27 People Share Their Creepy, Mysterious Stories Of Phantoms And The Unexplainable
1. Phantom story
This was back when I used to live on my parent’s farm. First a little explanation on how the farmyard was set up. The house is to the North. Barn to the south. Fuel tank to the east, and a little shed plopped right in the middle.
My sister was looking out the kitchen window (which overlooks the barn and rest of the yard) and told me to come see something freaky. I looked out and there was a shadow moving back and forth slowly between the fuel tank and the little shed. I told her since it was windy that night it was probably a shadow that the yard light had cast (it was night). She said ‘okay’ and went to bed. There were other nights when we would see this shadow. Normal, calm nights. We noticed it liked to hang out near the fuel tank, so we joked and named it ‘the fuel tank ghost’. We’d even play around and ‘talk’ to it when we were fueling up machinery. We had never mentioned this to parents/friends because we didn’t think it was actually a ghost. Just a shadow that was cast from the yard light.
Jump to a random summer night. 11pm. My best friend comes to pick me up. She is waiting outside for about 10 minutes before I get in the car. She looks to me and asks “Why is your dad still outside?” I thought your parents went to bed at 8pm or something’ (which was true. Early to rise, early to bed). At this point I asked her “What the fuck are you talking about? Where is he?” and she pointed to the fuel tank. She said she saw a man walking by the fuel tank and just disappeared into the dark.
No one fuels up after dark anymore.
2. This really got me good
When I was 17 or 18, I remember seeing a girl about my age who got hit by a car. I was home alone and sneaking liquor from my parents stash. It was late and snowing out, and I’m pretty sure the driver was drunk and didn’t see her. She must have assumed the guy would see her and let her cross, but he clearly didn’t. She was hit by the car and must have flew a good 20 feet into the trunk of a big oak tree. I didn’t actually see her get hit, so I couldn’t identify the vehicle, I just looked outside because I like the way the snow looks and saw her contorted body laying against the tree with blood soaking her light blonde hair.
I ran to grab my phone to call the cops, and ran outside to see if she was still alive. The body was gone, but there were footprints in the snow where she had been walking, a mark in the snow where she was laying, a dent in the tree and smattering of blood trickling into the snow. I was fucking confused at this point, but I saw footprints leading away from the body. I must have been too far from my house for the cordless phone to work, so I had to go back inside to call the cops.
I tuned to my house and noticed that it was completely dark, I was a little freaked out already, but I forgot to put on a jacket, so I forced myself to go inside. I tried the lights, and the power was dead. All of the other houses and streetlights had power, but it was about 1am, so I didn’t want to bother my neighbors. I tried the phone again, but it wouldn’t work. I went to the hardwired phone, and the phone lines were dead as well.
I grabbed my jacket and a flashlight and immediately got the fuck out of my creepy house. I looked around for the girl and noticed that the tracks were leading both towards and away from where the girl was laying. Further investigation showed that there were actually 2 sets of tracks leading to the road, one set of large boot prints, and one much smaller set. Someone must have come looking for her and brought her inside, but that idea didn’t sit right with me.
I was tired, cold and pretty shaken so I decided to brave my house again. I remembered a spare cell phone my parents had for emergencies, so I slowly made my way to the stairs, stopping at the bottom and turning my flashlight off. The light was casting a host of moving shadows, each one competing for my startled attention. I let my eyes adjust and climbed the creaking stairs to my parents room. I opened there drawer and heard a whoosh behind me. It was the wind belting the side of the house. I grabbed the cell phone and tried to turn it on, but it was dead. I took it downstairs with the charger (No, it’s not a wall charger, it’s like an emergency battery backup about half the size of a car battery) and sat on the couch. This was a ghetto hunk of a phone, no smaller than the cordless one, and it had to be off in order to charge. I laid on the couch while waiting for it to charge.
The house groaned with the wind and small drafts seemed to seep into the living room. The next thing I remember hearing through the breathing of the wind in the otherwise still room was a sudden uproarious laughter and flurry of lights and colors as my eyes shot open. I had fallen asleep on the couch and the lights came back on, along with a late night episode of the Nanny. Fuck dude. I grabbed the cell and practically ran outside with my shoes half on, only to see that the marks in the snow were completely drifted over. I examined the tree and the blood was gone. I was thoroughly convinced that the event was real, but nothing remained of it.
Alright, so this freaked me out a bit, but I basically shrugged it off when my parents came home. I went outside and checked out the scene of the accident, and noticed that it wasn’t just drifted over with new snow, but that there were literally no traces that I could tell. It was obviously me being drunk and trying to stay up too late. I honestly didn’t even bother telling anyone, and quickly forgot about it for awhile.
I lived in northern NJ, which will see snow for a day or 2 before everything turns to mush and big snowstorms weren’t all that common. Within a few days the snow had melted and with it I had forgotten about the lucid dream I had. I walk past the tree almost daily on my way home from school, although I believe this was the first time I had passed it since that night (my mom had off of work and drove me home a few times).
I couldn’t help but take a closer look at the tree. Just seeing it up close again brought back the unfinished memory of that night. I didn’t outright see the dent, but there was an odd spot on the tree, like a knothole that had healed. My heart jumped when I realized that it was exactly where the dent should be, but I forced myself to believe that it was a coincidence. I tried my absolute best to milk an explanation from this, I told myself I was pretty sure I had seen it before and wondered where it came from or any other reason why that would be planted in my overactive imagination to create such a crazy dream.
As a final step, I checked the police blotters from the past week. I didn’t find any record of a serious accident or hit and run, so just like that I dismissed the whole thing.
About a month later (the first event was mid december) another big snowstorm hit around midnight. I heard a chill whisper on the side of my face which jolted me from my sleep. My window was rattling as the wind buffeted the side of the house. It was beautiful outside, with thick snowflakes being whipped back and forth in small dancing eddy currents. I sat up and watched them in the streetlight across from the tree which was just up a small hill from my house, in perfect view of my window.
That’s where I caught a glimpse of the girl again.
She was standing at the edge of the road, just past the tree wearing a baggy T-shirt hiding the top half of her bare legs. She stood out, as she was just beyond the lamplight which highlighted the snowflakes. The snow around her slowly began to illuminate, getting brighter and brighter until I could barely see her. A car peaked over the hill and drove past, and she was gone. I stared at the ceiling until I couldn’t fight off sleep any longer.
I didn’t notice anything else until the next winter when I came home from college for winter break. I was relieved that there was minimal snow, and encouraged myself not to look in the direction of the tree. I visited with my parents, had a late dinner and went to bed shortly after because I was tired from the long drive. I had to leave my window cracked because the heat in my room was much too high, and figured that the weather was good enough.
I was wrong. Through my dreams I heard a sudden but sustained wail, and a feeling like I had just jumped into a frozen lake. I launched myself forward, sitting disoriented in my bed. As soon as the room stopped spinning I got up and shut the window, which was blasting me with storm force wind and spitting flakes of snow into my room. I immediately rushed to the window expecting to see the girl. She emerged after just a few minutes, hair tossing carelessly in the wind. Slowly, her head turned while her expression remained locked, it scanned the street drawing nearer to my gawking eyes. She looked blankly in my direction, directly towards me and stopped. I hesitated, my stillness broken by a sudden shiver before ducking below the window sill. I looked back after only a few seconds and she was gone as a car slipped past my house.
It snowed for the next 2 days, the first of which I spent completely inside, refusing to look out the windows. That night I slept on the couch in the living room on the other side of the house. The next day I braved the storm in search of something to lift my “spirits”. Instead of taking the direct route up the road to the liquor store, I broke trail a couple of blocks out of my way. I met with my friend’s deadbeat older brother who bought me a pint of Yukon Jack, and was even nice enough to offer to help me drink it. I told him I had plans that night, which wasn’t true.
That night, my parents dug out the car to go to dinner and the bar with their friends, leaving me alone in the house. I got down to drinking, and got increasingly interested in my ghost watching as the night went on. I got ready for bed, purposely opening my window despite the storm. This time my own shivering shook me awake around 11:30. I looked outside as I closed the window, and watched for the girl. As the room warmed up and I reached the end of my bottle I became drowsy. Every wisp of fresh snow blown loose from the ground took the figure of that girl. My vision was unsteady and began to twist edges of the shadows into her shape, and I began to nod off to the visions of her phasing in and out of the lamplight’s edge.
My eyes felt like they were spinning in my head, and seemed to trick my into tracking a white shape in the distance. That shape instantly pipped me from my half-conscious state. I watched the fleeting white shape come fully into view as she ran to the edge of the road. She looked anxiously around, paused, and locked right on to my face. she began to run towards my house as a screeching gust punctured the edge of my window. My heart raced but with full clarity I saw the look of fear on her face, so I jumped up and ran outside to meet her.
She was in the street jumping up and down waving at my window, and she didn’t see the snow begin to shimmer on the hilltop. I ran at her as a large black SUV bounded over the ridge, grabbing her and tackling her into a snowdrift as the car trampled on by. I regained my senses and looked up to find that the car was already out of sight. Then I looked back to the girl who stuttered “I, I need help p-please” “what, is it what’s wrong? What can I do?” I replied, heart still pounding” “I, I need.. about tree-fiddy” she said. And that’s when I noticed that the poor girl with the soft blonde hair was actually a 3 story tall creature from the paleolithic era, but at least I had closure.
3. She was the ghost
On the other side of things, im pretty sure one time this boy thought I was a ghost or a demon or something. I was wearing a white Sundress and had been to a crazy party in Austin and slept outside. Naturally, I was filthy, drunk and my hair was a disgusting mess, and I had raccoon eyes. I was waiting for my friends to pick me up, so I walked to a pretty close park since the guy was kicking everyone out. I sat down on the ground next to a tree and this boy about 8 or 9 ran past me by the tree without seeing me. The motion was too much for me and I puked everywhere. He turned around, I looked up at him with vomit still on my mouth and he screamed and ran as fast as I’ve ever seen someone run.
Poor little guy.
4. Sleep paralysis
At times when I’m stressed I get absolutely chronic sleep paralysis, basically where you are still dreaming but believe you are awake, and your body hasnt woken up yet, so you’re unable to move. You can also hallucinate a tormentor is responsible for this temporary paralysis, that they holding you down or freezing you in fear. everyone has their own tormentors, it can be an imp, or a vampire, mine is the woman from The Grudge/ Samara from The Ring: A woman in a white dress moving very erratically with long black hair covering her face. After what seems like a lifetime, you jolt back awake as your body breaks out of the paralysis. Most times you can just realize it was a dream and try go back to sleep.
It usually manifests itself in a real world setting where I am sleeping, so I feel like I’m lying down on my bed, and the ghost woman from the Grudge will appear from a wardrobe, through the door, or at the foot of the bed, and start to make her way towards me.
One time (around an important exam I was having) she came up from under my bed, making that grating noise and intense eye contact the whole time, and I basically thought I was frozen with fear, I couldnt move an inch. She continued really slowly making her way towards me, and about an inch from my face I snapped out of it.
I thought I got out of bed to shake myself out of it, it felt so much like I was awake, but as I moved for the door I started to get lower and lower to the ground until I was lying on it, and again unable to move. Then herself emerged from under the bed again towards me, except this time I felt I was awake. It was horrifying!
I woke up just before she got me, and turn on every light, and straight onto the balcony to get cold and make sure I was awake. Didn’t sleep for about 2 days!
5. Hag-ridden
I’ve seen a woman with the long black hair covering her face!
I think it accompanied the only out-of-body experience I ever had. According to Indian tradition and folklore from around the world, when people sleep, the “astral body” hovers about a foot or two above the physical body.
I’m not into New Age religion, crystals or any of that other stuff. But I have a friend who claims she’s had out-of-body experiences. I never gave it too much thought, until one night I was asleep with my wife and three year-old son. Through a succession of very normal dreams, I came out the other side and had the impression that I was now in a shadowy world that existed in a strange nebulous dimension about ten feet above our reality. I remember calling out for help and to my bafflement I heard a strange strained voice which reached me from a distance. It sounded strangled and faint. I looked down and saw my body. Every time I was yelling “Help” my body, drawing on only shallow breaths, was mouthing the words in an eerie puppet-like way. Now here’s where it gets weird. After I realized that my “astral body” (if that’s what it was) was controlling my physical body, I looked over at my young son, whereupon he started to utter “Help! Help!” in the same hoarse, choked-off voice. I was startled because it appeared that my consciousness was projecting my will not into my own body now, but my son’s. His sleepy figure—which was as corpse-like as my own body—seemed devoid of its spiritual essence and in its absence I appeared to be able to “possess” him. It shocked me. Now at this point, I’m starting to get freaked out–and then it happens. Already struggling with disorientation and perplexity, my very presence seemed to have attracted the attention of some strange, small woman who kept trying to jump on my back. I had the uncanny impression that she was trying to “feed” off me, in some way I can’t even begin to articulate. As if she could absorb the energy that seemed to exist in my solar plexus. She had straight black hair and it was brushed over her face, as if to hide her features. I had the intuitive understanding that she was a denizen of the Astral Realm, and that she wasn’t human. She wasn’t even a “she”. She was an It. A creature. An intelligence just as natural and just as normal as us, but from a different order of Nature. And she had the capacity to absorb our energy, if given a chance.
Not a religious man, I found myself praying to God to help me. And, after several false attempts, I was finally absented . . . first sucked away from the imp and into some black abyss. I wavered back and forth between this Void and the Astral Realm. The she-creature expressed dismay at my sudden vacillation between places. It seemed to be as confused as I was. Then finally, I was drawn back down into my body. I sat up, terrified, between my still-sleeping wife and son. My chest heaved. My forehead was covered with sweat.
To this day, I have the irrational conviction that it wasn’t a dream . . . that I entered a dream-state, yes; but that I used it to essentially leave my body and enter some strange parallel world that flows concurrently with our reality. I know this makes me sound like a nut. But I still can’t shake the feeling that it was real and that that “thing” was real, too.
I wonder what the hell it was, and why other people seem to have seen her, too.
6. Candle Cove
I was with my girlfriend and her family at a going away party for her Aunt/Uncle/Niece/Nephew who were moving to Washington. It was like 3 PM on a Saturday and the weather was pretty sweet (we live in Florida). Well, we were watching Tangled and it had just ended- anyways, when it ended, my girlfriends nephew took the remote and hit a button on it causing it to change inputs and go to static.
Now…here’s the creepy part…
My girlfriends Niece stared at the static blankly for a few seconds and, I shit you not, said “Skin Taker, Skin Taker” in a whisper.
I promptly freaked the fuck out, snatched the remote from the nephew and turned the television off as fast as humanly possible.
Her niece just stared at me (who by the way, was 3 at the time).
Needless to say, that kid now creeps me the fuck out.
7. Disappearing clowns
When I was younger, I’m talking “I still play with pots and pans from the cupboard” younger, we lived in a sort of townhouse in Surrey, Vancouver. My dad was away at work for the stock exchange back in the day, and my mom was at home looking after me. She told me that there were two reasons we moved from that house:
1. My mom and dad had this coffee table, more like a side table, in the livingroom. Every other night or so, this table would move, by itself, from one corner of the room to the other. My parents do NOT sleepwalk, and I was too young to do anything but drool in my crib. Furthermore, my dad kept finding what looked like watery footprints in our basement. Our basement had no leaks, no animals, and only boxes.
Apparently this was kosher with them until…
2. My mother let me down on the kitchen floor to play with the pots and pans as usual one day. It was sunny, the day was good, and she was doing laundry in the other room. She leaves me for not two minutes in the kitchen alone, and she comes back to find a giant crack in the wall and bees swarming out of it. I was covered in them from head to toe, and she called 911 immediately. By the time the fire department arrived (first responders), they were flying away out the kitchen door and off of me. I wasn’t stung once.
I have a few more stories:
This was actually a duplex in the Eastern part of Surrey, however my parents are a bit hazy on the exact location because we moved several times during my childhood (I don’t know why, it’s just something I remember doing). My mother said that the table in question belonged to her father’s mother, and it was left to her when she died. She placed the table next to my dad’s sitting chair in one room, and they would find it often placed near the window on the other side of the living room entirely, as I said before. As for the basement phenomenon, there is actually more to this.
Over eggs this morning, mom talked my ear off about this place. It obviously made her very uncomfortable living there. It was a duplex, however nobody lived on the other side. My parents would often be woken up by voices in our living room and basement, and because of this my dad would be sent down by my mother to the basement to check it out. I’m talking a completely bare basement with just linoleum flooring. He would not only find WATERY footprints, but DIRT footprints on the floor leading up the stairs, and by the time he returned to clean them up, they would be gone. She couldn’t have been more serious about this.
This is when the dreams started. My dad is a very heavy sleeper, and he’s not shaken by anything at all really. I mean this guy has problems waking up if I yell at him. So my mother had me to look after, but they were trying for another child (my eventual sister), and she would lay awake at night with the usual worries of a mother. However, once she fell asleep, it’s as if she dreamt about only the house itself, which can be attributed to normal nightmares, however it was regarding my younger sister specifically, and how the people in the basement seemed to hate the idea of her having another child. This is actually all leading up to my experience with the bees in the wall, and she believes it was a result of these dreams.
I think the final thing that really did her in was the missing items in the house. My grandmother collects porcelain clowns, like tiny little figurines. She had given some to my mother to decorate the duplex with, and this is where I’ll straight up admit my family has strange decor ideas all around. So she had them in a closed-door china cabinet display in the livingroom. These clowns would SOMEHOW disappear for days at a time, only to reappear in the kitchen either in the spice cupboards or facing the wall, away from view, on our kitchen table.
What brought back this memory is that we recently inherited ALL of my grandmother’s clown collection and it sits in my parent’s bedroom on a delicate china cabinet on display. There’s over fifty of them, and if I find any of them doing these strange things in this house, it’s straight to living in a box in the backyard for me.
8. Ouija board
When my mum was in high school, she lived in a big old farmhouse in a rural area. It was allegedly haunted by a farmhand who died in an accident 50 years earlier. My mum, her sister, and three of their friends decided to contact the spirit using a Ouija board and then talking to the spirit in some way once they’d contacted it. They put an entirely blank sheet of paper in the far corner of the room with a pencil and all had both hands on the Ouija board centerpiece. After attempting to contact the spirit with little success, my aunt screamed. Despite the fact all of their hands were on the board, my aunt had a large, red handprint on her arm, as if someone with large hands had hit her- and that’s what she said she felt. The piece of paper that was across the room was now a few feet from where it was originally, and had a large “L” on it.
The next day, my mom and her sister went to the library to look up who the farmhand who died at that house was. His name was Lawrence.
…and that’s why Ouija boards were ban at my parents house and my brothers and I were forbidden from “attempting to contact the dead or rousing any ghosts”.
9. Dark figure by the bed
My girlfriend suffers from pretty intense night terrors/sleep paralysis, and has since she was kid. Usually they are about a shadow man at the foot of her bed, or snakes in her room/bed. It gets to the point where she scares herself so badly she bruises herself while dreaming. She has had some small terrors before, and I am usually able to calm her down quickly, convince her that nothing is there, and she just goes back to sleep.
We recently celebrated Valentine’s day by getting a hotel room, some pizza, some candy and some beer, and relaxing the night away. The night goes great, and when we finally go to sleep, I am out like a light. 15 minutes after i pass out she whispers quietly, “There’s someone in the room with us. I can see him, he’s right there.”
Now this hotel wasn’t exactly the nicest, and it wasn’t in the best area, but I had felt safe. I had assumed it was just another one of her night terrors. She then starts screaming that he is coming closer, so at this point, I bolt awake and it is much, much darker in the room then it was when I went to bed. I flick the light on and no one is there, but my girlfriend is sobbing curled up on the bed.With my heart racing, but still unconcerned I checked the room to calm her down. I checked everywhere, including under the bed. When I went into the bathroom, my blood went cold. The window was open about 3 inches, when I specifically remember closing it before I went to bed, and neither one of us got up during the night.
I didn’t tell her about the window, cuddled her close, and did not sleep at all for the rest of the night, and made sure that the knife I keep in my emergency kit was within reach on the nightstand.
10. Albino weasel ghost
Long night of gaming at the computer, when I see a flash of white out of the corner of my eye. I’m in a dark and empty room, with only the monitor light. I think nothing of it, go back to gaming. Again with the white flash, only I caught a longer glimpse–enough to make out a slender weasel-y form. I thought at first my roommates’ ferrets escaped. I get annoyed, check for the ferrets, make sure they’re in their room, and return to the computer.
The white flash springs from one dark corner to the middle of the room, about 5 feet from where I’m sitting and in that flash, I saw red eyes, furry form, and I shriek and topple myself backwards in the chair. Crumpled on the floor, all I can think is this is how I die.
Never saw it again, but the vivid memory of it still scares me shitless.
11. His niece knew
This is more sad than creepy, but I had a cousin who drowned when I was much younger. He was off in college though at the time so nobody knew about it until the next day. His parents were taking care of his 2 (maybe 3) year old niece the night he drowned and she woke up screaming in the night and would not go to sleep, just kept pointing at a picture of him that was on the nightstand. His parents gave it to her and she hugged it to herself and wouldn’t let go of it all night.
It was a very sad deal overall; happened a long time ago, but it still makes me think every now and then.
12. She was stuffed in a fridge
Then I was like 10 I was dragged to school with my mother for Student Teacher meetings. We weren’t allowed in the classes with them so all the sorry sods that got brought there had to wait in the office. Well in this “Office” there was no one really keeping an eye on us, so it turned out we just started running around the school. All the parts that we weren’t allowed to go to as 10-year-olds. This was a K-12 school, so being 10, we only knew the elementary section.
This girl committed suicide the week before in the woods by the school. And after they found her body, it kind of disappeared. Like actually. No one knew where it was. They saw her hanging, they brought her down and did all the cop stuff, but then the body was gone.
Anyway, we were running around and we were in an area where all the lights were off and suddenly two girls ran away from the cafeteria area screaming their fucking heads off. So me and this other guy go to see what they were looking at and my 10-year-old mind swears to god that there was a body in the dessert refrigerator. Her body. Everything was dark, but that fridge stays lit up.
I didn’t sleep for like a week and refused to tell my parents what I saw. And of all of us there that night — 6 of us — swore that we saw it. I don’t know if any of them ever told anyone. But it just wasn’t brought up to anyone else.
The worst part — they found her body the next morning. But no one ever said where.
I know that it probably didn’t play out this way and that it was our imaginations playing games on us, but thinking back to that is spooky as shit.
13. Saw something creepy as hell
Many years ago, I came home late from a club one night. I was sober as I had work the next day and I was riding the motorbike to and from.
I pulled up outside my house and found my mum waiting at the door. It’s a loud-ish bike and it was around 3am. She looked kind of not right, I figured maybe coz it was so late. She turned right and went into her bedroom, but while she was closing the door, She also went straight down the corridor into the kitchen. I thought I was seeing things. I just clearly saw her walk into the bedroom and she was still closing the door. So I walked down the corridor into the kitchen and there’s my mum with her back turned looking out of the window. She was kind of swaying ever so slightly from side to side. I had this sudden burst of goose pimples and I said, “Mum?”
She turned around with this really creepy frowny toothy smile and when our eyes met, I swear I heard thunder and collapsed. Everything sounded like I was underwater and I couldn’t move, it’s like my whole body cramped. I must have been screaming coz my sister runs into the kitchen, she looked all fucked up too like…I cant explain, just creepy. My dad comes running in, he put his hand on my forehead and said stuff I couldn’t understand. Then everything was gone. I lay there really sobbing and shaking violently man, I had no idea what the fuck just happened. Til this day (I’m 38 now) if my mum is in the kitchen when I visit her, I won’t walk in. After that, I was kind of prone to freakish nightmares for a short while, never happened before that night.
14. Weird behavior from this dog
Age: 18, Location: Middle of nowhere Alabama, When: 5 years ago
So my buddy and I were spending a weekend at my grandparent’s house to go deer-hunting. On the first morning we go to leave the house and head out for the woods. It’s about 3:00 A.M. and we are both kind of groggy. We walk out of the door and there is what appears to be a medium/large white dog up on the hill behind their house. As we are walking down their driveway the dog stands-up/morphs into a humanoid shaped figure and takes off running into the woods. At this point I stop and start wondering if I’m still asleep. My buddy looks up at me and asks if the dog just stood up on two legs and ran away. I don’t remember what I said, but we turned around and went back inside.
15. Weird humanoid creature
My dad saw something in the woods in Alabama. He was in a tree stand, and it was almost dark. He starts down the ladder to leave, when he hears a commotion coming towards him. He freezes on the ladder as a herd of deer stampede past him. They were running from something, and that something was scary enough that they ignored a human and ran right by him. He climbs back up into the tree stand and looks out of his scope of his rifle in the direction they came from. He sees something very, very tall standing at the tree line, looking in his direction. My dad is pretty freaked – he kind of wants to shoot it, but he doesn’t know what it is, and it’s almost dark. So he aims his gun wide of the figure and fires. The thing turns and walks back into the woods – not on four legs, on two. My first thought when he told me was “bear,” but bears aren’t exactly common in AL, and they certainly don’t walk on two legs.
16. Haunted movie theater
I used to work at a movie theater. It was a crappy cheap movie theater that got all the movies after they were done at the bigger nicer theaters… We always joked about a ghost that haunted the place. We would always hear whistling. You could whistle part of a song and you would hear someone whistle the rest. I shit you not. This happened. We kind of joked about it and went on with our lives. Well one day I was up in the projection area and I heard someone say my name. I yelled back “WHAT??” no answer. I walked down stairs and asked my coworkers what they wanted. They were slammed busy at the front desk / lobby…. no one had come upstairs…. fine … could be explained right? Im hearing things right?
Well here is the freakiest part. My family doesn’t celebrate Christmas like most families so I would always volunteer to work Xmas eve and Xmas day. I was working the night shift on Xmas eve alone. I was waiting for 2 or 3 people to get done watching Lord of the Rings or something so I could go home. After the movie was out I ran upstairs, stopped the projector and ran back downstairs to clean the theater. No one else was in the building at this point.
Halfway through cleaning the theater I get this feeling like “Wow… I shouldn’t be here right now.” I look up and see a man shaped shadow in the projection booth. I ran out of the theater, turned off all the lights and ran out the door. I turn around and see that there’s a neon sign for COFFEE behind the snack bar that’s still on… I work up some courage and run back inside to turn it off. I literally jump over the counter, turn the light off and jump back to the door. By the time I’m out the door I turn back around to see the light flickering back on. WTF!! I ran back in turned it off again. I turn to my right and see a flash of light come from the middle of the dark lobby. I turned, ran and never looked back.
17. Grandpa said goodbye
Quite a few years ago, was at a local big-box store. Wife was looking at clothing. I see a kid sitting in a cart with his parents. He’s maybe two years old… Maybe. Kid looks at me and starts pointing. Says, “I see you! I see you!” Wtf… Parents are staring at the kid. Wife asks if I know these people. I don’t. And I have an extremely uncommon first name.
Got a call a short time later from my mother. Grandpa died. He used to say “I see you!” when we were playing in his house when I was little and it would make me laugh.
Flash-forward to a few years later…
I’m at a local casino. In the restaurant. Kid walks up to me… He can barely walk, in fact. Again, maybe two years old. Looks up at me and says, “Hi, you.” Wife’s baffled. Parents grab him, as he’s wandered away from his table. And I’m a little freaked. So, I call my mom. Tell her what happened. She starts crying a little. “It’s Grandpa’s birthday today”, she says.
18. Civil War ghosts
We used to live in a large house near fairfax Virginia, in the old civil war battle grounds. This house was built next to a building that during the civil war was used as a field hospital. Our house itself was built over an officer’s residence. On many nights my parents swear they saw figures walking around outside and would occasionally hear sounds in the house; doors opening, sinks turning on, but nothing violent or disturbing. The figures were scary but never did any harm and would not hang around long.
At this time my sister was still a baby, and appropriately my parents had a baby monitor. One night my sister started to cry in her crib. While my parents were arguing who would go comfort her, they heard a sound. Thump, thump, thump, crreeeeeaaaaakkkk. Over the monitor you could hear the door to my sister’s room open. My Dad, freaking out, grabbed it and quietly moved to her room. Then, he heard the monitor utter “Shhhh,” and her mobile started to turn on its own and a kindly, southern voice soothed her. After she was done crying the voice was gone, and all was silent.
The rest of the time living there small benevolent acts were done by this gentleman ghost. My family thinks it was an old officer of the civil war, being kindly to those who now lived there.
19. No denying it
Ran a restaurant in Philly out of a location where the previous owner had died in the building. Others had claimed to have experienced ghostly events but I had not. One night after closing myself and two other employees were walking out when one of the check presentation trays lifted itself off the counter and then tumbled to the floor. All three of us witnesses it and none of us denied it.
Also, second-hand story here but the witness was my father so I believe it. My brother was in a 10 day coma when he was 7. My mom and dad never left his side. The night before he emerged from the coma my dad was praying at the foot of my brother’s hospital bed. He said in prayer “God please give me a sign, I want my son back.”
There was an outside window in the room and as he finished his prayer and looked up the lights from moving traffic outside slid across the wall and for one moment made a perfect star over my brother’s head. He came out of it the next day perfectly healthy.
20. Whoa…I have a mirror facing my bed…
When my son was just born, he would sleep in his crib in our room. One night my wife and I both woke up suddenly, at the same time. Our room has a large mirror over the dresser. Coming out of the mirror a black-scaled, naked woman. My wife shouted ‘Go Away!’ This apparition or whatever looked straight at me. I swear I was terrorized. It kind of ‘sunk’ back into the mirror. We immediately turned on all light, grabbed out son, and drove to her parents house.
We both saw this thing. It freaked us out completely.
Being the geek that I am, I started researching what I could have seen. I even spoke with several professors with backgrounds in folklore. One of them pointed out a book by Joshua Trachtenberg about Jewish Folklore. Specifically, the chapter on the ‘Lilith’ myth.
Lilith is a 1st wife of Adam who will try to steal away the soul of uncircumcised baby boys. She appears as a dark black woman who enters homes through ‘vanity’ in mirrors. Well my son is uncircumcised and this completely freaked me the fuck out.
To protect against Lilith, you ask the 3 angels Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof who were sent by god to retrieve her for Adam to protect your son from her for that night with an image depicting the angels.
I guess being scared shitless can make you believe in some things you wouldn’t ordinarily believe in.
21. Creepy ghost figure
As a kid I used to hear random voices/shouts in my house when I was completely alone. I didn’t tell people for a while because I didn’t want to seem crazy but once Id mentioned it other family members told stories of my rocking chair I had as a baby rocking by itself at night, stopping only once someone came over the staircase to see why I was awake only to find an empty chair. Other times I’d lose an object, the strangest case a ski mask, for months at a time. After coming back from dinner as a family the mask was inexplicably sitting at the doorway to my room. Everyone in my family swears they didn’t put it there and had no clue where it was.
Fast forward four years ago and my sister ends up dreaming about our house’s little friend. He said his name was Ben so that’s what we called him whenever we’d notice weird things going on.
Now the weirdest thing to happen was when my dog would get up, look at the front door and just growl for no reason. One day we took a picture of our staircase and looking back at it you can pretty clearly see a shadow of a man walking up the stairs even though no one was there.
Yay ghosts!
22. His soul
When my dad died, my brothers, my mom and I were all there. As he was in the process of his last agonal respirations we knew time was short. He took his last one at 12:04 cst on January 6, 2003. What I saw rise up from his chest, I cannot explain. Some white, translucent something floated or rose or drifted from his body. It was like watching a helium balloon take flight in a wind that really had no specific direction. No one else seemed to see it. He visits me in my dreams now, telling me things are fine.
23. Don’t answer the phone in your dream
I was 18, recently graduated high school and was waiting for a date for basic training. I spent a bunch of time with a friend I known for the past 5 years, we’ll call him Gus. Gus was a really, funny, smart guy but had a lot of issues at home with his parents. We used to go play trivia together at a local restaurant and hang out for a bit.
After one of these outings, I noticed he was visibly shaken and not acting like himself. He wouldn’t tell me what was wrong but insisted we’d meet next week and quickly left, leaving me confused.
Next week, same time, I finally got Gus to talk about what was bothering him. He told me the past few years he’d been having dreams where a little girl named Emily, he described her as pale, with long, straight black hair, no more than 9, would appear and hurt him or just scare the shit out of him. What freaked him out so bad the week prior was he then started seeing her while he was awake. She’d follow him around and whisper things into his ear.
I asked him if he had been doing any drugs, at first which he denied but then let me know he did smoke pot, but nothing else. He clearly had a big issue with telling anyone this but didn’t know what to do about it, as she was bothering him more and more lately. I encouraged him to speak with a doctor about it and maybe go see a psychiatrist. He assured me he would.
I didn’t have much contact with him for a couple of weeks since I was starting to get busy before I left. We found some time and I spent the weekend with Gus at his apartment. I asked him if things had gotten any better about his issue. He told me no, and he hadn’t had any help from the psychiatrist he went to see. We spent most of the afternoon playing video games and just acting up. Everything was pretty normal.
Eventually our friend Tanya shows up. We continue doing pretty much the exact same thing, but the subject of Emily comes up again. Gus tells us one of her favorite things to do is to take his childhood stuffed animal, a beanie baby cat he received from one of his parents, and hide it. He couldn’t find it anywhere and asked us to help. After searching for a good 30 minutes, we found it under a pile of clothes downstairs. I kind of roll my eyes at him, thinking he was just playing a joke, but he insists he never takes it downstairs. We decide we’re hungry while talking about this and make plans to leave for food. I looked at the cat, shrugged, and set it on top of his computer monitor and then went out the door. I was the last one to leave, as they were already waiting outside and I locked the door behind me.
We come back from dinner, and Gus opens the door. I was enjoying a good chat with Tanya when Gus interrupted and asked where I put his cat. I stepped through the door, preparing to point at his monitor and say “there” when I notice he’s staring up at the ceiling fan that hung from an expanded room, roughly 14 feet off the ground. The cat is sitting on the edge of one of the blades, positioned so it was staring straight down at the door. We all stood in an awkward silence for a fer moments when finally laughed and accused me of putting it up there. I assured her I hadn’t. She didn’t believe me. Gus thought this was proof enough to me that Emily was moving things again. It was late, so we threw some clothes at the cat to knock it off and decided to call it a night.
I had the worst sleep I’ve ever had in my life that night. I dreamed all 3 of us were at a cafe, drinking coffee, when my phone rang. I looked to see who it was and it simply said ‘Emily.’ Immediately, I didn’t want to answer it but the dream kept going. I looked at Gus, told him who it was, and he and Tanya both agreed that I should answer it. I pressed accept and said “Hello?” The line was quiet for about 2 seconds and then a mind piercing scream emanated from the phone, causing everyone to cover their ears in an attempt to block out the sound. It didn’t help. I shut my eyes and when I opened them Emily was standing over me, screaming over the bodies of my two friends.
I screamed and woke up. I was covered in sweat. Tanya and Gus were already awake and came rushing downstairs, asking me what happened. Tanya looked at me and told me I was extremely pale and should eat something. At that point I was trying to catch my breath and make sense of what just happened in my dream. I started saying “I had the scariest dream I ever had last night,” only to be cut off mid sentence by Gus asking if I had dreamed about Emily. When I said yes, he asked if I had accepted a call on my phone from her. Starting to realize things were getting weirder I again said yes. They each described their own dreams exactly how I had mine, except from their point of view. Everyone stood around pale.
Fast forward a few years and I see him again. He’s started fresh, trying to get away from his past. Apparently it had gotten very bad and she wouldn’t leave him alone. He couldn’t sleep and after days of insomnia he attempted suicide. Gus said the last time he saw her was in the hospital afterwards, where she giggled and said “That was fun! Maybe I’ll be back to play sometime…”
He hasn’t seen her since. It’s been about 3 years and he’s doing better, but we don’t like to talk about it.
I’m a pretty skeptical person and I still have no clue how to explain most of that, nor have I ever been more scared in my life.
24. While traveling in Sudan
I was at volunteering trip in Sudan, stayed in a medium size village with a few hundred people.
First night was a nice meeting period, get to know the village, really friendly, hanging around the fire pit/where the dinner was being prepared, kids were jumping, laughing, women and elders just cautiously quiet. The typical image of a foreigner in a Sudanese village.
A few days passed with success, but the evening of the third day at the village was when things changed. I awoke probably middle of the night, I can hear the fire crackling and the moon shining through my hut and bug protector. I then heard some mumbles and light talks, curiously I crawled out and poked my eyes through to see towards the fire a few men seated arms loosely hung on the ground whilst a man in a tribal helmet danced holding a staff and throwing objects in the fire creating random colorings and such, after probably 15 seconds of watching out of the blue, the masked man looked directly at me. Stared. Made a loud hiss and howl and stopped.
I booked it back into the net & bed and attempted to go back to sleep. The next day one of the English speaking elders came up to me privately and softly said “It is best to sleep at night.” I responded the usual okay, okay. And didn’t think much of it, went throughout the day sitting in a teachers class, watching the men hunt all that jazz. However, as I went along with my day I could feel a very nervy tension around the village towards me, more than the general.
That evening at dinner the elders were separated from the majority, showing real fear and anger towards a few of the others, things started to get heated but cooler heads prevailed. Now for bedtime. I strangely awoke again, very unlike me, but I just simply awoke. Eyes wide open, strangely felt like I never went to sleep.
“HISSSS-HRRRRRAAAH” is the best way to describe the deep, dark, voice I heard bellowing out from the window. Next I can describe with only the sound of skin on glass being wiped and very, very loud. I was truly petrified. Nervously, I crept out of bed, having no real idea with what I was looking for and why. By the time my eyes met the fire, I felt a deep mulch in my stomach, a sharp pain of fear and confusion. I was staring at two levitating men facing the fire, hovering, arms raised, legs dangling. While the masked man, staff rooted to the ground, throwing objects onto the fire, mumbling, growling, almost tongue-twisted he could barely even make out sounds.
I was utterly speechless, fuck, even mentally I couldn’t even think of things, I just felt darkness, surrounding me, pain, anger, surrounding me, eagle eyed, I just gazed, in a trance, fixed on what was occurring. When suddenly a loud crack similar to one you’d hear during a storm of a tree snapping, the men immediately dropped, rag doll esc, then instantaneously the masked man snapped a look right behind and directly at me.
Naturally I shot myself back to bed, praying (strangely something I never ever do) and just hoped nothing would happen to me. I felt darkness, a deep, evil presence, all that night. No one ever came that night, but I felt, watched. All. Night. The next morning I was politely and without any excuse, asked to leave. I was thanked, and asked to leave that moment. No goodbyes or anything, what once was cheers of my arrival, was eerily, nothing. No children playing, not even elders staring. Nobody just myself and the English speaking elder. “Pack your belongings, I’ll be in the car.” And that was that.
25. Growling cat
This happened to me a couple years ago, bug I still remember exactly what happened. I was sleeping in my room when I heard scratching at the door. This was normal, because I sleep with my door closed and my cat loved sleeping on my bed. I got up and let her in and for just a second thought I saw a person out of the corner of my eye. I stood there for a minute, but didn’t see it again. I got back in bed, and my cat started meowing. This alone was strange, because she almost never makes any noise. She jumped up on my bed, and tried to crawl under the covers. Understand this; that cat hated, absolutely HATED being under anything. She managed to crawl under the blankets with my and started growling. I looked under the blankets and tried to calm her down. When I looked back up I saw a man shaped form standing about 3 feet away from my bed. I couldn’t look away, and I couldn’t move. It slowly backed away, and my cat kept growling, and then I passed out. I woke up with the cat in my bed, and the door to my room open.
26. Ghost of his grandfather
I actually have two things. About a year before I was born (I’m 15 now), my father was very sick. Doctors tried all kinds of tests, but they couldn’t diagnose him. They thought he had HIV or something amongst those lines. So my Cuban mother decides to take him to a psychic in downtown Miami. My father thought this all was a load of crap at the moment. She said that he was going to be fine, but then the crazy part happens.
The psychic began to describe my father’s grandfather in extreme detail, as if she knew him. She said he was 5’4, Irish, had a cane, etc. This freaked the hell out of my parents.
1 month later the doctor tells my family that my father is fine, but it is still a mystery as to what caused him to be so sick.
The last creepy thing that happened was in mid-November of last year. My Cuban grandfather was placed in hospice care after his kidneys failed (his heart was going too.)
A few days before he passed away, he called my grandmother into his room. He began shouting, “Julie! Julie! Come quick! My father is here!” My grandfather was 81 at the time. His father must be over 100 and dead by now. My grandmother played along with him, pretending that she saw his father. He ended up talking to him for hours before he disappeared.
He also claimed that he saw a little girl who he never met before, but she disappeared too.
I don’t know what to think of all of this. I just thought this would be interesting to share!
27. The most terrifying of all
Once I hear story about girl in Chaplygin. She was asleep in her bed, when she feel lick on her hand. She thinks it is dog and goes to sleep. Next morning, she finds note on dresser with dead head of dog. It says “Capitalists can lick too.” She screams.
Father comes upstairs, takes belt off and beats her. Moral of story is daughters should not yell in house like peasant. House is not Siberian pigsty. I worry daughter will never find good Russian husband.
Read our original collection of horror stories here.
