Horror stories are one of the most interesting things to hear. But it would be very different if it happened in real life. Hair-raising events really do happen, and unexplainable encounters exist.
You might want to have someone to read this with because you’re about to dive in the spookiest and spine-chilling side of the internet.
1. Momma’s Instinct
The scariest thing I've had happened while camping. So, I live in eastern Oregon, and my mom lives in western Oregon. I went to visit her for the summer, and she's very outdoorsy, so we decided to take the 1-hour drive from her city to the coast.
We ended up at this free campsite at the top of this hill (huge foothills of the coastal mountains, about a 25-minute drive from where the campsite is to the bottom where the main road was), and we were the only campers there.
We relaxed for the rest of the day, made food, etc. A truck full of men drove up the hill and talked with my mom (idk what about; I wasn't suspicious at the time), and they left us.
Fast forward to the middle of the night. I wake up to my mom sitting straight up in the tent. I woke up easily, so I heard her gasp, and it woke me.
As soon as she saw I was awake, she put her hand over my mouth because I was starting to ask her what was wrong. It was dead silent, and suddenly, you hear footsteps RIGHT beside the tent. The little flap that covers the zipper was even moving.
Thankfully, my mom had quick wits and said very loudly, "Kenny, grab the gun." Kenny is my dad, although that doesn't matter, and mind you, he was not there, just us girls like I previously said. They left. No harm was done. Thank the lord for my momma.
[deleted]
2. Eagle Eyes
I was camping in a valley by myself with no cell service. I stayed late on a trail and ran into a nice local dude as it was getting dark. He showed me a local camping spot close to the road and the river but camouflaged.
I had a fire, drank beer, and listened to my friend’s comedy podcast. I was loud and visible. Because it was dark already, I decided to sleep in the back of my truck under my topper next to all of my gear as opposed to setting up my tent.
The next morning, I made a fire, cracked a beer, and started making breakfast. Then I notice that there is a man at the edge of my camp.
He comes closer but never looks directly at me. This dude looks homeless, has a long, ratty beard, and has at least a hundred plastic grocery bags tied all over his clothes. I comment about how nice the day is.
No response from him. I offer him breakfast, but nothing. He sort of paces around the perimeter of my camp. I offer him a beer. But he just turns around.
The dude is just standing there back to me, wandering around. I’m realizing that there isn’t going to be any good happenings. I had my bear spray and buck knife super close.
I give him an ultimatum, “Jerkward, you are either going to acknowledge me or leave immediately!” He ignores me. I grab the bear mace and walk a few steps towards him.
He sulked away, and I threw my things in my truck and left that place quickly. I wonder if he watched me during the night, and I thank my laziness for staying in my truck instead of a tent.
anselmo_ricketts
3. Sketchy Apartment
I lived in an old apartment in 2002. The place was built in 1900, so it was just over 100 years old when I moved in. The living room and kitchen were fine, but the bathroom and bedroom were unnerving.
I just always felt like I was being watched, especially in the bedroom if the closet door was open. Those unnerving feelings just became moderately uncomfortable as I settled in. I felt safe in the bedroom, but only if the door was locked.
One night, I was dead asleep when a loud BANG was on my bedroom door. When I got up the courage to get out of bed, I checked the apartment, and all the windows were closed and locked from the inside. The door still had the chain secured. No one was in there.
I mentioned the closet in the bedroom. I never liked going in there, and I never liked it if the door was open. For some reason, in my head, I would hear gasping noises. So, for that reason, the closet stayed closed.
A month or more after I was woken to the bang on my door, I was dead asleep. But something woke me up, which was a pressure on me like being held down. It was pitch black in my room. I couldn't see anything but knew someone was standing over me. No one was there when I could finally turn on a bedside lamp.
After that, I couldn't sleep in the dark. I had to sleep with a lamp on. That incident scared the life out of me. And after that, the unnerving feeling of being watched intensified. Friends would come over and comment about being uncomfortable in the bathroom like being watched.
It became so uncomfortable for me when I had the chance to move to another unit, and I jumped at it. I packed up and got out. After me, several people rented the apartment, and they would move out within months.
I became friendly with the building manager and told him I felt the place was haunted. He kind of laughed it off. Years after, they were renovating the place. The building manager was doing some painting there, and the building owner was there, too.
I went and checked out the apartment, and it looked nicer. It didn't feel as creepy. I got to talking with the building owner. Throughout the course of the conversation, he just threw it out there that a former tenant died.
He also mentioned that the original designer of the building lived in that apartment and died there. I wasn't mad when I heard that, but I felt validated that what I experienced was real.
tightiewhities37
4. Moving Picture
When my grandparents bought their house for a family of 10, my grandpa found a fake wall upstairs. He tore it down to make more room for the family.
Behind the wall were children’s clothes and play toys, almost like they hurriedly walked out of the room. My mom told me stories of sitting in her room and something circling the walls around her, sounding like wallpaper being torn.
When she moved out, my aunt moved into the same room. She would wake up with pictures she hung up lying on her chest in the morning.
My cousins also have stories of hearing footsteps coming up the stairs and stopping outside their door in the middle of the night.
I still don’t go upstairs to their house because it’s always cold, and I get weird vibes up there. Even in my adult life, I have scary dreams that take place in their upstairs.
DickRubnuts
5. Mystery Party
While at uni, my friends and I ran out of booze. Hardly any shops were open because it was late, so the only option was to walk the mile to the nearest 24-hour supermarket.
Between the supermarket and the dorms we lived in was just row after row of suburban houses, which all looked the same. As we were walking down one road, we passed a field with a large campfire and some people riding horses around it.
There were people playing musical instruments and general sounds of a good time going on - the horses and fire, and the lanterns which were dotted about, gave it a very old-fashioned feel.
Maybe 5 minutes after passing the field, now walking past houses again, one of my friends commented on how weird and out of place that gathering of people had been.
My other friend and I had been thinking exactly the same thing, so curious, we turned around and walked back to find out exactly what was going on.
There was nothing there. There were not just no people or horses; there was no field, just more and more houses. Even though we were absolutely certain we were on the right road, as we'd simply turned around, we walked up and down the neighboring roads, too.
We found nothing. We weren't drunk, though we'd had some drinks, and so I've got absolutely no idea what happened that night.
luckycynic
6. Vanished Into Thin Air
My family friend and her sister once walked their dogs through a huge empty field. They noticed an older-looking man coming towards them on an even older-looking bike, wearing clothes from what seemed to be the 1930s.
He looked right at them, smiled, and said, "Good morning, ladies." And they just smiled and nodded as he passed them. They both turned to look around at him no less than 30 seconds later to see no sign at all of him. Very odd.
aural89
7. The Cycling Guy
My grandad had a spine-chilling experience in the 1940s. He was cycling late at night down a road in north Yorkshire and came upon a man on horseback dressed in older garb.
He said hello to him, but the man didn't reply, and they rode along together for a short while. The man suddenly wasn't there anymore.
He cycled home in fright. He ran inside white as a sheet, and my great-grandfather took one look at him and asked him if he'd seen the horseman.
[deleted]
8. The House
He's a pretty serious guy and not one to make things up, so I believe him. One of the stories, for instance, was that he was driving down a country road after shopping and saw a family walking on the side of the road in the middle of summer in St Louis, so it was hot.
But the family was all wearing odd clothes, and the first thing he noticed was none of them wore shoes. The clothes were more like shawls or wraps.
It was a man and a woman with a child, so he stopped to offer a ride since it was hot and they were in the middle of nowhere. They agreed, and the man said their house was just a few miles down the road.
So he drives them up and drops them off at a little cottage-like house on the side of the road. A few weeks passed, and he was driving with my Aunt, to whom he had told this story too.
He said, "Up here is the house I dropped that family off at," and when they got up there, there was no house, no nothing, it was just the ditch and grass. Nothing was ever there.
So, who knows? I'm super skeptical about anything like that, but it was HIM who told me, and my aunt corroborated it, which made me wonder.
Soeldner
9. Strange Knock
Back when I was a kid, my grandmother had a really close friend who used to help her babysit us. One day, she goes missing. The family doesn't know where she is, and we don't.
About a week later, police found her body in a dumpster. She had been dead for 4-5 days. Incredibly tragic. Who would mug an old lady?..
Here's the spooky story. A few days just before she was found, my three cousins swore they saw her walking around in their backyard and knocking on their windows. The following day, we had a search going through the area.
It wasn't until the body was found that we realized what they saw couldn't be true according to the police timeline, but they swore it was her.
ObiMemeKenobi
10. Odd Room
Four years ago, I lived in a huge farmhouse that was converted into two apartments. The house was known as the ''old boys home''. It was used to house boys with behavioral issues but was closed due to allegations of molestation.
Anyway, I was living with my boyfriend and three-year-old daughter then. My bedroom had a large fireplace boarded up and painted over. I decided to push my bed against it one day while rearranging things.
It was like a headboard. That night, around 1 am, I heard a small voice saying, 'Mom, mom, mommy.’ I had sat up in bed but didn't see anything, so I reached over to my boyfriend, trying to grab down to grab my daughter and put her in our bed.
I kept feeling around, still hearing the voice, but I couldn't feel her. My boyfriend woke up and turned the bedside lamp on, asking me, ''What the heck are you doing?" I explained that Amelia was trying to get in our bed, and I was reaching for her.
There was nobody there. My daughter was sound asleep in her room. Then the next night came. Around 1 am, my dog again started to whimper at our door, so my boyfriend got up to take him outside.
You know that feeling in a bed when someone lies down next to you? When the bed pushes in, and there is a warmth in your back? I felt that, so I assumed my boyfriend had returned to bed.
I rolled over, my boyfriend wasn't in the bed, and I felt the bed release pressure. Whatever was lying next to me had gotten up in that second. I moved my bed the next day to the other side of the room, and I have never had another incident in the two years I remained in that house.
GoatbustersBM
11. Dream Or Nightmare
My wife and I were having a great weekend in Las Vegas when my father-in-law passed away in the early morning hours. We get the call and haul ass to get back to the rest of the family.
After a couple of hours, the family is all together and talking, sharing memories when we arrive. Shortly after we arrive, it gets brought up how we are going to share this news with our niece (who was in prison at the time).
While trying to figure it out, a call comes from out of nowhere..... it is our Niece, and she asks what happened to Grandpa. She had a dream that he visited her and said goodbye. She freaks and calls us. Weird!
stylusnix
12. Pee Ghost
I went to use the bathroom at work, and when I entered, there was no one there. The bathroom has 4 urinals and 4 stalls (one handicap), and I did not see any feet in any of the stalls.
I took up my normal spot inside one stall and was doing my business when I heard the sound of someone peeing into one of the urinals....but no one had entered the bathroom.
The door is heavy and loud when it closes, so I would've heard someone entering. The peeing stopped after a normal amount of time, and I heard a few footsteps. But the door never opened. When I finished up, I did a cursory look, and there was no one in the bathroom.
DualJ
13. Unidentified Figure
At the time, I was around 14. I’d asked my dad to wake me up early that morning at about 5 am because I had some work to get done.
That morning, I was woken up and flung my legs over the side of my bed. I felt a tug on both of them. At the time, I thought my dad was trying to get me to hurry up.
I reached over to pick up my phone and turned it on at 3:30 am. I looked over at the black figure I assumed was my dad, and it was gone.
tom-evvans
14. Bright Skies
This just happened to me two days ago: I was walking into the house after work around 6 PM, so it was already mostly dark. Suddenly, the entire sky lit up bright green.
There was a super loud ZAP sound, just like a movie laser or something, right over my head...so loud that I hit the deck and then tore back into the house.
One of my roommates was cooking dinner, and I was like, "WHAT THE HECK, DID YOU FREAKING SEE THAT," but he didn't.
We went back outside, no transformers near or out, no house's electricity out, no sign of disturbance at all. Now, I'm a rational grown man.
I’m a believer in science and always the "there must be a rational explanation for this" guy, but this was truly mindblowing, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.
kmoneyrecords
15. Cold Feet
I’m from Scotland, and when I was a child, my Mum and Dad took my sister and me on a trip to Fort William, which is a town up in the Highlands. People go there for skiing and hiking.
It wasn’t winter, so we were there to do some easy hiking (my sister and I were quite young; I was about 11) and to stay for a couple of nights. I can’t remember the name of the hotel we stayed at, but I do remember that it was old-fashioned, and we were all in one room together.
There was a single bed (where I was sleeping), a double bed in the middle (my parents were there), and another single on the other side (my sister’s).
I was often frightened when I was a girl. I didn’t like the dark, and I was super scared of the possibility of ghosts, etc. I never found it easy to sleep because of this, even at home.
I vividly remember tossing and turning that first night in the hotel for a long time before lying on my back and trying to calm myself down. I then felt the bed sink a little next to my feet. I heard the creak of the old mattress.
Someone was sitting at the foot of my bed. My heart was honestly pounding. I was terrified because I hadn’t heard my sister or parents get up.
Whatever was sitting there quickly moved so it was sitting on my feet. I felt the weight of whatever it was. I heard the mattress creak again. My feet were freezing cold. It then moved off my feet and settled down next to them again. The old mattress shifted and creaked again.
Within a second or two, I felt the coldest I’ve ever felt, but not throughout my whole body. The coldness was slowly rising up from my feet, accompanied by a feeling of pressure. I was too scared to open my eyes.
I was willing to call for my Mum, but I was so scared that I just couldn’t at first. When I managed to shout out and wake the rest of my family, the cold, pressured feeling had reached up to my knees. When the lights were switched on, the feeling vanished.
I have no explanation for this whole situation. My Dad slept in that bed the next night, and I stayed awake the whole night in the double with my Mum.
bruciabogtrotter
16. Crying Baby
When I was in high school, my uncle would throw me a couple of bucks to help babysit his kids with my aunt. They lived in a two-story house by the water, a nice area. The kids were about 3 and 6.
One day, I was sitting in their den on my phone when I heard a baby crying. Thinking it was the three-year-old, I headed to the bottom of the stairs to check and see if my aunt was up there dealing with it.
I called her a couple of times and have yet to hear back. The baby kept crying. I called for her one more time, and when I got no response, I started walking up the stairs.
Then I heard my cousins and aunt playing outside. All the hairs on my body stood up, and I literally felt a chill run down my spine.
I quietly turned around, walked down the stairs, got in my car, and drove away. The "baby" was still crying when I closed the door behind me.
A few years later, I was drunk at a family party and told my uncle the story. He told me that he and his wife used to hear the baby, too, and apparently, the previous owners had a kid die of SIDS in that room upstairs.
He's uber-Catholic and had a Mass said for the baby. He said afterward that it never happened again. It still gives me the willies when I talk about it, though.
urgehal666
17. Moving Chair
I came home from work one day to grab my spare tires. My sister was away at school 7 hours away, and neither of my parents was going to be home for another 5 hours at minimum.
I ran in, changed my clothes, grabbed my tires, and then drove to a garage to get them installed. I got home 2 hours later, and as I walked into the living room, there was a chair just sitting in the middle of the hallway and facing the front door.
I thought nothing of it but didn't recognize the chair as being one that we owned. It was a standard metal folding chair that you would buy for a couple of bucks at a retail store. I folded it up and propped it up against my dad's workbench in our garage.
My mom gets home a couple of hours later, and I ask her in passing why she left a metal chair in the middle of the hallway. She tells me we don't own any metal chairs and that she hadn't been home up until an hour ago.
I told her I had come home, and there was a metal chair just sitting in the middle of the hallway after I had gotten back from the garage. She told me to show her the chair, and when I went out to the garage to show it to her, it was gone.
I looked high and low for that metal chair but couldn't find it. I swore to her that I wasn't on drugs and that I wasn't imagining things.
She thought what I was telling her was strange but didn't pay much attention to it. I never saw that chair again, nor do I know where it came from or where it went.
[deleted]
18. Little Bud
It's more bittersweet spooky than spooky spooky, but here goes - my ex had this lamp that she had on the island in our kitchen.
She turned it on almost every night and in the mornings to make coffee; it was a pretty solid little lamp. I brought my cat to live with us late in our relationship because she had dogs, and my cat was pretty up there in age and not used to dogs, so I tried to spare her little heart from that shock.
She came to love laying down in the spot by where that lamp plugged into an outlet on the wall of the island. She died soon after I brought her over, and I was absolutely heartbroken. I had a hard time accepting the loss.
About a week after my cat died, my ex was grinding coffee in a little electric grinder, and I heard her shriek from the other room.
I rushed over to see what was going on, and she told me she felt something cold pass by her feet, and then the light on the lamp started flickering. She tried to show me again the flickering, but it didn't happen.
I just chalked it up to her being weird at 6 AM. She asked me to make coffee for her a couple of days later. I grabbed the grinder and flicked on the lamp to see what I was doing, and sure enough, the same thing happened to me - a cold wind whipped past me like a cat running around my feet.
Then, the light on the lamp flickered before I could even get the grinder going. It never happened before or after, despite the hundreds of times I'd used that grinder in the same outlet as the lamp. I like to think it was my little girl saying goodbye one last time.
[deleted]
19. Electric Mystery
I have a bunch, but I think the best one I have actually happened to my mom. We lived in a very creepy, very old house when I was little.
One day, my mom was cleaning my little brother's room while we were at school, and every single one of his electronic toys turned on all at once.
Two of them did not have batteries in them. She was so freaked out she had us "camp out" in the living room for three days cause she didn't want my brother alone in his room. Up until we moved, that would occasionally happen. Either one or two toys at a time.
LameGhost
20. Old Man
I tell this story a lot, and no one ever believes me, but I know what I saw. I was staying at my grandparents for the summer when I was fourteen.
It was 11 pm, and I was thirsty to go out to the kitchen and see who I thought was my granddad sitting at the table eating a sandwich.
I say hello, grab a glass of water, and head back to my room. My grandfather came out of his room and asked who I was talking to. I turned around, and no one was there. It freaked me out and still does to this day.
Lucanthethird
21. The Dad
My father passed away almost 11 years ago, but I’ve seen him three times since. The first time was in middle school. I was working on a family tree project and was asking my mother about his side of the family.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him walk out of the room he died in, heading towards his favorite spot on the couch. The second time was a year or two later.
I’d had an awful day, one of the worst in memory. As I walked across the hall to the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of him sitting at his old spot at the table, reading a newspaper.
The last time was the most clear. My senior year of high school. My mother and I sat at that table, discussing college plans. I mentioned I was applying to the rival school of my father’s alma mater.
Just then, I saw him walk again from the room he died onto the counter, where he grabbed a coffee cup and walked towards his bedroom. I guess they just like to check up with us every now and then.
gingerfer
22. New Roommate
I currently live in a haunted house. I've heard voices and footsteps, lights have been turned on/off, and one of the ghosts has a thing for silverware (I hear it clattering in the drawer all the time, and sometimes a knife or two will end up in the wrong slot in the drawer).
But the strangest/scariest experience I had was the first night I spent in the house. I wasn't finished moving in. There were boxes everywhere.
I didn't even have my mattress up there yet. I was bedding on an old futon mattress, watching a video on my phone, when I got the pins & needles feeling of my feet falling asleep.
Except it wasn't on my feet; it was on the top of my head in the shape of a hand. I said, "Good night," turned off my light, and tried to sleep.
When I woke up, my closet door was ajar, but other than that, everything was otherwise untouched. I guess whoever my unseen roommate is, just wanted to check out who I was on my first night.
mrttenor
23. Smoking Ghost
When my daughter was 7, she kept asking me why I was smoking in her room late at night. I was a smoker at the time, but I never smoked in her room. I never smoked upstairs at all.
I told her that I sure wasn't smoking in her room late at night or at any time, but she was insistent that someone was coming in, sitting on her bed, and smoking.
I was kind of freaked out, but I knew nobody was sneaking into our house just to catch a late-night smoke in my daughter's bedroom. The house had belonged to the in-laws of my daughter's teacher at the time.
So, her teacher asked her how she liked the new house and her new room, and of course, my kid said, "It's great, but someone smokes in my room at night, and mom swears it's not her."
So, on parent conference night, the teacher pulled me aside and asked which bedroom our daughter slept in. I tell her, and she says, "I don't know what you believe, and I don't want to offend you, but the kid says someone is sitting on her bed, and she smells cigarette smoke late at night."
I'm getting ready for a deserved lecture on smoking around children, which I did not get. The teacher went on to tell me that her mother-in-law wasn't allowed to smoke due to health issues.
She would sneak into what was now my daughter's room at night for a few quick drags. My daughter's bed was in the middle of her favorite clandestine smoking spot. We actually lived in harmony with Hazel the Ghost for quite some time.
She had an annoying habit of putting things back where she thought they belonged, but otherwise, she was a fine ghost. She had said in life that she had no intentions of leaving her house even after death. I did end up having a "chat" with her about her chosen smoking spot, though, and that stopped pretty quickly.
KringlebertFistybuns
24. Grim Reaper
I usually have to take the ferry to commute to uni, and this time, I had been studying for a while and had to take the nighttime ferry.
I sat down on my phone when I noticed a strange man walking slowly back and forth on the ferry, eyeballing every passenger he walked past.
The dude was in his fifties and had a gangster/mafia vibe. I even remember texting my friend and saying that there was a weird dude walking back and forth on the ferry.
About 10 minutes before the ferry arrived, a man went out to the deck, most likely to get to his car. The mafia dude quickly followed him outside. A minute or so later, I heard this scream from the outside.
And it wasn’t like any other scream. It was a proper scream of real fear from a grown man and lasted about two seconds. I looked around to see if any other passengers noticed it, but I couldn’t see anyone reacting.
I was confused when I left the ferry, and look back just as I was leaving it. I then spotted the weird dude standing on the upper deck in the darkness, just watching all the passengers leave the ferry. His eyes met mine, and I was horrified. It was almost like he knew that I suspected him.
Needless to say, I rushed to my car, which was parked in the parking lot. The worst part was that it was full of ice that I had to scrape off before driving.
When driving home, I was horrified and paranoid that he was following me. Proper scary. I reported the episode to the police the day after in case something serious happened.
Tieredofyou
25. The Whisper
The house I lived in from when I was about 13 til I was 24 had some darkness. I remember hearing stories from my parents that the son of the previous owner had OD’d (but not within the house, somewhere else).
Still, that always creeped me out a bit. Throughout my entire time living there, I saw and heard all the classic signs of a “haunted house.” We had a glass cube wall (very 80s) that separated the living room from the dining room.
I saw all sorts of shadows running past on the other side in the dead of night when I would stay up watching movies or gaming. There was never anyone awake when I’d go look.
One night, when I was about 15 years old, I was sleeping in my room when all of a sudden I woke up. I used to have this HP laptop that would let off a blue light when closed, just dim enough to check the time from my wristwatch lying next to it.
I don’t know why I didn’t have a regular nightstand clock. As I’m squinting to see the time, I hear something whisper my name RIGHT NEXT TO MY EAR. It was as if it was standing an inch from me.
I jumped up out of bed and scrambled out of my room, knocking things over in the process. I didn’t stick around to see what else I could hear.
I ran to the living room and passed out on the couch til the next day. I couldn’t sleep well for the next few nights and kept waiting for it to speak again. Never did.
The house came with a camera system installed, and I remember seeing all sorts of wacky things. The back fence door opened on its own when it had two clip locks.
Granted, they’re the locks that you only need to push up to get it to unlock, so it could’ve been a strong wind, but something about the movement of the door unnerved me. I can’t explain it. It was something I felt in my bones. I learned to live with that feeling during those years, but it was always there.
NoirCellarDoor
26. Little Boy
This happened about one week ago. I set up an appointment to view an apartment in a part of town that's a bit less traveled. It's not a bad area. It's just kind of industrial/out of the way, so not much traffic around.
I waited for about 30 minutes for the real estate agent to show up, but she never did, so I left because it was freezing. I make the first right turn out of the neighborhood and come to a red light about a block down.
As I was pulling up to the red light, I saw what appeared to be a man and his child, a little boy no more than 4 or 5, walking down the street and heading toward a little cafe. However, the man stops short of the cafe and heads into the liquor store on the corner without the little boy.
I can now see the little boy more clearly as I come to a full stop at the light. He is holding a tiny green book in his hands, looks to be of Asian descent, has shoulder-length black hair that is blowing furiously in the wind, and he's crying.
You know that crying face kids make when they're lost in a department store and can't find their mother or father quickly enough? That's what this kid was doing. At this time, I see another man walking toward the kid and rationalizing that HE is the boy's father.
Still, the man passes the kid and keeps walking. I watch the boy for about 10 more seconds while he walks up to the cafe window and peers inside as if trying to find his parent. No one looks at him.
No one notices he is staring out the window. He realizes no one is paying attention and turns to find me staring at him. We locked eyes for about 5 seconds while he stood there crying in a tiny blue windbreaker in 15-degree weather, clutching his little green book close to his chest.
I decided at that moment since no one was with him. His jacket was WAY too thin for the weather that I would pull over as soon as the light turned green and wait with him until whoever he was looking for came back.
In the same instance, an SUV pulls up next to me, causing us to lose eye contact, but I can still hear him crying. The light turns green, not even 2 seconds later. I put on my hazards to pull over, the SUV zooms off, and no little boy is in sight.
I quickly glanced into the cafe to see if he had run in, but nothing. I look in the liquor store, nothing. He just vanished. And I drove home in complete silence, trying to decipher what I had just witnessed.
seri_ous
27. The Haunted Dorm
Freshman year at my university. We had a creepy, old dorm on campus that no one was living in. Everyone generally avoided it because it was uncomfortable when you got close to it and felt like you were being watched.
There are rumored stories about two women dying there on separate occasions, and they're the ones who haunt the building.
One night, a friend was in a bad mood because his girlfriend had broken up with him, so I was walking around campus to let him get it off his chest and just trying to help him feel better.
We walked past the dorm, and I brought it up about it being haunted and told him the stories to try to take his mind off it. So, the way the bottom floor was set up, there were two doors on both sides of the building, and the hallway ran the entire length of the building, and you could see the other door.
We walked up to one of the windows and were just looking down the hall when two girls walked out of a room, wearing clothes that looked like they were from the '70s/80s, and stood there looking at each other, not speaking...
Then, one girl slowly turned her head and looked straight at us, slowly turned her head back, then turned and walked the opposite way down the hall. So we ran to the other side of the building but couldn't find them. We returned to the original door....and watched them do the same thing all over again.
We looked at each other and ran. This freaked me out for a while, especially after when I was sleeping in my room, and all my posters fell off the wall at the same time.
After telling this story to another friend, he convinced me to go back with him and try to find a way in. We found an open window, climbed in, and started walking down the hall.
We wandered around the building a bit and just started to notice generally creepy things....water faucets started coming on, we'd walk through one room and then back through, and a chair would be moved.
On the first floor, a desk was turned upside down under the stairwell...as we were getting close to leaving, a lot more water faucets came on and kept getting louder and louder.
Then, when we got back to the room, to go back out of the window. As we put our hands on the window, the door slammed closed...so we ripped the door open, dove out, and ran back to our dorm...and never went back.
[deleted]
28. Footsteps Are Coming
My daughter lived in an old dorm with no elevator. She was in the stairwell one night, climbing up to her room (3rd floor if I recall).
She heard someone behind her, also climbing the stairs. She says she definitely heard footsteps and just assumed someone was close behind her.
She didn't really think much about it, but when she got to her floor and opened the door to the hall, she turned around, and the stairwell was empty. Footsteps, whispers, and other spooky things were pretty common at Dexter Hall.
wanttoplayball
29. Strange Eyes
A friend of mine and I live in Rural Ireland, and we were going for a walk on the grounds behind a castle. As we were coming to the end of our walk, it was pretty dark, and we glanced into an area that had a well, and something caught our eye.
I (he stayed a bit further back) walked over and looked into the well only to see two yellow eyes looking up at me and a sinister-looking grin from a girl with dark hair. Naturally, we ran like little girls.
We were followed by this little girl all night. So, we went to the graveyard and found her watching us while she sat on a tree.
We went under a bridge a few miles outside of the village, and she was standing at the other end of the bridge and slowly started walking toward us. We both saw her every single time.
[deleted]
30. The Question
Just yesterday, I was in my cousin's house after helping them with the laundry and heard someone say 'hello?' in a 'is anyone here' low tone. And the family was in their parent's room, and I was in their room.
I was like, 'Uhhhh' and decided it must be the TV that was on in their room, and if anything, they would've heard it too. The dogs started barking a little bit.
Ummmmmm. Then, after about 10 min, I stopped paying attention cause no one was screaming there was an intruder in the house. Cousin comes back to their room and asks me why the front door is open.
john6map4
31. Never Play It
In high school, my friends and I were messing around with an Ouija board one night. We had done it before, and nothing remarkable had ever happened.
We usually did it to try to scare each other or our girlfriends. We all thought it was a joke. That night, there was no one else home except the 7 of us, and we were all together around the board.
One of the girls there wanted to try it. She had never done it before. This time was different. The board misspelled some of the words the same way every time. It gave answers that seemed really historically accurate for our town (things we neither knew nor cared about).
Long story short, the “spirit” claimed it was a 10-year-old boy who had died on the property in the 1800s and was buried there, too, in an unmarked grave (my friends house was on a farm on the edge of town).
We were all a little freaked out because the board had never been so detailed and consistent. However, we were still skeptical, and we were all assuming one of us was trying to scare the rest.
Finally, my friend asked if the spirit could do something to prove he was there with us. It went to Yes and then spelled out k-n-o-c-k. Then, the planchette stopped moving.
We just all stared at it silently, and then there was a rap-rap-rap on the window right next to us. The lights were on outside, and there was absolutely no one out there. We never touched that board again.
ExcrementCranium
32. The Grandma
We moved into an old three-story house that was built at the turn of the century. From the deeds we saw, it was owned by a single woman for many years before being sold to a man and then to us - my husband and my grandmother.
It needed a lot of work, but luckily, the next-door neighbor was a builder. He came in to do work while my grandmother visited my parents in another city.
On the final day, he said, “Your grandmother is always out working in the garden. It looks great!” After I questioned him a bit, I realized he had been seeing a white-haired woman walking outside of the back bedroom window in the garden.
It was definitely not my grandmother. She was 100 miles away. I never told him because he’s really superstitious and probably wouldn’t have come back!
In the same house, while we were eating dinner, I looked up and saw what looked like a huge black hooded figure hiding behind the doorframe in the hallway.
It was so big it looked like it was ducking down and peering into the room before whipping up and away when I glanced over. That scared the heck out of me, particularly as I only looked up because the dogs were whining. I never went in that corridor again when the lights were off!
Laylelo
33. His Reflection
This isn't a super spooky story, but I sure was spooked when it happened. My mom used to clean the house of an elderly couple.
They didn't have any kids, so their house was empty, aside from them. The husband ended up dying of lung cancer, and about a week after the service, we were at their house cleaning.
I was in their bedroom, and my mom was in their restroom. I had my back turned to the bed, and off to my left was a mirror that they had facing the bed.
This isn't a super spooky story, but I sure was spooked when it happened. My mom used to clean the house of an elderly couple.
They didn't have any kids, so their house was empty, aside from them. The husband ended up dying of lung cancer, and about a week after the service, we were at their house cleaning.
I was in their bedroom, and my mom was in their restroom. I had my back turned to the bed, and off to my left was a mirror that they had facing the bed.
While cleaning, I kinda half turned and momentarily looked into the mirror and saw the lady's deceased husband standing next to the bed and looking down at it.
He then looked up at me through the mirror, so I quickly turned to look at their bed, and he was gone. It really freaked me out at the time, and I quickly joined my mom in the restroom.
indigo-10
34. Grandma’s Girl
My mom just last week told me a story about when I was a kid. I had to be 4 or 5. We went to visit my grandmother's grave a state over. My mother and I lived with her and my grandfather until I was 3, and my grandmother died.
My mom said my grandma and I were super close. We traveled from Indiana to Illinois and visited her grave (out in the middle of nowhere, off of a gravel road with a forest just past the cemetery).
My mom said I jumped up after visiting her grave site and started to run to the trees. My mom was only 21-22 at the time, so she could keep up with me.
She asked me where I was going, and I said, "I'm going to play with Mammaw! Look, there's Mammaw!" She then said she scooped me up and took me to the car.
I was kicking and screaming because I couldn't understand why I couldn't play with my grandma. Then she told me that right after my grandma died when I was 3, I would lay in bed and talk to her.
Jiggly_Poop
35. Just Like Him
Grandpa was in the police and tragically expired in my arms when he fell from the stairs. He was very proud that I had joined the government services as well, and the quote "Behave like an officer" was something like an inside joke between the two of us.
A few years later, I was in my car, and it was freezing outside. There was a police check, and I saw the cop who was inspecting the cars wasn't wearing any jacket. Immediately made me think of Grandpa, with all the cops around in their uniforms and all.
My turn came, and I rolled down my window and gently reminded the officer to put on his jacket. He looks into my eyes, smiles, says, "Now that's spoken like an officer," and tells me to go.
He said it in exactly his voice, his style. It had been years since I resigned from the services, and there was no way this cop could have guessed I had been an officer.
[deleted]
36. The Singer
My old childhood home has three stories with a cellar and was built in such a way that the floors were thin. Sound travels very well through it.
The basement has a piano, which my brother, a musician, spent a lot of time on as a teenager. To that end, I heard him playing and singing at the top of his (very distinct) voice one morning. I yelled over the upstairs stairwell for him to shut up because he was being loud and obnoxious.
Then, I remembered my brother wasn't home that day; he had gone out with my parents. The music stopped, and I investigated the basement to find it dark.
For years, I was able to mostly brush this off as sound from outdoors or something I imagined, but this week, my brother and I are back home for the holidays. It happened again.
Now, the basement stairwell leads into a corridor, and off the corridor are three rooms: a full bathroom, a laundry room, and the rec room, which holds the piano. I was showering with the bathroom door open.
I got out and brushed my teeth, and all the while, I could hear my brother playing and singing from the rec room. It was not unusual, but the music stopped on its own at some point. So, I finished what I was doing, put on my robe, and made my way back upstairs.
My brother was standing in the kitchen. Now, there was absolutely no way he could have gotten upstairs without having to walk past me. I asked him if he had been in the basement at all, and he was rather insistent he hadn't been in the basement all day.
I went back to check the cellar out to find nothing amiss. Spooky! Phantom music aside, the most unsettling part is that both times, it sounded exactly like my brother.
brothersvoice
37. All Ears
When I was about 10, four of our cousins lived with us, and I had two siblings, so that means there were seven of us. We were in the family room, sitting in a circle and playing a game.
My parents were out doing whatever adult errands they had that day. We all heard a voice call out, "Zachary!" It was the voice of our grandmother (and one of my cousins was named Zach).
No one heard my parents come home, and they didn't mention they would be getting our grandma, so we all ran out of the room to greet her.
We quickly realized my parents were not home, and our grandmother wasn't there either. We even went outside to check, and there was no one in our neighbor's yards either. We were baffled. It was one of many paranormal instances in that house, but this one was experienced by 7 people.
[deleted]
38. Into The Woods
I got lost in the woods in North Carolina during a game of paintball. It was broad daylight, but the woods were really thick, and every tree looked exactly the same.
It probably only lasted 1-2 minutes, but it felt like I was screaming "help" for hours. The worst part? Turns out I wasn't even lost.
I was maybe 10 feet from everyone else, and they all heard me screaming "help," but they thought I was acting as a decoy... Like, what the actual fudge?! Who hears someone crying for help and ignores them?! Jesus, dad!!
reincarN8ed
39. Parenting Style
When I was a kid, we'd be out at dusk helping my parents in the garden. They'd freeze like they just saw something terrifying and say, "Grab your brother and run to the house RIGHT NOW and lock the door behind you. "
So my poor older sister and I would scoop up our kid brother, book it to the house in pure silent fear, and huddle together by the window so we could peep out.
Every damned time they'd come in from the field doubled over laughing. I know they thought it was funny because we bought it every time, but Jesus Christ, Mom, and Dad, if you want a couple of kids with anxiety issues, you're doing it right.
ThatsnotwhatImeant84
Pexels, Fernanda Latronico
40. Dark Cabin
I had a recurring scary dream. In it, I was at my grandparent's farmhouse, which is over 200 years old. I was dressed in Victorian clothes and in the fields and walking down a strange path, but it felt like I had been there many times.
I walked through the woods and eventually came to a cabin. It felt eerie, like a presence of death. I opened the door, and there was death all around me. Cries of children filled the air. I had this dream for months.
I eventually ended up visiting my grandparents on spring break or something and decided to follow the path of my dreams. I ended up at a cabin.
It looked exactly like in my dream. I was terrified. I called my friend to try to shake my fear and cautiously opened the door. There was a burned car seat and burned children's toys scattered around the ground.
I felt an awful sense of dread and backed up slowly while trying to catch my breath. I've since tried to look up missing children in the area and have found nothing. I have no idea what it all means, but as soon as I found that cabin, the dreams stopped.
[deleted]
41. Mind Games
Early Sophomore year in college, my girlfriend spent the night in my dorm room. She'd lost her virginity to me the night before, and this was her first time ever spending the night in a boy's bed.
That morning, she was still half asleep, so I got into the shower. While showering, I'm 100% certain I can hear someone calling out my name. But hey, I ignored it - there's that thing where you end up hearing your own name in white noise just b/c it's something you're so attuned to hear.
The weird thing was it sounded very loud (like it was being shouted) but also very, very far away, and like the sound was coming from deep inside my head. Like I was wearing headphones and hearing my own name called out in this tiny, tiny, panicked scream.
It was really odd, but again, I dismissed it entirely. Finished my shower and went about my day, never mentioning it to anyone.
Two years later - we're sitting around in someone's dorm room, and my girlfriend casually mentions, "Oh yeah, remember that first night I stayed in your room? And then you went to go to the shower? I was freaking out because it was so dark in your room. I started having a panic attack and started screaming your name in my head while you were in the shower."
I try not to think about this too much since I'm very much one of those "science uber alles" types of guys who like to mock new-age crap.
But this was the one thing I've personally experienced that feels like it was legit supernatural. No ghosts or angels or any of that - just a tiny experience of straight-up telepathy or one really, really weird heck of a coincidence.
sfinebyme
42. Voice Inside My Head
My mom and I are very close. I helped her through chemo and surgery, and we’re just close in general. We’re standing in line at iHop waiting to pay when I get a little dizzy, and I hear a distant voice say, “It’s starting to get cold in here.”
I turned to my mom and said, “What’d you say?” she told me she hadn’t said anything but was just thinking it was starting to get cold. It was that same weird thing where it sounded far but in my head.
fatalXXmeoww
43. Strange House
The house I grew up in was fairly old, and my dad did some serious renovations to it. I always got the creeps from the attic, which was a full third story. Eventually, my dad fixed it up as a kind of 2 bedroom apartment for me and my older brother.
One night, when I was maybe 13, while everyone else was asleep, I heard three loud bangs on the wall outside of my room, right next to my head.
Important note: The stairs were on the other side of the wall in a traditional Victorian style (some steps, then a landing, 180-degree pivot, more steps), so the point on the wall where the bangs were coming from was about 8 feet off the ground.
Directly after the bangs, the touch lamp beside my bed started going crazy. It had four settings: off, dim, bright, brightest, and it cycled through them without being touched for about thirty seconds while out in the big, open living area.
Our stereo turned on at full volume, blaring some crazy punk album I had just discovered. I quickly ran out of my room and turned the stereo off, not wanting to wake anyone else in my family.
Then, I just sat in my room with a light on until I could fall back asleep. This was probably the creepiest experience I ever had in the house, but definitely not the only one.
hambletonorama
44. The Dreamers
This is about eight years ago when I was still with my Ex and her two kids, but the household had been plagued for a couple of weeks with intense and bad dreams.
We were all sitting around dinner one night, and somebody started talking about how bad their dreams had been. Everybody else chimed in about how bad theirs had been, too.
I'm a pretty lucid dreamer, where I'll realize I'm dreaming and either just mess around, practice flying, or just bail on the dream altogether.
Well, a few days passed, and one night, I was sleeping, and I had this particularly vivid dream about fighting a demon. And it's not a fun movie demon fight. It's pretty intense. So, in my dream, I start reciting this incantation.
I don't remember what I was saying or how I knew it, but I remember it being English in the dream. I also realize I'm fighting this demon in a dream, so I will speak this incantation out loud in the real world. This woke up my ex, who was sleeping next to me.
This wakes my ex, and she says, "Armorphoenix, you're talking in your sleep." And I go, "I know." And she asks, "Why?" To which I respond, "Because spells are more powerful when you say them out loud." right as I roll over and go back to snoring.
Freaks her out a little bit. She told me the next day that the stuff I was speaking didn't sound like gibberish, but it wasn't English. But after that, no more spooky dreams for the household.
armorphoenix
45. Abandoned Apartment
Exploring a historic abandoned apartment complex in a pretty rough shape due to a pretty large fire. I felt extremely uneasy the entire time, which was strange, considering this was just a normal day of exploring.
Eventually, we decided it was time to leave, but at the last second, we found the basement, so we hopped down there to take a peak.
As soon as we enter the basement from the staircase, we hear extremely loud and slow-walking boots on the first floor RIGHT above our heads. It sounded like one person, alone, with very heavy boots.
It did not sound like he was in a hurry. We were absolutely petrified. We could hear each other's heartbeats from across the doorway.
The weird thing was, we were RIGHT next to the entrance, so there was absolutely no way somebody had wandered through while we were walking out.
We waited about a minute to hear this "thing" walk back and forth above us. As soon as the boots stopped, we found a basement window that was cracked open and hopped out. I didn't see anybody from the outside; no person was in sight. The creepiest story I have from years of exploring.
DetroitEXP