1. The Baby

My mom told me this story the other day and it freaked me the fuck out. When my oldest sister was little, like 3, she asked my then pregnant aunt to pick her up to hold her. My moi m said she was like “she can’t pick you up, honey, she has a baby in her tummy.” And then my little sister was like “that baby is dead!” My mom freaked out, but my aunt and grandma were fine and were telling my mom it was all good, she was just a toddler and didn’t know what she was saying. Well lo and behold my aunt goes to the doctor the next day for a routine pregnancy checkup and the baby was dead. Gives me he willies just thinking about it.

2. The Missing Shotgun

My father passed away last year. One item he always said he wanted me to have was a shotgun which had originally belonged to his grandfather. For years he had this shotgun stashed in the attic. After he passed, I had gone in the attic to look for it, only to find that it wasn’t there.

A few months later, I had a dream in which I was talking to him and I asked him where he had put the shotgun. He told me it was in the closet of a spare bedroom. I called my mother and had her check, and sure enough that’s where it was.

Now it’s completely possible that my father had told me that when he was alive, and the dream was little more than a memory, but I certainly don’t recall that being the case.

3. The Flying Key

When I was 15, my mother and I were standing in the kitchen talking. There was a rack on the wall holding keys about 8 feet away. A key from the rack flew across the room and hit the floor near our feet. This is the only event in my life I for which I have no explanation.

I don’t know (what the key went to). It was an old, heavy key. The house was built in the 1880s, so it could have been original to the house.

4. Camping In Canada

Scariest moment of my life happened while my friend and I were camping in eastern Canada as teenagers. We decided to sleep in this abandoned camper we found deep in a large forest that was near our town. It had been there so long that small trees had grown around it. We’d stumbled across it when we were exploring a few months back and thought it would be cool (and brave) to sleep there for a night. So one weekend we did it.

We arrived after dark because we had gotten lost trying to find the camper. We had a really low power flashlight, so it made it even more difficult. Once we finally found it we opened the rusty door and stepped in. The sounds inside the camper were shrill and echoey. There were typical camper things strewn about; cups, empty cans, swollen pulp fiction novels.

Already tired, we holed up in one end of the camper where the bed area had originally been before the cushions had rotted away to almost nothing. A long hallway stretched the length of the camper so we could basically see from end to end.

It was a miserable night. There were several rats living in there. I saw them staring at us from a chewed out part of the ceiling. When the wind blew outside the camper would shriek and groan. We even thought we heard a bear outside too, walking around. Still, we feigned bravery and acted like we were having a good time. But we were on edge.

At some point I woke up from an uncomfortable sleep. I sat up to adjust myself when I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye. At the other end of the camper, there was a small window, and as I looked at it I saw a man’s silhouette. He was clearly staring straight at me from outside.

At first I thought maybe it was a weird shape of a tree or something. But when I moved a bit to get a better look the person clearly reacted and then froze. My heart was pumping and I woke up my friend immediately, saying “someone is here” over and over and over in a whisper, not taking my eyes off his profile. He woke up immediately and I nodded towards the window.

He saw him too. We whispered frantically about who it could be and why was he staring at us. And for the next 10 minutes, no joke, we stared him down. The longer we stared at him the more frightened we got. Occasionally he would move, but always keeping his eyes locked on us. Eventually I shouted at him, “Hey!” No reaction.

My friend was braver than me and decided to shine the flashlight at him. As soon as he did we realized our horrible mistake. It wasn’t a window at all on the other side of the camper. It was a mirror. We had been staring down ourselves from the very start. Completely idiotic. Still, it was the most fearful, relieving and funny moment of my life that I’ll never forget it.

Closest to paranormal I’ve ever been.

5. The Figure In The Hallway

I saw a ‘shadow person’ once.

I didn’t know that’s what it was called until much later. I was living in a house in Laguna Beach that had been there since the 1920s. In it’s history, it had been a speakeasy, a brothel and a house for smuggling illegal immigrants.

One day, my new wife and I were having an argument. I can’t even recall what it was about. She walked down the block to get a cup of coffee and cool off, and I was alone in the house. The way the place was built was incredibly haphazard. There was a bedroom and living room on one side, then a bathroom with two entrances. On the other side of the bathroom was a hallway that had windows in one side and two bedrooms on the other. From my bedroom, I could look across the hall into the bathroom, then through the bathroom and down the other hall. I was standing at my dresser, and I just noticed movement out the corner of my eye, and looked down there.

There was… and honest to god, this gives me goose bumps just typing it, 17 years later, a black figure. It was maybe three feet tall, and it was only vaguely humanoid. it looked like black scribbles, like someone had scribbled a human shape, but the scribbles moved, like electricity arcing, that’s the best way to describe it. There was no sound that I could remember. I distinctly remember when I saw it I wasn’t afraid, just like, WTF? Then it noticed me looking at it. I can’t say it turned around, it just, focused on me I guess. THEN i was scared. I didn’t move, didn’t scream, nothing, I was just frozen, because it just fucking came at me, it RUSHED down the hall towards me. I have no idea what it intended, but as soon as it entered the bathroom, the door closest to me just SLAMMED shut on it. The I screamed. I yelled for my wife. She wasn’t home. I went the fuck outside, into the daylight, and didn’t go back in until she got home about 10 minutes later.

I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe I saw something supernatural, but I know I saw something. I don’t know what it was.

6. Just Outside The Door

I was trying to sleep in my room back when I was younger and lived with my folks. I must have been maybe 17 or 18. I opened my eyes while rolling over to get comfortable and I see a black figure just outside my door (who I thought was my stepfather in the dark) with his hands up by his chest making “scary finger” motions at me like you might do sarcastically after a scary story, or a witch might do when casting a spell – just moving fingers wildly in my direction.

I should note that this figure had no defined shape. It looked like squiggles that moved in a vague shape and I chalked it up to the lack of light and my stepfather.

Well, I look over and say “What the hell are you doing?” thinking it was a really stupid, creepy thing to do at night. Well in that moment it vanished. Just gone. It was at that moment my heart sank and I became PETRIFIED with fear. One of the few moments I was scared out of my mind and couldn’t comprehend what I just saw.

7. A Presence All Through The House

I was probably 11 or 12, and never really had any belief in the supernatural, aliens, etc. Around roughly 5am I was sleeping on my bottom bunk at the end of our hallway when a shadow figure about the height of my dad was standing in the doorway — not doing anything, just standing. I could hear my grandmother (who watched us at the time) in the basement, and I could vaguely remember my dad leaving about an hour earlier. I closed my eyes twice, opened them, and just stared with a squint so it looked like I was sleeping.

Eventually I was so scared I just closed my eyes and secretly hoped it was all some weird dream. I couldn’t sleep, but soon after I heard dresser drawers slamming VERY loud in our spare bedroom. All of the sudden my grandma runs upstairs and tells me to quit making so much noise. I tell her what’s up, she opens the spare bedroom door and there’s nothing there. No possible way to escape either — a second-story window with the screen still in tact.

8. It Was Like It Was Made Of Static

I was laying in my bed, the room door in front of me, wide open, and to the left. I could see the room where the front door was. There was an antique cabinet that my dad had that illuminated a white glow. I started to freak out for no reason, and started sweating. I for some reason knew shit was about to happen and I was about to witness something. About 5 minutes later, laying hot in sweat, I fucking saw it.

There was a door in the back of the room with the front door, that was storage. A black outlined humanoid figure walks out, mildly static looking. It takes a few steps towards the front door then stops. Does a military like turn facing me. At this point I’m freaking the shit out eyes wide. It walks into my room and stops beside my bed. Does one more military turn facing me. At that point I figured, what have I got to lose. I noped the the fuck out and ran through the thing, ran upstairs to my parents bedroom and knocked furiously at the door waiting to let me in. Eyes focused on the stairs making sure it wasn’t to follow me. Nothing. I slept with my parents for the next few nights.

Story 2:  A short time after the shadow people encounter, I began to settle down and my thoughts were no longer fearful. I also believe this was during the time I put up a dream catcher that my mother got me at the time. Let me just say that dream catcher really did the job for years! Maybe because I truly believed in it, and my mind worked in my favor.

Anyway, I woke up one morning to mum yelling down the stairs for me to get up. It was a school day. I had a shower, came back to my room and sat on my bed, sluggishly slipping my school uniform on. This is where the shit goes down…

As I was pulling up my socks, I noticed a flash outside my door more toward the room with the front door. Not the bright camera type flash, but more like an invisible person walking past super fast past my door. For those of you that played halo, it looked like someone walking around with the invisibility cloak but real fast past my door. You can still see them but not entirely. I saw this from the corner of my eye and began to freak out.

I went upstairs to eat breakfast and I remember how scared I was. I sat there staring down at the table as I ate my cereal. My mother asked what was up and I looked up at her with a straight face and said something along the lines of “I saw a flash by the door downstairs. Something walked past my door”. I said this calmly with a straight face, and now that I look back on this I must’ve looked like the classic creepy kid. My mum replied with “Its all in your head”.

I went back to eating and she went in the laundry room behind the kitchen, and that’s when it happened again! I was eating when I saw another flash of an invisible person walk past the kitchen door! This time I was paralyzed! As in, I stopped chewing and now staring straight down at the table. These fuckers are playing with me! My mum walks in, stops, sees my reaction and again, I calmly say “it just did it again, over there” pointing at the kitchen threshold. I tell my mum “Something is playing with me, and I’m not imagining things”. What really relieved me but freaked me out at the same time was her reply “I know…” It relieved me because she believed me but freaked me out because she basically confirmed their existence! About ten seconds later, we both heard someone walking down the stairs (wooden, so creaking can be heard) very slowly. I remember thinking to myself that it sounded as if they’re cover is blown and they’re trying to sneak out. My mum and I both looked at each other and once we heard it stop, she looked around the corner down the stairs. Nothing. Dad had already left for work. What the actual fuck?

Story 3: This story is set in the Philippines, where I’ve heard many stories from my relatives about paranormal things happening in the house we stayed at. This is something that I’ve experienced myself. This happened in the second story living room. This living room was huge! Tall ceiling and about 20ft x 45ft worth of room. It was during Christmas time and we had a tree setup in the middle of the room towards the north side. A large jesus table on the east side positioned north south. There was a television setup on the west side, with a large green velvet couch about 15ft in front of the tv and another couch setup sideways to the tv, but backed up against a sliding door to the balcony. There was enough room for someone to walk behind the couch to get to open the screen doors to the balcony.

Anyway, my Filipino cousins (I’m half Filipino) and I were gathered around the tv. Some of them on the floor, one on the back couch, and me on the couch by the sliding door. We were all watching either a game show or something overly bubbly. At this time, it was getting late for us. Maybe 10pm or so? Here’s where the realest shit goes down.

I’m sitting on the couch with my legs up and one knee up. Remote is dangling on the backrest edge to my right and I hear it drop behind me. So little me, being the ninja i am, slides over the top of the couch on my back! Like a bridge stretch for your back. With my face pressed up against the glass, I grab the remote and from the corner of my eye I see a little girl with black fucking hair! Se had a white dress on and was looking down so I couldn’t see her face. She was in a crawling position, backing up like she had been caught and trying to escape. She was backing up towards the middle of the room towards the Christmas tree. I was still upside down at this point and when I managed to look over at her, she disappeared! I scuttled right back up and jumped. All my cousins looked at me like “wtf?!”

I then explained to them what I saw and they started basically shaking their fingers pointing at me, as if they know that I must’ve done something to see something. They were smiling though, as if its a normal thing.

To this day, I still think that they were just messing with me with the whole “you got in trouble with the supernatural” but I know what I saw. I was always scared shitless whenever I was in the Philippines. Especially that house. In the area we lived in, “betis”, this house was like a mansion. It was opposite some basketball courts in case anyone knows betis. Anyway, if anyone ever goes to the Philippines, ask the locals for some supernatural stories ;) I’d imagine everyone there has experienced something, as all my Filipino relatives have, including our maids. One maid ran away once because of an encounter. She came back, and I’ve met her before and she hates talking about it.

9. The Rocking Chair Man

My grandfather passed away just a few weeks after I was born. Never met the guy, never knew what he looked like. When I was 5 years old, I started to see this man in our rocking chair. I called him the rocking chair man. My parents thought it was that “imaginary friend” stage, but it started to bug them when I told them every single day.

They finally questioned me about it. I told them every detail I could remember and finally they showed me a picture of a man.

It was my grandfather.

To this day, I’m 22 now, every time I dream, he is in the background somewhere. I remember when I dreamed about my high school graduation and I looked in the stands and I saw him with my parents. I like to think that he’s just watching out for me and being there when he’s not really there.

10. The Teacher Saying Goodbye 

I attended the same university for my Bachelors and my PhD. There was a lovely woman by the name of Jennifer, who was my Reading in the Content Area instructor. The guys all swooned over her (she was gorgeous) and I loved her because she read us The Giver out loud. She was an awesome instructor (and was doing her PhD in Literacy).

Fast forward a few years, and Jen has moved to South Carolina to teach literacy. I’m now in my PhD program, and in the same grad student office she used to work in, with other Literacy people that were her colleagues.
And then, we get the news that she was murdered by her boyfriend. Everyone is totally devastated. It was a huge blow to the department, as she was genuinely loved by everyone who knew her.

So a few days after her funeral (her body was brought home), I’m in the office suite at school very early in the morning, when nobody else was around. The grad students had a fishbowl office (10 of us, with group desks) within a larger office suite that was locked and had light motion sensors. I’m walking in and pass a locked door with windows, and I see a woman with short, dark hair walk the other way inside. Which was weird, because the lights didn’t flicker on when she moved.

So I walked around the corner to the door with a key code and let myself in. I walk inside, and head to where I saw her. The lights flicker on when they sense me. Nobody is there. It’s just me, and an entire suite of empty offices.
I swear to god, it was her, saying goodbye to a place she spent so many years, and where she had so many friends. It spooked the hell out of me, but made me sad, too.

11. A Sudden Premonition 

About 20 years ago, my mom came out of the shower, pale, shaking, and hysterical.

My aunt spoke to me and she is here to pick someone up….I know she is talking about my father. She said to my dad and I. Her aunt has been dead for many years.

Two days later, my grandfather (mom’s father) was in the hospital. He was in a coma and died shortly after that from undetected lung cancer.

12. One Life For Another

Girlfriend’s mom had cancer and dreamed of her Grandma one night. (I don’t remember the type but doctors gave her a 5% chance of survival.) She said her Grandma said something to the affect of “I’m going to die so that you may live”, and the next day her Mom called her and said “I have grave news.” My girlfriend’s Mom said “don’t tell me, Grandma passed away.” her Mom “yes, how did you know?” She survived and has been cancer free for 20 years.

Another story was with my girlfriend’s sister. The family was going through a photo album and her sister pointed to a man and said “that’s Grandpa”. Her Mom asks “yes, but how do you know? You never met him”. (died before she was born) She replied “He sits at the foot of my bed some nights and we talk.”

13. No More Going Out At Night

I grew up in the Arctic.

In the town I lived in, as long as it was a clear night, it was an extremely normal occurrence to see all sorts of strange lights move across the sky. Keep in mind the winter is long in the arctic, which means longer amounts of time being spent under the stars. It’s quite beautiful, as long as you don’t mind the cold so much. Sometimes I would drive a snowmobile a few kilometers out of town, shut it down, and just lay down on the snow looking up at the majesty of it all, the only thing disturbing the silence being the occasional breeze.

The northern lights are also a common occurrence. Doesn’t happen everyday, but often enough that they start getting ignored after a while, as long as they aren’t too spectacular anyway.

On one particular night, without asking my parents (it was their snowmobile), I decided to go on one of my midnight drives out of town. I drove a few kilometers over the hills to find a spot devoid of light pollution from town, shut off the machine, and settled in to a good spot to look up and be retrospective.

It wasn’t all that interesting a scene. A few satellites passing here and there, some relatively boring activity affecting the magnetic field, etc. And then I started noticing a clicking noise…

At first I thought it was the sound of the snow machine cooling down, as engine expands and contracts a lot in the cold. But the source of the sound definitely wasn’t coming from that direction. My next thought was there must be an animal nearby in which case I need to get out of there fast (you don’t really want to mess with a wild animal). But, the clicking is far too regular for an animal to produce it. It was fairly mechanical sounding. And again, the source of the sound isn’t coming from anywhere around me laterally. It was coming from up. So naturally I look up determined to ascertain the origin of this strange noise.

I see what I always see: stars, northern lights, a lazy satellite crossing the sky…all normal stuff. But before I dismiss it altogether and begin heading home, I notice something strange in the Aurora Borealis. There were three rather strong points of light. I ignored them at first thinking they were oddly symmetrical stars, but this proved false. They were definitely getting brighter. I kept staring in morbid fascination as they grew stronger and stronger, yet still only remaining single points in the sky. All the while the clicking noise is getting louder and louder and more pronounced, almost like someone started with tapping a pen on a desk to clacking billard balls together inside my head.

Then it stops. The lights are gone, the clicking is not heard, and aside from being a little stiff, cold, and rather petrified, I’m fine.

So I jump back on the snowmobile thinking maybe I’m going crazy. The machine takes a little longer than usual to start up, and I’m beginning to worry, but soon it’s running and I’m heading back to town. As I’m driving back several plausible scenarios as to what occurred are running through my head. I’m thinking it could’ve been a helicopter from the mine, or some strange northern lights behaviour etc. Probably not that big a deal.

I pull up to my house. Lights are all dark. Strange. It wasn’t that late when I left. Open outer door as quietly as possible, remove winter gear, enter inner door. House is quiet. Really quiet. My parents are teachers and are usually up late marking or watching T.V. All I’m thinking is I have to get to bed without anyone noticing. Proves to be easy as I’m soon under my covers. I go to set my alarm for the next day. All of the sudden everything makes sense.

Engine hard to start, stiff, rather chilly, nobody up when I was gone what felt like relatively short period of time…

It was almost 11:00pm when I left, and now it was creeping up on 6:00am. I stood, staring at clicking lights for almost 7 hours.

I never ended up sleeping that night, and I don’t go on late night snow machine rides anymore.

14. In The Tree, In The Darkness

Whenever I was scared as a kid my dad had always told me that in life, you should not be scared of ghost….fear the living because they can actually hurt you.

In my late teenage years I came into some money after my father committed suicide and I received an inheritance from him. At time of my dad’s passing he and my mom owned a cabin up in Oregon by Mount Bachelor. The cabin had been put up for sale since my mom could no longer afford the payments and renting it out was not covering the payments either. The cabin was set to go on the market for sale in less than a month and was in the process of finalizing all the paperwork with the Realtor and lawyer. So for that month’s time the cabin was not going to be rented out any longer and was going to be vacant.

I saw this as a chance to get a way for a while and clear my head in light of all the things going on. I quit work, packed up my snowboarding gear, grabbed my dog and headed up in my dad’s car ( that he had willed to me) to the cabin. Now this was our family cabin that my parents rented out throughout the year when we were not using it. I had keys to the cabin and also had the code for the alarms so I did not feel the need to stop at the rental management company and advise them of my stay. This has nothing to do with the coming story, but felt the need to mention it anyway.

My first two days at the cabin were normal and nothing out of the unusual happened. Spent my days playing with my dog in the snow, snowboarding and the evenings playing PlayStation or listening to music, drinking and smoking out on the balcony. Had already stocked up on food, cigarettes and liquor so I was pretty much a shut in aside from the occasional out to hit the slopes. With my dog as company and dvd’s/PlayStation as entertainment, I was quite content and started to feel relaxed after all the drama that had preceded my outing. The cabin itself was two stories, bottom story had the living room and a side guest bedroom along with small kitchen. Upstairs had another two rooms along with a walk out balcony attached to the master bedroom. Most my time there was spent either in the living room, kitchen or master bedroom. I never ventured into the other rooms and always kept the doors leading into them shut (open doors to dark rooms always creeped me out).

Anyhow, the third day came around and I was going through my usual routine of playing with my dog (his name was Midnight by the way and he also since passed) playing games and watching DVD’s. That day it was pretty heavy snow fall so I did not feel like trekking down the hill to the main road in my car and decided to stay in. That’s when things started getting a bit weird. In our area there were only two other Cabins adjacent to ours (maybe a block away from each other). All other cabins aside from these two where around a mile away from ours. Surrounding us was mostly forest and very tall pine trees (tall….this is important later on). Both these cabins were empty and from the past couple of days I knew that no one was currently staying there.

Gave enough background and am going to jump to the weirdness…. …Around midday while outside with my dog I noticed what looked like footprints in the snow around the area surrounding our cabin. It was still snowing so the foot prints looked semi fresh like someone had been there in the last 20-30 minutes before me. I thought that maybe someone was staying in the cabin near me that I may not have noticed…..maybe they were shut ins like me….alright…whatever, the prints lead away from my cabin and they disappeared in the snow towards the denser part of the trees…. disregarded the footprints and went back inside.

Nighttime came around and decided to head to bed. My dog Midnight was laying on the bed with me when I noticed his ears perk up to a standstill/listening position. This was followed by him quickly jumping off the bed and running downstairs to the living room. I lay in bed and stayed silent (I was kinda freaked out) and could hear him moving around down stairs back and forth. After around 5 minutes he ran back upstairs to me and started to do his doggy dance for the sign that he had to pee or that he wanted to go outside. Shit….well fine. I cant say no to him so we both went downstairs to the outside driveway for him to his thing. Only, he didn’t want to pee.

As soon as we were outside he started to pull on his leash trying to drag me to where he wanted to go. He kept looking into the dense part of the trees were the prints had been earlier. But he also kept sniffing the side of the house and looking up towards the roof. After he figured out that I was not going to go to where he wanted he sat himself down and just stared into the darkness……a bit unusual for him but alright, maybe there are forest animals out there that he wants to chase down.

But fuck this, did not want to chance anything so I pulled him back inside and we both headed back upstairs. Around half an hour later I was lying in bed when I heard what sounded like hooves walking on my roof. It was only a series of around 6 steps and I rationalized that it could be a pine cone falling from a tree onto the roof or maybe a kind hearted forest animal running around. But here’s the thing, the steps seemed to be spaced apart like a man length stride. So it was really freaking me out. Midnight also heard the noise and was quick to run to the balcony screen door expecting for me to let him out.

Alright, you know what, I’m a tough guy and at the time considered myself to be fairly well built and strong enough to handle myself…..So I grabbed my coat and shoes along with my cigarettes and flash light and went out onto the balcony. Fuck it right? As soon as I was outside I lit up my cigarette and started canvassing the roof with my light….nothing there and the snow on top was undisturbed. Weird, must have been all my head? What about Midnight hearing the noise? Maybe he was feeding off my fear or paranoia. I started to calm down and relax again. (by the way…I am shaking right now and my heart is beating hard as I am typing this next bit).

My eyes started to adjust to the darkness and I kept smoking and just staring at the stars and trees next to our cabin. That’s when I saw it. In a tree that was a little taller than our cabin and around 20 feet from the balcony I saw what looked like a man crouched in a squatting position in between two branches. It was squatted on one branch and its arms were extended above its head holding onto the branch above it. Fuck me…what the fuck is that?

I wasn’t sure if I was really seeing this thing and stood just staring and sat there motionless. I noticed Midnight stand up and start pacing behind me and lightly barking at the same time. The thing still did not move. I put my cigarette out and was debating on shining the light in the things direction, but something in my head kept screaming not to. So I walked backwards to the inside of the room and pulled Midnight with me. Once inside I locked the door and shined the light in the things direction but there was nothing there. I shut the curtains to the screen door and retreated back to bed. But later on in the night I heard light tapping at the screen door, like someone was tapping on the glass with their fingers. It was consistent and did not stop for nearly an hour. Midnight seemed to stare at the door but he wouldn’t go near it anymore.

The weirdest part was that I had a feeling like someone was inviting me to open the door. But at the same time I kept hearing my dad’s voice in my head telling me to stay in bed and not do it. I listened to my dad’s voice and just stayed were I was. Passed out eventually and woke up in the morning and everything was normal. The rest of the week I spent there was non-eventful and nothing else out of the ordinary happened. I totally admit that it could have been all in my head. A lot of stuff was going on at the time so I was pretty fucked up from all the drama.

15. The Strange House

A few years ago, my best friend and I moved into a rent house. It was definitely a weird house and I got some weird vibes out of it. Every night when I went to sleep, I would hear music. Not singing, just music, like someone had a distant radio on, and not any song I could ever name.
I had dreams every night of a crowd of faceless people with a little boy standing in front. He never spoke but I could tell he was trying to tell me something.

The fridge would often open on its own and the cats would hiss at corners and such. We would smell cigarette smoke coming from the back room at three o’clock every day.

My aunts were (still are) big into ghost hunting so they set up cameras in my house one night. We didn’t catch much, but one of the cameras was spun in circles for about fifteen seconds and at three in the morning, the front porch light turned itself on and got really bright and then faded off.

When I moved out of the house after two years, I had trouble sleeping because I didn’t have the music anymore.

It was definitely a strange, strange house.

16. Voices At The Top Of The Stairs

My company headquarters in Germany was supposedly haunted. I figured the guys, NCO’s and even the 1sgt were just fucking with me before I had to be CQ. So it’s like 2am and I start hearing shit coming from upstairs. A broom being pushed down the hallway, voices, hell I even smelled cigarette smoke. I go outside to see if there are any cars in the lot, even though to get into the building you had to go right past me. Nobody parked outside, I go back inside. I’m still hearing voices and the other stuff. I slowly creep up the stairs and I can clearly hear the voice speaking German. I get to the top…

Nothing. No people, voices are gone, no brooms left out. But the smell of cigarettes was still in the air.

17. An Unexpected Helper

My mom grew up in a rural part of Guatemala where witchcraft was a real thing and has so many stories of the weird shit she and her brothers and sisters experienced there.

Of all the stories she tells, the creepiest one deals with a young apprentice to a witch doctor who travelled around the country healing people. He was murdered West of Guatemala City and they had arranged to bring his body back to be buried there. They paid bottom dollar to have some poor bastard go pick up the body and bring it back in his pickup truck. The guy gets there, loads the coffin on his truck and starts heading back, but his truck breaks down on the way. He gets out and frantically tries to get the truck back on the road, as he has to be back in time for the services to start. He is completely alone in the dark hours of the early morning and a man in a nice suit comes from out of nowhere to help him out. The man gets his truck back in working order and walks back down the road into the darkness. The guy gets the body back in time and after some prep, they begin the services. He happens to walk by the open coffin to pay his respects and sees that the dead man in the coffin is the very same man who had helped him with his truck.

To this day, I get shivers thinking about it.

18. Mirror Writing

My dad died in a motorcycle accident a few years ago and after he died weird shit started happening at my dorm when I got back. The clock would fall off the wall and change time, batteries would seperate themselves from remotes and bangs and knocks were regular. But the weirdest thing that happened was when I was back home from college and I took a shower, got dressed, and was headed back into the bathroom to finish getting ready and the mirror was just clearing off the steam and lo and behold I see smear marks faintly that looks like lettering.

So I tip the mirror cause its one of those triple pane medicine cabinet mirrors, and I see ‘Hey’ spelled out in his handwriting with the elven I symbol that was in The Lord of the rings that my dad would put EVERYWHERE. This was probably 6+ months after he passed and I have no idea where it came from since it was only me and my mom in the house and I know she wouldn’t do that. I have a picture of it I will try to find. The crazy part is like a week before that I had broke open a glow stick and it splashed on the mirror, but the writing was UNDER the splashes and none were smeared or touched. Still to this day cannot explain how it happened. We actually took the entire mirror off the wall so it wasn’t ruined.

19. The Woman With The Candelabra

Not me but my dad. When he was younger, he used to see a woman in a white nightdress holding a candelabra walking along the hallway at his old house. No one ever believed him but he thought it was his grandmother.

Fast forward 20+ years and he’s talking to someone he works with. This girl says she used to see a woman in a white nightdress holding a candelabra in her old house. My dad asks where she used to live and it was his old house.

Spooky.

20. The Knocking

I was in 7th grade and we’d just moved in to a “mill town” house: one of the houses built close buy a dam and textile mill that used to house the families of mill workers. The upstairs area always gave me an eerie feeling, but I shrugged it off as the discomfort of living in a new place.

From the beginning I had trouble sleeping, and was jolted awake in the middle of the night repeatedly for no apparent reason. Then, I started hearing the thumping. It started as occasional, soft thumps, seemingly coming from the attic. I had my dad check it out to ease my mind, but he found no explanation. Fast forward a few weeks, the occasional knocking was becoming louder and I continued to wake up in the middle of the night. One night I was jolted awake again, but this time I heard a loud BANG accompanied by the sound of breaking plastic.

I looked to my window across the room, and the blinds had been completely torn and were in disarray. My door was closed, the windows were closed, and the house was locked up tight. I don’t think I’ve ever run so fast in my life. I made it downstairs pretty quickly and the sound woke my parents, so they went upstairs to check it out. They found no cause or explanation.

I slept on the couch downstairs until we moved shortly afterwards. An update to the original: my parents still live in a neighborhood not far from the house, and I’ve noticed that it never keeps an occupant for too long.

Also, I never experienced anything similar until this year. I live in an apartment with three other people, and on occasions on which one of us has been home alone around 2 am, we’ve heard knocking sounds as if someone is at the door. In my roommate’s experience, the knocking quit when she answered the front door. In my experience, the knocking stopped when I turned the lights on. It’s pretty eerie.

21. A Feeling Of Something Deeply Unnatural

About ten years ago I was walking one night with my sister. We were passing a familiar point on the road when suddenly we both found ourselves about 200 meters back the way we had just come, approaching the familiar point for the second time. She turned to me and said “what just happened?”

We both experienced exactly the same thing – like we had just been pulled back twenty seconds in time – and neither of us could explain it. No spooky g-g-ghosts, but a lasting feeling of something deeply unnatural having happened.

22. Dreaming Of The Future

So this is a story from my family.

When my mom was a young girl growing up in Vietnam she had this weird dream about being in a darkened church. Everyone was talking in hushed tones, but it was English so she didn’t understand what was going on. But she remembered certain details, like the stained glass windows and the baptismal font. She told her parents, but they were kinda dismissive. They just told her it was a weird dream.

A few years later she was forced to flee South Vietnam because of the Vietnam war. Her family relocated to Florida, and they started their life over. About 10 years later she went to the local Catholic Church for her younger sister’s confirmation. And suddenly she realized it was the same church she had dreamed of as a child. The same darkened church, the same stained glass, the same baptismal font. She talked to her parents again and they remembered her having the dream and describing the place exactly.

Maybe some of it is altered memory, but it’s one of our family legends.

23. The Yelling Man

I have memories that are very early, and most of them are scary, but I had one thing… When I was very young (I am talking between age 2 and 3), I used to see this man who looked JUST like my dad when he holds his cheeks to make this goofy face (kinda like this but a 40-year-old man), only the dude’s face was like that without even holding it.. I recall playing legos with my brother in our room, and the guy walking by the window, turning slowly to look in, bulging eyes, and starts yelling. I would sit on the floor frozen in fear. My brother didn’t see these things… and now that I think of it, this man I saw was never directly in front of me… I only saw him through windows…

I am pretty sure I was one of those kids who hallucinated when they were very young.

24. The Man With The Hunched Back

I used to see things out of windows. Mine was a large man, that had on multiple layers of brown clothing. They were so stacked upon each other that it gave him a hunched back. He almost looked like a turtle. I never saw his face though, and had always assumed it was a bum that would sit close to houses to keep warm. That was my logic at a young age. The really disturbing thing was he would laugh. It’s hard to explain but almost 20 years later and I cans till hear it in my head when I want. It was like a clown chuckle, you know, that ha ha ha ha. It had a tempo, very consistent. But it was low, and almost like a forced laugh, but it never stopped.

I used to hear it outside my bedroom window, scared I would then move to my parents room. He would move and sit on our patio. That laugh. Sometimes I would watch him. He would slowly turn to look at me, and I would quickly duck down below the windows. One time I had stayed up late, and our living room window had a very dark curtain. I was sitting on the chair we had by that window. I had been watching something on the television when I heard that laugh starting. I turned the television off so he wouldn’t know I was there. The moonlight hit that curtain, and I could see his giant turtle like outline. I was literally inches away from him. I sat there for what seemed like hours. I was powerless to move, and had to listen to that laugh.

Eventually, I had passed out from being so tired. We finally moved a couple of years later, and I never saw him again. I never had to hear that laugh, but I never forgot it. I think I hallucinated like you, but man, it really sticks with you.

25. The Hunched Back Man, Again

This same exact thing happened in my old house! Same description of the man and everything and I’m not even joking. I could never see his face, but he had layers of brown clothes on (almost like a really thick, raggedy brown coat). He would stand in my back yard and stare through the window. I would be washing dishes and he would be out there, standing, staring, and I’d be paralyzed with fear. I also used to sleepwalk in this house like crazy and that alone scared me.

One night when I sleepwalked I woke up in the kitchen after my mom turned on the lights. I was confused. There were knives all over the counter. Turns out I had taken all of the knives out of the drawers and laid them on the kitchen counter while staring out the window to the backyard. My mom was disturbed and asked what I was doing. I had no answer. I was scared myself the moment I came to. We eventually moved but I still sometimes have dreams of my old house and this faceless, hunched, brown clad dude just standing, staring.

In one dream he took the rocks from our backyard garden and kept throwing them through the porch at the kitchen window. That’s the closest communication he made and it was in my dreams.

26. Belated Messages

When I was in high school, I dated this marvelous girl. She was charming, sweet, and had THE perfect smile. Sadly, she got in an ATV accident and passed away due to head trauma. This destroyed me and I was a wreck. But exactly a week later, IIRC, I got an e-mail from her saying that she was so excited to hang out with me that summer.

It strangely made me feel better. I don’t know if that message was in the drafts folder for x amount of time and then automatically sent, but I was happily surprised that somehow she “spoke” to me after her passing. I also got a text message from her phone that week, but no one had touched the phone since she had passed-her parents and brother wouldn’t go in her room.

27. “I Think You Just Produced A Ray”

I was in the middle of a session with my therapist. We were starting deep meditation/hypnosis. I had finally achieved what I would describe as the deepest state of relaxation I’d ever gotten to. About 5 seconds into this deep meditation, the room got incredibly bright (as far as I could tell with closed eyes) as if I was looking at the sun with my eyes closed. My therapist stopped mid sentence just then. She didn’t speak for five seconds and I asked her if everything was okay. She said,” I think you just produced a ray.” She refused to tell me what she meant and she dropped me as a client the next week. I still have no idea what happened.

28. Snow Globes

My Mom always bought snow globes for my grandma, when my grandma passed away my mom took them back to our house. My mom put them all up on the shelves that go around the entire living room. A few weeks had passed and my mom found a video that she wanted my brothers and I to watch because it reminded her of our grandma. We all sat down to watch it and of course near the end of the movie our mom was crying.

Right when the movie ends all of the snow globes went off at the same time. The figurines didn’t move on any of them, just the music. We all huddled together of course because we’re scared as fuck and my mom suddenly said, “mom?” And all of the music stopped and them room became extremely cold.

My mom suddenly felt really uncomfortable and had all of us run and get into the car and she drove us to our god mothers house. She cried for hours until she got a call from our dad saying he’d be home in a few minutes and should head back. When we all got back inside it was warm again, but all of the snow globes were shattered on the ground except for 1, the one that was my grandma’s favorite.

29. “It’s Okay“

I lost my grandfather several years ago. He was the first of my grandparents to die, and the rest sort of fell like dominoes behind him. I was out of town when he passed – he had been in the hospital a while (stable), so it was very unexpected. My father called me early in the morning and told me “come home. papa’s gone.”

I drove home a complete mess. Wiped tears away and stood strong for my dad, helped with the arrangements, supported everyone as best I could.

Not long after, my grandmother’s Alzheimers got much worse – and she followed him into death. The night before she died, she looked at the ceiling and smiled so big, saying “Jesus and [grandfather’s name]. They’re here for me.” She passed quietly with family present, and then the rest of us were called in to mourn and assemble as a family.

All that passed without incident. A couple of years later – my (maternal) great grandmother, a true diamond, fell and broke her hip. She was closing in on 100, and ultimately made up her mind to just let go. We understood, and took turns sitting with her until it was time. The last time I saw her, she told me that she was ready to go and imparted her last words on me. I leaned into her with a hug, and asked her for a favor: “When you get home, will you tell Papa Im sorry I wasn’t there?”

She just smiled, nodded, and winked at me. We cried a little and I went home – she passed that night, about 3 in the morning.

Fast forward to a little over a year or so – the email I sent my parents telling them about this is dated 2/19/12 – there is a local convention here that normally has ghosthunter panels and the like. This year, a former TAPS team member and some other ghost hunter types held a ‘campfire stories’ sort of panel – with people contributing their own stories, much like this thread. I sat there listening, it was all pretty neat. The panel was uneventful. It ended, and I lingered around for a while.

I was chatting with one of them, who gave me a copy of their book, as people milled about leaving – and a heavyset guy who had been sitting on the panel earlier came up to me and said “I need to tell you something. I was going to leave, but I cant until I tell you this. I hope it doesn’t freak you out.”

So I told him to go ahead and he looked at me and said:

“There is an older gentleman behind you, tall and thin. White button down shirt, khaki slacks, glasses. A little bit of stubble, very strong jaw. He’s been with you since you came in here, and he wants me to tell you “its ok.” He is very insistent and really wanted me to tell you. He wanted you to know it was ok.”

I pulled a photo of him and my grandmother (at a younger age, but still very much themselves) out of my wallet and asked him if thats who he saw. He went white, looked over my shoulder and back to the photo, and said “…yes.”

Holy. Fucking. Shit. Onions, onions everywhere. He told me that my grandfather was around me often and protected me.

30. Fulfilling Your Own Dream

When I was young, I’d have a reoccurring dream. The dream had no real story behind it, it was just odd little clips of my life so far. The dream always ended the same way. It would just kinda fade to black and I’d hear voices. One saying “I just had the weirdest dream”. And a female voice would reply “what about?” The first voice would then go on talking and at that point I’d wake up.

So about 8 months ago, at least 30 years later I had the dream again. It was the weirdest thing. I could remember all those little clips, most of which I had long since forgot about. I felt this overwhelming joy to be recalling all those lost childhood memories. The feeling was so intense, it was like being so happy I could cry (never felt that before). But the end of the dream was different this time. And this is the gods honest truth… Instead of fading to black and hearing the voices, I just woke up…I was laying there feeling confused about the dream. Was this the same dream I’d had when I was little? I rustled my wife from her sleep and said “I just had the weirdest dream.” She replied “What about?”

I was wide awake, playing out the ending of the childhood dream. No shit, everything I said to her over the next minute or two to describe the dream was actually as I had heard it when having the dream back when I was 8 or 10. It was like this hardcore case of déjà vu. I have déjà vu from time to time and I think it’s cool, but this blew my mind.

The next morning after the dream and I was already starting to question myself about whether I actually had those dreams when I was young, or was it something my dream invented. But if I did have them, was I somehow peering into the future??

I’m all about logic and science. I don’t believe in ghosts, the supernatural or even god for that matter (sorry mom) . I believe there’s an answer for everything, but I’ll be damned I have an inkling to what this is was about.

31. Walking Home From School

It was in my first year at University, completely new to the city and its surroundings. One evening, my friend and I decided to take a trip to the mall. It was 8 pm and we got on a bus that my friend claimed would take us to the mall.

We ended up at an empty bus terminal and it was around 10 at that time. We waited and waited for another bus back and there was no one there but us. Awhile later, an old man walked by and told us that since its so late, another bus won’t be coming for an hour or so. He told us to turn and walk down the road and we’ll find a bus stop in the middle where a bus will soon come.

We followed his instructions and entered this single lane road with tall trees on each side. There were only a few street lamps working so the area was dimly lit. The road was sort of built on a slant – our bus stop was in middle, so we could see all the way up the road and down the road, and it was a single lane road. All we could see was the road and trees on either side for at least half a km on each side.

Anyways, so we’re waiting and waiting. My phone battery died and my friend had forgotten hers in her dorm room. We were starting to think there won’t be any bus coming and started to panic.

Then, as we were waiting, I turned around to see two kids with backpacks walking down the road. I was relieved to see them and so was my friend. When they were close by, I asked them if they knew about any buses coming. There were two kids, maybe around 12-13, one was a boy and other was a girl, both had backpacks. Here is our conversation (not exact, but close):

Me: Hey! Do you know if there are any buses coming?
Boy: Let me check takes phone out, walks towards the bus stop sign, ( but its empty and doesn’t say the timing nor the stop number, just a picture of a bus – I knew this from before)
Me: The timings aren’t there and there’s no number to text either, I’ve looked at it before.
Boy: still looking at phone Oh its okay, your bus will be here in 10 minutes I think.

Meanwhile, during this conversation, my friend started talking to the girl:

Girl: Where are you guys from?
Friend: We just started University here, what about you?
Girl: Oh, we’re in school and we’re just going back home from school.
Friend: Oh okay.

After the boy told me that the bus would be here in 10 minutes, I turned my head to tell my friend this, turned my head back to thank the boy and he was gone. Gone. The girl and the boy were nowhere to be seen. I literally probably looked away for a second MAX.

We both looked down the road, up the road, and by the trees. They had a fence around them but even if they went there, we would’ve seen them. I literally looked away for a second.

Needless to say, both of us were scared as hell until our bus arrived. It was the last bus and it was around 12:17 am when the bus came. I know because we asked the time from the bus driver.

I asked my brother about the area later, I didn’t tell him what happened. He said that there’s a graveyard there.

And then it hit me that what the hell would two 13 year olds be doing in the middle of fucking nowhere coming back from school at midnight?

I didn’t believe in paranormal activities, but I can’t seem to find an explanation for this one.

32. The Fourth Roomate

I was living in an apartment with 3 roommates at the time. I was working all sorts of weird hours, and would stay up late most nights.

Our apartment had 2 hallways that formed an capital L. My room as at the “top” of the L, the bathroom was in the corner of where the lines meet. With the door being in the inside middle of the small section. In the outside corner was the living room. I walked out of my room to go to the bathroom, no need to turn the light on as this was a trek I had made hundreds of times before.

As I left the bathroom I turned to go back to my room. Just as i turned off the lights of the bathroom there standing where the short hallway and the living room met there was a teenage girl standing there. Wearing a white flowery dress, just smiling. She didn’t look “evil” just a normal person standing there smiling at me. I freaked the fuck out and went running for my room.

About 20 minutes later I finally came out of my room. Turning all the lights on as I went through the apartment. She was no where to be seen, however where I saw her standing was noticeably colder than the rest of the apartment should have been for an August evening.

Creepy, but not the worst part. I lived there for about another year, and I never saw her again. After I had moved out I was hanging out with my one roommate who had the bedroom at the end of the small hallway, right next to the bathroom. We were talking and I told him that I never felt comfortable in the apartment after something happened. To which he responded “Oh, you saw her too” I nearly drove off the road when I heard this. We then both described her, finishing off each others sentences describing her. He had seen her twice. I was indifferent about ghosts before that. Now I believe in them..or believe in something. It was very creepy and every time I tell the story the hairs stand up on my arms.

33. A Paranormal Gift

I was at a friend’s dinner party once when he revealed that one of the guests was a respected psychic. I am a huge skeptic and this probably isn’t going where you think it is, so read on. I swear every word I am about to type is true and there were many witnesses.

The psychic agreed to do a reading for us. We were all in the living room – maybe twenty or so people. She began with the expected stuff we think of when we think of a psychic doing a cold reading. I had had a few drinks and was feeling pretty loose so I was just observing and waiting for her to do anything interesting that an observant person or someone trained in cold reading couldn’t do.

About twenty minutes into it, she stopped and said “okay, there is a stronger power than mine here and it needs to be acknowledged.” I perked up thinking things were about to get interesting. She said anyone who had anything to say should speak up. She asked us to let look around the room and allow ourselves to see one another clearly and look into each others’ eyes. If we felt impressed to tell someone something, we should.

I will admit that I felt a little drawn toward a woman I had never met. Her name was Tammy. I didn’t say anything. The room was silent and the silence got awkward, like when a teacher waits overly long for a student to respond to a question s/he clearly doesn’t know.

So she probed again. “Someone here has a strong gift and needs to tap into it. There are messages waiting to be heard. If you feel drawn to someone, say so.” There was another silence. Then, she looked right at me and said “Oh my God. It’s you. You are a gifted empath. You must speak.” I blushed and kind of laughed it off, but several of the guests insisted that I must speak my mind.

So, I said I was feeling drawn toward Tammy. The psychic asked me to let my guard down, “reach out with your mind” she said. So I tried to let my mind go blank. Suddenly, I could hear the Journey song “Don’t Stop Believin'” in my head. Not my usual stuff. Then I started to feel sad. I’m normally a pretty happy guy, and this odd wave of sadness just came over me. At the same time, the name “Mark” came into my mind followed by an urge to tell Tammy thank you. I didn’t know what to do.

The “psychic” told me to just start talking – describe what I was experiencing. So, I did. I closed my eyes and started to talk. As I got to the “thank you” part, I started to choke up and cry a little like I was actually feeling extreme gratitude.

I opened my eyes and Tammy was white as a ghost. Her friend Mark had died in the early 90s from complications with AIDS. She had been the only person in his friend group to visit him, and she did so regularly. The song had been their “pep” song, and she said Mark had died unexpectedly after seeming to have rallied a bit.

Tammy was trembling. I was shaken. The psychic was smiling and the guests were all staring at me.

A bevy of questions followed – almost none of which I could answer. I’ve always relied on my gut, but had never had that specific of an experience before. I do not believe in an afterlife, and as I said earlier, I’ve always been a huge skeptic. I couldn’t explain what had just happened.

Others asked me to “read” for them. I didn’t know what to do, and was frankly a bit weirded out. The psychic told me to hold people’s hands and look deep into their eyes. That night, I told a man I’d never met that Sharon, the woman that allowed her friends to pay her for the “right” to molest him as a boy, was sorry and in torment. This huge, burly man crumpled into a pile and said he had never told anyone about that ever in his life and that I had even nailed her physical description. I told a young woman I’d never met that the relationship she was in was not working because she was too focused on wanting a child and that the stress was causing her to not become pregnant and making her act out in anger toward her husband. She left in anger because “people had been talking about her behind her back and told (me) her secrets.” That was not the case.

All total, there were about five instances out of six attempts that night that were dead on. The one that did not work was my partner. Nothing I said was right. I was left very, very perplexed by the whole night.

So, being a student/researcher, I decided to explore it. I worked that summer with the psychic (whom I have befriended) on exploring things I do not understand. She determined that I am, she believes, indeed an “empath” and that I can feel/read/interpret emotions from people that allow my intuition to put together stories. She also believes that the world is full of emotional impressions/scars and that empaths can feel their echoes.

Since then, I have determined that I AM indeed able to do something unusual. I don’t do it as a hobby. I don’t make money off of it. To be honest . . . I do it as a “I’ve had one too many drinks” party trick because that’s about how seriously I take it. However, I do it one on one now because I’ve discovered one too many uncomfortably personal things people don’t want everyone in earshot to know.

Here’s what works best for me to “read” someone:

The expectation is that I will tell them something they need to hear and that they do not tell me anything about themselves or what they HOPE to hear. It works best when the person is an absolute stranger.

I ask for an item that they usually have on their person often. So, a favorite ring, someone’s glasses, etc. It has to be something they have touched often. I’ve found the absolute best results come from pillows people sleep on often.

I will spend five to ten minutes holding the object in silence, allow my mind to wander, and then I will ask for the person’s hand. Then I just talk. I let my mind wander, and I talk.

About 90% of the time, when I open my eyes again, they’re staring at me in disbelief, crying, or smiling an incredulous smile.

I don’t understand it. I don’t get it. I do like doing it, but it challenges my beliefs to the core.

34. The Pound Puppy

When I was young, I would sleep with a stuffed toy (a Pound Puppy named Cutes). One time, I clearly remember waking up and noticing that he wasn’t under my arm, where he always was. Then out of nowhere, he jumped up on the bed and I instinctively grabbed him and tucked him under my arm. After realizing what happened I threw him across the room freaking out, but then my young mind thought that he was perhaps out walking around protecting me so I got him back and apologized. No reaction from Cutes then, but it still freaks me out when I think about it.

35. A Steady Hand

When the wife (then gf) and I were in our second apartment, I saw shit all the time, but the first encounter was the weirdest.

I was hanging curtains, standing on a poofy chair, when I started to lose my balance. I felt a hand on my butt steady me. I finished drilling in the last screw, then turned around to thank… Nothing. I expected my lady there. As soon as I turned around, that’s when the feeling of the hand left my butt. My wife had been in a completely different room the whole time.

36. A White Coyote

Went to pick up my daughter from a dance on the waterfront. I was early so I walked near the lake. I saw something very bright… not moving at about 20 degrees up (Sirius was at about 40 degrees that night). Then I looked down and saw a pure white coyote walking along the water’s edge. Even though I purposefully made a lot of noise so as to not startle the coyote, it didn’t not acknowledge I was there.

I looked back at the “star” which was still not moving but suddenly went from exceptionally bright dimming down to nothing. I looked back to the coyote and it was gone too (although it was a very dark night).

This all happened at 12:30 am.

The next morning I woke up to a phone call telling me my best friend had died in Norway. He died at 6:30 am local time… 12:30 am my time.

37. Missing Time

I was driving home with my then girlfriend from a beach up north of us and it was around 10pm, we are on a deserted country road and I’m driving fast as I just wanted to get home. She was mostly asleep in the passenger seat and I had the radio off and was listening to the engine purr. We had about 25 miles before our turn so I was just watching the edge of my headlights for deer and stuff when I saw tail lights appear from an intersection like someone had flipped their brake lights on.

I started slowing down and my girlfriend woke up from the speed change the next thing either of us remember is a police officer knocking on my window waking us up. It’s 3 in the morning and the intersection I saw the lights at is no more than a half mile down the road behind us. He asked us what we were doing and neither of us could come up with a good response, so he told us to keep going as we were pretty hard to see off to the side of the road.

My girlfriend and I lost 5 hours while driving and have no idea how it happened.

38. The Girl On The Second Floor

Me and some buddies were bored one night and decided to head out and poke around an abandoned mental hospital. The only way in was through the autopsy room, the rest of the place was pretty much sealed off. So we go in, me another guy and two girls. As soon as we get into the autopsy room, one of the girls starts hyperventilating and crying. She said she just couldn’t be there anymore.

We tried everything we could to convince her everything was going to be fine, to no avail. She wanted to leave, and wanted to leave NOW! Disappointed, we decided we had to leave. The two girls were walking in front of us, one trying to comfort the other, while me and the other dude walked a bit of a way behind.

I don’t know what brought me to look back, morbid curiosity maybe. But I did. Now, I’ll admit it was dark, but the moon was out so it wasn’t pitch black. Still, I know what I seen. A window on the second floor, what looked just like a little girl in a white dress staring back at us. I looked for a good ten seconds, stopped my buddy and had him look without taking my eyes of the thing, and asked him specifically “Do you fucking see that!?”

I thought I may have been seeing things, or maybe it was a trick of the light. But no, we both saw it and stared for a good 20 seconds after. I might have thought it was some kind of trick, but after 20 seconds or so, it moved. We NOPED the fuck out of there, passing the girls and screaming at them to get in the car.

Is it possible it could have been some other people there, who happened to bring a girl who might have looked from a distance to be a lot younger than she was? Yes. There were no other cars around though, so whoever it was would have had to walk a pretty good distance to get there. It could have also been a homeless family that was using the place for warmth. Who knows. All I know is what I saw. It was a little girl, in a white dress, staring at us. From the second story window of an abandoned mental joint. At 2 in the goddamn morning.

39. Everyone Knew, But No One Said Anything

When I was 7 I was having a sleepover with my cousin at her house. We played with barbies and a sweet barbie RV. Anyway, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw an old lady in a dress or night gown walk through the giant barbie RV and through the door to the garage. I never told anyone anything about it.

Ten years later, my aunt and uncle were selling the house that I witnessed the above. My dad was like, finally, they can get rid of that haunted house with the annoying old lady. I was like what do you mean? He described the “ghost” and it was what I thought I saw when I was 7. Again, I never told them what I saw and they confirmed it without knowing my story.

I am a skeptic and this is the only thing that makes me question that.

40. The Uncle’s Cat

I was at my girlfriend’s house, and she has two cats. One of them is a big fat cat, black, named Taz. He’s a pretty creepy cat, I’ll often catch him staring at me from under a desk or from the shadows.

I was talking to my girlfriend in the kitchen, when I saw a man in my peripheral. I turned to look, but it was just Taz. I continued talking, and saw a man again, much more clearly, but still like a shade, in my peripheral again. My girlfriend told me previously she’s sensitive to spirits and stuff, and while not strictly believing in such things, I’d humor her. This time, though, after seeing this man shape over Taz, I asked her if she saw him, too. She told me she did, that it was her uncle who gave her Taz. She preferred not to acknowledge him, because she hated him. Since then, I have stopped seeing him. But Taz is still really creepy.

There are a bunch of other stories of crazy things happening.

41. Ginormous

Some family friends of mine have a daughter. For the first few years of her life she had an imaginary friend who she called ‘Ginormous.’

Anyway, a couple of years back, we were looking through some old college photos with the family, and their daughter was also present.

We came across a photo of one of our friends who had sadly passed away while we were still at college, and the little girl’s voice piped up:

“Why is Ginormous in the photo?”

Many chills went down my spine!

42. The Ship

The most paranormal thing I have experienced is second hand, so I apologize since the story is not my own.

When we all tell stories, we add flourish, flash, hyperbole, and enthusiasm in an attempt to make the story memorable. My Dad is not one of those people. He is honest and candid and gives little regard to whether it comes off as rude or not. In fact, him and I don’t get along and we haven’t spoken for nearly a year.

Once however, he did tell me something very strange. He is now a ship inspector but he use to be a ship captain on a large cargo vessel. He told me once, during the twilight hour while he was out on voyage, standing on the bridge with his chief engineer he saw three lights, in a triangular shape approaching his ship at very high speed. As the three lights approached, he realized that if they were all of one vessel, it would be HUGE. His ship was easily encompassed within the area of the triangular lights for the brief second it passed under the ship, then on into the horizon. He, his chief engineer, and various other sailors all saw it, and all were at a total and complete loss as to what it could have been. He told me that was only just his FIRST encounter with mysterious undersea craft. He didn’t really elaborate afterwards and I never thought to ask him.

Like I said earlier, my dad doesn’t really BS or flourish stories like most of us do; and when he tells me stories like that I tend to believe them.

43. Someone Leaning Over Me

I was sleeping on an air mattress on my floor and woke up suddenly. I remember someone leaning over me in a yellow shirt and blue jeans. They had pale, almost gray skin. They were leaned too far over for me to see their face. I instinctively grabbed them and can distinctly remember the texture of their shirt. Out of the corner of my eye I can see my door is open and there are bright lights outside my window. Then I slowly relax and go back to sleep. Then I woke up the next morning and my door is closed. I’m pretty sure it was a dream but I’ve never had one where I wake up and all the details of my setting have no obvious differences from reality. And I distinctly remember the texture of the shirt.

44. The Molesting Ghost

Growing up we lived in a house from the 1800’s and it had a third floor that we would rent to college kids (usually girls because my mom thought they were less destructive). Over the 25+ years several girls (who couldn’t have known each other) claimed there was a faceless male ghost that would engage in what they described as beautiful and intense sexual encounters with them – all of them said it was profound and not scary at all. *Every time my mom tells that story, my dad chimes in with: “I wonder what ever did happen to that old ghost costume of mine.”

45. “That Was When I Realized He Was Gone”

Back in 2007 my grandpa finally lost his 20 year battle with Leukemia. My grandma couldn’t manage well, being alone in the house they’d lived in for almost 60 years.

We moved my grandma into an assisted living residence a few months later, and for insurance reasons (vacant property) my parents asked me if I’d like to move in to the house so that I could watch the house, and also to move out and not live at home. I said absolutely.

I remember right after he passed away, strange things started happening.

The portrait we had of him in the living room fell off its hook. Picture frames containing pictures of him flipped onto their front during the night. I didn’t mind though because I thought my grandma was making it up.
Before I moved in, my family got a big dumpster so we could clean some of the clutter out of the house. Since we’d spend most of the day cleaning and it was summer, we’d bring the family dog with us. My grandpa loved our dog dearly. But since he passed, my dog wouldn’t go down to the basement anymore, where my grandpa spent most of his time in his office. She refused to go into the basement at all, and barked at the stairway a few times.

This was weird, since our dog almost never barked. It finally made me think “he’s here”. I moved in shortly after. While I lived there, things went missing all the time. I had bought a new lockset to change the backdoor lock, brought it home and put it in the cupboard to tackle on the weekend. Few days later I go to change the lock, and it’s gone. After a week of looking around I finally found it in the trunk of my uncle’s old BMW 2002 which he stored in the garage (I happened to be looking at the car). My grandpa was always a prankster, so I almost came to expect these occurrences.

He used to wake up at 530 every morning to listen to the early news on the radio in the kitchen. I’d wake up some mornings and the radio would be on. I often heard typewriter noises coming from his office in the basement. It became comforting. I found myself talking to my grandpa out loud. Having conversations with him. I missed him. After about 6 months, suddenly I wasn’t hearing any noises anymore. Nothing was going missing. The radio wasn’t turning on at 530.

I shrugged it off for a few days, but it started to worry me. I went back to my parents and grabbed the dog, brought her back. She was apprehensive at first, but she entered the house. There was an issue though. Every time she’d been over since my grandpa died, as I mentioned earlier, she refused to go downstairs. This time though, she went downstairs, and went right to his office. Nothing was any different about the office, but she wasn’t barking. She wasn’t pacing. She wasn’t doing anything.

That was when I realized he was gone. I broke down. Suddenly I felt incredibly alone. Even though it’d been about 8 months since he died, it was the first time I felt like he was gone.

46. They Hadn’t Been There Before

Alright, bear with me on this one. As a teen, I used to sneak out of the house a lot with some friends of mine. One of our friends lived a few miles away from the rest of us, so we’d have to go on a bit of a hike to go retrieve him. The shortest way to get to his house was to cut through the local farm’s property in order to get to his neighborhood.

We did this rather frequently, and would often meet up on a cluster of rocks at the edge of the property that was overlooking their field of corn. One night, after our typical mischief had concluded, I went with everyone to walk them home – finally, it was just me and the friend that lived far off. We walked through the cornfield as usual, and nothing was amiss. It was only up to about waist-thigh on a thirteen year old at that point in the year, so it was pretty obvious that the field was abandoned.

Anyhow, we reached the far side, and sat down on the cluster of rocks to talk for a bit. Typical teenage crap – girls we liked, what our plans for out futures were. While I’m talking to him, I notice my friend’s face slowly go pale, and I give him a questioning look, and he grabs my shoulder and points out into the cornfield.

Scattered in different spots all over the cornfield we’d just walked through not five minutes before are five indistinct, shadowy figures, drastically taller than the corn. They were about six feet tall, and they weren’t moving.
It would be easy to brush them off as just being tricks of the light or scarecrows, or something else logical – except that we had literally just walked through that field, and there had been nothing there.

We were both stricken with terror, afraid to even move as we stared at them, but they never moved an inch, never came toward us, never moved away. They were too spread out to be a group of looming teens. What finally startled us into action was the farm dog starting to go absolutely ballistic inside the house, barking his head off and going crazy. We weren’t anywhere near the dog’s line of sight.

We ran like hell. When we stopped for breath, I looked up. The entire sky was clouded over except for one little gap in the clouds that only the moon was shining through.

It was the most surreal and terrifying experience of my life, and I can’t explain it to this day.

47. The Haunted French Chalet

This happened six or eight weeks ago. As someone who has had no reason to believe in ghosts, I will share a little shaker.

This winter season, my boyfriend and I are working in an old chalet in a French mountain village. We live with another guy who also worked in the chalet last year. He told us that two separate guests (on different weeks, staying in bedrooms on the ground floor) reported seeing a ‘ghost’ standing at the end of their bed. One said they saw the ghost (apparently a girl) turn and walk through the wall.

My boyfriend and I shrugged this off – I figured that seeing a figure at the end of your bed has got to be one of those common half-sleep delusions and that if I bothered to google it, there’d be a ton of explanations..

The chalet is a little gloomy and rustic in places, with some interesting features in the downstairs bedrooms – such as an ornate clock built into the wall; a bricked up fireplace; a slate-floored corridor with a medieval-looking slate trapdoor etc. All things that point to it simply being pretty old and a little quirky.

We’re 3 months into the season and had pretty much forgotten about this supposed haunting, having not heard anything from our guests, until yesterday.

I was standing around with our guests waiting for their airport transfer to arrive when one guy asks how old the chalet is. Having no idea, I said that as they were leaving today, I didn’t mind telling him that the place is supposedly haunted – and before I could snicker and roll my eyes, the other guests in the hall way gasped and started telling me that Gaz, (who was staying in the bedroom upstairs) saw ‘someone’ standing over Natalie’s bed in the middle of the night. He’d pulled out his phone light to see who it was and when he shone it into the room, there was nothing there.

The bedroom upstairs has 4 single beds and the four of them staying up there had spent the morning investigating the angles and mirrors in the room, trying to see if anything could have tricked him. They’d all concluded that from where he was lying, there was an uninterrupted view of Natalie’s bed and no mirrors in sight.

So three separate incidents of this being reported – but the third from a different perspective!

…and having just written that, I’ve just realized that Natalie, sleeping below the figure’s gaze would have been oblivious to it’s presence had Gaz not woken up and seen it. How frequently does this happen!? My boyfriend and I live on the floor above this room…

About 4 weeks ago, my boyfriend asked me if I’d heard anything weird at around 4am, as he’d heard something coming up the stairs to our staff area (wide carpeted slat-like stairs which layout-wise, are directly behind the head of our bed). He heard something padding around outside our bedroom door, then quickly head back down the stairs to the first level and finally down the distinctively creaky wooden stairs to the ground level. This creeped me out, as no other staff were staying upstairs (driver had quit job), however we’d just had our last change of guests – 3 families with five excitable under 11s with them..so we began to convince ourselves that as this was the first night, it’s possible that one of the kids got confused in the night…though this is quite a stretch.

A week later after these guests had left and the first night the chalet was completely empty besides us, my boyfriend wakes me up at 4am with the words ‘can you hear that..’ and I fucking could. The sound of small fast moving feet – like a child’s, on the stairs right behind our heads. We heard it go down the stairs and disappear. At this point my boyfriend had stood up to go to our locked door…and instead I convinced him to shut the window (to quiet the sound of the river) so that we could hear anything else. He was sure there was someone in the chalet (having walked in on a burglar himself) but through that extremely thin wall, right behind our heads, it hadn’t sounded like an adult intent on robbing the chalet.

Weirdest next few hours of sleep; waking up, talking. He became convinced it was someone in the apartment that was sandwiched below our staff area and the ground floor guest rooms, which I allowed him to believe until the sweet light of morning when I told him that the shutters had been shut (and still were) for well over a week and no cars had been in the spaces.

Still have no idea what we heard. I know what it sounded like, and that we both heard it. Unmistakably – though we tried to kid ourselves – something was there.

48. Constant Sounds That Everyone Heard

My parents bought an old house with the intent of renovating it (they did, it’s fabulous). Before it was renovated, my dad and I stayed there for a while.

Doors would open and shut completely while we stood there chatting and watching. Now, I understand a door swinging open/shut one way, especially if there was an open window or the floors were warped, etc., but this wasn’t the case. We’d just be sitting there, chatting away, and kind of slowly trail off in conversation watching as the door went click and swung open, then swung quietly shut and click closed.

Didn’t stop us from staying and sleeping there, though.

After it was renovated, there would be creepy sounds. Sounds like the cutlery in the sink being moved around. I understand that might be noises from the pipes, so I’m going to discount that, but it’s creepy as all hell to be sitting there reading a book and hear clink… scrape… clink… scrape right behind you in the sink. And of course when you go to the sink and look in, you’re pretty sure the fork has been moved from one side to another, but you can’t – won’t – trust your memory.

And there were sounds like someone walking across the floor. Dad and I were sitting downstairs talking – the tv was on mute during a commercial – and we heard a sound like someone ran across the floor directly above us. We kind of looked up and looked at each other, and laughed. We know the house is locked; there’s no animals; it’s not the sound of the house settling or the ventilation.

Then there was the time that I was there alone. It was about 12:30 am and suddenly right above my ahead upstairs was the sound of heavy men’s boots stomping across the floor and stopping at the head of the stairs (which is literally a few feet away from where I was sitting). I froze in terror. I’m alone there, it’s late at night, and I’m convinced someone has somehow broken into the house and is standing there in darkness at the top of the stairs waiting for me to make my move. There wouldn’t be time enough for me to make a break for the back door. So what did I do?

Reached for the phone and called my mommy like the scaredy cat that I am. And while she was on the phone with me I checked that house from top to bottom. Everything was locked. Nobody was there. My mom mocked me and hung up. I did not sleep well that night.

49. A Much Needed Visit

My dad died when I was 2, so needless to say I didn’t know anything about him aside from the generic “Your father was a great man.” Well one night I fell asleep like any other night, and it brings tears to my eyes every time I tell this story. Anyway, I fall asleep and I have this dream that I talked to him, but I don’t remember what it was about. I remember crying a lot and that he was sitting on a chair that he pulled up right in front of my bed. I wake up the next morning with a vague recollection of what happened, and my eyes were puffy and red like they had been crying. And then there it was, a chair positioned towards me not 1 foot away from my bed in the same spot I remember him sitting. Mind you the chair was originally on the other side of the room pushed into my desk. I’m not much for superstitions and ghosts but I like to think that he visited me that night.