomped up the stairs. The next thing I can remember is the bed shaking, left and right. Often times our Ernie and Burt piggy banks would start to shake, and they’d turn around. Being young we didn’t like them looking at us at night, so we would face them towards the wall… they’d always turn around.

Even our parents both remember how they could hear the change jingling around as the banks moved. By morning it would all be back to normal, and the cycle would repeat.

12. His room was destroyed by a demon

A friend picked up some weird stuff from a yard sale. Some things with weird symbols and such, but it still looked cool. He placed it on his dresser and we left for pizza. We come back 1 hour later. The room is destroyed. Everything had been thrown around, dresser drawers pulled out, clothes on the floor, closet doors torn down, and the stuff he bought sitting in the same place. It was completely undisturbed.

13. Our Ouija board caused us to see hallucinations

Graduated high school, moved in with best friend, bought a Ouija board. We mostly asked it stupid questions, like what we should name the bong or when would we meet the loves of our lives. Once we asked it if it was friendly and it said no. Then we asked if it liked us and it said no. We didn’t really play with it much after that, but it stayed in the apartment. I started seeing cats out of the corner of my eyes several times a day. When I looked, there was nothing there. It freaked me out, but I didn’t say anything. After weeks of this, my friend told me she was seeing cats, and her boyfriend (who occasionally played with the board with us) immediately said he had, too. We ended up giving the board to a friend and the cats disappeared. Not very scary, but VERY weird.

14. My entire house was haunted

When my parents got divorced, my mother moved to a nice lake house. She bought it from a widow whose husband had died of lung cancer. We are not sure if he passed away in the house, but we do know that during his last years, he would only stay in the house when he wasn’t at the hospital (the couple had no children, and no other family).

My sister and I assume he passed away or spent most of his time on the second story, where our two bedrooms and bathroom were. I often felt like someone was watching me in my room at night, and would hear creaks from my dresser like someone was leaning on it. My sister felt the same way, but about someone sitting in a chair in her room and it creaking. We would both awake in the middle of the night with just an eerie feeling that we were being watched.

Some doors would seem to close when we did not recall opening or closing them. My bedroom entrance had two double doors that opened inward to the room, a walk-in closet door that opened inward towards the closet, a door to the bathroom that opened outward towards the room with a double sink for my sister and I, and a door to a room with shower and toilet that opened inward. There was also a door from my sisters room to where the sinks were, and a door to her bedroom. The important thing to recognize, is that the doors open in different directions.

One night as I was getting ready for bed, I thought I heard something move, and I quickly turned around and looked in the mirror that was behind me. Immediately upon making eye contact with my reflection, all of the second floor doors slammed. BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM. At the same time. Six swift slams echoed across the house. There was no window open, no air conditioner on, no fans (Minnesota in the winter) and the double doors that had been open, slammed together. I felt trapped and ran to jiggle the double door handle and fled, running down the stairs.

A few months later, I was heading upstairs towards my bedroom after dinner. My sister had been on the computer in my room before dinner when it was light out, but as it got darker while we ate, the only light on in my bedroom was radiating dully from the old iMac in my room. As I got into my room, I thought I saw something move, but again, the only light was from the dull, blue computer screen. I turned to hit the light switch but thought I saw something move, so I stopped with my hand on the switch. Within the light cast by the computer, there was a shadow that was unfamiliar, and it began to move. It was two shadows really, and they looked like legs. Slowly, the two shadows moved again, like legs, but they were slowly walking towards me. They were almost transparent, like light shining through wax paper. As they approached me, I screamed, and threw the light switch. I never slept on the second floor again.

15. The security sensors went off when no one was around

I work in a nursing home so we have weird things happen all the time (socks traveling across the hall by themselves, cupboards opening and stuff flying out, lights turning off and on, washing machines just sitting all full of ice water for no reason, etc.) but our alzheimer unit has the most activity.

All of our alzheimer rooms have special sensors so we know if a resident is getting out of bed or leaving their room. It is to assure we know where they are and that they don’t fall.

One particular night a call light kept going off promptly followed by that room’s bathroom sensor being tripped. This room’s resident had passed away three days before and we didn’t have anyone else in there yet. We turned it off about four times in three hours and were pretty creeped. Then, at 10pm, just an hr before I got to leave, we heard a lady screaming for help. We ran back to the source and it turned out to be in that same room. The bathroom sensors started going off again right when we got there. We had to check in case some other resident had gone in, but there was no one. The sink and shower were both running full blast with ice cold water though. I turned everything off and reset the switch, and gently pulled the door closed as I left. Halfway through closing it, someone/thing SLAMMED it closed for me. I almost had my shoe caught.

I refused to go back in the rest of the night.

16. A chair moved all on its own

Pretty simple story. I was an early riser as a kid, and since I walked to school that meant I was often the first person there. Sometimes I’d talk to my teachers in the morning about homework or even doing extra work.

Well one day I got to class, first one there and all, and my teacher leaves to get something from the printer. She says she’s not supposed to leave me alone in the room, but since she’s gotten to know me and trusts me she’ll just lock the door behind her and will be back in two minutes.

She leaves, I hear the door lock, and not ten seconds later one of the chairs of a desk in front of me SLAMS itself into the desk. I practically shit my pants, unlocked the door and bolted for the front office. Never went to school early again.

17. The ghost of my dog visited my room

Several years ago, while I was a freshman in high school, my dog died of an inoperable tumor in his liver. Fast forward six or eight months, I’m home alone. My brother was just hospitalized, beginning his two year, one month journey of near death, surgeries, and recovering.) My parents were at work, so I was home by myself after I had got off from rehearsal.

I went to the kitchen to find some food and took it to my room to eat. When I was just outside my door, I had a strange feeling that someone was behind me, and that I wasn’t alone in the house. Turning around, I saw nobody was there. Before I entered my room, I caught a glimpse of a misty figure about knee level. I was slightly creeped out but just brushed it off as nothing. I go into my room and sit on my bed, with the door closing behind me, but not completely shut. I was on my bed, staring at the door, still in disbelief about what I had saw. Suddenly, the door pushes open gently and slightly. Just like my dog used to do.

At that point, I wasn’t scared, but more comforted in the fact he was there with me. It is a weird feeling, but if you’ve ever experienced it, you’d understand what I mean. I eventually told my mom what happened, several weeks later, and she said she had been experiencing strange things also. When we got a new dog, who was a 4 month old puppy at the time, she would also stare at things curiously. One time, she was staring at the curtains for the longest time, but staying were she was, and the curtains began gently moving, as if someone had touched them. There was no draft right there as I found out after.

I miss that sweet boy of mine. We rescued him from a life as an abandoned and mistreated dog, and was very loyal and protective of the whole family. Although this story wasn’t as creepy as many others, I feel that my experiences justify why I believe in ghosts and residual energy.

18. We saw a lady in white

The supposed lady in white.

A buddy and I were relaxing on a porch late on night close to the Michigan border at a friends house and staring into the woods I see something. I said hey Donny do you see that, he said yea it looks like some chick just standing there. Now this was about 100 feet away and it kind of freaked us out. So we kept staring and then all of a sudden it zipps off to the right as if it were floating. We looked at each other and freaked out so bad we ran inside the house and slammed the door. His sister looks at us crazy and we tell her what we just had seen. She told us we had just seen the lady in white ghost and it was common up there to see her. Still to this day just the thought of remembering that floating/zipping motion still irks me.

19. An invisible presence shook my bed

I’ve posted about this before. Actually, my mom and I were talking about this a week ago. She told me about this story that I’m posting about. I don’t remember it, though..

I’ve got what I call a “bed shaker.” Whatever it is has been following me around since I was about 8. My mom used to like to prank me when I was a kid and hide near my bed and shake it. One night, I was in bed and the bed was shaking so I yelled at my mom “Stop shaking my bed!” I heard her and my father reply “We’re in the living room!” and I quickly booted it downstairs.

It happened every few years here and there and stopped from the time I was 18 until about a year and a half ago. Now it’s happening every few weeks. I’ll wake up to my bed shaking like fuck, and of course I’m terrified. The one time I was grateful for the bedshaker was about a year ago. My bed started doing that funky dance, and I woke up. My daughter (who was under a year) started HOWLING. I ran into her room and the wee lamp shade on her nightlight had tipped and the bulb started burning through the shade. Thank FUCK I got in there on time.

20. My friend can predict the sound of screams

A friend of mine tends to wake up in the middle of the night and then go to sleep a few moments after. The weird thing is that (almost) every night, he wakes up at 3:38 am PRECISELY and shortly after a gruesome howl (like a very freaky powerful scream, but at low volume), will appear for approximately 10 seconds, and then just.. .nothing. I wish I could say he was crazy, but after I crashed at his place one night, he woke me up just after he himself had woken up (at 3:38 am again) and he said “Now! Listen.” I heard the scream too. I have never felt such an intense fear in my life.

21. I had a feeling my old sweetheart had passed away

Just an incredible coincidence but 2 weeks ago I was grocery shopping and I thought about a girl who hadn’t come to mind in years (over a decade). We were middleschool sweethearts for about a minute and then I just forgot about her until that moment. When I got home I googled her to see what she was up to (was she still hot?) and I found a blog posting about an hour old from her current SO announcing that she had just passed away from cancer.

22. I saw a shadow figure move across my bed

I’m sure all of these things had logical explanations, but they freaked me out at the time. I don’t know if I believe in “ghosts”, in the most widely accepted terms, but I’m sure there are things out there which science has yet to discover.

When I was about eight, I was going to bed in my room when a grey thing about the size of a football slowly moved across the foot of my bed, slightly pulling the blankets as it went. It dipped down when it got to the end and I couldn’t find any trace of it. We had cats, but my door was closed and none were in my room at the time. My parents wouldn’t believe me(I can’t say I would have if it were one of my kids) and I was terrified for ages.

In the same room as the previous event, I had a door which opened to a screened porch type thing. There was no other way to get in to it as it was locked many times from the inside at the other exit. Every so often the door would make a sound which was like someone throwing their whole body in to it. A big “thump” with various elements as if different limbs were striking it, so it was a pretty defined “someone is on the other side” noise and not just the normal creaks and pops of an old, new england home. This happened during any time of the day or night. One evening it just kept happening. Over and over. Like someone was trying to break their way in to my room. I made my dad check it out while I stood behind to see, and nothing. He closed it up, locked the door, and went about his business. Then it started again. Quietly at first, then building up to loud crashes. Had dad check again. Again, nothing there. I have NO idea what it was, but it was freaky as hell.

In the same house there were lots of little things which I’m sure had more to do with being a freaked out kid than anything else. I had many instances of terrible sleep paralysis where I could feel something grabbing lightly at my feet and/or pushing on my belly and chest, I would often see cats skirt about my feet or around doorways when there was no cat there, I would hear angry, indecipherable whispers when sleeping in the living room, etc. Creepy, old house.

During the same time period, but this was my friend’s house. She lived in a two family home, on the top floor. They had a shared attic with a stairway up to it which was next to her room. Her downstairs neighbor was an elderly woman and she lived there for many years. After she died we would often hear very human sounding footsteps in the attic, but not going up the stairs behind her room TO the attic(which were normally very audible).

When I was pregnant with my first child, we lived in a small house in NM. One day I’m sitting on my computer(surprise!) and our dog starts barking in the yard, so I turn around to look out the window. As I do this, I see what I think is our dog walk from the front door, past the couch, and in to the bedroom. Only then I realize that our bedroom door is closed and our dog is outside. This one freaks me out a bit as I was an adult when it happened, but there are also easy explanations for this sort of thing. Still freaky.

A few years ago, we’re living in a new home in TX. I’m home alone with the kids and my husband is out of town for work. It’s the middle of the day, so I wasn’t exactly freaked out. Then something bangs on the house from the outside. Not unusual, could be anything. Then it happens again on the other side. Then the back door. It keeps going around the house in circles and gets faster. It was way too quick for it to have been something running circles around the house. I finally(I say finally, but this all happened in a matter of less than a minute) get the nerve to open the back door and look, and there’s nothing there. It stopped after I looked. Gave me a pit in my stomach.

23. I blinked and everyone disappeared

One weekend I was walking through my old grade school to get into town (small town maybe 1200 people) when I turn a corner of the building into the parking lot. In the parking lot was one black sedan, nothing notable, no identifying marks… but nothing too unusual. I’m maybe 20m away.

Except the passengers.

There was four completely white, definitely Albino looking men. Bald, black eyes looking straight ahead. A moment after noticing them they all turn and look at me in unison. Their heads snapped instantly and all four of them met my eyes.

I jolted back around the corner then slowly looked back around to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Nope there was the car and the men still looking at me.

Then I blinked and the car was empty.

I leave the way I came… take the long road into town, all the while feeling as if I was followed.

I’ll never forget that day, hallucination or not, it’s burned into that part of my brain that helps you frequently remember all the scary shit that’s ever happened to you.

24. Something we couldn’t see spoke my name

This happened recently. My grandma came over to visit, it was just her and me in the house, she was sitting on the couch reading a book, I was sitting next to the couch on a chair, when all of a sudden I hear my name, clear as day so I turn to my grandma and she turns to me and asks “Did you say something?”

“No, I thought you called me that’s why I turned.”

She says, “I heard someone say your name.”

Then I was like…. fuck.

25. We all had the same exact dream

After my grandmother passed away, everyone in my family had the same dream of sitting down with her at a restaurant talking about her will.

26. A spirit messed with my gun

I bought an old Mosin Nagant 1891/30 rifle. For those who don’t know guns, it’s the main rifle of the Soviet army in World War 2. I had just cleaned it after a range trip and put the rifle and bayonet in the gun safe.

Fast forward a few weeks when I’m about to go shoot again. Open the gun safe and what do I find? The bayonet is attached to the rifle. I’m the only one in the family with keys to safe and the only one who would even open the safe, yet alone touch what’s inside.

Now, from what I’ve read in Soviet field guides, Soviet doctrine said that a bayonet should only be removed when cleaning the weapon or when traveling by rail. I theorized that it was the spirit of a long dead conscript keeping his rifle battle ready.

27. I heard a strange sound upstairs

House-sitting and taking care of the dogs for my aunt. It was an old farm house. Old as in the kitchen and bathroom were added on to the house when working plumbing became a common thing. I played some video games, watched a little tv, just winding down to go to sleep. Just laying there in the dark trying starting to doze off and I hear something. Something coming from upstairs.

The upstairs was an attic turned into bedrooms for my cousins. The best way I could describe it was like a pipe or a bottle, the sound of some kind of hollow object rolling back and forth across the floor in the room directly above me. I just sat there wide eyed and scared shitless. Finally, I worked up the courage to get up and turn the lights back on. The rolling sound continued. I told myself it was just something in the walls, trying to come up with any rational explanation. I got up to turn the tv back on and just kinda drown out the sound. With the lights on I noticed the dogs, two big rottweilers, were sitting silently in the kitchen hair bristling and staring right at me. I backed away, honestly afraid they were going to attack me for some reason, but I realized they weren’t staring at me. They were looking past me at the door that goes upstairs.

Well, shit. That did nothing to settle my nerves, but there was no way in hell I was going up to investigate. I cranked up the tv, eventually coaxed the dogs into the living room, and after a while I was tired again. I left the tv on, just turned it down, laid back down on the couch and got some shut-eye. I don’t know how long I was asleep, just that when I woke up it was still pitch black outside. What woke me up was the door. My feet were hanging over the arm of the couch I was sleeping on and the door that led upstairs had come open and hit my feet. If you’ve ever lived in an old house you will know this kind of door. It’s an old door. The kind that’s been warped from too many winters and rubs the frame when you shut it. The kind you would have to put your shoulder into to close it all the way and would have to really pull to open it again. Yet there it was, wide open to a pitch black staircase, the hinges creaking as it bumped against my dangling feet. I was up and out in seconds, the dogs right behind me. Put my shoes on in the car, put the dogs in their kennel, and was off to sweet sweet civilization. I didn’t care about using all the gas to drive out and feed the dogs every day, I wasn’t spending another night in that house.

28. My pinball machine started playing on its own

When I was in the second grade I had this plug in, stand up Happy Days pinball machine. (yep.. I am feelin’ old) If you left it plugged in it would eventually start making sounds as if it was being played. One night I went to bed and it started making the sounds. I reached for the plug and could not find it. I jumped out of bed and turned on the light.

When I did… I noticed two things simultaneously… it was not plugged in AND a ball rolled between the two flippers.

I did not sleep in my bed for a week. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

Holly is the author of Severe(d): A Creepy Poetry Collection.

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