1. I found a piece of an astronaut who was in an explosion

“I sadly found a piece of one of the astronauts from the Columbia explosion. I told my teacher, she called the cops, and cops called the FBI. Our whole school had to shut down so they could search the area for more ‘pieces’ of the explosion. It still haunts me to this day.” — ForscherVerrat

2. My father was hit by a stray bullet from the FBI

“When I was very young, my dad was on a tractor working at a landfill. Not far away, the FBI was on a shooting range. A bullet was fired, ricocheted off of the backstop, traveled a good distance, and hit my dad in the arm. He went to the hospital, and after the surgery the FBI collected the bullet, paid for everything, and left.” — masedog91

3. I accidentally burnt down an entire factory

“Once burnt down my mum’s clothing factory when I was 5 years old because I was playing with candles…. no one ever believes me until my family tells the story.” — aparttimefisho

4. I experienced a glitch in time

“No doubt this will get lost here, but I still find this weird. About eight years ago, I was driving back from working at a party on a Navy base about two hours from home (I supply games and props for themed parties). About ten minutes outside the base, there was a stretch of road that goes through a wooded area before hitting the motorway. As I’m driving down, listening to an audiobook, it occurs me to me that I hadn’t seen another car, on either side of the road for a really long time. I’m driving a fully loaded van, and get paid hourly, so I’m in no rush to go anywhere and cruise along at around 50-60mph, definitely slow enough for anything else on the road to easily overtake me. I left the base at around 1.30am, so understandable that there wouldn’t be constant traffic, but it’s a busy enough area that there’s would be regular vehicles moving around. So, I’m driving through the woods, listening to the book and generally just concentrating on driving, and I look at the clock on the dash- it’s 3.45am. Around two hours has passed with me driving through these woods, with not a single other vehicle in sight, and nothing happening. A few minutes later, my turning comes up, so I turn off, and hit the motorway for the drive home. All of a sudden a wave of tiredness hits me, so I pull in to a service station for a coffee. It’s only then that I realise just how long I’ve been driving. I should have been home by now, and instead I’m only just on the motorway, with still almost two hours to go. I check a map, and there is nothing around that could explain the time it’s taken. For context, I live in England, and we barely have any woodland that you couldn’t walk across in two hours, let alone drive. I decided to just carry on home, and assumed that I was mistaken. After a nights (mornings?) sleep, I thought back, and realised that I had almost perfect recall of the audiobook (it was a brand new story, no previous experience of the story or author), which I rarely get. I also remembered minute details of things I spotted in the woods, enough at the time to know that I wasn’t seeing the same stretch over and over again, things like a burned out van covered in police tape (enough to stand out, as it looked almost identical to the one I was driving. Believe me, that thought has stuck with me a lot!), a small herd of deer standing at the side of the road and watching me drive past, as well as a short track leading to a worn out little cottage. To this day, I’ve no clue what happened, but I spent two hours driving through a woodland, that the map showed was only a few hundred yards long. Most of the road I was driving on should have been country roads, which I didn’t see at all. There was no chance of a wrong turn that I could have taken. I’m convinced it was aliens. Thankfully, if I was probed, they were gentle…” — TheDemonPanda

5. We felt the entire building shaking as if an earthquake hit — but no one else noticed it

“I was trick-o-treating with a friend one Halloween when I was younger. He lived in an apartment so we decided to go through all the apartments in his building to get as much candy as possible. Nearing the top floors, we get out of the elevator and hear a loud bang, followed by the whole building shaking, so much that my friend would have fallen to the floor if it wasn’t because he was able to get to the wall and stay standing. We actually thought it was an earthquake, but there aren’t earthquakes where I live.

We were scared as fuck, and after the shaking was over we decided to ring a random doorbell to find some comfort or at least an adult. A lady opened the door, said hello very nicely, gave us candy and closed the door. We thought it was weird so we rang another doorbell and the same thing happened. We decided to go back to his apartment to ask his mom, and turns out nobody but us had heard or felt either the loud bang or the building shaking.

I still don’t know what happened.” — grimskull1 

6. I saw a group of people get hit by a tram

“I saw 3 people get hit by a tram in Blackpool. They had obviously been drinking and had crossed the tracks to pee, when the tram came they all ran to cross. One of them ran in front of it and was knocked flying, the other two ran into the side of it.” — VikramMukherjee

7. We witnessed unidentified objects flying through the sky

“About a couple years ago my friends and I were in my backyard around 11:30pm. We’re sitting down and we notice two orange orbs about the size of basketballs flying (exactly next to each other at the same speed) north over my house. They were flying too fast to be the Chinese lanterns or anything like that. After flying for about a mile and were over the lake by my house they split apart and disappeared. Nobody believes what we saw, even with all the stories of other sightings online.” — sdowdsy

8. Our truck flipped over four or five times

“My dad and I were in Namibia and we rolled a 4×4 truck while driving to avoid a head on collision. It flipped over about four or five times before coming to a stop sideways. And I’m no expert on gas tanks but ours was dented and I don’t know if it had the ability to blow up.” — razer1313

9. Me and my friends swear we saw bigfoot

“Was out on some four wheelers with a couple buddies. On some old logging trails. Very rural western Kentucky. Not so much as a house for maybe 30 miles. Come around a clearing, there’s a stream and saw what is either 100% real deal bigfoot or someone in a costume fucking with us. It was clear as day and we all saw it and we froze. For someone to be fucking with us, they would’ve either a) know we were going out there (it was a spur of the moment decision, only we knew) or b) would’ve had been camped out for days waiting on someone to be out there all while wearing a huge ass costume. We told friends and family and were just laughed at. We still talk about it with each other.” — 5meterhammer

10. My girlfriend found a way to enter my dream

“One night I was at this chill/party night with few close friends where we would drink some wine, smoke some pot and just play games or talked. Anyway I fell asleep and started sleepwalking. I came into the bathroom totally unaware of my actions, took my shirt off and started to wash it in the sink but without water. My friend followed me to make sure that I don’t do anything stupid because like I said I was sleepwalking and he notice that my backs are badly scratched. When I woke up tomorrow I started a day with chatting with my girlfriend and she told me that she read about entering someone’s dream and that she tried it last night. She was unaware of an incident that happened last night, so she couldn’t possibly make that up but she told me that she tried entering my dream and that in one moment we were having a sex with a lot of scratching. To this day I don’t know if it was sea lice or there is some voodoo shit going on.” — Cmek

11. I saw my grandmother’s ghost after her death

“I saw my grandmother’s ghost moments after she died as well as two of my cousins, and screamed, ran past her into the hallway, and cowered in my bed crying because it scared me how real and healthy she looked. She hadn’t looked healthy in years.” — jwc1995

12. I went through a time jump

“One night my friends called me and asked if I wanted to play poker. I said sure and headed over. I drive for about 15 minutes and arrived at my buddies house. He let me in but all the other guys were all just sitting around watching a movie. I asked what was up and they said they were done playing. I asked why they didn’t wait for me they insisted they had. He called me 3 hours ago! I have no clue what happened.” — sbashe5

13. Someone pulled out a grenade in the middle of a fight

“Save for the 4 people with me, no one believes this.

We got into a scrap with 2 Somalis. 15 minutes later, there was 20 of them. My friend called his brothers, they came.

One brother, with a very thick accent, said “you have problem with my brother, you have problem with me, that is very big problem.”

Cue a bunch of “What are you gonna do about man?”

Cue his brother taking out a grenade, pull the pin, and calmly stare at them.

They shut up and left. His brother then proceeded to give us a gun. We were 14.” — PopusiMiKuracBre

14. I spotted a UFO in the sky

“When I was 12yo I saw a UFO come over the mountain beside where I grew it. It was just like a ball of light but with a pointed end. I stood there amazed, no idea what I was seeing, but when its light started to illuminate the tree line up there I freaked out and ran home for my life, never looking back. I wish I had been braver back then but who know, maybe I did the smart thing?” — [deleted] 

15. Something hunted us from outside of our tent

“I haven’t told this story to anyone in a long time, and I’ve still never told my parents, just because I have no explanation for what happened.

When I was 15 (about ten years ago), my best friend invited me, my brother, and our other friend to go camping with him and his family. My buddy’s family drove us up to a dusty little parking lot of a campground in the Eastern Sierras called Millpond.

On the second night of our three night stay, we somehow convinced my friend’s parents to let us hike up into the hills, and set up a tent so we could stay the night on our own.

We spent most of the afternoon lugging gear up the hill, two or three miles away from the campground proper. When we finally finished setting up camp, we decided to go on a twilight hike in the hills. A few hours later, just past sunset, we returned. Exhausted from the day, we called it an early night and went to bed.

Hours later, we were suddenly awakened by bright lights shining through the thin material of our tent. They were coming from the direction of the hills. My friend guessed they were headlights, but they seemed far away, and none of us heard a running engine or any other sounds. Just an eerie, bright light in the distance.

After about three minutes, the lights went off. Confused, and a little afraid, we decided to try to go back to sleep.

I lie down, roll onto my side, and made eye contact with my friend who is facing me.

I’ll never forgot the look of absolute fear in his eyes.

I asked him what was going on, and all he could do was point at the tent above my head. I follow his finger, and see something poking the side of our tent, depressing the fabric so that the point of whatever is poking in is just inches from my face.

I screamed in fear, and scrambled away from the protrusion. My brother and other friend turned towards me, saw the protrusion, and yelled as well.

Strangely, it stayed there while we screamed, and only slowly retracted after a good 10-15 seconds.

We spent the next ten minutes huddled together, yelling threats at whatever was out there. Our shouts and screams were met by nothing but silence.

After our voices grew hoarse, my friends convinced me to open the tent flap and look outside. Trembling with fear, I unzipped it and poked my head outside.

I saw nothing. No vehicle, no tracks, no footsteps. Absolutely no evidence of anything approaching our tent.

We spent the rest of the night arguing about whether we should hike back down or not. In the end, none of us felt brave enough to make the trek back to camp. We stayed awake until morning, packed up the tent, and walked back down the hill.

When my friend’s mom asked how our night was, we just grumbled and said something about the cold. I’m not sure if we were afraid of getting in trouble, or just wanted to pretend that it never happened. Either way, we’ve never talked about it to this day.” — froyofoyohoe 

16. Something bizarre happened at my old worksite

“I was working a summer job at a huge company that assembles machines. This company was so huge, it had streets, bike/pedestrian lanes and crosswalks indoors. To make it even cooler there was an underground tunnel-system with some bunkers. The company used said bunkers to store documents and materials.

My job was to move a few thousand folders from one bunker into the other (mind these folders were massive and heavy, they contained every single bit of information about a sold machine). The bunker we took the folders from was very old and needed maintenance. It was wet, the air was suffocating and sometimes the lights made buzzing sounds. Really creepy from the start.

We took a break and rested on some stacked folders. Suddenly I felt a pressure in my head, saw black and was pushed to the floor. My colleague screamed and we bolted upstairs. After we caught our breath she told me she saw something behind me.

My theory was that the conditions were too bad down there and I was about to pass out but that never explained what my colleague saw. We never told anyone because these people were already looking down on us ‘dumb holiday workers.'” — Elyraion

17. I saw a large yellow ball pulse across the sky

“I was once sitting in my kitchen in the evening and had an intense sudden desire to ‘go outside and sit down.’ I argued with myself that I had no reason to go outside and sit down. After a few moments of internal arguing, I concluded I had no reason NOT to go outside and sit down. So i did. I went outside my back door, pulled up a fold out chair and sat down in a spot i never sit. As soon as I sat down and looked up over the tree line into the night sky, a large yellow ball pulsed out of the trees and stopped, then pulsed again and shot across the sky to the horizon like a streak of light. I got up and said to myself ‘nobody will ever believe this,’ and went back inside my home where a living room full of my friends never heard a word of what happened. I sat back down at my kitchen table and contemplated (still contemplating to this day) what it was. Unless humans have developed ESP along with ufos, I’m betting on aliens. So it’s either humans with high tech, or aliens with regular tech. There really isn’t any other explanation.” — Sillybillygumdrop

18. The entire house experienced bizarre nightmares

“There was a point during my childhood when everybody in my house had horrible, vivid nightmares for about five years. Bad dreams aren’t that bad until they happen weekly throughout your elementary school career, oftentimes on the same nights that my sister or parents would have them.

When I was in fourth grade, my mother converted to extremist Christianity. She never took any of the rest of us with her, but she would make a point to ‘pray’ in front of us. She was praying over dinner a few nights after Halloween, and she got completely carried away. She was yelling about protecting our house with the blood of Jesus Christ, about us being untouchable, about rebuking demons. It was bizarre, but eventually my dad shut her up and my sister and I decided to forget about it.

I woke up later that night from a nightmare, and the house was shaking. Seriously. I shared the room with my sister, and she was looking over at me with wide eyes. We lived in Wisconsin. Earthquakes don’t happen in Wisconsin. Needless to say, neither of us slept at all that night.” — bigindianjoe

19. We shot at a strange creature that approached our property

“I was staying on my family’s farm, about 300 acres at one time, lots of corn, and they had 6 giant sheep dogs. The big white fluffy kind. Great perirnese?

It was about 2am and I heard all the dogs barking. Not unusual there were wild coyote that tried to get to our chickens. So I go outside with my shotgun. I’m soon joined by my granddaddy.

He asked me if I saw anything. Nope. So we move to stand behind the dogs that are all looking at the same spot in the cornfield. We shine our flashlights and we see nothing. We give a command to the dogs. They don’t budge.

We started walking around the dogs to the cornfield edge and they came and horizontally put their body in front of us. I said Zeus what’s going on bud. (Oldest male dog) when I said that the stalks in front of my shook back and forth like someone was walking in them. My granddaddy yells to get back. We shine our lights in and still nothing. I’m shining right down the aisle of stalks that are still moving. No wind, the others are still. I’m like wtf.

My granddaddy says to fire a warning shot. I do. I then see, whatever it was, run back and forth horizontally making all the stalks in the 3-4 rows move. Then stop suddenly. Then shoot straight back into the thicket of the corn. Never saw anything, but those stalks were moving like something was tearing through them like a tornado.

The dogs stayed out there all night. We stared at the pitch black space in between stalks and never saw it happen that night or any other night again. Went out the next morning and saw tracks I’ve never seen in Alabama. Thought the usual like deer, possum, coyote, anything. But that didn’t add up either.

My granddaddy is gone now but I’ll never forget that night we sat there majority of the night on the porch just watching and listening to the world outside in nowhere alabama.” — kitxbox

20. We saw the ghosts of a herd of animals

“I was 16-17 and driving home from work at about 9:30 at night. The road I usually took home dipped into a little valley, taking a turn between two big hills. On this night, as I neared the bottom of the valley coming out of the blind, I saw a fucking buffalo. In the Chicago suburbs. I slammed on the brakes, and ::poof::. No more buffalo.

Everyone thought I was completely insane, and/or trashed. After awhile, I gave up.

Then one day in economics class, on one of his typical tagents on the history of our pretentious little backwater, the teacher says, ‘There used to be a buffalo farm over in the dip on Suchnsuch Road.’

I stood up, pointed at two of my friends in that class who hadn’t believed me, and shouted ‘GODDAMN GHOST BUFFALO!!’

Now no one believes that I saw the buffalo or that there was ever a buffalo farm. Such is life.” — silversatire 

Severe(d) is a creepy poetry collection by Holly Riordan
that glows in the dark! Get your copy here.