29 Truly Unsettling Tales Of The Paranormal That Will Absolutely Scare The Hell Out Of You

1. A Visitor In “The Croft”

I studied abroad in Italy my Junior year of college and lived at this old castle. The students stayed in what is affectionately called “The Croft.” Every night we would hear noises, like someone walking, but we would just assume it was the old wood creaking, or somebody going to use the restroom. One weekend the whole group, except me and two others, decided to go to Milan for the weekend.

Well, one evening, as I lay in bed reading a book and waiting for my friend to get back from the library, I distinctly heard the sound of the croft door open and close. I then heard halting steps on the stairs; these were not subtle creaks, but obvious footsteps, so I assumed it was my friend or his girlfriend coming back, so of course thought nothing of it. Then the steps began to sound closer and closer to my door, but I heard no voices and an unexpected chill crawled down my spine. I felt nervous, so I yelled, “Is that you, Dave?” The steps stopped outside my door, but again no one spoke. I was starting to become terrified when I heard My friend and his girlfriend walking down the path outside and I immediately stuck my head out my window and called out to them and asked who was in the croft? They replied that no one but me was in there.

I did not even hesitate; I jumped out my window, and the moment I was out I heard the door to my room slam open and heard what I can only describe as a whispered scream of rage. No one in the group ever believed me, but I asked the Castle’s cook about it and she explained that there were ghosts in the croft, three in fact. One little girl that liked to play pranks, one weeping woman, and one malicious man with a hate for the living.

2. How Could Anyone Live In This House?

Growing up, I used to spend the night at a house that was (in my opinion) haunted. My friend lived there with her family, and they all thought nothing of the sinks turning themselves on and off at night, sporadically. Not a drip mind you, but a fucking full-on sink for 3 seconds and then nothing. It would wake me up every time and scare the shit out of me. Other haunted shit in this house:

• The tv turned itself on sometimes, and changed channels by itself. One time we laid in the bed upstairs, talking, and the tv turned on and started slowly flipping through different channels of static.
• My friend’s bedroom was the bonus room, so she had the door to the attic in her ceiling. If we stayed up talking too late, we would hear warped wood start creaking back and forth across the door. SO scary, when you’re all of 14 years old.
• WORST THING. This was the thing that made me officially stop going over to her house. One time the whole family packed up and went to Sam’s club to go shopping, and as a bored 14 year old I came with them. The mom locked up the house as usual, we shopped for 30 min tops, and came home. When her mom went inside, she tried flipping on the lights. Didn’t work. She said “I wonder if the power’s out?” and tried other lamps. Nothing. After a swift check of the house, it was discovered that all the light bulbs in the house had been moved to the four corners of the living room. I don’t know why, but I remember crying when we discovered them. For some reason it was deeply scary for me.

3. Daddy, Up Late

I woke up out of bed in the middle of the night, I walked out into the living room and saw my dad slumped over and walking to the front door. I just stood there and watched and he walked out side and sat down on the sidewalk that went up to the front door. I watched him through the window for a second and he just sat there staring into a tree with no expression on his face. He looked really pale and almost blueish. I then walked down to my parents room and I woke up my mom and asked her why dad was sitting outside. Then I will never forget it, she said “What are you talking about? He’s right here” and I looked over her and my dad was laying asleep in bed.

Still scares me to think about it.

4. The Crow

My father. Whenever somebody dies in his side of the family, a crow comes to him in his dreams and squawks the person’s name. It happened the first time to him as a 6 year old when his dad died, and then ever since.

Once every couple years he gets up in the morning, says “the crow came again,” takes the day off work, and just waits for the call. I haven’t seen him be wrong yet.

5. A Lingering Spirit Of Sadness

In early 2007 I was on a traveling singing group. There were eight of us on a team, and the team members were switched every year. We were invited to stay the evening at the house of a previous member named Drew. Drew wasn’t home, so it was his mom, his sister and his brother who hosted us.

Now we’d all known that Drew’s dad died about four years earlier, but he’d died of a heart attack and not IN the house. I generally try not to be superstitious, but I went into the house and immediately felt a little uncomfortable. I blamed it on the fact that Drew and I had never really seen eye to eye, or that I felt bad for his mom who had been widowed so young and left with three children.

As sleeping space was limited, I got put down on a cot in the basement, along with another girl in my team. The basement wasn’t a creepy basement by any means; it had been refinished and was pretty comfortable. My cot was only about a foot from the wall and there was a small, old, digital clock between the wall and the cot. I fell asleep in my usual manner: facing the wall, back to the room.

At 2:48am (I’ll never forget the clock, since it was the only thing I could focus on) I woke up very suddenly. I was immediately frozen in bed, my heart was racing, my throat went tight and I couldn’t swallow. It was primal fear at it’s best. I couldn’t roll over to check but I swear, even now, that something was standing over me. EVERYTHING in my instinct told me NOT to turn around. It felt like my life depended on me staying right where I was. During this time of intense fear, I kept seeing images in my mind, flashes of gore and plain out horrible things. I could hear a laughing in my ears but not the voice of just one person laughing. It sounded like I was in a room with thousands of …things…laughing. I remember for the first time having suicide cross my mind during this overwhelming, fear driven time.

I should note that I am not and have never been suicidal.

When ‘The feeling’ went away, the last thing I remember hearing in my mind was, “Not this one.” I looked at the clock again and only nine minutes had passed. Longest fucking nine minutes of my life.

A few hours later when I got up, I decided I was going to get the hell out of there as quickly as I possibly could. I skipped a shower and breakfast and sat in the van waiting for the rest of my team. As I was waiting, Drew’s brother came out and spoke with me. He said one sentence. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you this morning.” As he said it, he had tears in his eyes. He honestly looked like he was going to be sick to me. The look of hopelessness in his eyes still haunts me.

Two weeks later, we got word that Drew’s brother killed himself just before 3am.

Ever since the incident, I still have dreams of the laughing. Part of me wonders if I would have just tried talking to his brother…maybe things would be different.

I’ve never spoke about this to anyone but my husband. It brings back a chill to my spine…and a sense of guilt. I don’t know what to make of it or what the hell really happened in that house. Part of me never wants to know.

6. Footsteps On The Landing

This will probably get buried, but ah well. New house, I was about 12 years old. Backstory: my dad is military, and usually carries wherever he goes.

My dad and I were in the basement den, just watching a John Wayne movie or something. My sister and mom were out getting groceries. While we’re watching the movie, the door at the top of the stairs opens. My dad calls out to Mom to ask if she needs help. No answer.

Steps slowly come down the stairs, pausing at the landing. At this point, my dad has his gun out and has motioned me to hide behind the couch. My dad calls again for whoever it was to identify themselves. Still no answer.

I’m hiding, but I can still see a little bit of the room, and I (idiotically) want to keep an eye on my dad. The noises hit what should be the second-to-last step. My dad crouches and spins into the stairwell with the gun aimed, but he looks confused. The next thing I know, the thing RUNS up the stairs and slams the door at the top.

My dad is very obviously shaken. He holsters the gun and tells me there wasn’t anybody there. We go out for ice cream.

7. A Walk Through The Night Market

My family moved across the Pacific when I was in high school and we weren’t able to go back to visit for years. One night I dreamed about my favorite grandmother (mom’s side). She came to visit me and take me to the night market. At the night market we met her older brother and the two of them apparently “live together” now, so she introduced her older brother. (Her older brother was not able to escape communist China and died before she was able to go home and visit. Her entire family died during the war, only her and her husband survived.)

We walked around the night market, she got me one of my favorite snacks (caramel coated tomatos on a stick) and we walked around some more. Then I noticed something wasn’t right. The food carts were not the normal modern day food carts. They were ancient looking with bamboo roofs. People were holding candle lamps and shops were lighted up by candle lamps too.

Then I realized the patrons were a bit weird. I was sure one guy was holding his head, and the father with his daughter sitting on his neck looked as dead as his daughter. Everyone looked moderately calm/happy/content, but they were soooo not alive.

I asked my grandmother if everyone here is dead and she said, “Of course they’re dead! why wouldn’t they be?” For some reason I didn’t question her at all and we hung out for some more. I remember we hung out for a few more hours before she dropped me off (can’t remember where) then I woke up.

Two weeks later my aunt called to ask my mom if my dad told her her mother died two weeks ago (the exact day I dreamed of her), and if we were going back to attend the funeral.

My dad didn’t call. He just didn’t care enough to tell us my grandmother died. My mother decided we were NOT going back to see her because we had school and it would be unthinkable to miss school over a funeral.

This was the only grandmother who recognized the abuse my parents placed on us and tried to stop it. (Mom yelled at her and told her to stop meddling, since mom was helping with her living expense she couldn’t do too much to help us.)

Before we left the country she spent 4 hours telling me how she escaped the Communists in China when she was 18 (with a child). I told her I’ll see her again. We’ll be back to visit. She sighed and said she’ll never see me again. She was right.

8. Waiting On The Groundskeeper

While living in Philadelphia a friend and I were meeting some people at an old historic house inside of Fairmount Park for some political function. We knew someone who was a groundskeeper there and he would unlock the houses if we needed. The house itself stood atop a small hill, with a winding path down to the parking lot, it was at least 300 years old. It was dusk, the sun just starting to go down. The house was dark inside, but as we approached we saw the curtain move aside in one of the windows. A face looked down at us watching us approach, like a mother would watch her kids coming home from school. We figured that people had arrived before us and were already inside. As we stepped closer, the face moved away from the window and the curtain fell back in place. We found the door locked and waited for the guy to show with the key. We asked him if anyone could be in there and he told us that he hadn’t opened that house in weeks. My friend and I just stared at each other. Once we got inside we found the house completely empty.

9. CZ

This didn’t happen to me, so I don’t tell the story very well and I may have a couple details off, but I always found this a little creepy. It’s really out there, so I don’t blame you if you don’t believe it. I do simply because I know the guy it happened to very well and he’s extremely skeptical.

A friend of mine, Brian, used to do investigations with a couple other people. They were very skeptical and would never assume anything they couldn’t explain was a “ghost,” they’d just say “welp, there’s something going on here we can’t explain” and leave it at that. They very seldom got a case that even ended in that.

A couple friends of Brian’s kept bugging him to check out their apartment because they had apparently made several contacts on a Quija board and kept having weird things happen around the place(doors shutting randomly, stuff falling off counters). Of course, Brian’s first reaction was “A Quija board? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” However, his friend was really insistent and finally he went to check it out. Brian had the guys use the Ouija board and they “contacted” several different spirits or whatever you want to call them. One of them spoke Spanish, which intrigued Brian because none of the guys spoke Spanish.

The building the apartment was in used to be a hotel, and across from the apartment was a closed off hallway where all the rooms used to be. Brian, still skeptical but curious, took the Ouija board and some equipment into the hallway. Supposedly he had several long, confusing conversations with several different entities. All of the entities expressed fear of one called “CZ”, and when Brian asked why they’d be very cryptic about it. Eventually one of the entities told Brian to search room 8, when he asked what he would find, it answered “CZ.”

So Brian goes to room 8, breaks down the door, and finds a whole bunch of scribbling on the wall. The only legible markings are “Making Howlers” and “Chuck Zolner.” Through a mix of Ouija conversations and inquiries at the historical society, Brian discovered that Chuck had killed someone in the hotel in the late 1800s. Chuck died in another state, but supposedly hid the murder weapon in the hotel. As for the making howlers thing, when he mentioned it to the entities he only got fearful responses and no answers.

Another entity he contacted, Beth, claimed to be 19 years old and thought it was still the late 1800s/early 1900s. After some research, Brain discovered a girl named Elizabeth had been run over by a stagecoach in front of the hotel.

On Brian’s last visit to the hotel, he could only get ahold of one entity (one he’d never had contact with) and it kept saying “I’m trying to kill you, etc etc.” Then a really strong, foul odor enter the room, the candle he had with him started burning sideways, and Brian decided it was best to leave.

A couple weeks later, Brian was talking to a supposed psychic and out of nowhere she said “you’ve been getting into things lately, haven’t you? You really need to clean that stuff of you.” She told him some spirit named Elizabeth had attached itself to him.

We tried to gain access to the hotel a couple years ago, but Brian’s friends moved out (meaning we couldn’t get in the building), and the new owner didn’t want us poking around. I really wish I could have checked that place out, just to see what it was all about.

10. House Is Haunted AF

I know people don’t believe in spirits. I myself never did until I lived in this one house.. It was a newer home too so it was odd to me. Perhaps it was just energy left over from a time long ago I don’t know. But my entire family saw stuff. It first started out with noises. The first summer there my sister and I were left alone all day while my parents worked. we were 15 and 10 at the time and one day I heard coughing in my parents room. My sister and I thought it was our father. We thought maybe he was home sick. So all day we kept hearing coughing and finally after about 5 hours I decide to peek in and ask dad if he needed medicine. There was no one in the room. We went in to check the master bathroom and nothing no one was there.

Then a few days later we heard the back shower open.. it was one of those rolling kind that made quite a bit of noise. We heard it open and close and we sat there waiting for my mom or dad to come out of the room. Again nothing they were not home. That summer my cousins visited and they too heard the coughing and shower.

We lived there for 5 years and things got worse and worse over time. Tapping on the walls, My sister and her best friend were having a sleep over and her friend saw someone walk out of my room. She said “hi” to me but it wasn’t me. My cousin saw someone walk out of the bathroom into my sisters room, she thought it was me but I was out front at the time.

My aunt stayed over on a new years eve once. She bitched me and my sister out for walking all over her air bed and waking her up. We did not do that..

My mother was walking down the hall way in the early morning she thought my dad was behind her and asked if he wanted a full or half pot of coffee… when she got out of the hall way she turned to see a man in a plaid shirt that then ran past her.

My sisters friend stopped coming over because she was in my sisters room and a Susan B. Anthony coin my grandpa had given her flew off the shelf and hit the wall leaving a dent in the wall. My sister was walking out the door at the time and thought her friend who threw it. She had been on the top bunk sitting down. Her friend got up and called her mom to leave right away and never came back over.

My best friend stayed over once for a week and she stayed in my room with her evil cat that hated me. I slept on the bottom bunk of my sisters bed. My friend asked why I kept coming in the room to bug the cat. Why I kept knocking on the walls, and why I would lay on the bed only to get up and leave. I did none of this. that cat hated me and would attack me. She said the cat would flip out and hiss and meow like I was in the room.

Then one time I got up to go pee in the middle of the night in our bathroom the way the mirror was.. if you looked over your right shoulder while on the toilet you could see in to the kitchen. I always did this when I left the door open. It was like 3 am so the door was left open and I looked in the mirror. I saw a man standing in the kitchen by the fridge at first I thought it was my dad. Then he turned around like he knew I was looking, and there were no eyes just dark patches and he opened his mouth perhaps to say something I don’t know.. I stopped mid pee and ran back into my room. all the while keeping an eye on the “guy” I never went pee at night again lol

I was so happy when we moved. I have no clue what all that was but so many people witnessed and saw things that it wasn’t just my imagination.

11. Not The First Time And Won’t Be The Last

When I was younger, I attended boarding school in the north of England, and the house I was assigned to was actually on the upper floors of one of the oldest buildings (built c.1909) on campus.

The building was actually a series of interconnected ones. At one end was the school chapel which was connected by a long hallway (with classrooms on each side) to the building I was housed in. There was a day house on the ground floors and basement with boarding house on the upper floors. The campus refectory was also off the ground floor of this building.

I hated the first few weeks – I was young, away from home and friends, knew almost no-one and to cap it all off, I couldn’t sleep on the bed, so I spent many night just lying awake in bed after lights out.

One night in what I think was my third week there, I was lying awake in bed when I thought I heard a door creak open and close again. It wasn’t the door to my dorm, but I looked over and saw a faint light under the door that slowly moved from one side to the other and heard faint footsteps. I thought it was another kid from one of the other dorms, so I got out of bed and went to go look.

I didn’t see anything in the hallway, but heard the stairs that led down to the refectory – I’d heard stories of kids sneaking downstairs to grab food at night, so I followed. When I got to the bottom of the stairs however, there was nobody there, and no-one in the refectory.

I’m not sure what possessed me but instead of going back to the dorm, I went around the corner and looked down the hallway that led to the chapel where I saw a figure about 2/3rds of the way down, so I followed and called out for them.

By the time I’d caught up to them, they were ascending the stairs that led to where the chapel’s organ was, and I heard the door above me close. I thought of going up there to find them, but I heard a loud banging noise in the chapel itself. The doors were unlocked, but they were heavy and it took me a few moments to open them.

The chapel was a traditional stone chapel, and was cold at the best of times. However when I went in, it was ice cold. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. I saw a faint light up where the organist would sit, and this wave of terror passed over me and I ran back to my dorm as fast as I could, and remained under the blankets until the Housemaster practically dragged me down to breakfast the next morning.

I never told anyone what happened to me that night.

Fast forward a few years, and my Housemaster shuffled tutors around when one of the teachers left. My new tutor was one of the Music teachers, he’d been at the school for many years (he died a few years ago, and had been teaching for over 50 years at the same school). He was the organist in chapel, and was a really awesome guy. He was also my music teacher for my music appreciation class for General Studies, where we’d look at different instruments and see how they worked – he owned a harpsichord – including the organ in the chapel.

He told us why the paint on the barrier was a slightly different shade than the rest of the paint around the organ. Originally there was no barrier behind where the organist sat, and they were open to the congregation below. The barrier was built after one of the music students (which were regularly asked to be a page-turner for the organist) was sleepwalking one night up to the organ, fell off and broke his neck.

If I hadn’t have been sitting down when he said this, I probably would have fallen down.

Shortly afterwards after one of these music classes, I asked him if the story was true – he said it was, and I told him that I thought I’d seen the ghost of the boy. My teacher said that I wasn’t the first, and probably won’t be the last.

12. A “Being Standing Over Me”

To start off, I was always a hardened skeptic. I grew up in a religious home, and my experience led me to reject any and all religion and spirituality around 8 or 9 yo. I also suffered from depression, anxiety, and hallucinations that started getting strong around 10 yo. I started seeing a therapist when I was 11 (I knew I needed help before then, my mother insisted nothing was wrong), started medication at 13. By 14 I was taking antipsychotics, but still had never received a diagnosis that me or my doctors were satisfied with. I had Major Depression, GAD, and OCD all thrown in my file but they never really covered my symptoms. At this time I was seeing two psychologists, a psychiatrist and my GP, all constantly exchanging notes. I asked about schizophrenia or other kinds of psychosis but I was told I was “too lucid”, and from talking to me and my family extensively determined I “show no paranoid or delusional behavior”.

Basically I had none of the unique symptoms of schizophrenia except for hallucinations, mostly audio. I was always aware which ones weren’t “there” so to speak, how they didn’t fit, and my awareness was so separate from them, that psychosis apparently didn’t make sense somehow. Now, the one voice in particular is important. This one I heard the most often, the clearest, and I’d see it in my minds eye, in my dreams, out of the corner of my eye. It constantly told me to kill myself, and convince me life in general was not worth living. It had no triggers, was not attached to any trauma in my past, it didn’t even talk about things I’d done or said, it was just there constantly trying to convince me to kill myself. The more I explained this voice in particular to professionals, the less it made sense, to me and them.