7. The blood tree

“We moved out of a house because of an experience my little brother had there. I was eight and my brother was six, and at that time we shared a room in the basement of the house. I woke up to him absolutely shrieking about a blood tree. He just kept repeating the words ‘blood tree’ over and over again. He was shaking, and he had wet himself.

I remember being very very scared. And also that no one treated it as a bad dream. My parents brought us into their room and we all stayed up until it got light. Then we pretty much gave notice and left within a week.

As a side note my dad says that when we were moving out he found my little brother under the stairs, pooping on the carpet—he thinks it was some kind of six year old ‘fuck you house!.’

I have asked my parents why they took what was a potential night terror so seriously. They both said on separate occasions that some really awful things had been happening and that was kind of the last straw.”

8. The bird with sneakers

“In my childhood I lived in a small city in the south of the Dominican Republic. One summer night around the year 2003, I was sitting in the garage, listening to a Discman around 9:40 PM. As I was listening to the music, the music stopped, and I froze, in slow motion (and I swear this is true) I saw a really huge brown type of bird/bat/humanoid thing flying above me, it lasted about 2 minutes until it got lost in the trees, until that thing didn’t get lost I couldn’t move. I then ran inside and told my mom, she said it must have been an eagle, but that thing was bigger than me… A few days later I was visiting some friends in the neighborhood where a man that used to work late at night told a similar story, the only difference he had a closer look and said the ‘bird’ was wearing white sneakers. He called it ‘El pajaro con tenis,’ which means ‘The bird with sneakers’… I think about it today, and still gives me the chills.”

9. Vision of a dead man

“I think I was around 12-13 years old when I was at a friend’s house working on some homework in his dining room. In the dining room one wall is covered with large mirrors. As I am doing my homework, in the corner of my eye I see an old man, dressed in old timey kind of depression era clothing—a fedora, suit jacket etc., with newspaper under his arm. My friend’s mother who was in the room sees this look on my face and asks me what’s wrong. I explain to her what I saw, and she goes and pulls an old photograph from a drawer of her grandfather, who used to live in the house. It was the man I saw, wearing the same clothing, with a newspaper under his arm. Only experience I can think of in my past like that.”