30 Skeptics Reveal What Spooky Experience Made Them Believe In Ghosts

1. Worked at a public pool, I would work alone after hours cleaning the building and the pool. One night around 2 a.m. I’m cleaning the change rooms. The pool has been closed for 4 hours at this time.

I hear the sound of a child’s laughter and bare feet running across the pool deck. I go out and scan the area; there’s nobody in sight. The doors are all closed and locked, there is nowhere a kid could be hiding. No wet foot prints on the pool deck. I re-check the doors and the security monitors. I am the only person in the building.

It was unsettling.

2. When I was about 10-14 I had terrible insomnia. I would imagine things and felt incredibly unsafe as though I was being watched although I never admitted this to anyone. I began only sleeping on the couch, with my back against the wall, and had to have the TV or some sort of light on.

I missed an immense amount of school because of this so my mom had me see a neurologist. The neurologist diagnosed me with some things but the crazy part was during my sleep study I slept amazingly well, no issues at all AND slept in the “real bed”.

Eventually I got transferred to a children’s hospital and speaking to the doctor I explained I would “see” things and felt uncomfortable, they had thought I was experiencing sleep paralysis.

When they told my mom she went ghost white. She pulled me aside and explained she was experiencing things, too. She described in detail what I was seeing. That evening she approached my brother and asked broad questions (“Do you have anything weird happen in home?” Etc..). He also described what we experienced.

It was then I realized we must have paranormal activity and I’ve believed it ever since. When we moved out of that house all my sleep issues abruptly stopped and I haven’t experienced it since.

3. I saw a reflection of myself at the end of a hallway in a friend’s apartment building, only he told me the day after there was never any mirror in the hallways.

4. I was staying in the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, CO – the hotel that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining. Around 1am I heard what sounded like children running up and down the hallways interspersed with laughter. Opened the door to see what the hell was going on, and didn’t see anything. Quick little buggers, I thought. Then the next morning when my SO and I took a tour of the building, the guide stopped directly in front of our room to tell us the story of young girls whose ghosts can be heard running up and down that same hallway.

5. My aunt used to live above a convenience store. It was a duplex and had a mud-room that connected the front doors to each apartment. The other apartment was empty and unlocked so my cousins and I would hang out in there. One night we are playing hide and seek in the empty apartment. My cousin and I are running from the seeker and the hallway door slams shut in front of us. We freak out and end the game because we are too scared. We tell our parents and my aunt happens to have a night vision baby camera. She sets it up in the living room of the empty apartment and we can all see it on the TV in her house. We are watching it for about 10 minutes, dust is flying everywhere and nothing is happening. Out of the darkness, a Pepsi can rolls up and hits the base of the camera. Everybody is like wtf this bitch is haunted. I never went up the stairs alone to get to her house again, I was too freaked out. About 3 years ago, the entire building burned down unfortunately, I don’t know the cause.

6. I was always open to the idea, but wasn’t convinced. That changed a couple of days after my grandfather died. I was in my room at night, thinking about him, when I suddenly felt as if someone was rustling my hair. There are no vents in the ceiling in my room. My fan wasn’t on. It was a very slow, deliberate feeling as if a hand was very slowly running its fingers through my hair.

7. When my son was a baby, he started crying in his crib at about 3am. I sat up, dreading having to nurse him back to sleep for the third time that night. All of a sudden, I hear a soft, sweet, woman’s voice over the baby monitor say, “Shhh… don’t cry… go to sleep…” And my son settled right down back to sleep. In my sleep-deprived state, I was like, “cool.. she’s got him,” and I went back to sleep myself. When I woke up that morning, I was like, “Did I just let a ghost nanny take care of my baby?! Can she come back tonight?!” She did not… but I did constantly see orbs fly around over his crib over the video monitor which were clearly not bugs or dust.

8. We were in the process of moving from an apartment over a business and I told the landlord about an experience I had one night.

I got up to go to the bathroom and in the hallway I saw three dark shadows moving along the wall, man shaped and it looked as if you could reach through them in to an infinite void.

I was terrified and started yelling and my father came out of his bed room to see what was the matter and said I was dreaming it. I know to this day I wasn’t it was very distinct and I was standing in the hallway.

So as I tell the guy I am glad to leave the place no offense he tells me sincerely that years ago the shop was a bakery and there was a fire that burned the place and it was rented by 3 brothers who perished. He had the most bizarre look on his face trying to see if I was pranking him.

Totally weirds me out to this day.

9. My girlfriend’s grandfather’s ashes were on a little shelf in the living room, right next to a very solid/heavy angel statue. Well one weekend she and I are fooling around on the living room couch and out of the corner of my eye, I see the angel statue fly off the wall, accompanied with a deep grunt.

Now when I say this thing FLEW off the wall, I’m talking 7-8 feet of air before landing on the hard wood and leaving a dent where the wing hit. Even if this thing had fell off the wall, it would’ve dropped straight down, not soared with force.

Well we both stood there in shock, and I whispered if she had heard the grunt as well, to which she agreed. So we both booked it for the day.

Well that night at dinner we told her parents what happened (leaving out the naughty bit) and her younger sister burst into tears saying she had seen a dark figure at the foot of her bed the last couples nights but didn’t want anyone to think she was crazy. (Grandfather that died had mental health issues that caused a lot of pain.)

Welp after that day I was a believer.

10. In 2011 I was studying abroad in Morocco. We were staying in Marrakech with tall, ornate windows. I had one roommate who was already asleep this night. I thought I saw her sitting up in the bed next to me wearing all white. Suddenly I saw a white, hazy thing vaguely shaped like a person floating above me next to the big windows. I was so scared I went in the bathroom, turned the light on and stayed in the bathtub all night. My roommate didn’t see anything.

11. My wife and I swear that our daughter used to talk to ghosts when she was a toddler. She was an only child at the time. First instance I remember, was her telling me that she was talking to Nana. That’s what I called my grandmother, who passed about 15 years before my daughter was born. My daughter was young and so I hadn’t even talked about Nana to her, so I showed her a picture and asked who she spoke to. There were four women (three of which I didn’t even know), but without hesitation she pointed to my Nana. Ok, no biggie.

Some months later, my wife and I are trying for baby #2. After my wife gets pregnant, my daughter is sitting next to her on the couch and puts her head on her belly and says, “mommy, there’s a baby in there”. Ok, maybe that’s coincidence. She overheard us saying something. A few weeks later, my wife miscarries. Maybe my daughter picked up on our sadness, who knows, but she again puts her head on her stomach and says, “mommy, there’s no baby in there anymore.”

Then, several months and one more (very early) miscarriage later, my daughter tells us, “I was talking to my brother last night and he said that my sister is coming to live with me soon.” Again, she’s an only child and had no (living?) brother. We were still trying at this point, but had not taken any tests. We picked one up that night, and sure enough, pregnant. When time came to reveal the gender, I wasn’t even interested. My daughter had already said it was a girl. Sure enough, I have two daughters.

12. My 4-year-old son knows some really specific things about my dad (who died about 2 months after my son was born).

The two of them never actually met because my dad was already in the hospital when my son was born.

About a year or so before he got sick, he bought some kayaks for him and my mom.

They also sold them before my son was even born, and we didn’t even realize he knew what a kayak was.

One day we saw some kayaks at the store, and my son points at them and says “those are just like what grandpa bought for grandma!”

He has never known that either of them owned a kayak.

Still don’t have an explanation for that one.

He also used my grandpa’s name from out of nowhere too – my grandpa died when I was 9, so about 15 years before my son was born, and he also has never heard that name said out loud.

13. I was probably in early high school or late middle school at home with my sister of four years younger and our dog. Our dog was very calm indoors and he rarely ever barked and never acted aggressive. All of a sudden, he got really aggressive/defensive near our backdoor/kitchen, and stared and growled at the corner ceiling of the room.

The corner was completely empty, and there wasn’t anything we could see. We tried to pull him away but he wouldn’t budge. I checked the window curtains for any bugs or anything but nothing was there, and he fixated his gaze above the curtains.

I went out to the backyard and peeked up and down my driveway as well to see if maybe my dog heard something from outside, but nope, opening the door didn’t interest him at all. My sister and I kind of stared at each other, and that sent chills down both of our spines, as just our looks at each other confirmed we were both experiencing this thing. We didn’t say a word to each other in the moment, but I’m pretty sure we were both thinking some paranormal shit was there that our dog sensed.

I don’t remember how or when our dog finally snapped out of it.

My sister also experienced weird shit in that house (brand new in a nice suburb) multiple times after, but by herself each time.

14. Over a couple of weeks years ago living with my ex while we were in the shower together the bathroom door got knocked on extremely hard and aggressively, got out and opened it basically straight away and there was no one there. No one was in the house and all the doors were locked.

We also had the cliche footsteps and I remember one night there was this weird music coming from nowhere but still in the house. That was whack.

A Friday night (maybe Saturday, it was years ago now) some teenagers from next door came and knocked saying there was someone in the house with them (they were alone for the weekend), so my mates and I plus them and my partner went out with them. We saw the lights go out all at once but no one came out. The cops came and called for backup. They went through and found no one after looking for like 15mins.

The thing is though, unless whoever was in there could climb 4 metres in a few seconds the only way to the street was past us. They stayed with us the night but we never heard anything about it again. They also moved away maybe a month after I think.

The last thing that went down over those weeks was the one that fucked with me the most, I heard as clear as day my name said right behind me and then footsteps above me while doing some early morning weekend work. I used to work in a very high security facility and for someone else to be in the building they would have to have been let in by me and couldn’t be in there before me as the alarms couldn’t be deactivated without my fingerprint.

I almost shit myself and after talking with my boss on the phone and checking that there really wasn’t anyone else there besides me (no cars besides my work car and my private car locked in the grounds with the other work cars) there I bailed and never did Saturday mornings alone.

After that, nothing ever happened and nothing before. I still think about those weeks all the time. It was fucking weird and I have no explanation besides “fucked if I know, ghosts?”.

15. Speaking for my wife. I grew up in a house that was haunted so I know what’s out there but my wife has always been a skeptic and gave me shit for believing in the paranormal and being spiritual until we moved into our house. She has seen and still sees a couple dressed in white in our backyard staring at our house. At night she will hear a giggle and doors close. She tried to rationalize what she seen until one day she saw a lady floating over our bed. That did it in and now she takes what I say seriously

16. I slept over at my buddies house. Woke up at 3 am to the sound of a women crying coming from right outside his bedroom. I figured it was his mom arguing with another family member so at first I felt very awkward rather than scared. Then things began getting more intense. She started screaming “$7?! You did this for $7?!” And as she began getting louder and louder I thought I might need to intervene before someone got hurt. I stood up, walked the the door, grabbed the handle, twiiiiiist, open the door. instant dead silence Every sound I heard died in a heart beat. It went from a WWII war zone to being able to hear a mouse fart. Outside his room, every light in his house was off, there was no one else awake, nothing. I still can’t explain wtf happened. I woke my friend up and he told me he once saw a lady in a white gown walking up his steps and thought it was his mom, but when she didn’t respond to him calling out to her, he followed her up the stairs and when she turned a corner, she disappeared. Then one day when they are moving out of this house his cousin and sister arrive to the new house after grabbing some things from the old one and tell everyone that they swore they saw a girl in a white gown standing at the upstairs window as they pulled out of the driveway. (Me and my friend never told anyone about our stories, so his cousin and sister said they saw what they saw without any prior knowledge of the situation).

17. I’ve written about this before but once while falling asleep after a movie with the family I was awoken by what seemed like a small boy running towards the couch we were in. I immediately sat up and braced for impact. Now, i would normally chalk it up to falling asleep by my mom and dad also bolted awake at the same time. Before I could explain my dad told me he saw a boy running towards us. His description of the boy matched mine while my mother confirmed as well.

18. I was sleeping in a hotel room and something woke me up– I looked next to the bed. There was a woman sitting cross-legged on the floor below me and she locked eyes with me, cocked her head sideways and then floated up toward me before dissipating. I prefer to think it was one of those hallucinations people can have in that pre-awake stage but damn it was terrifying.

19. I was one of the firefighters working on ground zero for 9/11. I lost two of my buddies, and it still haunts me to this day. As I was making my way through the rubble, I heard someone screaming. I bolted to wherever I heard the sound, and only found a twisted body on a rebar. The body was burnt and pale, and it looked like it had been there awhile. I watched a firefighter walk up the rubble towards me, and hug me. I was confused, but I understood why he wanted a hug. I hugged him back, and when I opened my eyes, there was no firefighter. I stood there, holding a helmet. I don’t know how I got this helmet, but it was in my hands. The golden eagle on the front had been bronzed, and a hole through the side of the helmet, with dried blood around it. I was holding this helmet in tears, while in front of an impaled civilian. I did some research, and the firefighter that I hugged had apparently died three hours before I saw him. I still have that helmet, and I will never forget the hug the fallen firefighter gave me.

20. When my grandma passed away, in that moment, my husband and I were in several economic problems. So, the next days after her funeral, I started to dream about her, and she told me on my dreams, that if I need money for an emergency, just check under her matress and I will find $1500 mexican pesos.

I just ignored it, but those dreams were repeating again and again… So, I decided to take a look under her matress and GUESS WHAT??? I FOUND $1500 MEXICAN PESOS…!!!!

And, since that event, I never dreamed again with her.

21. So weird story that made me quickly question what was real and what wasn’t.

When I was around lets say 8 years old and my brother was 6, we had been playing video games in my room while my dad and mom watched football downstairs. For awhile we had lots of fun, that was until I had a really bad chill down my spine, I shrugged it off before I notice my brother get a chill as well. He continued playing the game so I just thought if he wasn’t worried then neither should I be. Everything went smoothly well, not for long. My brother paused the game, “Do you hear that?” he asked. I then heard a humming sound of what seemed to be a little girl. I nodded, “The humming right?” I asked him, he nodded as well. The humming was coming from the hallway right outside our room, we began to be very nervous because me and my brother were the only children in the house. The door was shut thankfully so we did not see anything. After a few seconds of the humming, it stopped and we heard footsteps from the attic. The thing about the attic though is that nobody ever really goes up there, at the time neither me nor my brother had been ever up there and my parents only went up there once each. Once the footsteps stopped and nothing else happened, we opened the door to see only the hallway. The next day we told our parents in great detail what had happened and they did the whole parent thing saying, “oh you probably just heard us, it was your imagination.” Needless to say if I didnt believe in ghosts before that incident, now I did.

22. Most of my family is extremely religious and believe in ghosts wholeheartedly. Most of them claimed to have seen something paranormal at some point in their lives. I wasn’t very religious, and I always thought to myself, “If I haven’t seen it, then it’s not real.”

That changed during my senior year in HS. I was dogsitting at my great aunt’s house while she was out of town for a few days. A little after midnight, I’m watching a movie and my aunt’s dog starts barking like crazy and runs up the stairs at full speed. The dog was small, but fierce.

Suddenly, I clear as day heard a gravelly voice at the top of the stairs say “Bad doggie”. The voice was deep and masculine.

I went upstairs because I was certain nobody else was supposed to be there. I looked around and there was nobody in sight. The dog was still barking at something that I couldn’t see. She was just barking at an empty hallway.

That’s when I heard footsteps walking away from us down the hall and into my aunt’s bedroom. I could hear the footsteps, but I couldn’t see anybody making them. I noped the fuck out of that house with the dog and went outside in my car. The dog and I slept there for the night.

I’m not entirely sure wtf I experienced that night, but I definitely believe in the paranormal now. I never told my aunt about what happened, but apparently my great uncle, her husband, had died in that house a few months after I was born. I never knew him, but I’m willing to bet that it was him who I heard that night.

23. Not about me but this one’s about my 3 brothers. We used to live in the Philippines where everyone believes in ghosts, Duwende (dwarves), Diwatas (fairies) etc. Our old home was the second house built in our subdivision so it was VERY old, with huge mango, santol and other fruit trees growing all over. As my mom had told me, my 3 brothers were playing around shooting these bamboo bow and arrows made for them by one of our helpers. It was all fun and games until my 3rd brother shot his arrow and according to him and my brothers, it stopped midair, and dropped. Needless to say, they found this weird and stopped playing.

On the next day, my brother is suddenly hit with a high fever out of nowhere. They were going to take my brother to my aunt who was a doctor but my older brothers told my mom about the arrow stopping midair. My mom decided to take him to a an “Albularyo” which is a practitioner of folk medicine I think (correct me if I’m wrong). So my mom took my brother to this guy so they could find out what had happened, and what they could do.

Once they met up, the Albularyo decided to do a ritual that involved dripping candle wax in water to see what caused the sickness. Once they did this, a small humanoid figure formed in the water, but it was missing a hand. The Albularyo told my mom that my brother probably shot an arrow and hit a Duwende’s hand, which is why he got hit with a fever as punishment.

I don’t know exactly what they did to ask for forgiveness but apparently my brother got better the next day after. I’ll try to dig up more details if I can.

24. When I was in 5th grade I was playing with silly putty in my room when my mom called me down for dinner. I had molded it into a ball and placed it down directly behind me (I’m talking as soft as can be here).

When I stood up to go downstairs, I felt something hit me in the back of my head with some force. So I turn around and see my silly putty ball, not on the ground anymore, but bouncing on my windowsill until it eventually rolled back onto the floor. Needless to say I ran downstairs hysterically trying to tell my mom what had happened

25. I was having a conversation with my mom when I was a teenager, mid sentence I felt a hand grab my arm and looked to see who it was. No one was there and my mom didn’t see anyone. Apparently the same thing happened to my sister a few weeks before. Also all the random voices and bags falling off shelves and moving shadows in the periphery. I believe it was just the house that was “haunted”, but they weren’t malicious so it was all good.

26. Once when I was in university I went to go see my therapist whom I had been seeing twice a week for about five months. On this day he was uncharacteristically quiet and I asked him if he was all right. He said he was fine, and we continued through what would be one of our most breakthrough sessions. A lot of repressed memories came up through it that have helped me to heal.

At the end of the session I asked him why he was acting differently today than other days. He said when I walked in I was accompanied by a warrior-like person. He said he had the overwhelming feeling to perform as best he professionally could that day, and that he got the sense this “warrior” had fought a lot of battles to protect me.

This would seem coincidental, except for 10 years later I was living on the other side of the world. I had a Puerto Rican neighbor I would see occasionally and eventually got pretty close with him and his family. One day as I was walking by he kind of gets quiet and weird and then says in broken English, “do you know there is a soldier who follows you around?” I knew instantly who he was talking about.

In both instances the warrior/soldier was described the same, just over six feet, blonde curly hair, wearing primitive warrior clothing, and strangely “a white guy”.

Neither of these people could have known that my closest brother who passed away at 14 was over six feet tall with blond curly hair, and always was my protector.

27. Ooh, ooh, I have a story!

So in high school, I worked kids birthday parties. The place was basically a giant gym, and gymnastics/dance classes were also held there.

One day, I came in, and one of the girls I worked with (who was very spiritual and very religious) was totally freaked out. During the gymnastics class she taught that morning, one of the kids was staring up at the ceiling. When she asked the kid what he was doing, he said “There’s a little boy up there” and pointed at the ceiling.

Strange enough, but whatever. Kids are weird.

Later, two girls who were working a birthday party before mine came out of the gym and were visibly shaken. A pair of 5-year-old twins went down a slide and then stared at the ceiling. They both said that there was a little boy “up there”, in the same spot on the ceiling that the kid from the morning gymnastics class.

We all went in and inspected the ceiling. Of course, it was just a regular, gray, warehouse-y ceiling. But we were all super freaked out at that point.

During my party, I was pushing a little boy on the giant swing we had in the gym. He, too, began to stare at the ceiling. He said DIRECTLY TO MY FACE, “Hey, there’s a little boy up there!” We told all of our coworkers and managers about the three separate experiences we had today with children from different parties and classes seeing a little boy on the ceiling.

The next day, we had downtime between parties, and nobody was in the gym. There are cameras in the gym that allow parents to see their children playing from the lobby.

My manager called us out of the break room – “Guys, check this out.”

We come out and see the screen (which is streaming from the gym) showing that giant swing going back and forth. Nobody’s in there. It’s just the swing going.

I like to think that the ghost was truly a little boy who just wanted to play, and he finally got to go on the swing. Could be worse.

28. I was always on the fence about ghosts because there was no scientific evidence of them being real (and I was going through a big question phase with religion/afterlife at the time anyway).

But my family moved into an old farm house when I was 12.. this was a very old farm house with a build date around the civil war. The original owners name was still on the old barn out back and we found numerous old antiques built into the walls when we completely renovated the place.

A few odd and end things happened after we first moved in, but distinct things started happening to myself after I turned 16.. but never to my sister until after SHE turned 16 too.

The most prominent memory I have:

The upstairs consisted of 2 bedrooms. 1 bedroom was the room at the top of the stairs, the 2nd bedroom was in a separate room just to the left of the top of the stairs. I had the “private room” and my sister’s room was the landing. When someone walked up the stairs it was VERY distinct, you could hear each individual step and the creaks got louder as the person approaching got closer.

So one night I am sitting on my bed watching TV or something and I hear my sister come up the steps and go lay on her bed- so I start talking to her.. when she doesn’t answer me I get annoyed and go into her room to figure out what her problem is- only she is not in there. My mind was blown because I KNOW I heard her. I call for her and she had been downstairs the entire time.

We never felt threatened.. but it did seem that this entity liked picking ONLY on women.. even my mother who absolutely doesn’t believe in ghosts had to admit some odd things had happened. I think the funniest thing was having my pony tail pulled while I was doing the dishes. I don’t know why it was so funny… it just cracked me up that whatever it was felt like playing with my hair.

29. When I was in my late 20’s I was dating my girlfriend ( soon-to-be wife.) We had been together for a while. One summer, July 3rd, her sister was abducted and killed by a group of six men. All the men were eventually caught and tried. The trials and the aftermath for the family were devastating and debilitating for them for many, many years.

Fast forward three months, after the funeral. I arrived at my girlfriend’s house to wait for her to get off from her job as a nurse at a local hospital. Neither of her parents were home. Just me, alone in the house. So I went into the family room, turned on the TV, sat down in the couch, got comfortable and began to watch.

Clear as a bell I heard my girlfriend’s sister’s voice in my right ear, just off my shoulder, call my name. I turned to look at the seat next to me and of course there was nobody there. I stared at the spot in the couch next to me for a long while. Feeling a bit uneasy, I turned off the TV and went outside to wait on the porch.

30. So my grandma use to live with me. She was in the room next to mine and would get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom (which is in my room). There is drop from her room to mine so we put a night light outside the bathroom so she could see the way. It was like this for about 12 years. Only a few days after she had passed away I was in my bed with my cat and dog reading a book or something. I remember my cat and dog both waking up and looking to the night light. My cat got up and went to the light, pawing at it and making nosies. My dog just stayed still, not barking. I would grab him so he would calm down or go to sleep but he never took his eyes off that spot. That’s when I saw what I can only say looked like light bend around the night light. I was positive it was my grandma coming back to use the bathroom and or check on me and the house. To this day (she died about five years ago), I still have that night light there and turn it on every night for her. I haven’t seen her or experienced anything like it again but I’m sure she’s still around.