25 Horrifying Stories That Cannot Be Explained In A Scientific Way

These stories from Ask Reddit are unexplainable. And that makes them even MORE terrifying.

Girl with a horrifying story
Unsplash / Lyndsey Marie

1. A threatening voice interrupted the song on my CD

“I was in bed, listening to an album from a well-known metal artist. It was on full blast when suddenly the music got interrupted and a female voice started talking. She sounded like a flight attendant, and very politely and calmly stated ‘your greatest wish is to die. Your greatest wish will come true.’

I freaked out and ran from my room to grab an adult. They told me to stop freaking out, and that it was probably just a part of another song on the CD. I listened to that entire album several times and never found anything like that on it. Even today, I still try to search for a song that has those lyrics at the end.” — FreeCustomSpells

2. I felt a large hand against my chest — but didn’t see anything

“A few years ago, a couple of friends invited me to their cabin up in the Rockies to help clear some trees that were threatening the building. We were going to be out there two nights, and the first night was mostly making sure the cabin was in good shape, sorting out bunks, then beer and poker till the wee hours.

I got cleaned out about halfway through, so I get up to go to the bathroom. There isn’t a bathroom, though, only an outhouse a short walk away. Now, this place had a small porch, so there were two doors to actually get out. I walk out on to the porch, and say hi to my buddy who was having a smoke. I open the outer door and just…stop.

I can’t move. My legs will not walk, I can’t even move my arms or head. I have the sensation of a large hand, fingers spread, pressed against my chest. My friend asks me what’s up, so I tell him. I can’t move. Something is keeping me here. I’m not allowed to leave.

I stayed like this, kind of battling the feeling, for a few minutes. It never goes away. I finally decide that I don’t need to pee that badly and that I want to go back inside. The hand takes itself off my chest, and I can move. So I go back.

The people inside ask me how I made it so fast, and I tell them the truth. They kind of glance at each other like they know something, but never tell me what. The rest of the night, everyone else is free to use the outhouse. I don’t bother trying again until the sun comes up.

The part that bugs me is that the hand on my chest wasn’t meant to frighten me. I was never in danger from that hand. It kept me there to keep me safe. Which only tells me that there was something else out there waiting for me. Specifically.” — VoxDraconae

3. I heard a little girl’s laugh come out of a doll 

“Slight backstory, when my roommates and I moved in to our place, we found a plastic doll double bagged in garbage bags in the garage. One of them brought it into the house and now we have been noticing some strange occurrences in the house. I was walking through my house, none of my roommates were home and I heard a little girl laugh. A day or two later in a different part of the house one of my roommates was talking on the phone with his girlfriend who stopped him mid sentence to ask if there was a girl there. He said that there was no girl there, and she told him that she could hear a girl laughing in the background. Finally a couple days ago I was home alone and I walked past the basement door and could here a little girl having a conversation in the basement, couldn’t make out what was being said, but it was a voice if I have ever heard one.” — immaboss1856 

4. A face was smudged into my bedroom mirror

“I came back home from New York one night turned the light on in my room and notice the face of an older man smudged into the mirror. Nose, eyes, mouth everything. I took pictures of it as well and put it on Snapchat, my friends were so freaked out they told me to take it down which scared me even more.” — Yung-Hodor

5. I woke up with the sensation of my skin burning

“I woke up one morning to the sensation that my skin was burning. Within half an hour, boils had appeared all over my arms, and were still growing. They were the size of quaters, and about a cm thick. My mother drove me to the ER, where the doctors were really perplexed. All they could do was drain the pustules, but never once told me what it was. I still have the scars to this day.” — Nosynonymforsynonym

6. I saw baseball-sized orbs inside of a haunted house up for sale 

“We were looking at houses to buy, and found one that was absolutely perfect as well as affordable. It had a guest house which would’ve paid for the monthly mortgage if we decided to rent it. The only problem: One of the upstairs rooms was haunted.

It’s hard to explain. The rest of the house was charming and just our style, but one of the rooms upstairs had an overwhelmingly off-putting vibe that my husband and I both felt independently of each other. It felt like the room itself was angry or even evil. At the very least, it didn’t want us there.

I tried to write it off as being disoriented by the odd slope of the ceiling because the rest of the house was fine, and even though we were mutually creeped out, we decided to give it a second look with my husband’s parents. We did not mention the issue to them, choosing to focus only on the house’s good qualities. This was not only because we didn’t want them to think we were crazy, but also because my mother-in-law has claimed to be sensitive to the paranormal and we wanted to see if she’d react.

And she did. She was loving the rest of the house just as we had, but as soon as she walked through the doorway of the creepy room she backed out and said, ‘Ohh no. No no no. There’s spirit in here.’

We tried to sell her on our ‘oddly angled loft ceiling’ theory, but she didn’t buy it for a second. Admittedly it didn’t hold up very well. There were two rooms upstairs, one of which had a tiny door which lead to a large open storage space with a round window being the only source of light. A small hidden attic room can be a creepy thing in itself, but it didn’t have the same frightening vibe as the second room which was otherwise identical except it was missing the tiny door.

So, when everybody else was checking out the detached apartment, I went back upstairs with my camera for one final experiment. I stepped through the doorway into the room with the creepy vibe, and turned on my camera, making sure that the flash was turned off to avoid dust-orbs. ‘If anybody is in here and you want to prove that you’re real, I want you to show yourself for this photo,’ I whispered.

At that point, several(?) glowing orbs about the size of baseballs appeared in front of me and began moving rapidly in a circular formation. One appears in the photo, though it is not nearly as impressive as the actual sight. (My theory is that it was only one orb as seen by the camera, but was moving so quickly that it appeared to be several, kind of like a strobe light effect.)

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, as I had never witnessed anything like this before. As soon as I clicked the button, they disappeared. ‘Okay…’ I whispered quickly, ‘I promise I’ll leave after this, but I need to take one more photo to prove that you aren’t dust or something. Do not show yourself for this photo.’ Nothing happened. Only seconds after the first photo, the 2nd one had appeared normal.

I ran down the stairs and out the front door. ‘We are NOT buying this house,’ I said to my husband, and we left shortly afterwards.” — NeedsMoreTuba

7. My remote control car moved on its own

“Had a remote control car for christmas which I’d spent most of the day playing with. Comes to bed time and I put the car on the floor under my desk underneath my raised bed (had ladders up to it) and the controller on the desk.Now both the car and the controller had on/off switches that obviously had to be on for the car to work. Anyway, I go to bed as normal and fall asleep. Wake up in the early hours of the morning to a dim revving sound and bumping, followed by my dad huffing, getting out of bed and saying “CAJones95, what are you doing playing at this time?!” Dad proceeds to come into my room, where I am half-awake in bed, with the car driving forwards and backwards on its own, with the switch off, and the controller in the exact position it was in, with the switch also off. Didn’t think anything of it at the time, but looking back its creepy as fuck to me.” — CAJones95

8. I had a dream that brought me physical pain 

“Went to bed with the chair next to my bed and my back turned to the chair. I will cut this short but I dreamt this weird chick with long black hair and a distorted face tried to get me to do some public speaking to receive a prize when I refused she slapped rapidly what I can only describe as 10 slaps in one slap that was so hard I jolted forward waking up halfway through the jolt. The strange and horrifying thing is that it felt like someone had slapped me hard in the back and I had pain that lingered for a few minutes after. It was to the point that I had to go check in the mirror for a handprint.” — l-Orion-l

9. We lived in a Victorian house where weird things would happen 

“When I was younger we lived in a 110 year old victorian house. Everyone would notice weird things.

I was home alone organizing the silverware when I dropped a fork on to the table only to have it bounce once and fly at the wall like someone slaped it. I still have no idea how you can drop something strait down and have it launch horizontal for 5 ft

my parents when they first bought the house turned off all the lights (5 floors if you count basement and attic) My mom did the top 2, father did the bottom, the met in the middle, went to the first floor, left, got to the car and noticed not only was the 3rd floor light on but the blinds were now up.

We had a seesaw, my mother turned on the light and saw it violently going up and down.

I was in the basement and felt a hand brush down my back. I jumped and turned and saw no one there. I convinced myself it was just my shirt moving weird. As I went up the steps I heard giggling.

When I was older I was sitting on the couch and heard my dad say “What the fu waTCH OUT” right before a framed puzzle we had fell on me. My dad said he saw it lift it’s self off the hook

we had a Mastiff, A Rottweiler, and a German Shepard. They refused to go to the attic.

Our entrance had two sets of doors. The front doors, then a small room, then the second set of doors. We never locked those doors as it was two large bolts that went into the floor and then a 3rd bolt that held the two doors together. Locking it was very hard with a key so you could only do it from the inside with considerable force. We came home one day and the door was locked with all 3 bolts. In other words our completely sealed house was locked from the inside. My mother flipped, grabbed us, and ran to a payphone to call the police because if that door is locked then there is someone in the house unless the left via a second or 3rd story window. 3 cop cars came, they unlocked the door with my mothers key and swept every last inch of the place down to one of them going into our crawl space. Nothing. Not only that my mothers gold necklace was laying on the table and all the windows were locked. We had a family friend who is a cop and one of my uncles who is a cop come spend the night. Next morning everyones is up and my uncle goes to leave only to see that the door is again locked from the inside. We removed those locks that same day.

Mastiff was laying next to me while I was watching TV. Suddenly he jumps up and backs into me. He’s growling and snarling while staring up the steps. The other two dogs run in and immediately have their ears go back and their mohawks go up. This went on for several minutes. Our german shepherd started inching toward the step and did a little lunge nipping at the air bearing his teeth. about a 5 seconds later I heard what sounded like someone full sprinting up the steps of the first floor from the landing to the second-floor steps, then the third. I called my mom from the house phone. While on the phone I heard what I can only describe as a wail from the the 3rd floor.

Years later, parents are divorced, I’m with my dad for the weekend. I helped him clean the 3rd floor. We put the toys in a large toy chest from the closet they where in. While we our brushing our teeth I go pale. I’m hearing something so I shut off the water and ask my dad to listen. We both are completely quite. The sound starts again. it’s the sound of clink clink but a bit of rhythm to it. I couldn’t place it at first then said ‘Dad I think that’s the xylophone’ we go up and the toy chest is open and the xylophone is on the floor.” — suitology

10. I saw a set of eyes in my darkened bedroom

“I was laying in bed, and all of a sudden felt scared out of my mind. After a few minutes of this, I looked around and saw in one section of the room… a set of eyes. I turned on the light.. and nothing. Nothing was there. I got up, walked towards the bedroom door, and had to rest myself on my brothers bed (he lives with my mom, so he wasn’t here for this) and nearly had a nervous breakdown. I slept with a light on for the next week.” — TasteOfBrainland

11. I experienced a strange series of dreams

“I’d have some strange dreams when I was a kid.

Once I dreamed that I was at a large amusement park type place. It has some rides and some obstacle course things, like a rock wall and a ball pit.

About 6 months later I dreamed about the same place. Then again 6 months later. It was always dark outside but there were many lights. They kept moving stuff around; every time things would be different but it was still the same place. The place was showing signs of age that were much greater that a year. It looked like it might have been 15 or 20 years. Things were beginning to rust.

I had to convince myself that if this place existed that I had never been there awake.

That place always had a sinister feel to it, as if there were something going on that couldn’t be seen. It felt like being lured away from or into something. It was as if I were to stray off the path I could easily become lost or trapped and that if I were there then I was already off the path. There were never any ride attendants, nobody selling tee shirts. Just people seemingly having fun.

I forgot about it.

A year later I was laying in my bed at my father’s house. Suddenly I was there again. I couldn’t believe it. That time it was totally an abandoned amusement park, beyond repair and completely deserted. Grasses growing through the sidewalks and the buildings being also overrun with vegetation. Everything rusty and broken. It was still dark outside and the place was lit up with artificial light, no longer bright. Old style yellow light bulbs. All the colorful lights were gone. Apparently the place had expanded quite a bit before falling into total decline. There was at least one badly dilapidated concert hall. When I had dreamed about it before there before there were no indoor concert venue.

Although the creepy factor had increased, I wasn’t afraid that time. If there were ever anything to fear about that place I guess it had fallen into decay as well. Whatever it was would no longer work. Fluid would have leaked into the parts that were supposed to be dry and would have come out of the parts that were supposed to have liquid inside them. It would be totally bound up with age in whatever back room corner it were last stored and it would have trees growing up through it.

It was very interesting how I felt about that series of dreams.” — JesterofToms 

12. I watched as a deer shifted into a grown man

“I’ve posted about this before. I was about 7 or 8 and my family was staying a few nights at my paternal grandparents’ home in the woods. I always hated that place as there was this unnerving sense about the place. Dad said it was because I was used to living in suburbia but like, there weren’t even any real animal noises. No bugs buzzing, no birds, nothing at night. It was like a dead zone, but even more than that, I always felt like something was out there, beyond the yard.

I slept in a bedroom with my little brother, sharing a bed. He would sleep at one end, I the other, facing the window. This particular morning, I woke up and the room was suffused with the golden glow of morning, shining through the curtains. It was actually kinda pretty. And then I saw it.

The shadow of a deer against the window. It looked almost like it was pressed against it in profile. It had massiveantlers, and was just standing there. I stared in silent awe.

And then it changed.

In one smooth motion, the deer reared up on its hind legs, and just…shifted, and was now a man. The man was clearly well built, and not either of the two adult men in the area (dad had a gut, granddad was built like he was made of bricks, this thing was more raw power). It stared to the side for a moment before striding off with purpose. I remember being frozen in fear. It was the sheer sense of wrongness, of power, that made me afraid to draw any attetnion. I don’t think it even knew I was there.

Amusingly, I now live in the woods not too far from there. But my woods are so different, it’s like night and day. Animal life abounds, it gets so noisy at night (So many frogs and foxes). No sense of something watching.

I want to tell myself it was just me half awake, but I dunno.” — Kii_and_lock

13. My room faced a graveyard and something scratched on my window

“My grandma used to live in Gettysburg, PA. In case you didn’t know, Gettysburg is known to be totally haunted. Well, my mom left me with my grandma for a year to go break up with my Dad, and my grandma lived in this house that used to be a church or something like that, the ‘backyard’ was a graveyard. My room had a window that faced the graveyard, and I saw all kinds of horrible inexplicable shit.

A few examples: scratching on my walls or at my window, seeing faces or hands in the window, watching people walk around the graveyard on fire, hearing footsteps in the house when my grandma wasn’t home, seeing people crouched in the corner of my ceiling talking quickly and in tongues, etc.” — thomas_the_plane00

14. I fell down an empty water well and was saved by the supernatural 

“When I was a young boy in Canada (5 or 6 years old), my dad and I went to one of his friend’s house for some reason. I was running around the backyard pretending I was an airplane while they hung out inside talking. I ran over this wood enclosed hill ready to ‘make my landing’ when the boards caved and I fell through in to what I later found out was an empty water well. As I was falling, I heard a voice in my head say something like ‘grab the rope’ or ‘grab the wire’, so I did. My dad later told me a shock ran down his spine telling him to go check on me at almost that exact moment. When he got over the hole he saw me down the well hanging for my life. He climbed down the rope and grabbed me, and later told me he legit had to force my foot out of my shoe to get me out, because my shoe was stuck in the brick wall of the well. We both later found out that the guy who owned the well was confused because he didn’t have any kind of rope leading down, due to him taking his out since no one would fill it that time of year. To make it creepier, my mom called this house minutes after this happened because she felt some kind of shock also and was worried about us. I still believe to this day that I have some sort of Guradian Angel, and I hope I can some day make it proud for its efforts.” — Nujabliss

15. We heard an evil voice inside of our dorm room

“I was a freshman in college in 2004, where my high school best friend and I shared a dorm room in a suite that housed four. Our dorm was new; it was built the year before we came to school. A few weeks after we started college, he and I were laying in our respective beds, both of us falling asleep (he may have been asleep at this point–sleep never came that easily for me).

Lights were out. Laptops were closed. We didn’t have a TV in our room (the tv was in the common area outside our room). In 2004, we only had Nokia brick phones, so no one was playing on their phone from bed. Like I said, lights out.

Anyway, as I was just drifting off to sleep, right in that twilight phase between consciousness and dreaming, I awoke to what sounded like a loud mix of twisting metal and powerful electric current. It was coming from inside my dorm room–just feet away from within the empty space between the foot of my bed and my roomie’s bed. As soon as the noise began, I also heard a voice.

At first, I couldn’t understand what the voice was saying. Not because it was quiet–it was LOUD. But the words were unintelligible gobbledygook. Imagine the Tasmanian devil from Loony Tunes–just speaking total jibberish–except this voice was very angry. It sounded malicious. Evil.

The voice cut right over the loud metallic/electric sound, and reverberated as if it was coming though a large PVC pipe. Eventually, I understood the words ‘COCKSUCKERMOTHERFUCKER’ and a few more curse words. The voice and the clanging went on for maybe a total of 10 seconds.

Then everything went silent.

I laid in bed with the covers over my face for what seemed like forever. Eventually either I or my roomie asked the other if they had heard he voice. We both did.

At some point one of us mustered the courage to turn on a light and check out the room. We thought maybe someone had been playing a prank on us. We checked for speakers in our air vents, checked our laptops to see if some pop-up ad had played a sound, and explored other scenarios. We eventually asked the guy in the room next to us if he had heard anything (he was a quiet guy and we didn’t suspect him of prancing us). He hadn’t.

To this day I have no idea what that was.” — jhnygtr

16. A hand grabbed me inside of my basement bedroom

“When I was sleeping in my basement bedroom one night in my old family house. I was awaken by a hand grabbing my right calf and jerking me a foot or so down the bed to where my leg was dangling off the bottom the bed. I remember that I had grabbed the sides of the bed to try and stop the motion. I stayed in that position for a good 20 or so mins before I finally had the courage to move. Eventually curling into a ball and refusing to move until morning.” — GGRIMM69

17. I felt something sit on the bed alongside me

“My bedroom was in the basement and it was an old house with creaky stairs so you could here someone coming down. I was laying on my bed with my back to the door and I felt my bed dip down beside me as if someone was sitting on my bed. Every hair on my body stood up and I was shaking as I turned around to see who it was too afraid to talk. There was no one on my bed but the dip was still very noticeable. I felt it left up as if who ever was there got up as soon as it did I ran out of my room and up the stairs and the whole way up I felt as if there was someone standing directly behind me. I really want to go back to that building and see if it’s still as haunted or if it was just our family.” — npcvillager

18. I lost two hours of my life

“I lost two hours of my day once.

I was getting ready for college and my dad was going to drop me off so he was there too.

We were watching the news and it froze. We turned the TV off and on to get it working again and in that time, two hours had passed.

So either we both slept without realizing it or something weird happened.

I think we crossed into another dimension personally.” — FailingDegree91

19. My son kept talking about his past life

“My 5 year old step son likes to tell me about his other life when he had a different name and didn’t live with us. He will randomly tell me bits of information about this past life and I’m always unsettled by it. Especially because the names of places or names of people are ones we’ve never talked about or used around him.

He’s told me he lived in California in a city that had a T at the beginning and an A at the end (I looked it up; there’s like 2). He’s mentioned several times that he misses driving his red sports car on the beach. We live on the east coast and have never been to California or taken him to a beach.

He’s also talked about coming home to find his new kitten had escaped from his apartment and had been hit by a car in the street. He described her, told me her name, and talked about how sad it still made him sometimes.” — AnxiousOwlette

20. We heard a female screaming out in the forest

“I live near a set of woodlands, and foxes do scream and bark at night (especially between 2am and 4am on the nights where I have to wake up at 5:30am).

A few months ago, the foxes did the call of their people at the usual time of 2:37am. They fell silent around 20 minutes later. Okay, a bit odd because they usually go on for 40 minutes, but whatever, I’ll go back to sleep. This was during August, and they tend to go on for two hours maximum. 10 minutes later, there was one last scream, but this time, it sounded more… human. You know in the movies where the female lead gets attacked and she screams bloody murder? That’s what that one scream sounded like to a T. Needless to say, I did not go back to sleep and resorted to watching the sunrise from my window.

The next morning, my brother came into my room and asked if I heard that scream as well, because it woke him up. When I said I did, we both went to the woods and looked around in there for any signs of foul play. Nothing came up, and the police didn’t bother with doing an investigation.” — BonLee64

21. I didn’t recognize my own neighborhood 

“My husband and I were driving down the road, in our neighborhood – I road I drove down every day and I suddenly had no idea where we were. I couldn’t recognize any common land marks, street names, etc. I started to really panic. My husband calmed me down, reminded me that I was safe, etc. It passed but thinking about it gives me chills still.” — sassylittlespoon

22. My childhood home had something living inside of my room

“I’m convinced my childhood home was haunted and that ‘he’ lived in my room. I thought I was nuts until years after I moved out when my dad took my room and he started having the some of the same experiences. It’s tough to choose just one.

Pets would refuse to be in my room, cats would claw at my door desperate to get out for seemingly no reason. I never slept well and always had the light on. It would always start with tapping at my window. As I would drift off to sleep, it felt like someone punched my pillow and I’d shoot up, terrified. Often I would wake up with my hand aching because I had been tightly gripping the sheet all night.

I tried taking a stand and saying out loud that this is my room and ‘he’ wasn’t welcome here. A sheet of paper then lifted off my dresser, curved in the air, and slipped behind the dresser. Never found it.

Once I was home alone when I was 13 or so. I was reading a book in my room when it sounded as if someone threw a box against the wall in my closet with all their strength. I called my grandfather to come get me and tried to go outside, but my parents had locked the iron gate on the door (ghetto neighborhood) and didn’t leave a key so I was trapped inside until my grandfather arrived and found me pressed against the gate.” — Witchundertones 

23. A speeding car completely vanished from the highway 

“My friend and I were driving up to Acadia national park in Maine for a camping trip a few summers back. We were driving in the middle of the night. Somewhere in New Hampshire I nodded off while my friend was driving. I wake up about an hour later and my friend tells me a car has been following us for the past 20 minutes. I brushed it off because we’re on a highway there’s only one direction to go. But my friend stopped the car in the middle of the highway there’s no one on the road but us and the other car. We wanted that car to catch up to us it was about a mile back. The other car stops as well and then turns off its headlights. We’re flipping out. We hit the gas and start driving, the other car turns on its headlights and starts driving again too. We’re speeding and the car is keeping up. We pull off at the next exit and stop at a gas station. From there we could see the exit and the highway… a car never passed or got off the highway.” — Reggiesanchez

24. I heard someone whispering my name while staying in an ancient cottage

“When I was a kid, I was staying in this really old cottage with my family. I woke up and went to the bathroom around 3am.

While I’m sitting on the toilet in the tiny bathroom, I suddenly hear my name being whispered behind me. I kind of shake it off, since I figure I’m still sleepy and maybe it’s the trees from the open window. I go about my business for another 10 seconds before I hear my name being whispered again, much louder. There was no mistaking it this time and there’s no doubt it’s coming from something right behind me. However, behind me is just a thick wall to the outside.

I finished up as fast as I could, all while my name is still being chanted/whispered behind me. The sink was directly across from the toilet, and above it there was a mirror. I washed my hands while looking at my feet because I had this terrible feeling that if I looked up I’d see whatever was chanting my name. I ran back to my bed and I don’t think I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night for about six years after that.

I still can’t explain who was saying my name, the cottage was small and I could see everyone in my family asleep in their beds on my way to the bathroom. On top of that, the cottage was in the woods, so even if it was a random creeper, I don’t know how they would have known my name or that I would happen to go to the bathroom at 3am.

Ugh, still creeps me out. We’ve had weird experiences in that cottage, but that was by far the worst for me.” — thatoriginalclone

25. I suddenly lost all feeling in my limbs

“Elementary school, 3rd grade. Played a game of tag with my friends. Climbed up the side of the stairs in front of the school’s bowling alley. As I pulled myself up, there was a sudden pain that shot up and down my legs then slowly went up my spine. I lost all feeling in my legs. I could feel my heart beating intensely as it was getting harder and harder to breathe. I couldn’t scream or say a word. I was laying down the marble floor and I remember this kid staring at me. I reached out with my right arm and I lost feeling in my arm too. I felt like I was passing out. I remember a bright white light then nothing. I remember hearing myself breathe. Then regaining control of my arms. Crawled to a spot where I sat myself up. I just looked at my feet. I was sweating profusely. I felt really cold. All of that happened, it felt like a long time but I think it was just 5 minutes. I still don’t know what happened to me. I also never saw that kid at school again. I am extremely paranoid it might happen to me again randomly.” — TheSixthPistol Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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