People Are Confessing Their Creepiest Experiences They've Never Told Anyone

My grandfather passed away several years ago after many years of dialysis. As he aged we were told this treatment wouldn’t last for ever and become less effective and they would had to stop it eventually. He was 83 when he passed, always fit and healthy and the dialysis kept him going a good few years.He was unwell and taken into hospital, his dialysis was stopped and we were told it would probably be around 48-72 until he passed. So all the family made our way to the hospital and stayed in the room with him as much as we can. They made him comfortable and was plying him with drugs to make sure he wasn’t in pain. As he nears the end he was in and out of a lucid state, most of the time in a slumber almost living memories, mumbling and muttering. If he woke up, he would stare transfixed at a point on the ceiling talking to god only knew who as clear as day and then he would drift off again. This happened all night.

Moments before he passed, he sat up staring at this point on the ceiling talking clearer than he had for the time we were there, holding my grandmothers hand he turns and looks her dead in the eyes and says “that they are asking him if he wants to take a message over to anyone? Was there anything she wanted to say to anyone?” When my grandmother said there wasn’t, he lay back down, closed his eyes and passed peacefully. The whole room was silent. Every single hair on my body on end. I’m not religious but felt I should go straight to church and start praying or something.

My mother who has been a nurse all here life, many years caring for elderly told me that when a lot of people die they focus on a point on the ceiling and talk to whatever is there. Her telling me that didn’t help at all. Bizarre.

/MisterSmithster/

I never make it in time to answer these and have pretty much kept this story to myself. I remember telling one person who told me “don’t repeat that, don’t mess with whatever that was” so I didn’t. I guess read at your own risk.
When I was ten I went with my parents to this campground so they could visit their friends. They had a son who I got along with, same age. Sometimes however if there was other kids around the son would try and pick on me to impress them. Me and the son went fishing and right as we’re about to leave another kid comes and joins us and the son immediately starts picking on me. Not wanting to be stuck on a boat and teased I decided to leave and walk back to the campground by myself.

I didn’t want to go straight back to my parents because they’d ask why I wasn’t with the son, and I didn’t want to get into it. So I just walked on this U shaped road. In the center of the u are campers and on the other side is woods with a lake around it. At the very center of the u is a park. Perfect I think I’ll just sit on the swings until I think enough time has passed to go back.

As I’m on the swings I notice a path directly across from me. I get up and start walking along this dirt path. There are reeds on either side of me and I have my hands stretched out as I walk dead center of this path. My hands can just barely touch these reeds unless I move closer to one side.

I walk for about 10 minutes maybe and I get to this pond. Crystal clear water and I have this urge to drink it. It looks so refreshing. I kneel down and suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck go straight up. It was like I snapped back into myself. What am I doing? Why am I about to drink pond water? Why did I walk down this path? 

I start feeling really uneasy so I turn around and start walking the same way I came. Let my clarify. There was only one path. Straight. I made no turns, I didn’t walk around this pond. I simply walked to the end of the path got freaked out about something and turned around.

Suddenly all types of bugs were now around. I kept walking and I notice the dirt path is getting more and more narrow. The reeds and tall grass are now at my arms and there’s a constant buzzing feeling n my ears from these bugs. The path gets so narrow that I have to walk sideways to avoid the reeds. I yell out help and I hear a voice ask if I’m ok. I reply I’m lost and a woman says just walk straight honey I see you. I see nothing it’s just tall grass and reeds. I walk a few feet and see the road.

I am scratched from head to toe and there’s a woman by the playground asking what happened.
She takes a Kleenex out of her pocketbook and starts wiping some of the scratches and I tell her what happened. I look behind me and see no path. I’m at the same park. I’m in front of the swing I was just on. The woman looks at me and tells me that I shouldn’t even think about it and to just forget it happened because I’m fine now. But she really emphasized not to talk about it.
I’ve always been on the fence about it. Im sure there was one path in and one path out. The bugs could of steered me off course. Maybe me being paranoid? Or...something more sinister that nearly trapped me for good.

/pootoomuch/

Technically this does not fit because I have told people about this. I may have actually commented it on Reddit before in response to a similar post, not sure though.I was in High school and watching TV with my mom and dad. Out of the blue my dad tells me to lock the front door because he is experiencing a feeling of "overwhelming dread". I was laying on floor in front of the TV by the door, and beginning to laugh in disbelief. He got mad at me. 

Seeing that he is serious I get up and lock it. We continue watching TV (Cheers 1987 or 88). within a few minutes (maybe 10) the door knob starts slowly turning. It was loud enough that we all looked at it and could see it moving. In horror we looked at each other. My dad asks "Did you see that?" I nod. 

Slowly we begin to come back to ourselves and realize we should get up and look outside. We could not see anything as it was dark outside. I was a bit terrified but my dad opened the door just to make sure no one was there. I don't have any idea why since that would expose us to whoever might be there. No one and nothing was outside just an empty driveway. The person(s) had walked away by the time we got up.

Cut to about two or three hours later. I'm in my room and hear someone screaming for help and beating on our back sliding glass door. it is the next door neighbor's youngest son (about 11 years old I think). They were pretty awesome people. Very kind. Anyway the son is clearly terrified and crying for us to call the police. 

They had been home invasion robbed and held hostage for the entire time since our door knob turned. My memory is that 4 men (may have been 3 I'm not sure) entered their front door which was open with only a screen door being latched. Bad things happened but everyone lived. My dad is no psychic, but that is by far the strangest thing I have ever seen.
I have shared this with room mates who ask why I lock the door every time I enter the house even in the middle of the day. It still creeps me out so I thought I'd share it anyway. 

This is one thing in my life that convinced me there is more than what we can see, a spiritual realm. Why did my dad feel that dread? Why did he take it seriously enough to have me secure the front door? And why after all of that did we not take it seriously enough to call the police? 

I wish we had done something that would have changed the outcome for the better for our neighbors. To this day when someone says they have a bad feeling about something I take it seriously.

/mazaroth12/

Last winter I was driving down the freeway at night, going between suburbs of a large metropolitan area kind of a thing. So there were plenty of cars around, but it was maybe around midnight or so, and it had been snowing when it isn't always white during winter here. I saw a car pulled over on the shoulder of the freeway with a guy standing next to it clearly in need of some assistance. I saw them as I was driving past, but since it was later at night and was cold out, I figured I might as well take the next exit, loop around, and see if the guy still needed help.
I get there, and it's a middle-aged working class type of guy standing outside of his pickup. He is wearing blue overalls, slender, is slightly balding, and puts off what I can only describe as a weird vibe. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was one of those "weird gut feelings" that you aren't sure why you feel.

He says that he has been having car troubles, is from about 2 hrs out of town, that his alternator is shot and that his battery needs a boost. I've owned a car with a shot alternator, and know that when the battery dies you need to boost it for a little while if you're going to get it running again. I tell him it's no problem, commiserate with him for a minute, pop my hood and he says he is going to go grab his cables. When he comes back, I notice in his hand that he has some sort of concealed metal object. No clue what it was. I saw it for just a brief moment, and saw that it wasn't a knife, but that it was metal and a little shorter than the length of his hand. And he was clearly trying to keep it concealed from my view. This all happens so fast, and I'm immediately on high alert. I see it for a split second as he is bringing the cables to me so that I can hook up my battery. I instantly take a step back to put some distance between us, and tell him that he can hook up my battery and I'll wait in the car, all the while in instantaneous full fight or flight, getting ready to block an attack if he were to lunge at me.

He doesn't, and starts connecting the cables to my battery as I'm sitting In my car. I start to wonder if I was imagining things as he connects the battery, and we both wait for the battery to charge. Maybe it was just something that was bundled in with the cables that he just had in his hand? Maybe I misread the situation as dangerous? After a few minutes he goes to start his car, shouts that it isn't working, and then walks back towards my car where he waits in front of my car. After a few minutes of waiting, he puts his head back under the hood of my car to fiddle with the cables. 

All the while I'm of course watching him intently to make sure he doesn't come to the car window, because I was still spooked. He shouts some things about how it isn't working, and asks me to come out to take a look. I open my window a bit, casually tell him not to worry, and that it's probably just going to take some time. Luckily, I can just barely see my battery in the dark, through the gap under the popped hood of my car through the windshield directly in front of me. I see him then fiddle with the cables, and hear him shout again that it isn't working and for me to come out. 

THEN I see him slip out the metal object I had seen earlier, and see him touch it to my battery terminal as sparks shoot out from where he touched it. He starts yelling and jumps back, as I immediately jump out of my car, and tell him that something came up and that I needed to go now. I honestly don't remember much of what he was trying to say as I cut him off, or exactly what I said, outside of that I needed to gtfo without taking my eyes off him for even half a second. I don't even remember how the cables came off my battery (did I pull them? Were they already off?) but I slammed the hood shut, jumped in my car and drove off.

I still have no idea what his plan was. No clue what he was trying to do, or what on earth he was trying to make happen. But I do know for a fact that what I saw him do is in no way what he was telling me he was doing. But as I left him there and drove off, I was practically pinching myself trying to make heads or tails of wth just happened. And I cannot stress this enough, that the guy just gave off the weirdest vibes. Like The Hills Have Eyes kind of weird vibes. 

Maybe he was planning on trying to short my battery so that I was stuck there? But still to this day I wonder if I encountered some sort of mass murderer who had been planning on kidnapping somebody at the side of the freeway as they stopped to help. Who knows. But either way, it was weird as fuck, right spooked me, and I nope'd the hell away from that dude as fast as was humanly possible.
I still wish that I had gotten a license plate or something to give to the cops, but in that moment the only thing going through my mind was just to remove myself from that situation as fast as was humanly possible

/vandance/

A number of years ago, I was using an on-line chat site and got talking to a woman who claimed to live around 50 miles from me. We chatted quite happily for a couple of days.

Then on the third day - a Saturday night - she was on-line and we were chatting, but she seemed different somehow. Something just didn’t seem right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

She explained that she was drinking and I assumed that this was the reason behind the melancholy. We continued chatting and she put on a cam so I could see her there drinking as we chatted. Over a couple hours of chatting her mood appeared to grow darker and she appeared distressed but was hesitant to elaborate further. She left and returned around 30 minutes later and appeared drunker and more distressed. 

This time she had a stack of tablets on the table in front of her. She claimed that she couldn’t go on and started to take tablet after tablet. (I had no idea what this medication was). She was continuing to take more and more tablets and her speech was getting more and more slurred. 

I was suddenly in a terrible position. Was I seeing someone take their own life on a live stream and totally unable to do anything, all I had was a name and a town, both of which could be false. I made the excuse of needing the toilet and left the room, and took this opportunity to call my local Police and explained the situation. 

The Police took what details I knew and I was told to go back and try and keep her talking and try and get further details from her. They sent a plain clothed officer to my house and whilst I was chatting to her he pulled up the chat logs and history on his laptop. 

By this time her speech was becoming more and more incoherent and the cam was knocked so was impossible to see her. Soon the connection was lost. Was this real, was it fake I had no idea of knowing. 

The Police officer was during this time on the phone with the station giving them what information he had been able to obtain, he then left leaving me to contemplate. The next evening I got a call from the local Police station, who wanted to thank me. 

The Police had managed to trace her through her IP address and had been able to attend. It apparently was a genuine suicide attempt and she had been taken to hospital and was subsequently undergoing treatment.

/George-Osborne/

About 8 years ago when I was a senior in high school me and 2 of my very close friends decided to break in to this house that was down a backroad we passed every day to go to one of their houses after school. The house was kept up but no one had lived there in over 10 years at the time. And by kept up I mean the lawn was mown and the lights were always on as well. It was pretty well known in the community for no one living there but the bills were paid by someone and no one had lived there in years.
So, being teenagers we decided to go check it out after dark. There was a driveway that led to a covered garage in the back of the property that couldn't be seen from the road. We pulled in just after 11:00 PM and made our way back to the garage and we parked, clean entrance and not a soul or sound anywhere. Since the garage was behind the house we made our way to the back entrance of the house and noticed there was a plywood slab that covered the back doors windowed top half. We proceeded to pry the cover off the door and revealed that the window had been broken before (probably by another nosy group of teens in the past). We had our entrance. One by one we climbed through, each helping the last through the window and into what was the kitchen at the back of the house. Once in the kitchen we moved to the eerily tidy living room of the house which was sort of infamous for being the room in the house with the light on. There were magazines, all dated to 1998, stacked neatly on the table in the middle of the room and it was fairly clear that an elderly woman had once been the occupant. There was a sewing station, the decor, and more to suggest this.

Well, we felt safe at this point. We had made it in and there weren't neighbors or anything for a half a mile in either direction. We sat around for about an hour, freestyling raps, laughing, and smoking a joint. We toured the rest of the house and ended back in the living room. It was overall pretty creepy but pretty typical too. Just seemed like a normal household that hadn't been changed in 15 years for some reason. This is where it gets weird. We were still cutting up in the living room and had actually turned the lights off because we were filming each other with my Lenovo laptop (something we did for fun all the time back then) so we could relive it and show our friends we had braved the empty house on the backroad. When all of a sudden, there was a sound like an old guttural truck trying its hardest to stay idling. This uneven rumble of engine.

It's hard to explain. I personally thought for a split second it was the air unit's fan outside the living room wall or something along those lines. We froze. And I mean froze. We looked around at each other in the dark, terrified faces stared back at me illuminated by the laptop's glow. After about 8 to 10 seconds of the rumble there was a squeaky, heavy truck door that slammed shut right outside the living room wall.

Now we scrambled. No hesitation we bolted for the front door that was also connected to the living room because climbing through that back door window again would have been difficult in a panic but the front door had actually been nailed shut. So we turned and ran to the other side of the house in a back bedroom that was also on the back side of the house. We all three froze and didn't move a muscle. The engine rumble wasn't audible anymore but we were trapped like mice. There were huge bushes covering every window and the front door was nailed shut. The only way out was the way we came in. But we were literally scared motionless. We sat in that bedroom waiting for the police or the owner or someone to call out that "our fun is over, come on out", but that didn't happen.

There was a window to the backyard in our hiding spot, covered by a huge bush. I personally was directly next to it. My buddies very close to me, almost huddled around me, could see and hear everything I could. And let me remind you that after the slam of the "truck door" it was absolutely SILENT inside and out besides us scrambling to the back. All of a sudden chills go up my arms and back and I slowly turn my head to my friends who looked like they were about to keel over from fright as well. Footsteps in crunching leaves were coming, slowly, DIRECTLY to the window we were hiding behind. They stopped as close as they could get without walking directly into the bush. We froze again.

Horrified by what exactly could be staring towards us in this window we threw caution to the wind at this point. We got up and slowly backpedaled away from the window and made our way into the hallway outside the room and into the area before the kitchen where our exit was now back in sight. I think all three of us knew that something was very wrong about all of this and I think getting caught by the police or the owner wasn't on any of our minds. This was very surreal and felt almost like a prank because there's no way people of authority would be "haunting" us the way whoever was outside had been doing.

So, fed up after what felt like an eternity of unease and terror we decided to bolt to the window in the door in the kitchen all at once and go out together. To either face what had been tormenting us or fucking run. Once we were outside we counted down from 3 and ran past the huge bushes to our left where our window stalker had been. I couldn't help it I had to turn around and look. I turned and all i saw was the light beaming from the window broken up by the bush and illuminating a patch of ground covered in what appeared to be undisturbed leaves. This made my whole body crawl in a way I've never felt before or honestly after. We made it to my car in the garage and I backed out and tore away as fast as I ever had. There was no vehicle outside. There wasn't anything. There was a deafening silence and stillness.

We still are very uneasy talking about it to this day. Even writing this makes my eyes water and my skin crawl. I have always been a man of science and a huge skeptic but I can't explain that night. There was something so wrong about everything. Needless to say we never went back.
Wow, I cant believe I actually took the time to tell this story. I've never written it out before.

/TrippyWentLucio/

Well, my inner circle of friends have heard this story, but I’ve never posted it online When I was 18 I moved into a first floor apartment with my best friend. The house is the last one on the street and it borders woods to the left side of it, and a very large cemetery in the back. (Literally the backyard was separated by a foot high rock wall, that instantly turns into the tombstone area) Neither of us thought much of it when we moved in because... we were 18. And didn’t believe in ghosts. LolAnyways, so the first month, it started to feel strange. I don’t know how to describe it. I HATED being alone there, and I was never that way before. I always felt the need to turn around and see if something was following me. Then, strange (?) things would happen.Tiny things turned up missing, and would re appear in an odd place. I once walked into my bedroom and found a pair of my sunglasses centered on the floor of the room. And my dog, this lil chihuahua, had started barking and growling at nothing. At a wall or something. It sounds like nothing, but he never acted that way before. It would scare the shit out of me. I talked to my friend, and turns out: same thing for her. It continues on like this for awhile until one day my friend called me late at night (I was at work) and said she had been laying in bed trying to fall asleep, when she started thinking about a deceased family member (won’t get into details there), and her vanity mirror light turned on. Which had never, ever, happened before. Just popped on.
So, main creepy thing that happened to me: I was eating dinner one night in the kitchen area, which faced away from the living room and front door. I was watching Netflix on my iPad or something stupid/mundane. Out of nowhere, I felt ridiculously out of control. If felt like my entire world had shifted. It was like.. this hysterical panic. After a few moments, my dog, who was in the kitchen with me, starts barking and growling at the front door area. He’s going absolutely insane, and I’m still freaking tf out. I start bawling and call my friend, asking her to come home. I then shut the door between the kitchen area and the living room/front door area, with my dog in the kitchen with me. I’m not more than a minute into the phone call when I hear a huge crash in the living room. I never left the kitchen area and I continued to just cry on the phone until my friend, and her boyfriend at the time, got home.It didn’t really change when they got there. I still was EXTREMELY upset. After a bit, my friend tells me that the lamp, which had been on the shelf by the front door, had been smashed into the middle of the room. The lamp was a hefty Tiffany-style lamp that weighed a good amount, and had been plugged into the wall. When I went out and looked, the lamp had moved at least three feet away and was smashed, as she stated, into the middle of the room.So anyways, long story short, the next day, my mom brought over some sage, and we just kinda burned it along the walls and rooms. Per google. My friend and i just kinda talked out loud to the ghosts (we assumed) from the cemetery. We had emailed our landlord explaining the circumstances, and told him we would be moving. But, immediately after the incident, things got better. It’s so difficult to explain... I didn’t feel ~alone~ per say, but I didn’t feel any panic either. I didn’t have that weird dread from before. We had a couple of incidents after that, which I won’t get into, but none of it made me feel unsafe. It just was an acknowledgment that there was 100% some paranormal shit there, but nothing ...evil...? AnymoreWe lived there for four and a half years. I still miss that place, but when I tell my friends about it now, I can never fully explain that feeling that came over me that night. How abrupt and terrifying it was. I am NOT an emotional person, and nothing will ever come close to that again. Wow that ended up being super long, my bad/chihuahuaha/

Every time I tell this story people think I'm making it up but it's true and it was on the local news: A few months before the ten year anniversary/highschool reunion for my graduating class, almost every single person from my grade + a few other select people (I'll get to this part in a bit) started receiving cryptic, vaguely threatening sounding letters in the mail - no return address. It always said the exact same thing, and the strangest part was that it was clearly handwritten/not printed en masse.
So literally hundreds of people scattered all over the country were receiving unmarked letters with a card inside of it saying something to the effect of 'you can lie to others but you can't escape your own conscience'. Creepy. It seemed to be obviously targeting my senior class since the vast majority of the letters were to people in our grade, but the 'few other select people' I mentioned were like, random folks from years above and I think below us as well - including my sister. And weirdly enough, my parents got a card too. Everyone started freaking out, the reunion was almost cancelled, police were sent to the highschool to keep guard, parents were informed, the local news channels picked up the news and starting airing stories on it.

One day my mom calls me and says 'I think it's X' - X being a kid who used to be one of my very good friends growing up. We were best friends in elementary school, kind of grew apart, but we were still on fairly good terms by the time we graduated highschool.

At any rate it was a bizarre guess, but mom had her reasonings - sort of. Half of it was on a hunch, and half of it was because of who received the letters - she said that it had to be someone from my senior class, but because she and dad had got one and so did my sister, it had to be someone tied personally to me.

I thought that it was BS because there was absolutely no way that this crazy letter had anything to do with me because I hadn't done ANYthing weird in highschool I was a complete square -and- anyway I hadn't personally received a letter; but later I realized I had just moved, so if by chance some creepy person tried to look me up on google yellowpages or something, my current address probably wasn't visible. So I could have received a letter? But I'll never know because I moved.

Still the whole thing seemed pretty farfetched to me so I kind of dismissed my mom, which I kind of regret - a few weeks later a couple of news reports came out saying that they'd 'caught' the guy and mentioned what state he was from - and I recalled that the same friend X that my mom had been talking about HAD moved there after college. It was a super specific place. Freaked me out. Like a 'what are the chances?!' kind of reaction.

Confirmed it a few days later in the text message group that included all my old hs friends, someone mentioned that they knew X was the perpetrator because they'd heard news from someone who knew AND they heard there was a warrant or something for his arrest because he'd destroyed some public property when he was back in our hometown a while back - the local news channel had just come out with a report that mentioned that the 'creepy letter guy' done exactly that - been arrested for destroying public property. So, yeah. It was definitely X.

No idea what happened after that; the reunion went off without a hitch. I didn't go, but I heard that the guy didn't show up. Sometimes I think about him and wonder if he's doing okay/what happened in the first place. Hope he's in a better mental place.
Anyway, I feel bad for kind of dismissing my mom over it. Sometimes she guesses shit that seems almost impossible for her to guess and it's eerie how spot on it is. Sister jokes that she's secretly a witch.

/historygoose/

I was driving home one night, under a New Moon Feburary sky.. not a single cloud & the Milky Way was gorgeous. I had been driving for a while (About a 1.5 hr trip), when I noticed something odd in the sky... a void, something blocking the stars.
This was odd because: 1. It was in the opposite direction of the moon's position. 2. It was large.. big enough that I could see it's triangular outline. Two long sides, one shorter. At first, I dismissed it as a cloud.. nothing abnormal. But it's outline was three straight lines... NOT natural. Once I realized this.. I got kinda nervous.

As I kept driving, I estimated it to be under 1km off the ground & hovering in place. And I was starting to get closer to it, with the road I was on seemimg to pass under it. With my brain going into full X-Files mode...

I started to feel jittery, as my brain was trying to rationalize what I was seeing. Before I got underneath it, despite my brain telling me to get away.... I pulled over & got out to see it better (This was around 2005, before I got a cell phone)

So I stood there, in the dark, in the middle of nowhere... staring at a big wedge in the sky... No wind, no noise, just calm & quiet. After about a minute standing there, it seemed to start moving. Almost spinning in place, the long "front" moving around towards where I was standing..

I started to panic a bit... realizing that I might have REALLY fucked up... when the UFO lit up.. Several lights under it started pulsing... almost like the blinker at a crosswalk. The lights flashed yellow, blue, green...

Then...instantaneously, there was a muffled "Whump", and it was gone.... the stars it obscured were now visible, and a slight breeze kicked up.

Needless to say.. I got back into my car, drove like crazy to get home, had a double shot of Whiskey & was up all night.. I've replayed this in my head & analyzed every possible explanation... but there is only one...
TL:DR... I'll go to my grave knowing that aliens exist.

/Skeldann/

I swear, im being haunted. My mom has this big stand thing where we put hand creams and face masks, and its about an inch away from the counter closest to the toilet. Sometimes, when I use the toilet, its falls over onto me.
I have one of those lamps with like 5 heads and the shades are all different colors in my room for extra light. Sometimes, when I'm sleeping, I'll wake up to a loud bang. I open my eyes, and my lamp is lying on the floor.

My little brother (1) has a toy piano, where as long as you just touch the keys, it plays. Often, I wake up to that piano playing. My siblings are at daycare and my mom is at work by the time I wake up, so im alone. I always turn it off, none of my siblings play with it, and it only happens when I'm alone. I have a white heat lamp for my geckos, but we havent used on in a few weeks. 

Every time we screw in a brand new bulb and turn the lamp on, the bulb pops and sometimes shatters. We've checked a thousand time, and we're using the right bulb wattage for the right heat lamp. We even bought a new lamp, and the bulb still breaks. If anyone has any explanation for any of these, please tell me. Im scared to use the toilet, and I'm scared to fall asleep.

Edit: the bathroom stand is a goot 2 feet tall and pretty heavy for its size, and only falls over on me. Ive tried the heat lamp in multiple different outlets and ive tried different brands of lamps. The toy piano did start playing randomly until about late February (we got it for christmas 2019) and we had just recently changed the batteries.

Edit 2: thank you all for your advice and help. I really hope i can solve this thing
Update: Its been a month since I posted this and it's still here. Ive told it that I dont feel safe, so it left for a while.

Yesterday my mom asked me to put groceries away while she took care of my little brother and sister. I started to put stuff away, and I figured I might as well put her purse away last. I walk across the kitchen to the counter to put something away, and when I got back to the table where she put the groceries, her bag was gone. Someone had hung it up. 

I didn't remember putting it away and I was the only one in the kitchen. I asked my brother if he put it away, and he said no. So i guess whatever is in my house is helping me?

/ChocoaQueen/

Let me preface this by saying that I am very dubious about the existence of the paranormal, but my uncle used to lived in what I am absolutely convinced was a haunted house as I really don't know how else to describe it. Their house was a converted monastic living quarters. Regardless of if you believe this or not, all these stories were told to my dad by my uncle who is a very level-headed man. Events that transpired there include:
The very existence of their living room. They actually converted another room into their living room because the aura of this particular room was absolutely vile. Both my parents, who aren't believers in the supernatural, report feeling extremely cold and uneasy in this room. My younger cousin actually cried the first time he went into this room when they moved in, and their dog wouldn't go anywhere near it either.
My younger cousin seeing a "white sheet ghost" when having a bath. My uncle had left the room briefly to go and get him a towel (cousin was about 4 or 5 at the time so obviously not being left alone to bathe), and when my uncle came back my cousin told him about "the white sheet ghost" who had watched him while my uncle had gone.
I assume he described it like this because his only frame of reference was ghosts in cartoons, but my uncle was freaked out. It was only him, my cousins and my aunt in the house. Numerous occasions of doors not just shutting themselves, but slamming closed despite there being no windows open nor any draught being present.
My uncle coming down to get a drink of water in the middle of the night to find all the gas hobs turned on and the taps running. This could obviously be caused by forgetfulness but I don't think my uncle would be this careless. My uncle putting clean dishcloths onto the table, going to the toilet and coming back to find they had been thrown around his kitchen. Just him in the house.
One time my aunt was alone in the house as my cousins were staying with my grandparents and my uncle had gone on a business trip. Just before going to bed, she noticed that the room was ever so faintly glowing red. As in, everything was bathed in this red light including the walls, bed and all the objects in the room. Their house wasn't near any main roads. She drove to my grandparents at 12am to spend the night there with my cousins as she didn't want to be in the house alone.
The final straw that caused them to move out was when my uncle, completely sober at the time and sat in the living room, saw what he described to my dad as a man in a black cowl walking past the door down the hallway (the living room door looked out onto a section of the hallway, which was very long and ran almost the whole length of the house).
My uncle obviously thought it was a burglar and jumped up to confront him, but when he ran out into the hallway it was empty. Front door still closed and locked, no signs of forced entry and after a thorough look around the house, nobody there apart from him and his family. Next day my uncle put the house on the market and they were out within like a month or so.
Again, I am aware this may sound like some bullshit creative writing exercise but I have no reason to believe my uncle made this up, and the fact that my parents both reported feeling uneasy in his house cements these stories in my mind.

/TheRealTKSaint/

I worked as a park ranger for a few summers. It was a great job, but the downside was dealing with the public. I have tons of crazy stories, but only one extremely creepy story.
I was scheduled to close the park one night with another girl. The park opened at dawn and closed at dusk. The closing duties were to drive around and make sure everyone was out of the park, then close the gates. You had to make sure everyone was out or else they would get locked inside.

Kristin and I got into a truck together to check the day use picnic area, both campgrounds and all bathrooms. When we left the upper lot, there were no cars in the parking lot of the ranger station. (Important later)

We cruised around, checked all areas. All was good, so we drove back up to the gate and ranger station to close up. I got out to close the gate and jumped back into the truck. Kristin pointed out that while we were gone, a jeep had parked in the parking lot. We thought this was super weird since we hadn't seen anyone parked there earlier, but whatever.

We parked the truck a couple spots away from the jeep and got out. We figured we'd just tell the person to leave and then we could go home. As we approached the vehicle, we could barely see someone sitting in the drivers seat. We had dim street lamps, so we knew someone was in there. I waved, got no response. No movement. Kristin knocked on the window, the person didn't respond. We both started feeling like something was wrong. I got chills standing there and we both stepped away from the jeep, alarmed at the lack of response.

We both decided to go get our boss, who lived across the street onsite. We weren't supposed to bother him at night, but this was too weird. He got his shoes on and walked over with us.
As we were crossing the street, we saw the door to the jeep slowly open. 

Then all three of us saw a figure creep out of the vehicle and CRAWL underneath! All we saw was a shadow, since there wasn't a lot of light. All of us were scared shitless. It was something out of a horror movie. Kristin got on the phone with the police while my boss and I slowly approached the vehicle. My boss told the person they needed to leave and that we were calling the cops. We could see someone sitting under the lifted jeep, near the front tires. The person wasn't moving or responding.
Once the police showed up, they were visibly freaked out too. They had guns drawn and everything. It turned out to be some person tripping on meth. We had no idea why they showed up at the park or what they were doing there, but the cops did find drugs and a loaded gun in the vehicle. 

After that night, my boss changed all policies regarding closing duties. He added extra closers and we had to carry mase. It was truly terrifying to witness someone creep out of their car and scramble like an animal underneath. It was like she was possessed!

/Ambam3434/

Back when i was 9 or so, me and my friend were having a sleepover. His parents were at a dinner, and his brother was out getting stoned somewhere. Anyways, it was probably 9PM, his parents had just called and said that dinner had turned into drinks, and they would be out for a little while longer. Anyways, we were young, playing Minecraft on the Xbox 360. When we heard his front door open. 

It had a very noticeable noise when it opened, very creaky, almost eerie So, we thought ‘Oh it’s probably just your brother.’ and kept playing, thinking nothing of it. Then, we heard footsteps, on the floor above us. We once again thought nothing of it, seeing as his kitchen was above the basement where we were playing games, and his brother was likely there for mid-high munchies. 

But then. we heard another set of footsteps. We were confused at this point, but we didn’t worry as it was either his parents or a stoner friend of his brother. We then heard a scratching at the basement door. We both looked at each other like ‘Is that just me or is there a scratching’ (He didn’t have any pets) So, me being the oldest by 2 months, went to go check. 

I opened the door and there was nothing there. I yelled upstairs to his brother, lets call him Jim. “Jim, you’re not scaring us. Stop it!” No reply. So i sat back down and continued playing. Now, there was a scratching on the window. We were honestly terrified, and we stayed seated, one of use looking at the door, the other looking at the window. 

Then, again, scratching at the door. I opened it with a baseball bat in hand, and nothing. We barricaded the door, and put things in front of the window. We didn’t hear anything for the next half an hour, and eventually fell asleep. 

The next morning his dad came down and knocked on the door, and tried to get into the basement, We took down the barricade, and his dad came into the room, furious. “Why the hell did you guys rip open the screen door?!” 

We went upstairs and sure enough, the front door’s screen was shredded. We tried to convince him that it wasn’t us, and that the brother had done it to scare us. But what he said next made our blood run cold. 

“Jim wasn’t home at all last night. We dropped him off in the city with his friends.” (My friends house was half an hour away from the city, and none of the people at his friends house had cars.) 

Me and my friend looked at each other, and couldn’t speak. Needless to say, his parents didn’t believe us, they called my parents, and me and my friend had to split the cost to have the basement door replaced (it had tons of scratch marks as well) and the screen door replaced. Me and my friend still bring this up to this day. Whenever we meet

/DuckWithDepression/

I don't really remember what all had occurred that day but it wasn't really anything bad or eventful. I had work after school and was extremely tired during my shift so I was stressed about doing my tasks and homework. I remember driving home that night, my grandma in the passenger seat. We were just chatting and talking about the dumbasses that were on the road in front of us. Of course, my grandma was with me because I was (still am a permitted driver). She'd pick me up from/take me to work.
I remember when we got home, I was ready for bed. Like any other night, I'd brushed my teeth and gotten into some proper sleeping attire. I'd decided to put my homework off for study hall the next day. Keep in mind, I share a room with my ten year old brother. He's a pain in the ass when I'm trying to sleep but I love him.

Anyways, fast forward to trying to sleep. I'd managed to sleep for what I guess was a couple of hours before I "woke up". You see, I don't remember falling asleep before this occurred. I just remember being extremely tired and 'poof'! I'd fallen asleep I guess. I just remember "waking up" and not being able to move, like I was glued to my bed. I couldn't even turn my head, the only thing I could do was move my eyes. I couldn't speak nor could I see that well. I remember my brother's lamp was off which was unusual, he always keeps it on. My only source of light was the window beside my bed because the curtains were pulled a bit. The moon was emitting a tiny ray of light through the small crack in my curtains.

By this point, I'd decided I'd just woke up randomly... until I saw it in the corner of my eye. A tall shadow standing beside my brother's T.V. It was as if it was just standing there, watching me. Maybe it was watching my brother but Jesus christ, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The more and more I looked at it, the more petrified I became. My mouth had gotten dry, my vision was becoming blurry, my limbs were going numb. It's entire body was outlined perfectly, just like a man's. Except I couldn't see an outline of clothes nor hair. Just a man, a shadow peeping on two kids trying to sleep.

This was probably the worst decision I could've made but I closed my eyes. I did this in an attempt to make it leave me alone. I just wanted to sleep, I just wanted it to leave me alone. I think it could hear my thoughts because the next second, my grandma bursted into the room and turned the light on. She said "it's time to get up!" I just remember looking at her like she was crazy.

A couple days later, at work, I remember feeling like I was being watched almost everywhere I went. Even in the bathroom. I damn near had a panic attack in there because of how tweaked I was from my recent ordeal.

Fast forward to my dad's birthday (which is on the thirteenth of January). It was a rough day for me because I had to call in for work and wait all day for my mom and dad to show up. You see, I don't live with my mom and dad. They're shit parents most of the time but on my dad's birthday, what happened not only shocked me but their reactions shocked me as well. For some idea of why this would happen, I'm a shit-starter sometimes. I make stupid jokes and joke about stupid things. For example: "Did you see that?" and "Oh my god! I just sliced my thumb open!" That type of bullshit.
The reason why this day was so shit though was because my hamster was dying. She wouldn't move, nor would she get up. I had to kill her. It was one of the hardest things I think I've ever done. To make it even worse, my mom and dad showed up right as I killed her. They walked in, seeing how upset I was and asked me what was wrong. I couldn't say anything except for "I had to kill her, she was suffering".

Let me get to the point of this though, I had went to the bathroom to splash my face with cold water in case I was to start crying. I hate crying in front of people, especially since it makes me feel like a dumbass when I do. Anyways, the bathroom door was opened. It was opened just enough to where I could see into my grandma and grandpa's room. It was dark in there, really dark. I remember feeling nauseous the more and more I stared into it. Not even thirty seconds to a minute, I heard running on the carpet. Like someone or something was coming at me. Nothing touched me, I don't think. But I flew backwards into the bath tub. The thud was so hard that it shook the house. I couldn't do anything except stare at the doorway, crying and whimpering. A few seconds later, I heard my mom yelling for me. My dad as well. I broke the choke that was in my throat that had developed from pure fear over the past few minutes. I managed to say "Mom! Mommy!" Yes, I still call my mom 'mommy' but only sometimes. When I really want or need her. She walked into the bathroom, looking down at me, worry distorting her face.

The next few moments consisted of "are you okay?" and "honey, what's going on?". I was shocked, thankful that they believed me. I was like this because whatever was happening to me was scaring the shit out of me. I was terrified of what was gonna happen next. Wether it was to me or someone else, I just wanted it to stop. Fast forward to now and I haven't experienced anything since then (hopefully never again). I just wanted to talk about this because it's been bothering me. It seems like no one believes me when I try to tell them about it except for my mom and dad. Wether they're acting or being sympathetic, I thank them for how they reacted. But yeah, fuck sleep paralysis and night terrors and all the like.

/friedash/

When I was around 15, I had a huge falling out with my parents and moved about 150 miles away from home to live with my aunt on her 500-acre farm in the middle of nowhere.I was home alone at her house often, as she worked and was recently widowed. One afternoon I left my bedroom to walk to the kitchen. When I did, I passed by an unused guest room but was shocked to see a man sitting at the corner of the bed staring out the sliding glass door at the rolling hills of my Aunt's property. 

I paused in the doorway realizing that this "man" looked hazy, it was like he wasn't a solid being but a "thick mist" made up of natural colors (difficult to explain, but everything was colored normally.) He was just sitting there, leaned over a bit with his elbows on his knees clenching and rubbing his hands. He turned slowly and looked at me and by that time I had come to my senses and ran to the garage. 

I was terrified and thought I was losing my mind. But as I gathered myself I realized the "man" looked like my grandpa, who I had only ever seen a few pictures of because he died 5 years before I was born. After I calmed down I bravely went back to the hall where the guest room was and shut the door.

My family has generally talked down about ghost stories and sightings for religious reasons, so I was somewhat afraid to tell my aunt what I saw. I primed my question focusing it on her recently passed husband "Do you think if spirits did exist, he would come to visit you?" she was a bit startled at my question but eventually confessed that she thinks her husband does visit her. She said, "Sometimes I will walk down the hall, and right by the guest room I can smell his cologne so strong it's like he's right beside me." 

I then told her about what I saw and how the man was sitting and she smiled and said "I think your grandpa was just checking in on you. He came for a visit once and that was the room he stayed in. He loved the view." After our conversation, I felt okay about what I saw and we didn't discuss it any further. 

A month later my Aunt and I were passing through my hometown on our way to a wedding and she said that we really should try to have a sit down with my parents. I agreed and things were going great when my Aunt said: "Tell your dad what you saw in the guest room." I didn't want to because my dad was the main person who was against the talk of Ghosts and this was his dad I was talking about. 

I gathered the courage to tell my dad and I showed him exactly how the man was sitting and how he was rubbing his hands. Almost immediately I could see my dad was about to cry. He looked at my aunt and said "Dad used to sit like that all the time!" my aunt nodded and then my dad said, "He was always rubbing his hands like that because they ached so bad from arthritis." I never saw my "grandpa" or a figure like that again.

I also have NEVER seen any video footage of my grandfather, only a few pictures. And none of the pictures show him sitting in that manner or rubbing/clenching his hands so I don't know how my brain would have been able to create that movement that was apparently super accurate. Also, oddly enough, today would have been my Grandpa's 111th birthday.

/jenybluth/

The story of the boy who disappeared from the Smokies is one of the strangest and creepiest stories of a child disappearing I have ever heard of. The reason I haven't told anybody is because it involves a whole bunch of conspiracy that not many people would actually believe.

Dennis Lloyd Martin disappeared from the Smokey Mountain National Park in Tennessee on June 14th, 1969. He was playing with 2 other boys, one his relative, one who came from a different family who also had the last name of Martin. His father witnessed him go into a bush. He just thought he was gonna try and pop out to scare the two other boys. But after a while, his father got concerned as the other boys had passed by the bush multiple times, and he still hadn't popped out.
His father checked the bush. Dennis was nowhere to be found. His father raced into the forest, as it was only a few feet away, and ran for 2 whole miles before he realised there was no way in hell his son could have made it that far in the amount of time he had been missing. 5 miles away, another family was wanting to look for a place to spot some bears. A Forest Ranger guided them to a spot that had known bear activity. 

When the family got to the spot, they heard a loud and shrill roar, "unlike any animal I've ever heard" as the father put it. He then said him, his wife, and his young son witnessed a large, upright figure, walking along the horizon, but when it spotted them, it tried to stay hidden. The father was scared shitless, but he was able to engrain of couple of the creatures features into his brain.

It was tall, shaggy, and furry. But he was also able to get the detail that it seemed as though it was carrying something. Something bright red. Dennis was wearing a bright red shirt that day.
When the search for Dennis was called, the Park Service weren't the only ones searching. The FBI and Green Berets also arrived to search for Dennis. But the Green Berets wouldn't say who told them to be there, and why THEY were trying to look for some random kid. Every request for these details to be revealed were flat out ignored.

Years later, Dennis' father, who had tried to forget about Dennis to move on with his life, said as though it seemed as though the 3 government entities weren't working together, but competing against each other. As if there was some prize at the end of this case. But going on, the family who had witnessed the furry and shaggy figure tried to report this to Forest Rangers. The father even offered to go to the FR station and show them the spot he had witnessed the creature. But they said "We'll come to you." Yet they never did.

Feeling as though his account wasn't being taken seriously, he went to the press. They published the story about a furry, tall, and shaggy creature that showed up only hours after the boy disappeared. How the deafening scream was that of no other animal. Yet the detail of it carrying something was completely left out.

Nobody would take the paper seriously if they did. Dennis' father learned about the "Ape Man" or "Man Bear" as the media called it, through the newspaper, not the Wildlife Services. When he confronted them they said the account was "Inconsequential" and "Wouldn't lead anywhere" as it didn't fit the time frame (the other family's account was 2 hours after many officials deducted the time at which Dennis disappeared) Dennis' father walked the trail to the spot the creature was witnessed. It took him only a hour and a half, and that was on the track. If something went through the thick and hilly forest, it could 100% take 2 hours to walk to that spot.

In the end, Dennis was never found. Months of searching and not a single trace of the boy was found. For the rest of his life, Dennis' father firmly believed that whatever happened to his boy that day, the "Shaggy" man had something to do with it. Look up "The Boy who disappeared from the Smokies" on Google and YouTube. On YouTube there is a great animated video about the whole incident that goes into more detail than I have.

/Better_Green_Man/

I once dated a man who claimed he was haunted by a demon or evil spirit. Weird stuff would happen around him like he’d leave all the drawers and cabinet doors in his kitchen open. I’d come to his apartment and find all of them open, and him in his bedroom. When I’d ask about it he’d say he didn’t remember leaving them open. I thought he was just messing with me.Then I started to have nightmares when I’d stay over. Like I once dreamed a creature was hovering over him. It looked like a black sheet or like a dementor. It was trying to smother him and I screamed myself awake. 

Once when we were sitting in the living room he said he felt it nearby and I heard a guttural growling sound. We were alone and he didn’t make the noise. I was so scared I told him we should stay at my apartment that night. He said it was tied to him and it would just follow him.

When we got to my place I told my roommate about the situation, she was open minded about it and we sat up talking for awhile. At one point he and I went and got into my bed to lie down. He told me he could feel it nearby. My skin start to get goosebumps and I felt this overwhelming fear. We decided to go back into the living room with my roommate because it felt safer. While they were talking I decided to go outside on my patio for a smoke, to calm myself a bit. I actually am not a superstitious person so this all was getting to me, plus I hadn’t been sleeping much.

While I sat outside, there was a lightning storm. No rain yet, but I could see the sky flickering and the wind started to blow back and forth in these big gusts. I stared to feel angry, like.. how dare this thing come to my house. In my mind I challenged the creature to appear, I dared it to. I was calling it out in my head. 

The storm was coming and I decided to go back in, feeling upset and angry. I put my cigarette out in a small glass ashtray that was on the patio. As I pushed the butt down the ashtray split perfectly into three pieces. 

Three perfect triangles. I know I didn’t push hard enough to break it. Right then, the thunder and lightning crashed really hard. I scooped up the broken ash tray pieces and ran back inside to show my boyfriend and roommate. I was so freaked out by everything at that point that I couldn’t process it.

The next day he called his aunt in Mexico and she told him to get a small mirror and look into while calling out to the spirit. She told him to break the mirror when he saw or felt the demon, and then to bury the pieces where no one would find them. He did it, apparently, and no more problems after that. Freaking weird.

Idk if it was all nonsense to this day, but I will never ever forget how I felt when that ash tray broke. It was like the bad spirit was taunting me back./Pretty_Detective6667/

Right before I moved out of my parent's home to start college, my family moved to a new home. It was fairly new, built in the 80s or 90s and had no sort of sinister history that we know of. It had only had two previous owners, none of which had had any issues or traumatic experiences in the home to our knowledge.
It had some quirks, but we chalked them up to being in an unfamiliar place. One of the "quirks" was that the bathtub faucet in the shared kids bathroom would sometimes run on its own for a few moments, then stop. Not a drip or a dribble, it would just run at normal pressure for a moment and stop without anyone bothering the handle. 

We joked that it was a ghost, but decided it was probably just some water getting trapped in the plumbing. I really don't know anything about plumbing, so I'm not sure how viable that is as an explanation, but I did think it was odd that it happened intermittently without any apparent trigger. It did not seem to correlate to how often or recently the shower had been used. Either way, it wasn't something that worried me or made me fearful, so I mostly ignored it.

One night soon after we had moved and settled in, my dad had woken up in a cold sweat and scrambled to the foot of the bed and looked around the floor like he was searching for something. He was obviously on edge, and when my mom asked him about it, he said he thought he was having a dream about a woman.

She was in a white gown but her hair was black and her face was very shadowy and tough to see. He said in his dream he was watching her move around the room, but she only appeared in the mirrors. (They had several small decorative mirrors hanging on the walls.) She would move from mirror to mirror, and when dad "woke up" she was briefly standing at the foot of the bed, and then suddenly dropped down below the foot of the bed. Of course we all just agreed it was a bad dream or sleep paralysis, so it kind of became a joke that "ooooooh, the house must be haunted, so spooky!" and we didn't let it bother us.

One morning I was home alone while my family was at school/work, and I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth and taking care of normal daily routine stuff. As was par for the course, the faucet started to run. Without thinking, I just said "You know that's not scary right?" and it immediately stopped.

It honestly jarred me, because typically it would run for several seconds before tapering off. But this time it stopped immediately as if it was responding to my words. I'm not sure if I believe in ghosts, but it did make me a bit uneasy. Despite that, I sort of let myself forget about it and business continued as normal for me.

I'd almost forgotten about our "ghost" until one day my sister asked me if I had heard the bathtub faucet running lately. I really hadn't put much thought into it, but she was right. It had been weeks since I heard it. She said it had not been happening to her either.

I kept myself aware of it over the next few days and not once did the faucet leak again. I don't live there anymore, but my parents and younger sister and brother do, and as far as I'm aware, it has not happened since that morning when I acknowledged it.

/bigdingushaver/

I have never told this story to someone since it happened, I think. I don't know if it's because I just forgot, or tried to block it out.
Several years ago, when I was much younger - around 8-9 I believe - I was home alone during the day during the summer, as my mother was working and my grandparents were in another state. At the time I was living at my grandparent's home as my immediate family was pretty poor.

Well, at one point, sometime around 2pm I think, I was sitting in the living room watching TV, just relaxing, when I hear knocking at the front door. I was a pretty anxious kid around unknown people, so I decided against answering it outright and only snuck up to the door to see if I could peek who it was. When I checked the window nearest to the door I had no clue who this guy was, certainly wasn't anyone I've ever seen around though.

It wasn't unheard of for people to go door to door peddling random shit then though, especially in my grandparent's neighborhood as they were moderately well off, so I didn't think too much of it. I was still a bit anxious though, so I decided to, as quietly as I could, lock the door without showing myself or basically announcing my presence to the guy outside. I failed.

This was, without a doubt, the loudest click of a lock I believe I have ever heard, or ever will hear. How I managed to fuck up locking a door quietly I will never know. But I do know that this random guy outside definitely heard it, because he stopped trying to knock on the door, and immediately tried to turn the doorknob.

After realizing it was locked this guy started walking down the path away from the door - but not straight back to the street, and instead he started walking towards the driveway, which would lead to the backyard and backdoor of the house. I don't think I've ever moved so fast while crouching in my life. I remember this part as clear as day, because even though I had less ground to cover, and moved as fast as I could, literally nano seconds after I locked the back door I could hear the door being pulled as this mystery-man tried to open the door on me.

I remember being panicked and worried that he would try something more drastic as he pounded on the door some more, and only just then did it dawn on me to try calling my mother who was at work. She called her friend who was closer to me, and she got there 30-45 minutes later. I don't think I've had a more tense filled hour in my life, than that time waiting for my mom's friend.

When she got there she looked around the house looking for this guy that had just made the last hour of my life a living nightmare, but to no success. She stayed with me until my mom got home, and my mom just sort of disregarded it because her friend never found anyone. I think she tried to calm me down by saying that it was probably just a government worker or someone trying to check the gas or some shit.

But I never bought it. Funniest thing I think about the whole thing is that it's possibly not even the creepiest/scariest thing that happened with me in that house.

/AolongHong/

When I was a kid, I lived in this really old house with my parents and older sister. I was 12 by the time we moved out into a much newer house, but the time this happened I'd guess I would have been between 6 and 10. There are three different things that made this house creepy:
The cellar. My dad kept a chest freezer down there so every now and again I'd have to go and fetch something, which I hated. The parts of the cellar that we used were lit just fine, but right at the back of the cellar was a small, weird room we rarely went in, because it was pitch black and the floor foundation was sunk down and creepy as hell. The few times I ever did go in that room, I was overwhelmed with this cold feeling and an absolute silence that made me feel like I couldn't move.

Next was the attic. It had been converted into a bedroom (my bedroom) but there was an crawl space type thing left attached right near where my parents decided to put my bed. Some nights when I was trying to fall asleep, I could hear scratching from behind the crawl space door.

It didn't happen often so I hoped it was maybe a pigeon or something that found its way in and nested in there. That was a comforting thought, until things got worse. Every so often, I was kept awake by my fear of something I saw in my room. At the top of the stairs right next to my toy box, I would see a 'creature'.

I was terrified when it was there obviously and, yeah, I'd forget about it during the days but would always worry when it came to bed time again. I have never known how to describe it but I guess I thought it was some sort of like, gremlin? It was really dark and all I can really recall is that it was small, like a child, and had huge round eyes that were just holes, like empty sockets.

The worst part of it is that I never saw a mouth or saw it speak but I would hear it whispering all the time, even if I shut my eyes (which as kid, usually makes bad things go away right??). Could never make out what it was saying aside from a few times where it asked me to go with it, like "Come with me".

In my absolute horror, I'd often bolt past it downstairs to cry and scream at my dad and sister, accusing them of teasing me and playing a trick or something but they always seemed unsettled to the point I really believed it wasn't their doing. Anyway, it happened less and less and when my sister moved out, I took her room and never looked back.

Eventually we moved out. Years later when my sister and I were both in our teens/twenties, my mum decided to admit to us that she hated that house because her and my dad would often hear a child crying in the attic or cellar, even when my sister and I weren't there at all.
I still think about it sometimes. I'm not a superstitious or spiritual person at all and often try to find the logical answer but it...has always creeped me out because it felt really damn real at the time.

/Tundraful/

I have a few from the townhome I used to live in back in college. My friends and I were convinced it was haunted. I shared it with two other girls and both of them have their own stories as well (I’ll just be telling mine here)
The first unexplainable thing happened the night I moved in. I woke up in the middle of the night to some strange sound and sat up. I heard a marble rolling around the hardwood floor, it was pitch dark but it sounded like it was rolling around right next to me. 

It stopped and I quickly woke my boyfriend up and we both sat in the dark listening, it started rolling again and we turned on all the lights. I don’t own marbles and I have no idea what that was.

Another time, my roommate and I were leaving the house in a hurry. The staircase was right next to the door so as I was running out I heard light switches flicking on and off from upstairs. I thought my roommate was upstairs so I called up to her to “turn off all the lights” before she left. I walk outside to see her already sitting in the car. There was nobody else home at the time.

There are also various other inexplicable things that happened like the downstairs printer running randomly and friends who stayed over in the living room would get sleep paralysis despite never experiencing it before. There was also a time we heard a huge BANG sound from upstairs but found nothing when we investigated.
Everything seemingly stopped with this final weird event. I had this wall in my room and for some reason paintings would not stay on this wall no matter what. I tried everything short of actually nailing them to the wall (Velcro tape, the sticky gray adhesive, double sided tape, etc) Every other wall in my room held paintings just fine but this one wall wouldn’t. 

My bed’s headboard was against this wall so I adamantly wanted paintings to be there because they looked the best on that wall. One day I was just fed up and ended up duct taping a canvas there.

I went downstairs for a few hours and when I came back up, that same painting was on the ground. In the middle of the room. With a huge hole in it. Like somebody took blunt scissors and just stabbed it.

I was home alone the entire time and I have no idea how that could have happened. I ended up taking all of the paintings off that wall and after that the weird events seemingly stopped. I moved out a month later.

/Kawaii_Sauce/

Well this is not something I saw, but something I experienced. I’m 16, almost 17 now, but when I was maybe 3-4 years old, I had VIVID dreams of a golden man coming into my room at night, talking to me, and taking me somewhere. He wasn’t like a gold statue, but he had a sort of golden aura. I remember almost perfectly him taking me places, only later in life I would visit.

The first place I remember going was a what seemed like middle eastern country. Very sandy and rocky. I was there with my family (then it was just my mom and dad), and there were these above ground tombs. Not like chambers, but like the bodies of people were buried above ground and covered in rocks. We were walking through it with other people like it was a tourist sight. I can only remember just being absolutely blinded by light.

This place I have not visited before, and I have not since. The second place he took me was very different. It was very very green. It was like a Zoo, but it did not have any animals besides lions. There were no bars, nothing modern. Everything was made completely out of stone. I remember us being up on a stone wall, looking into a field.

There were like stone covers in the field with lions napping in them. I remember the man took me down the wall and brought me right up to a lion. After this, I woke up. One year later, my family visited the exact place, minus the lions.

I have the pictures too, but I don’t know where it is. I had started to tell my mom about this, and instead of saying “Oh wow honey, very creative dream”, she believed me, and asked me if the man scared me. me.

I was not scared of the man when I was sleeping, but when I woke up and thought about it, 4 year old me was scared. She told me to tell the man that I was scared, and that if I wanted to, tell him to leave me alone. I don’t remember when after this I saw him again, but I do remember the last time I saw him.

He took me to a super bright place, with large pillars of greek architecture and ruins. There were people walking around on the street. Here I cannot remember what happened, but when he took me home I asked him to leave me alone because I was scared. He said that it was ok and I never saw him again.
I grew up and live in the US, and the man was not western looking at all. He was asian, and was dressed like a warrior sometimes, and a monk other times. I was 4 years old at the time, so I had never seen either of these things before. 

I also had no idea experience with roman architecture, so I do not believe either of those things could have been created by my subconscious based on prior knowledge.

/jackvr1104/

Think this was around February and even thinking about it now gives me a chill down my spine. I go to a college where I study filmmaking and i was on my way to a music video shoot, I was really tired and my mother knew so she offered to drive me to the shoot. Me and my mum have always been close, she’s always talked to me to get my opinion on problems in her life and emotional issues she’s going through.

One thing to mention is that me and my mum have a sort of linked intuition. I’m not really someone who believes in crazy spiritual stuff like that normally but I make an exception when it comes to intuition, because there has been many times in my life where I’ve had a bad feeling about going to a party or a bad vibe about a person and something fucked up has happened and even then I think it’s probably me rationally analysing it subconsciously rather that intuition.
Anyways. We are driving along I’m having a cigarette in the car and we’re playing music me and my mum are talking about very light hearted stuff you know like what me and my girlfriend are up to on the weekend, saying we should go out for dinner with my grandma on the weekend shit like that just normal conversation. Around my area there’s these windy roads going through almost like small forests

Right let me get to the point Something fucking really weird happens as we were going through one of these windy roads So my playlist comes to an end and me and my mum are laughing about something and as the music stops everything in the car went silent meaning we stopped laughing almost instantly

As we go through this bend in the road I get a sickening feeling in my stomach and shivers when my eyes laid on a hump of rubbish, with a blue tarp hanging on a cardboard box, and all of a sudden a very dark thought popped into my head out of nowhere But I disregarded it as my mind being stupid. We carried on driving and came to the main road and just before my mum pulled out on to the road she stopped for a second and looked at me and I said

“Did you just get a really bad feeling going through that bit where the rubbish was” And she gasped and said “YES!” I explained the feeling I had and she explained she felt the exact same thing but I was reluctant to say the thought that popped into my head as I didn’t want her to think I was a crazy fuck. I get to the video shoot it goes well. I get a Uber home because it was late and I didn’t want my mum to have to come out to get me cause she was saying she was tired.

A few weeks past and I’m out with my friends on a Friday in central London just fucking about and I go home about 4 o’clock cause they all live in lewisham and Croydon but I live further away so I get home and my mum and dad are having a drink in the kitchen and I’ll admit I was a bit high so I come in and I tell them what I was up to and I’m chilling with them having a few beers for abit before I go upstairs and my dad leaves and goes to the bathroom. and I remember that time I was in the car with my mum and that weird thing happened and I bring it Up

FYI I’m a little bit drunk “Mum do you remember when we were driving along that lane and we got that weird feeling” And she says yeah she does I said “Yh that was really fucking weird I’ve never had a feeling like that before it was the weirdest feeling I’ve ever had......” I stop and look her in the eyes “did u have a weird feeling about what was in that cardboard box” She said “YES !” “what feeling did you have... cause I had a feeling there was a -““Dead child” “Dead child in there!!!! ” my mum interrupts and says at the exact same time We both said the same thing and a feeling of absolute dread comes over me and my mum puts her hand over her face in shock.

My mum said she didn’t want to tell me either and we talk about it with my Dad whose a very spiritual person but not the weird crystal type ofspiritual. I haven’t read over this cause it’s late sorry if this doesn’t make any sense but I get a horrible feeling every time I think about that shit.
I never went back to that place since, I’ve never seen anything in the news recently about a child, but there’s been some strange things Me and my dad found in my area whilst walking my dog in the woods. But that’s a whole other story Thanks for reading all this.

/John-Berk/

Soo me and my dad go on these long walks around our area, there’s a lot of farms and forrests around us and a lot of land. We don’t take our dog to the park,( mastiff ) so he can run around without being disturbed by other dogs or humans who agitated him. So we’re walking through this Forrest and we spot these really old trees and they’re all plotted in this circular shape. We both thought it was interesting but wasn’t too strange it was just a circle of trees we just started talking again didn’t think nothing of it.

Anyway a few days later it’s probably about 6:30 and we take our dog out on a walk and we’re walking through this open field and we see these three people all dressed in black walking towards us our dog starts going mental at these 3 men, they stop walking, we stop walking, and they are staring at me and my dad they’re probably about 50 metres away and one of them begins to slowly walk towards us with his hands by his side not swinging and our dog just goes for him but my dad holds him back, by his chain but he’s not tryna restrain him or tell him stop cause he wants them to know that if they try anything funny our dogs gonna fuck em up.

Soo I think they realise this and they split up walking in different directions one goes across the field to the left, the other one goes to the right and the middle one goes back they way they came from I’m assuming
Soo me and my dad are looking at each other and cause were originally from Croydon which is like abit of a rough area we’re saying that they’re obviously tryna rob us or something but like I said if they tried anything our dog would fuck em up so I’m calm my dads calm and we keep walking. It’s starting to get dusky now it’s about 7pm and we’re walking and I’ve almost forgot about it.

Then as I’m walking I get this feeling someone is watching me and I stop look around and there’s no one there so I just keep walking my dad and I wanna go home now soo we’re picking up the pace. Now I have no proof but I felt like I was being followed by them guys soo I say to my dad maybe we shouldn’t go home straight away just in case you know and he try’s shrug it off but he agreed in the end soo we decide to it let’s round a few times and I actually end up running around just as a joke screaming “oi dickhead I see you ! aye come here “ and my dads laughing and tells me to stop.

Soo we end up walking up towards home cutting across this field and we see this rock about waist high soo we say we’ll just sit down and rest for abit soo I go to sit downwind my dog starts barking wildly again and it feels wet where I’ve sat but it hasn’t been raining. and my dad sits down and something crunches and we’re both like what the fuck, soo I turn my flashlight on and the part I sat on ,was covered in red , and the bit my dad sat on had a animal skull on it and a candle and we both look at eachother and we look around and we realise we’re in the middle of that circle of trees.

Now, when I tell you me and my dad RAN home as fast as we could with our dog, we must’ve been going faster than Usain bolt cause we cleared this massive field in about 30 seconds.anyway we get home and we didn’t talk about it since Now I’m not really know about the occult soo if anyone could let me know what that was all about that would be very helpful but rest assured we haven’t gone on that trail since.

I should add The people in my area are very weird there’s something a little off with the way they smile the way they look at us I don’t know how to describe one time I walked into the cafe and it was packed of people talking and laughing and when I walked in they all stopped talking instantly without looking up like a fucking western movie when someone walks into a bar .

My dad said it’s like the way the people look at that guy in get out at the house party scene I suppose 🤣but Yh there’s something off about the people round here and maybe it’s something to do with us being from a city and now we live in the countryside almost but I have a feeling it’s something more to it. Well thanks for reading all of this and please let me know if I’m being paranoid or whether this all sounds abit fucked up.

/John-Berk/

I was 8 or 9, and on the very first (and last) sleepover of my childhood. I also had very short hair, as my mother had cut my waist-length auburn hair the minute my dad had gone away for work (I hadn't wanted her to and neither had my dad, she was just... a bitch).
So, I go to this girl's house, we have dinner, her parents are really sweet to me (first time I was allowed to leave foods I didn't like on my plate without punishment, etc.), and then myself, the girl, and her two older sisters all settle onto the couch as cushions in the living room to watch films, paint nails, and eventually sleep.

The older sister was, I think, about 15, so seemed very grown up to me, and for whatever reason she seemed really interested in talking to me and finding out about me. She was the first person to whom I admitted what my home life was like, about the abuse from my mother, and I cried a lot about my hair in particular as this poor teenager hugged me. Eventually we all went to sleep.

I woke up the next morning with a long, thin plait hanging down from a section of my short hair. It reached past my shoulders. As first I thought it was something one of the girls had clipped into my hair as a joke but when I pulled it, it was rooted to my scalp - it was real hair.

The girls and their mother all had blonde hair, their father black, and this was my own natural shade of auburn, so it wasn't something they could have glued to my head for a joke for whatever reason.

I was freaking out and it woke the others, who then proceed to freak out themselves. We woke their mother, who at first thought we were playing a prank. When she sat me down in the bathroom and had a proper look, though, she went pale. It was MY hair, growing from MY scalp, and it was weird.

I begged her to cut it out, knowing my own mother would assume I'd stuck it to my head somehow and punish me, so she did. Again, where she cut, the shorter hair was identical to the rest of my head; she just had a half-inch thick, 6 inch long plait of my hair in her hand.
She took me home before breakfast, dropping me off outside. My mother didn't ask me why, just assumed I'd misbehaved and punished me with no food for the rest of the weekend. 

I never told her about it, and none of the girls spoke to me again. I was already a bullied kid at school but it got worse, although it seemed none of the girls never told anyone what we had seen.

/TartanManatee/

Sorry, this is a long one. Up until the age of 17/18 I was under the impression that my mother was a widow and my father had died from a heart attack when I was 2. My mother sat me down one night and told me more information about my father than I had ever known throughout my life.
In hindsight I should have known something was weird since my whole family never mentioned him. Never. I visited both sides of the family with no problem at all. This was normal to me and growing up I watched my friends interact with two parents and thought wow that's weird.
My dear mother then proceeded to tell me the tale about a very troubled man. My mother married my father at a young age, with him being her neighbor. She told me how in her eyes they were the perfect little family and soon my brother was born. the three of the were really close.

By this time my father retired from the army and decided to join the police force. There he met a witch of a woman. Lets call her L. L enjoyed any man that enjoyed her after a few drinks. She mocked any decent woman and had no respect for anyone. My father started to cheat on my mom with L to the point where weekends and some days would go by without hearing a word from my father. They soon decided a divorce was what's best for everyone. Then my mom fell pregnant with me.

My father wanted the divorce to go on, and claimed I was not his child. My mother pleaded with him to just put the divorce on hold till after I was born since being a child out of wedlock would mean I couldn't get the health care and inheritance my brother got. Throughout the pregnancy my father couldn't care less about my mom and I. He wasn't there for the birth and he mocked me the day I was born.

The divorce was settled and not even 3 months after it he married L. My father wanted nothing to do with my brother and I. My father took L and his new one MIL on a vacation, and he wanted to take my brother and I with for some reason. He begged my mom, and my mom felt sorry for my brother now being detached from his beloved father, and agreed to let my brother go with since he was already a preteen but I could not (being a toddler my mom was really protective).

While on vacation there was a big argument and my brother hid in a cupboard, watched as L and MIL beat my father and called him names. My father walked off. My brother hid until the women went away and went to go look for my father. He found my father dead in his car. He committed suicide by gassing himself in a closed garage.

On that day my mom told me she felt a hand on her shoulder and turned around to see no one. After I learned to talk, weird stuff started to happen. My mom told me about how I had an imaginary friend. I have absolutely no recollection of any of it. I would play and laugh at my friend, peek around corners and laugh. I'd go and ask my mom "where did he go?" expecting an answer.

I'd cry at night telling my mom ''he's pulling off my blankets'' and of course, I'd ask my mom to play with certain toys and she'd say no, it was already packed in an overhead cupboard and when she left the room and come back, I would be playing with the toys and the cupboards are closed. My grandmother asked me once to describe my friend. and I did. Eye colour, hair colour, tattoos, facial hair.. it was the exact description of my father. As I got older the playing gradually stopped.

As it turned out, my father was the third generation of suicide in my family. My father, grandfather and great grandfather all committed suicide in obscure ways. Some of my family believe it to be the work of a curse. I'd like to believe my father is still watching out for me, like a guardian angel of some sorts.

/queenchirality/

My family has a cabin in the northern part of my state. It's a small mobile home in the woods on a mountain, there's absolutely no internet or phone reception. There are one or two other cabins with occasional occupants within a few miles so it's not completely isolated but you will almost never see another car pass the house. My best friend and I (both females in our late twenties) had one of the scariest experiences of our lives the last time we visited and I still haven't been back.
The weirdness actually started about a month before I went to the cabin. My mother and aunt visited the cabin and when they got back they were oddly shaken. They explained that my Aunt claimed that, while she slept, someone had grabbed her ankle and physically tried to drag her off of her bed. There was a scuffle but she got free and ran to my moms bedroom in the front of the cabin. They both ran out of the house frantically and to the neighbor. State police were called, they very thoroughly inspected the cabin but found no evidence of someone in or around the cabin. My mom believed that my aunt may have just had a nightmare.

I didn't tell my friend about this, I didn't want to scare her unnecessarily over a silly nightmare. Fast forward a month or so and my friend and I get up to the cabin at about 8 pm after a 4 hour drive. We unload our car and get settled in. It's winter so there's a good foot of snow and freezing temps, we get comfy on the couch and start watching some movies we brought.
Suddenly, there is a loud bang on the window directly behind us. We look at each other startled and instinctively slide off of the couch and onto the floor to put some space between us and the rickety window. Movie paused, we're trying to figure out what the noise could have been. We listen intently for more noises. No additional noise come and, after an hour or so, we start to relax again. We laugh about overreacting, turn our movie back on, and settle in again when suddenly another noise comes. Three distinct and booming knocks directly on the door at the back of the cabin. The cabin shakes with the force of the banging, they're shocking and unmistakable.

We are immediately terrified and filled with dread. I quickly take stock. There are no cars outside, it would be impossible for someone to drive up without notice or without being heard. It's freezing, how is someone out there in this weather? Our cabin is not at all secure, it would be clear to anyone that with very minor force they could break into any door or window. On top of all this, we have absolutely no way to contact help.

We wait, barely breathing, eyes locked onto the back door which we can see from our spot on the floor. Both of us sure that the door will be kicked in any minute. Nothing happens. We being to discuss in whispers, still petrified, what could be going on. In the back of my mind I think about what happen to my Aunt, could someone really have been in the cabin? After at least another hour and no additional noise we decide to try and leave. There's no mistaking what we heard, there was (or is) someone outside. We can't sleep here knowing that. So, we decide to make a break for the car, it would be a short run from the front door in the absolute pitch black and snow.

After some mental prepping, and a whispered count of three, we make a frantic run to my car. Through the pitch black we hop into the car in record time. Slamming the doors, I quickly shove the keys into the ignition to get the car started so we can floor it to safety. I turn the keys and...nothing happens. The car doesn't start. It doesn't even turn over. Absolutely unresponsive. This has never happened, my father is a mechanic so my car is regularly serviced, we had absolutely no issues on our four hour ride up earlier in the day.

I look at my best friend as the reality of everything sets in. Something has been done to my car to keep us here. If we wanted to get to safety now we would have to walk potentially miles in the dark, totally at the mercy of whatever is outside. We have to get back to the house, we can't stay in this car for long without heat. I quickly tell my friend to run back to the house on my count of three, we make it back inside, hearts pounding. We position ourselves back on the floor and discuss options. We decide can't go for help until morning, that's all there is to it. So we wait, awake and terrified.

Throughout the night there were more noises. Anytime we would being to speak at full volume we would hear quiet knocks on one of the three windows surrounding us. As if it were scolding us, reminding us to be scared. We tried not to talk about it but both of us had the same questions, if someone was outside that wanted to harm us then why wouldn't they just break in? It had been hours, who could be outside in these temperatures for this long? The noises became less frequent as morning came.

Once it was light, the noises were gone, we contacted a neighbor who came to look at our car. He found that the nuts on my car battery had been fully unscrewed at some point. While he inspected the car, I looked in the snow around the cabin, expecting to see dozens of foot prints but there were none. Still, we left and haven't gone back. I have no idea what happened and I often convince myself we were overreacting to normal cabin noises but, if thats the case, what happen to my car? I grew up in that cabin, we've had it since I was a child, and I've never heard noises similar to those we heard that night.

/randomredd/

So this weird incident happened about a decade ago during my freshman year in my university. For context my university is situated in a remote area with a beautiful mountainous backdrop. I shared a room with two others in the campus hostel on the ground floor. My room had a large glass window overlooking an alley beyond which was the college sports ground having a small temple separated from the hostel block by chain link fencing.

One evening around dusk, I think it was in October or November, as I was busy working assignments in my room all alone I heard the clank of a pebble hitting the glass window from outside. This happened 4 or 5 times. The pebbles were small enough to not damage the glass. I looked outside but couldn't find anyone. This then stopped and I went about doing my stuff.
Semester exams were upon us now and we were busy cramming stuff late night. Some, including my roommates, used to go to the cafeteria each night for a midnight snack or coffee. I didn't join them and used to stay back. It was between 12:30 am to 1:00 am one such night with me alone in the room, I heard the same clank of a pebble hitting the glass window. 

The curtains were drawn so I couldn't see outside. I pulled the curtains apart and saw just the alley which was dark owing to the absence of lighting and I couldn't make out anyone or anything. I drew the curtains back together and went back to studying. The same clank again but this time it was accompanied by the howl of a wolf.

This clanking and howling started happening every few seconds and I just sat in my bed waiting for whoever there was to just get tired and leave. On the contrary, the howls started becoming louder and louder. It was a very weird sensation. It felt like the voice was coming from very far away but at the same time coming from right outside the window. I stood up and just as I reached the door handle to open the door, the howling stopped like it had never happened.

When my roommates returned and I told them about this, they told me they had no idea whatsoever I was talking about. The same thing kept happening the following nights at around the same time and while I was alone in the room. At one point I got determined to stay put in my bed but the clanking and the vicious howling noises got louder and louder that it started hurting my head and I actually started getting very afraid.

During the howling I couldn't muster up the courage to just pull apart the curtains and look whatever it was in the eye. I checked with other hostel guys but they said they didn't notice any unusual sounds or activities at night. I once had my friend be with me in the room during the hour when my roommates used to leave and the clanking and howling started but nothing happened that night. I observed it only happened when I was completely alone in the room with the door locked.

The noises continued for a couple weeks and then stopped. To this day I don't know if all this was something to do with the supernatural or just an elaborate prank. If it was just a prank I must say every individual gave an Oscar level performance. At the time it certainly felt supernatural.

The campus security guards used to tell legends of how this university was built on an erstwhile burial ground (which is actually true) and how a certain part of the university was considered haunted and it was not advisable to go there at night. I gave some thought to those stories afterward.

/CrystalKite/

I went to college at an older university in the Northeast USA. During my third year I got to live off campus with some friends in a really neat old house. It turned out it was the third oldest residential home still standing in the town and was only 800-900 square feet - really cute. There wasn't a lot of old charm left in the architecture, but the hallways were narrow and the rooms cut up in that victorian manner, so it felt antique. When my three housemates and I rented the house in August of that year, the landlord was relieved. Initially, it had been rented to a professor and her husband in June and they were going to take the lease through to the following May. But, by July they became distant and squirrelly, made some excuse and called him after they had packed their things and left the home to say they wouldn't be returning.
He was happy to have tenants and none of us were particularly rambunctious or big partiers, so it seemed like a decent fit. We moved in and all fell in love with this tiny quirky house.
When I say quirky, let me explain. There was a ladder to an attic that was built in to the wall. There were pavers in the backyard that were arranged in odd angles and patterns, jutting out from the ground and not level, but definitely purposefully lain. In the basement, whose footprint was much smaller than the house above it and all built in fieldstone, there were those great big joists for the floorboards above that had been hand sawn centuries earlier. At a point someone - some students we guessed - had painted them white and placed green handprints on them. The door to the basement was odd as well. It had a small flap door cut into the bottom, the kind you would put in if you kept a cat's litter box in the basement so that they could go down and use it. But, when closely examined, it was only one way - from the house into the basement. Nothing could return back into the house through it. Odd, though we didn't think too much about it at the time. We got on with school and life.

One evening I awoke to the sound of a housemate going down the stairs to grab a glass of water. I didn't think too much about it except that they were being loud as shit at 2am and turned over. But, as soon as they hit the ground floor, they turned around and walked back up again. When they hit the second floor they started descending. "What the fuck?", I thought, figuring I might have a housemate who was troubled with sleepwalking. My roommate was stirring and I whispered into the dark if he was awake, which he very much was. We listened for the next minute as our housemate ascended and descended, ascended and descended, over and over and over. At last we both got up, turned on the light, opened the door - and the noise stopped. No lights were on. No one was on the stairs. We went downstairs (quietly, so as not to disturb our other housemates) took a look around, figured it must be a loose shingle banging or some kind of pipe hitting the side of the house and that we would deal with it tomorrow.

We got in bed, shut off our lights and within 2 minutes the sound of someone creeping up the stairs, slowly at first as if testing how loud they could be, began again. The pace grew more quickly and all of a sudden we both heard our other housemates swing open their door and yell into the darkness, "go to bed!" The noise stopped. We got up, opened our door and looked down the hallway at our housemates hanging out of their doorway. They were bewildered that we weren't on the stairs. We all checked the house again, returned to our rooms and slept for the rest of the evening - no more noise. We talked about the following evening and figured it was some strange animal (a woodpecker? a raccoon?) that had been maybe banging on something outside and the sound traveled inward making it feel like it was coming from the house. That's it! Problem solved. We all went to bed satisfied.

The following day, as we were putzing in the backyard, one of my housemates said out of nowhere, "do you think those footsteps are a ghost?" He had said what we all had been thinking. We spent the next two hours talking about strange things that had happened to all of us over the previous couple of months. I had been making a PB&J in the kitchen one day the week before. I got out the bread and peanut butter from the cabinet and turned to the fridge to get the jam out. When I turned around - no bread or PB to be found. Completely gone without explanation and no other housemates home at the time. This was a tiny little kitchen, maybe only 3'x4' with counters all around, so I certainly hadn't placed it out of sight. I opened up every cupboard to no avail. I thought "why not?", tapped the button on the microwave. The door sprung open and inside were my peanut butter and bread, which was unnerving. I didn't want a PB&J anymore and put them back in the cupboard. I had forgotten about the jam until I went for a jog the next morning and when I opened the door at 6am there it was on the front stoop, like a lost dog that had found it's way home. I threw it out.

Also, we had all - from time to time - heard a strange shuffling sound in the basement. I had just assumed it was a sump pump because it had that "dzjh dzjh dzjh" kind of cadence. They reminded me we didn't have a sump pump. When our landlord came to pick up the rent for the following month the four of us were home. We figured we'd use this as an opportunity to be slick and ask questions about the house to find out what he knew about its history. He seemed a little on edge when we brought the subject up, but humored us kindly. When I asked if he had heard from the previous tenants he avoided the subject. When a housemate asked who he had purchased the house from that had lived there previously, he informed us that in fact, the house hadn't been lived in for about twenty years before we bought it. Turns out that the individual who had lived in the house twenty years+ prior was a bit of a ne'er-do-well in this college town. So ne'er-do-well that his family arrived to pick him up one day, finding him dead, having overdosed in the dining room. Okay. Got it. Thanks.

We had a ghost and we decided to name him William. Three to four nights a week the footsteps on the stairs would start slowly and then reach such a pace that one of us would get out of bed in a huff, open the door and scream, "Get the fuck to bed, William!" And the footsteps would stop for the evening. This was multiple times a week, for a year. We didn't like to talk about him in the house, so any William discussions happened off the property as we were convinced he was listening. One evening, we were watching a new episode of LOST (that should date the story appropriately) and the "Smoke Monster" character was on. My roommate joked that William was our smoke monster. At that moment, every blind in the living room (4 covering two windows) was violently jerked up simultaneously. We all looked wide eyed at him. He gathered himself together and in little more than a whisper said, "Sorry, William. I didn't mean it." We lowered the blinds and watched the program.

Things continued like this pretty regularly throughout the Fall Semester and remained much the same until one night in the Spring - around March or April. In the middle of the night we all awoke to a loud "CRACK" from downstairs. When I say loud, I mean 'don't give a shit B&E loud'. I grabbed a bat I kept by the side of my bed, convinced that someone had broken through our front door. This college town was a little rough around the edges as you might surmise. My roommate and I both sat up and looked at each other and listened - nothing. We got out of bed, and opened the door - still nothing. We saw our housemates down the hallway peering through a sliver of their door. I went into the hallway, banged the bat against the railing and said (in the bravest voice I could muster) "All right motherfucker, you want to break into our fucking house - come get it." We turned on the lights, bounded down the stairs as a posse and found - nothing. Front door was locked and tight. Back door was locked and tight. Everything looked good. I went to go turn off the downstairs switch to go back up to bed and then I saw it.The basement door had a crack running from the bottom of it up about 2/3 of the way, right in the center. It had been broken almost in two - from the inside of the basement. The basement was a self-contained space. It didn't have any other entrances or exits. Whatever had broken the door had been in the basement. Needless to say, we all lost our shit and decided to sleep in one room together, though none of us got much rest. While the footsteps and moving objects continued for the rest of our time there, there wasn't anything quite as terrifying as that night. We finished our lease and all moved out to other homes.

I had to return there, in the October of my senior year, to pick up mail that hadn't been forwarded to my new address. A young woman came to the door and I explained who I was. She kindly handed me a stack of mail that had come for me and I thanked her. As I turned to leave I had a thought. I spun around before she closed the door and said, "Hey, this might sound odd, but have you guys noticed anything strange about this house?" She went white as a sheet. She asked me why I had asked that question and I let her know we had noticed some odd things when we lived there and that it probab... "Like the footsteps on the stairs at night?!", she asked. "Yep, like those", I said. Her two housemates came down and we stepped outside and I shared my tales and they shared theirs. I told them just to tell William to go back to bed, and it would be okay. And that was the last time I ever visited that house.
I think of William often, though not fondly.

/southofwilliampenn/

One afternoon during high school (this was around 1990-92 or so) I was getting off the bus, and noticed a piece of paper a couple hundred feet away resting in the grass of my front yard that had floated there in the breeze. I distinctly remember feeling that I had some sort connection with that sheet of paper, before my foot even left the bottom step of the bus. There was something about that piece of paper, and I needed to see it.
So.. curious, I walked over..across my neighbor's yard, and into the front yard of my house, again feeling a very, very unusual feeling that I had something to do with that paper. When I got there, I picked it up, and unfolded it. It was a ditto sheet of a little school activity I had apparently done way back in 1st Grade, where you had to draw a line between a picture of an animal, and the word for that animal. 

And right there at the top of the sheet was my name, where I had signed it. I was so completely stunned by this, that I simply placed it back down on the ground, left it there in the grass, and went inside. I didn't say a word about it for years.

To this day, I have absolutely no explanation for how that paper got onto my lawn, why it had my name on it, or how the hell I knew before I stepped off the bus that I had any connection to it. For the record, I don't use drugs, never have used drugs. I was not running a high fever, or tired, or doing anything or consuming anything that might have caused me to hallucinate that experience. I don't generally talk about it, because invariably, people call bullshit and suggest i'm lying. As God as my witness, I am not.

It should be noted that the grade school I went to is also fairly nearby..so there's a possibility that maybe the school was getting rid of some old papers from 10+ years ago, maybe dumped them in the trash, and maybe the wind happened to pick up this one sheet of paper out of the school's dumpster.

Then it floated it all the way to my yard a couple hundred yards away.. but even then, the odds of that happening would be astronomically low, and it still wouldn't explain why I felt I had some sort of connection to that piece of paper before I even stepped off the bus.

I have one other small little inconsequential event in my life that was similar to this, but, I do not wish to discuss it.. It is deeply personal to me, but I've shared it with my wife, as it involves her. It forms part of the foundation of my faith.. it's just another one of those things that is so completely off-the-chart improbable that I cannot help but attribute it to God.
I'm convinced there are bits and pieces to our existence that operate either above or below our perception thresholds as human beings, something supernatural that human beings get occasional glimpses into..something 

Call it the hand of God, call it entropy, chaos, ghost in the machine, call it glitches in the matrix, call it whatever you like, but I believe there is something there, something producing this kind of phenomenon that logic and reason cannot account for. I think it's actually kind of cool, even comforting, to know that this underlying machinery of reality is in play.

/bpoag/