18 People Talk About The Unexplainable Things They Saw At Night And Still Can’t Forget
"I stopped moving immediately and my eyes darted along the tree line rapidly searching for what was causing me to break out in a cold sweat."
By Eric Redding
Found at AskReddit. All entries appear with full permission.
1. The Night Was Completely Silent
I’ve lived out in the middle of nowhere for about 10 years. I’m a smoker, and a night owl. I smoke outside. So I’ve seen some strange things.
Distant points of light changing course and shooting off at extreme speeds. (probably meteorites deflecting off the atmosphere? I really don’t think a visiting intelligence would have lights on a spacecraft). I’ve seen several instances of things like this. Maybe a dozen or so times.
But the one thing I’ve seen, that gave me chills and baffled me was a was a black oblong object (think cylinder/thermos) floating through the sky. It was darker than the night sky behind it, utterly silent, and maybe I’m misremembering, but I recall the night being completely silent too. No crickets, no cicadas. Just silence. This was in the middle of summer.
I told my family, and they just shrugged their shoulders.
2. A Tall Dark Figure
Finally a chance to tell my story! About 10 years ago my family and I were up in the White Mountains of Arizona to cut down our christmas tree. My dad was driving our truck with my grandpa in the front seat, and my mom and sister in the back seat. I was in the bed of the truck along with our families german short haired pointer. We were driving along a forest road, and all of the sudden my dog starts barking and growling. So I look to see what it is, thinking it is maybe a bear or mountain lion. What I saw was a tall dark figure walking parallel to the road about about 60-70 yards away. I yelled at my dad to stop the truck. When I told him I think I see Bigfoot he just laughed and continued to drive. When I looked back to get another look at it, the figure had changed directions and was walking away from the road. The last thing I saw was the things head disappearing down a hill. To this day I still do not have an explanation for what I saw. Every time the situation comes up my dad always makes me tell everyone my story, just so he can laugh at it!
3. The Satellite
I live in a rural area in GA and watching satellites is a common thing for me. One night a couple years ago I tracked a satellite that did the same thing, halted for 20-30 seconds and changed directions. Apparently I am the only one in my social circle that watches satellites so it is pointless to explain to anyone without getting the “that was just a plane or helicopter” response.
4. The Body In The Woods
When I was about 10 years old I went on a field trip with my 4th grade class to a summer camp. For the most part , it was a typical experience. Rafting, bad food in the mess hall, hiking, campfires, etc. Hell one of my friends did the typical movie thing and brought dirty magazine’s from home. We were supposed to be there for 4 days, I only lasted about 3.
It was late at night cause I stayed up to do the Trash duty and clean the mess hall, after I picked up the final granola bar wrapper I made my way to the showers to clean up before turning in for the night. Halfway through, I hear a loud shuffling sound outside the showers. I stop what I’m doing and listen intently, but the shuffling stops. I assume it’s my friends pranking me as they typically do, and get out of the showers.
Just to put this into perspective, the showers and the boys cabins are a good walk away with NO way to illuminate your surroundings, that’s why they shower before dark and with groups, to make sure nobody gets lost. For someone like me whose by himself having to navigate his way through the woods, it’s pretty fucking terrifying! To make matters worse, the flashlight I brought was back at the cabin. So I was stuck having to navigate my way back with a piece of shit lantern that barely gave me enough light.
So anyway, I grab the lantern, and start my walk to the cabins. About halfway through I hear this ungodly loud moan coming from right the fuck in front of me! I panic and drop the lantern, running in the opposite direction of the sound, I can’t see anything and in my haste I fall on something. I examine the thing I fell on and realize it’s squishy and soaking wet. I hear the moaning again from behind me and book it to the direction of the cabins. I’m instantly greeted by 3 flashlights and concerned looks.
Apparently the other campers heard the moans and the counselors went to investigate, only to find me. Covered in head to toe in fucking blood! They brought me back to the cabins and I’m immediately bombarded with questions about what I saw. My friends shut them up after a while.
The next day I went home. Could you blame me? I was NOT gonna stay there after the shit I’ve been through. I almost forgot about this incident until a while ago when I was reminiscing about this with one of my friends who stayed at the camp. I asked him what happened after I left and what he told me made the blood freeze in my body.
Apparently after I left, the moans at night got louder and closer to the cabins and freaked everyone the fuck out, and as for that big mound I fell on, while the counselors were investigating the source of the moaning, they found a deer on the trail I was on. The head was ripped clean off, and it’s entrails were laying in a separate pile next to the carcass.
That’s my encounter. To this day, it remains the scariest experience I’ve ever had in my life. Everyone I’ve told thinks that I’m bullshitting it, but my friends who were there always defend me. I still don’t know what the fuck was in the woods that night.
One of my friends actually sent me this video a while ago after I told him about the moaning at camp. It’s the most accurate replica I’ve heard. And keep in mind, I heard this right the fuck in front of me. With no light to see what the source was.
5. “Ya’ll See That Shit?”
My dad and I were hunting in the mountains north of Idaho City. It was about twilight and we were hiking back to the car. We began to smell something terrible. Like burning bone and hair. It was the worst stench I’ve ever experienced. The smell got worse as we kept hiking. We could hear what we thought was someone or something running at a great rate of speed from behind us. My dad grabbed me and held my face to his chest and dropped to the ground. I held close to him as the running got louder. Dad readied his rifle. I heard him say “Oh no. Son, stand up. Walk with me. Look at the ground.” Terrified I stood. Stupid me turned around and looked. There was the remains of an elk. The head looked like it had been put in a blast furnace. The hair on the body was all singed. The hooves looked melted. The running sound was gone. We moved closer to the car. It was now nearly dark. About 100 yards from the car, we heard the running again and we froze. All of a sudden the forest lit up like noon day. We heard a very loud whoosh, and it was gone. The forest was dark. It was quiet. Dead still. We booked it to the car. Threw our gear in the back seat and drove. I kept my head down and just cried. Dad was stoic and silent. Halfway out of the woods we saw the light again. Bright as ever. But just for a second. And then it was gone again. Made it back to Idaho City and stopped at the Gold Mine grill to regroup. Went inside and there was another hunter in there. He looked at us and said, “Ya’ll see that shit?” He just stared and drank.
6. A Visit From The Government
Worked with a young guy at a TV station who captured a UFO on camera – an unidentified flying object. It was freaky and definitely not something you are supposed to see in sky. He slowed it down in editing and it looked like a missile….flew by at an incredibly abnormal speed. I don’t know what the heck it was but it was not something the general public has ever seen.
Anyway, we reported it on TV, showed the video. Three FBI guys came in later on and spoke with this poor kid for two hours and he left the meeting in tears. No joke.
7. I Still Can’t Explain It
I was staring up at the sky one night and spotted what I thought was an airplane. It was moving around rather quickly in pretty cool patterns. It just kind of looked like a bright light and was pulsing rather than blinking. Then rather suddenly it stopped completely and shot back the way it came at a speed that I could only imagine would break the sound barrier but I heard no crack or anything. Then as quickly it came it disappeared in a tiny flash in the sky. It looked like the little sparkle that happened on Pokémon when Team Rocket would “blast off again.” It was very strange and I to this day am completely unable to explain it.
8. Camping In The Rockies
I was camping in the Rockies and was stargazing and spotting satellites. I found a satellite and tracked it for a while. Eventually, it halted and switched directions. No one believes me, but I saw it. No I wasn’t high/drunk/tripping. It was a very clear night, and I was sober. Maybe there is another explanation, but that night it was an unidentifiable flying object to me.
9. We Stared In Silence
I’ve seen three things that could be described as UFOS.
First one I was with friends and we all saw it. We were hanging out at a park at night being typical teenagers, and saw a series of red, blue, green, and white lights spinning slowly in the sky. We couldn’t see the actual aircraft but the way the lights were spinning it gave off the impression that it was a plate shaped object. We all basically stared at it in silence for 45 seconds or so until it just disappeared.
Second time was by myself. I was laying out in my backyard and saw a silver disk in the sky. I thought it was a weather balloon at first, but then it started moving very quickly in a triangular pattern. You know the three points in a triangle? Picture it going from each point very quickly, taking a quick pause at each point. Like the first time, I watched it for about a minute until it vanished.
Third time I was at a party, being held in a garage. I stepped out to the end of the driveway so I could make a call, and saw a slightly reflective black plate shaped object hovering in the sky. At this point I was basically annoyed, like wtf how many times am I gonna see these things and be scared shitless by them?! Anyways I watched it for a longer time than the first two, about three minutes, and then the sky flashed blue, picture a heat lighting type flash but blue, and it was gone. I asked the party goers if they saw anything weird and they just said “yeah that random lighting.”
It’s been four years since the last time I saw one. I’m pretty convinced i live near some secret military testing place or something, to see a ufo once is crazy, three times is almost unbelievable. I’m glad it hasn’t happened again though cause it’s pretty scary to see.
10. Catching Fireflies
When I was a kid I was playing by the woods at night catching fireflies. We lived out in the middle of nowhere. About a half hour drive to the closest town. Well anyway, I hear some sticks breaking and I’m getting excited thinking it might be a wild turkey (I was fucking obsessed with the things even though they weren’t known for the area). I was a dumb kid but now I know that by the sound of the cracking sticks that it could not have been a turkey but something quite a bit bigger.
I run over towards the trees and further from the house and I start to get this…..feeling. Like I felt before I was about to be punished. Shots of adrenaline and fear. I stopped moving immediately and my eyes darted along the tree line rapidly searching for what was causing me to break out in a cold sweat.
Two bright eyes, like a cats eyes, sat about three feet above the ground, about the size of a baseball. It wasn’t like the eyes watching from the darkness in movies where they are glaring. These eyes were wide open, unblinking, and staring right at me. I felt like prey.
Then, slowly, the eyes rose up until the creature was standing at about six feet high. Now I could see its outline. It was huge, bigger than anything I had ever seen. That was when its lips pulled back from its teeth and I hauled ass back to my house.
I told my dad and he gave me a spanking with the paddle for lying.
11. Vindication
I saw a series of UFOs for about a week. It was all I could talk about. They looked like satellites but moved, I can’t even explain it well. The best way to say would be fireflies but that doesn’t do it justice. Anyway I got labeled as the “UFO guy” and much humor was found at my expense. Two weeks or so later we had our annual family reunion camping trip and around the fire the UFO guy humor started. Two minutes or so Into the amazingly funny jokes a UFO exactly like I had been talking about flew directly over head.
With as much douchebaggery as I could possibly muster I pointed up and said “Just like that right there.” Dead silence vindicated and no more UFO jokes.
I am very skeptical about UFO sightings overall, 99% of the time while cool they can be explained by something very boring. I like to think with the vastness of the universe we aren’t alone but who knows. I have seen probably hundreds of satellites in my life. IMO these were not satellites. Whatever this was swarmed like bees or fireflies. I hate to say it but to me it looked they there was intelligence behind the movements. Also satellites that I know of and have seen in the past do not accelerate and decelerate at phenomenal speeds. I am not saying aliens. I am saying I have no idea. Black project, new not public tech, something that was pretty damn cool. I’ll go into more description after I get home from work if anyone is interested.
The first night it happened I waited about five minutes just to make sure it wasn’t something that could easily be dismissed and then started yelling like a four year old who had to much candy for my wife to come out. She wasn’t fast enough so I ran inside yelling like a moron woke up all the kids and drug the wife outside. Her response was something like “that’s neat I don’t know what it is either but all the kids are awake and I can tell you are going to sit and watch while I deal with them.” The nights after that her response was yup neat don’t you dare wake up the kids.
As far as pictures. My SLR, camcorder, and multiple phones couldn’t see anything. I tried messing with the SLR to get pics but all I accomplished was making the wife mad cause her pics turned out horrible after that.
At the camping trip after my vindication. There was about two minutes of silence and someone said “so the Vikings(American football team) should be good this year.” I said “oh hell no we aren’t going to pretend that didn’t just happen.” Consensus was very weird but no idea what it was. Everyone there thought it was strange enough that honestly I haven’t had another UFO joke thrown at me.
12. The Grandmother
Mine was a ghost. I was about 19. My grandmother had died less than a month prior. We were having a family gathering unrelated to her passing. I couldn’t sleep, so I stayed up late watching some old Nick-at-Nite re-runs on their old tube. I drifted off on the couch around 2AM, partly wrapped in a rough green and brown hand-made blanket a friend had made for me. I woke up between 3 and 4AM, felt cold and groggy. Looked up and saw my grandmother. “Go upstairs and sleep in a proper bed” she says. “Get moving.” I picked up my blanket and dragged it behind me up the steep stairs. She looked better than when I had last seen her alive, but equally as insistent and daunting. I didn’t dare refuse. Didn’t occur to me until the next morning that she was, in fact, still dead, since this was the kind of thing she would do regularly before she passed.
13. What Other Things Were Real And I Didn’t Know It?
I’ve been dealing with seeing stuff like this for practically my entire life. I deal with Hypnagogia, which is a condition that causes me to have extremely vivid hallucinations as I begin to fall asleep. Ever since I was about seven I have dealt with seeing monsters, ghosts, aliens and pretty much anything else my mind could cook up, all hanging out in my bedroom. Needless to say, it scared the shit out of me for years. Although I’ve gotten used to it and generally ignore the things I now see, one story sticks with me.
My great uncle Bob died when I was eight. The night after his funeral, I dreamed he walked past my bedroom door, wearing entirely white. He stopped and looked in on me, and then with a smile continued down the hall. I remember it being the first time I experienced one of these dreams and wasn’t scared. Well, the next morning at breakfast, completely unprompted, my mom talked about this wonderful dream she had where Bob came into her room and sat with her. That was too much for me. I exploded into tears and was inconsolable. The thought that I had then, and I still sometimes deal with today… if Bob was really there, what other things that I had seen were really there too?
14. The Fishing Spot
My family have been seeing UFO’s at an old family fishing spot for… wow nearly 100 years now. Weird balls of purple and green light that speed around at night, hover and descend into the ocean off the SW coast of Western Australia. Apparently my Great-Great Grandfather used to talk about how people were ‘driving’ them around the sky back in the 1920’s. So no-one on that side of the family really reacts to weird stuff like that.
Personally, I think it might be a phenomena similar to the plasma balls that have been observed elsewhere in the world. Still neat though.
15. No One Believes Me
In a car ride from my dad’s house to my mum’s house. A 15 minute drive at most. Me being in the passenger seat I’m checking out the clear night’s sky when just approaching a roundabout, I look into the sky and see four bright lights flying quickly. Probably a plane? Nope, these lights were moving too quickly to be a plane, and then it changing direction in a like ‘going back on itself’ kind of motion before vanishing. Impossible to be a plane. No one believes me to this day…
16. It Ran On Its Back Legs
A decade ago, when I was about 13, dad got a call from a friend of his. His friend had shot a huge, 8 point white tail buck, and lost it the night before in the woods. The deer was shot with a bow at sunset, and ran into the woods across a road. Dad’s friend called him at 8 at night, and told him he’d need help finding it the next day. Dad asks if I wanna learn about tracking deer. I’m all for it, because hunting is amazing, and off we go the next morning. This is out on Maryland’s eastern shore. Lots of woods, lots of hills, lots of walking. I was tired and trying to retain what these two hunters are telling me, but still having a blast. We found a really long blood trail, fur, the whole thing was fun for me, and my dad.
We’d been out there for maybe an hour or two. I take a break near a small thing of trees that connect to the massive woods where the blood trail went. Dad’s friend goes into the woods, and I’m just looking at the trees, trying to spot a white belly, or part of a rack… Then, I saw something, perched on four limbs.
It was hard to see it, and it’s been about a decade since, but I saw what looked like a fox, with a short muzzle, no tail, and really long limbs. Like, deer length, deer thin limbs. It’s just standing there, maybe 20 yards from me. I can’t tell what it is, or what color, I just know it’s strange looking and it’s not moving.
That’s not the weird part. That thing kinda just… loped away. Like, those cat videos where the cat is scared, lifts its front feet off the ground, and runs off on its back legs? Like that, only it held its front legs higher, and it ran like that was the way it had run its entire life. Like that was natural for it to do. Hunched and hurried, but not wobbly.
I only saw it for a few seconds. Dad scared the shit out of me by shouting about the 8 pointer being found. I told dad I saw a weird animal. He said it may have been a fox. I told him about the legs being weird and long. He gave me ‘the look’. The look that says stop making shit up. I got that look a lot.
Well, I learned how to gut, drag, and track a deer that day. We took a trip to the butcher, I got to watch them begin processing, and that was that. As for what I saw?
I’ve always had a big imagination. I could have just been sleep deprived, because 6am on a Saturday at 13 years old is bullshit. Maybe it was just a fox that moved weird. Maybe it was a deer with a messed up head. I don’t know. I only saw it for a few seconds.
But what I do know is that deer and foxes don’t run on their back legs.
17. The Boat
I was on a lobster boat off the southern Maine coast. We had 3 boats in our little fleet I guess you could say. We all parted ways to go home when a call on the radio is another captain of one of our boats. Says he’s got three lights floating above his boat following him around. Me and my captain laughed it off until I went out on the deck to have a smoke and there it was over our boat, bright as shit but no light being reflected on the ground. It was silent, about 20 feet above us, and following us and moving with us as if it had a fixed point on the boat it was staying the exact same distance from no matter if the boat when up down left or right. Then i call my captain out to look at at. We were so amazed that we forgot we were running a boat. and crashed into a underwater ledge. I fell to the ground and when I got up it was gone. A few more radio calls came in about this strange UFO following lobster boats in the southern Maine area.
18. The Black Dog
I’ve never seen a ufo, but one time when I was driving home at dusk, my husband and I saw what we thought was a large black dog running across the street. Except that it materialized halfway through the middle of the street and as it reached the fence on the other side, it climbed through like a human would.
Still can’t explain what the hell it was, but it disappeared on the other side of that fence.