People Confess Real Life Creepy Stories That Are Scarier Than Any Horror Movie

A few years ago my brother would get a call on his cellphone around 2:00 - 3:00 A.M. every night. He would answer and it was this hellish sounding noise. Like static mixed with screams. He changed his cell number after a month of this and it stopped.

Then after a week or so it began again. The exact same noise. Exact same time. Finally one day he decided to backdial the call. It was an old man that had no clue what he was talking about. Still the calls persisted. If he didn't answer, it would call a few more times. No messages were left.

He decided to say screw it. Ended his contract with his phone company, switched to a new one, and then got another new number. You guessed it, the screaming static calls continued after a short delay. By this time he was terrified every night. Unsure why this was happening. He backdialed the number again and got a different person.

Around this time he lost his job and his phone. The calls stopped of course. His phone was disconnected now. So one day my mom asks me to listen to this weird message she got on our home phone. It was the static screaming. We showed my brother and he was freaking out. He backdialed the number again and it said the number was disconnected this time. Never heard from it again after that.

/Mastrius/

When I was 16 I moved in with my aunt for a few weeks leading up to her wedding. She was paying me to help with the finish-work on her house (paint, drywall, etc). It was creepy enough, it was an old victorian in the middle of nowhere in Illinois. It had one of those unfinished basements with lots of cobwebs and river-rock foundation that looked like a dungeon. Lots of creaks and noises. It didn't bother me at first and it didn't seem to bother my cousins.

One night we watched a scary movie on TV, I think it was Sometimes They Come Back. My Aunt had a little too much wine and started telling us about the ghost in the house. We all thought she was fucking with us so we brushed it off.

A couple days later my cousin Mike and I were painting the bedroom off the kitchen (old house, weird layout). We stopped for lunch and from the kitchen we heard someone walking around upstairs. We thought my other cousin Sarah came home and thought nothing of it. A couple minutes later the steps came down the stairs, and they were loud and fast (like that scene from the exorcist, but much louder). Like someone who weighed 500lbs jumping down the stairs. We had line of sight to the landing and nobody showed. We freaked. We told my Aunt and she laughed, she thought this shit was funny. We didn't tell Sarah (she was like 15 and got scared easy).

Well whatever it was moved onto her, she was in the basement getting her laundry out of the drier later that night and we heard her scream bloody murder. She came flying up the stairs and tripped on the last step, skinning her knee. She was crying and said she heard someone walking around down there mumbling. Said "he sounded upset", like agitated, but she couldn't make it out. Us kids did the laundry in pairs after that.

Welp, Mike's stoner buddy heard about this and thought it would be funny to yell at the ghosts one night. Nothing happened until after that moron went home. Sarah was up in her room with the door closed and something started banging on her door bangbangbangbang! We ran up there and her door was locked, one of those old skeleton key locks that had no way to open on either side without a key.

She was freaking out in there while Mike went to get the key from my Aunt. I could see the light under the door and it cut out, she screamed for about 5 seconds, and then silence. We got in there about a minute later and she had fainted on her bed, and her shit was everywhere. Books, cassettes, posters torn down. I didn't hear anything move after she screamed. She slept with my Aunt after that.

The wedding came, her new husband started moving his shit into the house, and I had a couple nights left to stay there before going home. Everyone went over to get another load of his stuff except for me, I met a girl and was getting ready to meet her, took a shower. I had to run down and get my clean clothes out of the drier and didn't worry about the ghost (no bigger motivator to face your fears than a girl). Well, the fucking breaker tripped while I was down there. Click. Dark out. Dungeon.

I immediately heard someone scuffling around in the corner, sounded like someone practicing basketball moves on a dirt floor. I had my shit halfway out of the drier and I fucking booked. I ran right into the door at the bottom of the stairs which I know I left open. It was locked. The fucky thing is this one had a latch for the lock. A latch on the other side with the staircase. Then I heard the mumbling moving from one side of the basement to the other one the wall opposite me. I kicked that fucking door and a panel popped out (old wood door). It couldn't break the rest so I crawled through the hole and up the stairs.

That was the moment I was most afraid, thinking something was gonna grab my feet. I waited outside, everyone understood but my Aunt's husband, fucker laughed at me. I wore my dirty clothes on my date, didn't matter, got laid. Awkward teenage sex. My Aunt got divorced a few months later and they moved out, lots of stress and fighting, lots of strange shit exacerbating their relationships. Messed Sarah up pretty bad.

[redacted]

We used to own a racetrack in Ohio years ago, but we lived in southeast PA. You had to take the turnpike to get there in any reasonable amount of time, and one of the times my mother, my sister and I were together to go meet my stepdad who was driving separately with a trailer to haul equipment.

We got off at an exit after paying a toll, and go off into a strip mall with a bunch of rinky dink looking buildings. Not dirty, just faded pastel colors, didn't even look like there was a town nearby. They had a diner, though, and we hadn't eaten since we left (four hours before) so we stopped in.The food sucked, and was completely tasteless. People stared at us the whole time. It wasn't dark like a cave, just not a ton of windows. There were some, enough for ambient light. Like a Denny's if the power went out, that sort of thing. And an unreasonable number of people, we noticed, had bandages on them. The only person who said a word to us was the girl who took our order, who also rang us up at the end.

We decided not eating was better than going back there, so we wrote down the exit in a little journal we'd been keeping in the glove compartment so we knew not to make that mistake again.

A couple hours later we get to the track and my stepdad asks how everything went. We said it was uneventful but told him we'd recorded a real whopper for the journal and not to take the exit we'd marked because it was shitsville. He gets really excited and we're all kind of wondering why. He's actually said the words before, "I hate eating. It takes too much time and gets in the way of me living my life," so our less than stellar review definitely wasn't a motivating factor. He tells us he thinks we ate ghost food and that the people in the diner were vampires. He wouldn't stop talking about it for like ten minutes and it was making my sister uncomfortable, so my mom did an about face and tried logicking him away from it.

We argued that the food had no reason to suck, they could have easily killed us, and nobody could recall ever seeing the a movie where the wound, left by whatever bit the person to make them vampires in the first place, still existed on their body. He got less excited and left it alone.
We have the race weekend, it's time to drive all the way back. He asks me if I want to come with him, since he had to drive alone the way there. I say sure. Two hours in, he pulls off. I think it's weird because we at a gigantic fucking breakfast before we left, and I know he's anti-eating. I didn't recognize it at first coming from the other direction, but eventually it occurs to me he's going to the diner's exit. He wants to see it for himself.

He stops to pay the toll, doesn't mention our story, he asks if there's a diner at the exit to make sure he has the right one (you can't see it from the ramp). The guy says there was one, but it burned down. Holy shit. Okay, so there weren't vampires, but what a fucking coincidence. We just eat there and then right after, in the span of two and a half days, they have a freak accident. This almost intrigues him more than the supernatural bit, and I am one hundred percent on board for checking it out.

We drive over, same humdrum bullshit strip mall, except where we went to eat it's just this charred mess. Not like with holes in it, it wasn't a wooden frame in pieces like a cartoon, you just could seriously tell there was damage. No vehicles, no tape (I'd assume they'd at least test it for being a crime) and they'd cleaned the area around it well. We go to get back on the turnpike, and these poor toll guys are stuck in a booth hardly bigger than they are, so it's the same dude getting back on (hard to explain, but it's a short ramp, straight road perpendicular to the turnpike, guy's booth, lots of straight, then you can turn into the strip, so you see him again and then fork back).

Anyway, my stepdad's like, I thought you said there was a diner there. Guy says, there was, like I told you, burned down. He asked if they'd figured out yet what caused it, was it a grease fire or what, that kind of thing.
The guy says, "Yet?"

"Yeah, it had to have been in the last two or three days, they didn't investigate it? It wasn't on the news?"
Then the guy says, "Oh, we know what happened. It was on the news when it happened, eight years ago."

It sounds ridiculous, and cliche, and there are tons of stories like it. I know what I saw, it was the same exit, the same distance from the road, same buildings save for the one. I don't expect anyone to ever believe me which is why I don't usually share it. Plus there's no way to prove it because I moved to Florida by the time I was old enough to drive, and I don't have the exit number anymore. It was after Somerset (which I remember because of 9/11) and before Wheeling. But that's almost an hour long difference no matter which way you split it, so even that's no help.

All that I really think happened is that the place burned down like a motherfucker while we were gone and that guy's just an asshole. I don't think it burned down in the past and I don't think that I ate ghost food. But my stomach dropped like crazy and it's still a weird coincidence, especially given how good a job they did cleaning up the site, and how quiet everything was around it. It really did look lost to time.

[redacted]

When I was three or four we lived in a 1950s ranch house my parents bought at a sheriff sale. It was kind of run down, but a bargain because it was a only few blocks from my grandmother's home, on the same block as my sister's school, and my dad could be to work in 5 minutes.

Where the side door came into the house from the carport, there was a utility closet. It housed the hot water heater, a furnace, and a trap door down to the crawlspace below the house. The utility closet was in a short L-shaped hallway between the kitchen and the den which we used as a family room.

I remember the crawlspace always had a "dirty water" smell to it. The floor of the crawlspace wasn't poured concrete, but was composed of loose gravel. My sister would be at kindergarten all day, so it was just me and my mom until it was time to walk to the school to get her.

I would play alone in the den while my mom was decorating cakes (her side job) in the kitchen. My mom would hear me carrying on long conversations in the den with my toys. One of my favorite things was to make a "cave" by lifting the leg rest of the recliner and playing with my toys underneath. It used to annoy my mother because I never put it back down. One day she asked me why I always did that and I told her,

"Because the light from the big window hurts their eyes."
"The light hurts your toys eyes?"
"No. The two little black boys who come out to play with me."
That freaked her out, so she talked to my dad about it and they asked me more about it.

I told them I had two friends named "Poomie" and "Punkie". They were two little black boys that lived under the heater in the utility closet. Poomie always wanted to play, but he had to drag Punkie along with him because he never wanted to come, but they weren't allowed to ever be apart.

They were both terrified of my dad, and they would disappear back into the closet when they would hear him coming. At night, since my dad was home, they were too afraid to come out. So they would fall down into the crawlspace and crawl until they were under my bedroom.

Sometimes they would whisper jokes to me through the floorboards, but mostly I would just hear them moving around in the gravel. It ended when my mom found me sitting in the utility closet with the door shut. I told her that Poomie and Punkie had to leave because a "Raggedy Man who walked along the train tracks at night" almost found them.

They saw him in our backyard trying to peek through the screen door. So they crawled into the furnace and turned to cinders and flew out through the chimney.

/throw_throwaway_now/

I worked in a nursing home as an aide in a hospice unit. One night I had three patients trying to die and my job was to ensure that they were comfortable. The girls that worked the floor with me at night were awesome. We would always try to make each other laugh and get through the night as best as we could.

I was known for scaring girls. Sometimes I'd hide in the closet of a room where someone had recently died (their body and belongings long gone in the empty room) and I'd press the call light and wait. The girls would come in and hastily shut it off but I'd always jump out and scare the shit out of them.

One night I was in the nurses station filling out a report since I had to give a pt Kent some narcotics when an aide rushed in. She swore that she thought she saw my shadow on the wall as if I were hiding trying to scare her but then she heard me laugh in the nurses station. I decided to check it out since there wasn't suppose to be anyone on our floor.

As I walked over to the wall I stood where the light would have created my shadow and there was nothing. I laughed it off until the CNA started shrieking and I turned around and a shadow seemingly rose up the wall from the ground out of nothing. I just stared at it and said, "oh for heavens sake is that the best you've got?" And walked back to the nursing station.

A while later I had to do rounds. As I walked towards a patients room I heard three knocks on the door that lead outside to the patio by their room and I saw an older gentleman dressed in all black. I couldn't let him in because I didn't have the access code so I told him to hold on a moment and i would get the nurse to let him in. When she and I returned to the door he was gone. She went outside and we couldn't find him, so I continued to the patients room to check on him.

Blood everywhere and the patient is on the floor bleeding. He had tried to get up it appears and flopped around a bit in his blood trying to get up. The nurse lifted him back into the bed and we cleaned him up. There was nothing else we could do as he was DNR besides make sure he was comfortable. I went to my next patients room and bam...dead. He had stopped breathing. I rushed to get the nurse and pulled his file. DNR also.

We call the morgue and his family while I clean his body with an aide. I go to check on the patient that fell (vitals every 15 minutes for non witnessed fall) and he's dead. I'm get the nurse, she's frustrated because this takes two aides off her floor to care for the deceased and lots of paperwork for her. As I'm walking down the hall for linens I see the ol man I originally saw outside walking past the nurses station and he whispered, "one more jacmia, and then

I'm done for the night, just one more" I jumped up because his whisper was so eerie and I run to the direction he was going. A patients room door slammed shut and when I ran in she looked directly at me and took her last breath and died. Her eyes still staring directly at me. For some reason I remember her window being open and how odd it was. I ran to the window and didn't see anything and slammed it shut, checked the woman for a pulse and found nothing.

The nurse had followed me and saw exactly what I saw and heard the voice whisper as I did. She was coming around he corner and swore she saw the man and then me jump up and run after him and, like me, saw the patients room door slam shit before I could get in there. When I had turned around I saw the nurse standing in the door way and she could only say, "I fucking saw it too oh my god I fucking saw it too".

r/Jacmia/

Back in high school (probably junior year, I think), I was in a long distance relationship with a girl from several states away. She would visit a few times a year and when she did, we obviously spent as much time together as possible. One night, we were kind of making up from a fight we'd just had and we drove up in my dad's truck to basically the Lover's Lane of the area - a dirt cul-de-sac at the end of a road on the mountainside. From this little lot, you could look out over the town at night and it was pretty cool, which is why it was kind of a popular place to go.

So we're parked in the truck just off the road, looking out over the town and cuddling while we talk out our issue. Like many trucks, it had a small hatch window on the back of the cab facing the bed of truck. We opened this to let some fresh air in. At some point during our talk, another vehicle pulled up along the cul-de-sac.

Since I didn't make it clear before, the cul-de-sac didn't really have a curb all the way around it because it was partially dirt (I think there was construction in the area or something), so you could pull off the actual road and out onto the flat area overlooking the town. We had pulled off the road like that, but the other vehicle stayed in the area with the curb, so we'd have to go right past them to get back onto the road.

Anyway, this vehicle pulls up and a bunch of guys a little older than us get out and start messing around. Seemed like they probably were doing some drinking but maybe not. The thing is, they had left their headlights on and their car was facing into the back of the truck, so their lights were shining right on us and it was annoying. But we ignore them for a while, figuring they're probably just being idiots and will eventually leave.

Then, we get curious what they're talking about (because we can hear them talking loudly through the open back window), and we start listening in and picking up pieces of their conversation. It gradually became clear that we were the center of their attention and they seemed to be working themselves up to doing "something." I don't remember exactly what they were saying, except for something that one of them said that sticks very clearly in my memory: "I swear to god, I'll do it." At this point, I am becoming nervous, and put the keys in the ignition, telling my girlfriend that I wasn't interested in finding out what exactly was going on.

So now, we're both watching nervously out the back window as we listen to them egging each other on to this mysterious dare, when a few of them start walking toward the truck. They're maybe 15 yards away, and I don't want to make an idiot of myself in front of my girlfriend by immediately flipping shit, but I do turn on the truck and put it in reverse, but not moving yet.

When they saw the brake lights, they started walking quicker, and that's when the NOPE button officially got pushed in my mind and I turned the truck around and started driving back to the road. But like I said, their car was between where we were and the road, so driving back to the road takes us right past them. As we're passing their group, a couple of them run at the truck and one of them jumps onto the back bumper, grabbing the tailgate.

Now, whatever traces of doubt had been there about whether or not we were the target of something (innocent or not) was gone, so I floored it and the guy fell off. I don't know if he was hurt; I don't care. It looked like they were starting to get into their car as well, so I booked it out of the area and we didn't see them again, nor did we ever return to that place.

I still have no idea what would have happened if we hadn't gotten out of there, and that, to me, is the scary part. I'd like to think that they were just trying to scare us and wouldn't have actually done anything, but at the same time, I've heard stories of people at places like that getting raped/killed/whatever else. It's entirely possible that we both came very close to something horrible that night, and the experience scares me to this day.

[redacted]

In 2011 my next door neighbor was arrested for the murders of 4 young women. He was on parole and during a routine check his PO found a store of weapons (which felons are not to own). Upon further searching the PO found the photos (my neighbor had been a travelling photographer) and journals detailing the murders of at least ten different young women. He is currently on death row. The prosecution was able to match up two more women to his evidence leading to a conviction on six of the ten murders he committed. His MO also matches the murders of 8-10 more women in the New York area so he may have killed as many as 20 young girls.

In December of 2013 I was contacted by a man that owns and operates a murderbilia site (yes this is a thing, he sells mementoes and artifacts from famous killers/crimes). He had seen me on the news and was curious if I had anything from my neighbor as he was interested in buying. That was the first time I had considered going in the house which has sat untouched since his arrest.

Fast forward to May of 2014 and my husband finally talks me into going inside. The things I saw inside that house haunt me to this day and are far scarier than any horror film, because they are real. I will try to explain the house in as clear of detail as possible, but please bare with me as I am no writer.

It is difficult to describe the layout of the house originally as my neighbor, from here on referred to as J.N. had completely remodeled the inside with fake walls, fake flooring, and a substantial attic crawl space. Between the old walls and new walls there were 4-6 inch gaps. The flooring did not match (it was a mixture of different carpet types and cheap vinyl) so we curiously peeled up part of it so reveal a fake floor raised 6 inches above the old floor. We were not brave enough to enter the attic. There were large holes punches in the fake flooring, walls, and ceiling, most likely from police.
The first room we entered was a small five by six space with no windows as it had been formed by the new walls. The door had a large, steel, slide lock on the outside, so as to lock someone INTO the room. Against the left hand wall was a futon mattress with a pile of soiled (dark brown stains that could have been anything) flowered blankets. There were also children's sheets (Spiderman, transformers, etc).

Against the right hand wall was a long and low dresser. The back of the room had a door leading into the bathroom but 6 4x4s had been bolted over it so no one was getting in or out of that room. Also against the right hand wall above the dresser was a row of industrial outdoor track spotlights. Make of that what you will. Inside the dresser were many pairs of women's panties and panty hos. There was also a large roll of twine rope, bottles of shaving cream, and various sizes and shapes of rusty saw blades. Some the round types that would go in a table saw, some the long ones with the handle you use to saw through things. There were also several bloody razor blades.
The next door had a bare bed in it, another dresser, and six large black trash bags. There was also a closet. Inside the closet we found a medium size freezer Ziploc bag with drug paraphilia. The outside of the bag had a poem written on it in lovely black scrawling cursive: One for me, For every two of them, Three promises lie, At the end of every fourth trip.

Inside the dresser of this room were various children's items. Little stuffed bears, street chalk, Tonka Toys and Hot Wheels, etc. I did not look in the large plastic bags. The last bedroom also formed by the false walls had nothing in it but ten large, long dead, stinking potted plants. The odor in that room was atrocious. The bathroom offered nothing of interest except a large selection of expired pain and sleeping pills, some dirty rags under the sink, and a nefarious looking dark ring around the tub.
The living room and kitchen area were joined together in a style I believe they call open floor plan. The two areas contained 11 stand alone freezers. The type that are long and low. Some were very very large. We did not open any of them.

The kitchen was odd. Dirty dishes and pans were still on the stove right along side long rotted piles of food and spices as if a meal had just finished being cooked. The only thing that gave the scene any age was the undisturbed dust layer. J.N. had covered an entire wall in the kitchen with shelving which were full of jars common to people that pickle and can their own food. Except the jars contained things that did not look like food, at least that I have never seen eaten. Strange slabs of whitish meat, large knotted vegetables that looked like tree roots, a mixture that looked like solidified bits of plastic in jelly... The areas around the living room and kitchen were covered in religious wall hangings. Pictures of Christ, wood slates with Palms burned into them, crosses. Most of the Palms focused on themes of forgiveness and women being submissive to men.

All the windows and the front door had large wooden boards bolted over them. The door was ceiling to floor 4x4s, the same ones barring the bathroom in the first room. Absolutely no one was coming in or out of that house through the front. There was one set of 4x4s that went around the entire living room, kitchen, and parts of the second bedroom area that had large hooks driven into it. These are large hooks like that would be used to support something heavy. I stopped counting at two hundred of them. It occurred to me later as I was thinking about them that I know what the hooks were for. There was one photo entered into evidence from inside the house showing J.N.'s dolls.

He had ten large sized dolls and manikins, all dressed in ladies evening wear and lingerie and wearing full makeup inside the house. (He also had suitcases full of manikin limbs and $130,000 in cash taped behind his stove, though I never saw those, just read about them in the trial notes.) Some of the dolls were wearing ball gags, others were tied up with S & M style ropes. But they all had large nooses tied around their necks. I went back through some of the reports and was able to locate the photo of all ten dolls. The prosecution had entered it as evidence of J.N.'s deteriorated state of mind and because each doll may have represented a victim. Sure enough, the dolls were hanging from a series of hooks located on the back of the front door. We believe there are so many hooks around the house so he could move the dolls around with him as he went room to room.

At this point we had had enough and decided to leave. Passing back through the house my husband called out to me to turn off my flashlight. I did but the light didn't disappear.

It was then that we noticed the LED lantern. It was on the floor of the kitchen, underneath the table. It was flickering weakly but still on three years later. The research I have done on that model of lamp says it would be impossible for the batteries to last that long. Of all the things we saw in that house that lamp was the most terrifying.

Everything else I could write off as a bad dream, or a shitty treatment for a horror film, but that lamp made my skin crawl and still does as I sit here writing this for you. Glancing out my living room windows I can see the darkened house next door but I can't see through the boards on the windows to know it that lamps has died yet or if it is still there flickering weakly.

/TheMapesHotel/

This happened about two years ago to me, but it was pretty unsettling. I'll start by saying I used to have a shop in an over 100 year old building that was split up into three different storefronts. I had one shop, my best friend had another, and then the third was rented to another girl.

One day, I'm at the shop when the phone rings. A man is on the other line asking me for something or other and is being really spacey. I am trying to talk to him, but there are long pauses before his answers and he is just being a little odd. Finally, I ask him something and there is a long pause on the other end, long enough to make me ask, "Hello?" because I think he has hung up on me.

Instead he replies with, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just having a hard time focusing on our conversation because there is a spirit standing next to you that is yelling into the phone, trying to get my attention." At this point, I'm intrigued and decide to play along, so I say, "Oh really, what is he saying?"

The "psychic" goes on to make a few broad comments about me and the space I'm in (all of which he could have easily found if he had looked on our website, so I'm not impressed), and says the man has been in the building since the early 1900s and is "infatuated" with me, has been following me for years, and frequently tags along with me to my house, my friends' houses, and even places like the grocery store.

Okay, that's interesting, but then it gets more-so. He tells me the man is very jealous of the guy that I am dating, and doesn't like him because we are so close. He then goes on to say that the spirit hurt the guy I am seeing when he was doing renovations on the building (which was 100% accurate, I put that story below) and that he didn't like that he was in his personal space changing it.

So, that was weird, but his next comment really bothered me.

The psychic says, "And he is very glad you broke up with that army dude. He really hated him." Now, this was weird to me because I had dated that guy about three years prior before and had been restationed right after we broke up and had never set foot in the building, nor had I seen him since we broke up. At the time of the phone call, I had only had my shop in the building for about six months, so I couldn't figure out how this "spirit" would know about him.

The guy told me some other stuff, most of which was pretty basic, and then I finally got him off the phone because he started getting weird, and I just wasn't interested anymore. The whole conversation lasted about fifteen minutes, and I was thoroughly creeped by his couple of comments and couldn't figure out how he knew so specifically the last two people I had dated (I should add that I don't have any personal social media that someone can search for me for, so there wouldn't have been any couples pictures up of me with either person I dated).

Then, it dawned on me. I had worked for about six months for my friend at her shop in the same building for some extra cash after I moved back to the city, which was about four years prior and in the time that I had dated/broken up with the army guy, which would also explain why the psychic said the spirit had been following me for years.

I no longer have the shop in that building, but still go in there every now and then to see my friend. We both agree that building has some bad vibes, especially at night, and there's a couple more weird things that happened to me while I had the shop there.

/Oliverrr36/

First off, apologies for any mistakes... I'm on my break on night shift and on my phone...This is a story my gran would tell of something that happened to her when she was younger and happened some time around the mid 60s... first a little background, the city we live in has a LOT of parks, including many of those little fenced in gardens in the middle of squares, the current name is based on gaelic for 'dear green place'...

Anyway, my gran worked in a theatre and after work would get the last bus home at around midnight then walk a short distance home, past one of these fenced in communal gardens... usually the local police man (this was the days when people knew and were friendly with their local bobby) would meet her off the bus..

One night she was on the bus when some sketchy guy sat next to her and generally was being sketchy, asking her personal questions etc.. she eventually got up and stood by the bus driver, she was a regular on the bus and knew she could get some friendly chat from him to deter mr sketchy.

On getting to her stop she stepped off the bus and her regular escort, the policeman, was nowhere to be seen. To make matters worse mr sketchy jumps up a gets off the bus at the last minute. He walks off in the opposite direction from her, but keeps looking over his shoulder at her as he does so.

The bus pulls away and in the middle of the road is a huge black dog. A bit freaked out by everything she starts of for home at a fast pace.. the dog follows at a distance of about 20 feet, freaking her out even more.

She turns a corner, to the section of her journey that takes her past the fenced in garden. As she approaches the open gate the dog sprints for her.. and stops about 2 feet from where she is. It then starts growling and barking, hackles up, going mental towards the direction of the garden.

This understandably is the final straw, she sprints for home and the dog stops it's barking and runs after but keeping a distance of a few feet the entire time.. its not like it can't catch her, it easily could but doesn't seem to want to.

When she gets to her building it stops and just watches her go inside. She told my granda the minute she got into their flat and he looks out the window, no dog on the street, nothing.

The next day my grandparents found out that the friendly local cop had died the day before of a heart attack.. and few days later there were reports a young woman had been attacked a few streets away from my grandmother's route home on that night around 1am.

[redacted]

A few weeks ago my girlfriend and I were sleeping together, when I woke up to her saying "What are you doing?" 

She sometimes talks in her sleep, but this sounded so coherent and urgent that it jolted me awake and I asked what she was talking about. 

She then woke up and said she thought she saw someone at the end of the bed. 

Thinking it was just a dream, or semi-awake hallucination, we thought nothing of it and went back to sleep. 

About an hour later, I woke up and saw someone standing on the bed, with the sheets wrapped up and twisted to their neck. 

I didn't know what do but the first thing that came out of my mouth was "What are you doing?" 

My girlfriend then woke me up. I had been dreaming the exact same thing that she did, and said the exact same thing.

I know it's the power of suggestion or whatever, but fuck that.

When I was younger, I had an imaginary friend who lived in this massive antique dresser. We'd chill out and I vividly remember him telling me stories, although I have absolutely no recollection of what they actually were.

I remember one day talking to my parents about it (Dad traveled quite a bit so he wasn't up to date with what I was into) and when I started telling him about my dresser buddy, he wanted to know his name. It was something innocent like Peter or Patrick but I can still see him going white in the face.

I drew Peter/Patrick out for him and the very next day him and my uncle took out that dresser and burned it. It wasn't until a few years later when I found out my Dad's little brother (my uncle) also had the same friend with the same name who lived in the same antique dresser.

After a few months of the typical imaginary friend shit, my uncle started having night terrors and couldn't sleep because of Peter/Patrick. It got so bad that they had to move him out of his room before he managed to get back to normal.

The dresser was an old dark wood ugly thing. As far as we know, it belonged to my great great grandfather who had always been into some weird shit if family history is to be believed. Dad never talked about what was actually in the dresser and he was the only one who believed his brother when they were kids.

Their parents didn't really care because they thought kids were just being kids and who honestly believed in spooky ghosts back then? Must have been a shock that 30 years later, his own son started having the same friend.

My uncle's night terrors ended when they moved him to another room, the bedroom he was in with the dresser was converted into a little sitting room since it had some nice views. It remained relatively unlived in until dad moved our family into that home and that room became mine.

I haven't seen my uncle in 14 years now, don't really speak to him since he is on the other end of the world. Afraid to bring something like this up since I know he struggles with depression and alcoholism so I would hate to add stuff to his plate.

I remember tiny old man. Not like old man tiny, but kid sized tiny. He had very large hands, long fingers. Which in turn led to how I draw people even today, hands always come out longer and larger than what they would normally be. Smelled of wood, mothballs, old cloths, and what I now know is mold.

/TonyFX/

Hard to say what qualifies as creepy. It could maybe be seen as heartwarming. I don't know. My mother swears this is a true story, and frankly, I don't see why she would lie about it.

My mom had three kids. There's me, the youngest, and my older brother - but before either of us were born, there was Jonathan. He was a sweet little blonde boy, big blue eyes, known for accidentally repeating Dad's swears in church. Wholesome kid, great in school, active outside.

When he was almost six, he was riding his bike and fell and hit his head on a rock. He got up and said he felt fine. My mom found him the next morning in his bed when she tried to wake him up to get to kindergarten, one pupil dilated and the other not. She got him air-lifted to the nearest hospital.

During this time, Jonathan's best friend Nick was sitting at the breakfast table eating cereal. Nick suddenly gets up from the table and goes to the door. When his mom asks him what's up, Nick says that Johnny was calling for him.

You see, Nick and Johnny lived on separate blocks, but they weren't allowed to cross the street without a parent yet because they were still fairly young. But they lived close enough to call to one another to come out to talk at their respective street corners.

So Nick goes out to the street corner while his mother receives a call from mine that Johnny was just declared dead in the hospital (idle brain aneurism that was triggered by the fall). Nick's mom can hardly handle this news and is now wondering where her son went.

But Nick comes back a few minutes later and says that he heard Johnny calling to him but he wasn't at the street corner when he looked, then sits down to continue eating his cereal. When his mom asks Nick what Johnny was saying, Nick says he had come to say, "Goodbye."

My mom told me this story when I was young but it's stuck with me. I wish I could have met him. But truthfully, I wouldn't be here to type this story to all you random strangers if he hadn't died; my mother only wanted two kids. I'm thankful for the chance I was given to live, and feel like he died FOR me sometimes. I'm not religious, but I do feel spiritual when I think of Johnny.

It's scary to think of a little trigger in your brain just waiting to be set off to kill...but my parents said if they had known (it was the 80s and there was no reason to suspect such a thing would be an issue for such a bright, energetic boy), Johnny wouldn't have gotten to do all the fun things he ended up doing; playing baseball, climbing trees, and just being a kid. And that would've been like having no life at all.

/SlutRapunzel/

I worked in a nursing home as an aide in a hospice unit. One night I had three patients trying to die and my job was to ensure that they were comfortable. The girls that worked the floor with me at night were awesome. We would always try to make each other laugh and get through the night as best as we could. I was known for scaring girls. Sometimes I'd hide in the closet of a room where someone had recently died (their body and belongings long gone in the empty room) and I'd press the call light and wait. The girls would come in and hastily shut it off but I'd always jump out and scare the shit out of them.

One night I was in the nurses station filling out a report since I had to give a pt Kent some narcotics when an aide rushed in. She swore that she thought she saw my shadow on the wall as if I were hiding trying to scare her but then she heard me laugh in the nurses station. I decided to check it out since there wasn't suppose to be anyone on our floor.

As I walked over to the wall I stood where the light would have created my shadow and there was nothing. I laughed it off until the CNA started shrieking and I turned around and a shadow seemingly rose up the wall from the ground out of nothing. I just stared at it and said, "oh for heavens sake is that the best you've got?" And walked back to the nursing station.

A while later I had to do rounds. As I walked towards a patients room I heard three knocks on the door that lead outside to the patio by their room and I saw an older gentleman dressed in all black. I couldn't let him in because I didn't have the access code so I told him to hold on a moment and i would get the nurse to let him in. When she and I returned to the door he was gone. She went outside and we couldn't find him, so I continued to the patients room to check on him.

Blood everywhere and the patient is on the floor bleeding. He had tried to get up it appears and flopped around a bit in his blood trying to get up. The nurse lifted him back into the bed and we cleaned him up. There was nothing else we could do as he was DNR besides make sure he was comfortable. I went to my next patients room and bam...dead. He had stopped breathing. I rushed to get the nurse and pulled his file. DNR also.

We call the morgue and his family while I clean his body with an aide. I go to check on the patient that fell (vitals every 15 minutes for non witnessed fall) and he's dead. I'm get the nurse, she's frustrated because this takes two aides off her floor to care for the deceased and lots of paperwork for her.

As I'm walking down the hall for linens I see the ol man I originally saw outside walking past the nurses station and he whispered, "one more jacmia, and then I'm done for the night, just one more" I jumped up because his whisper was so eerie and I run to the direction he was going. A patients room door slammed shut and when I ran in she looked directly at me and took her last breath and died.

Her eyes still staring directly at me. For some reason I remember her window being open and how odd it was. I ran to the window and didn't see anything and slammed it shut, checked the woman for a pulse and found nothing.

The nurse had followed me and saw exactly what I saw and heard the voice whisper as I did. She was coming around he corner and swore she saw the man and then me jump up and run after him and, like me, saw the patients room door slam shit before I could get in there. When I had turned around I saw the nurse standing in the door way and she could only say, "I fucking saw it too oh my god I fucking saw it too".

/Jacmia/

One strange occurrence that I can only describe as being paranormal, was during a trip with my girl to the Linville Gorge Wilderness. We arrived at the Table Rock picnic area around 4pm just as it started to pour down rain hard as fuck. We put our pack covers on and started hiking south down towards the Chimneys (a beautiful rock formation almost devoid of trees - also a popular spot for rock climbers).

About 30-45min of hiking through the worst torrential down pour, we realize we need to find some camp/cover because the clouds are getting darker and lower. You could sense the electricity in the air and I knew it was gonna be bad news if we didn't find something fast. My girl, M, was getting discouraged and rather annoyed, so I had her hunker down in a small depression off the trail with our packs and ran up ahead to look for a spot. I found a steep scramble running up to the left off the trail and decided to see where it went.

At the top of the 20-30ft scramble was the most perfect overhang/cave I've ever seen. It's exactly the right size for a 2-4 person tent and has a "fireplace/kitchen" jutting out at the front. By this time it was almost completely dark. We scrambled our packs up and got a fire started just in time for the thunder and lightening to come in.

Incredible fingers of electricity were filling the sky in front of us and making our hair stand straight up with each crack. Dark green and black clouds swirled around the mouth of the cave and limited our vision down to the 3 or 4 ft radius around the fire.

After about an hour of this beautiful display, everything clears up and the wind blows the sky clear. We cook, eat, smoke, and have a drink while gazing out at the opposite ridge of the Gorge. The Linville Gorge is roughly shaped like a parenthesis with a deep valley and River in between. The outside ( ) consists of high ridges that rise and fall with trails spidering across and down into the valley.

As we're sitting there enjoying the night, we see a headlamp in the distance on the opposite ridge. This was our first visit to the Gorge (have had many many since) so we weren't sure exactly how far the opposite ridge really was. We watched as this headlamp turned on and off and moved quickly across the ridge, losing and gaining elevation and always returning the same general area. We assume it's some brave hiker exploring in the middle of the night or maybe even someone who's lost.

This part is hard to explain without knowing the Gorge, but when we awoke in the morning and saw the opposite ridge, it would have been IMPOSSIBLE for someone to cover that much distance that quickly. We estimated that the light was moving roughly a mile every 5 or so minutes. In the pitch black. And changing 100s of feet of elevation every 10-15 minutes. To this day I can proffer no explanation whatsoever.

There's an old urban legend about the non-native who found Linville Gorge, John Linville. He was hiking with his son and his servant, and the three were separated. Eventually, it's assumed that Linville and his son either got into a confrontation with a group of natives, or died in the wilderness.

The legend states that their servant continued to look for them for over a week by himself, both day and night, holding a lantern in the dark. On a related note, if you've heard of the Brown Mountain Lights, I've witnessed them on a couple of occasions. I thought it was all bullshit until then.

/Apocoflips/

Weird one that happened to my sister a couple years ago.Background info: she and her (now) husband are house sitting for my brother in laws uncle. The uncle is old and starting to lose it. He rents out a basement suite and a nice lady lives downstairs. She cleans the house when she is there but he wanted my brother in law to come check on things and feed his old cat once in a while.

Okay so first day they go to house sit they get in but can't find the cat to make sure it's okay. My sister has cats and know they like to hide when they are dying so they are all worried and are looking everywhere for this cat. In all rooms under the beds and everything.

Even check with the lady downstairs, she hasn't seen it. So my sister opens up the closet in the spare bedroom and is looking around stuff on the floor. Moves a couple of things and sees a set of feet on the ground in the closet, with clothes blocking anything above the feet.

The feet have nicely painted toenails and look human, but she assumes it is a doll or something. They look in a few more places and all of the sudden the cat is in the middle of the living room just hanging out. So they lock the deadbolt and leave.

Sister and her boyfriend go out for dinner and a movie and she can't stop thinking about the feet and how real they looked. My sister had started dating her bf fairly recently and didn't want to seem crazy so she didn't bring it up but a few hours into the night she decided she needed to tell him. He decides that it's probably a doll but he offers to go back and check anyway.

When they arrive my sister will only stay on the patio because she is scared, which makes him realize that this must be something serious. They go to get in the door, but the deadbolt is now unlocked and the handle is locked. Now he thinks there must be someone in there.

At the door there is a fireplace so once he is in there he grabs the sharp poker stick from the fireplace tools and starts to sneak towards the closet. He opens the closet and sees the same set of feet with painted toenails on the floor.

He pokes it lightly with the fire stick and the toes scrunch up. He proceeds to smack the foot as hard as he can with the sharp stick and yells "Get out of there!" Out comes a lady in her mid-30s, holding the cat and a can of coke. Turns out she was friends with the basement tenant.

When she became homeless the friend let her stay with her until she found out she was addicted to crack. Started leaving drugs around the house and had shady people coming into the house so she kicked her out. Somehow she got a key to upstairs and had been staying there while the uncle was gone. Police were called and she was arrested.

https://www.reddit.com/user/captaindigbob/

When I was younger my family was extremely poor and lived in a very old mobile home on some land my grandpa owned. This piece of land was in a very small town out in the middle of nowhere Texas and was covered in woods.

The town itself was your typical small country town where football was king and there was nothing to do but get drunk or high on the weekend. It was also the type of town, along with it being early 90s, where one didn't typically have to worry too much about locking their doors or setting an alarm.

Now, our trailer was a two bedroom and my parents, always putting us kids ahead of themselves, slept in the living room on a fold out couch. My room was directly connected to it and my sisters room was down a hallway past the kitchen and bathroom at the other end of the trailer.

One night, after everyone had gone to bed, my dad is woken up by a feeling that there is someone in the room. He looks around a bit and sees a large male figure sitting in the easy chair just feet from the bed. My dad quickly flipped on the light switch next to his bed and saw it was a neighbor from down the road named Carter. Carter was known to be a frequent drug user and was often in trouble with the law because of thise.

My dad asked him what the fuck he was doing here and told him to get out and he responded. "I can't get out. The demons are chasing me and your house is the only safe one." My dad, who I should is fairly large and terrifying person, responded that if he didn't get out and get out quickly that the house would be a lot less safe for him. "If I leave they'll get me! They've been chasing me all night. If they catch me I'm dead."

My dad's response was that there was no demons but that if he didn't get the fuck out of his house that he'd be dead. From what I've been told, since I was asleep for this part, my mom also hurled a few threats and, while she may not be big, she was equally as terrifying. I believe it was her anger that finally scared him off.

My dad got up and locked the door and watched through the blinds as Carter decided, since he couldn't outrun the demons he'd steal our old beater Suburban that my dad always left the keys in. He drove around for about an hour. We called the police and it took them about that long to get out to us since the closest police station was about 20 or 30 minutes away. He finally brought it back and was arrested and taken to jail. He was deemed crazy and ended up locked in a mental institution.

The scarier part is that for years after this we'd get phone calls where all we'd here is music that would have lyrics like "I'm going to fucking kill you!" These calls lasted for years and followed us from house to house even though we always had different numbers and would even be in different states. We always thought it was him sending us a message.

The calls stopped when I was about 12. I later found out that it was around that time that Carter thought the best thing he could do for himself was soak himself in gasoline and set himself on fire.

/thepwnydanza/

Lucky for me, I haven't had too many creepy things occur in my lifetime. However, there is a pretty good one from my childhood, which I've shared before.

When I was nine, my parents split up, and my dad rented a house in a pretty isolated part of town. Surrounded by woods, couldn't see any neighbors. It was in a nice area, especially for kids. An old friend of his lived in the basement apartment. He was kind of a weird guy.

Super-neckbeard, into mystic shit, and hit on my mom constantly when she and my dad were still together. Upstairs, my dad lived with Big Frank, a big teddybear-viking guy who loved me and my little brother (five, at the time), and Barney, a very religious stagehand who also liked my brother and me a lot.

For a while, when my brother and I came to visit Dad, everything was cool. We'd run around in the woods and play games and stay up late and eat junk food. Slowly, I started to feel more and more creeped out whenever we were there. I'd run to my bed after turning the lights out, because every child knows the bed is the only place you're safe. I constantly felt like something was there.

One day, my brother told me his closet door opened in the middle of the night. We didn't tell Dad, probably because he wasn't very good at listening to us back then, and we knew he wouldn't take us seriously. Instead, we told Barney. Barney said he'd felt something evil in the house, and he'd do something about it.

When everyone else left the house, Barney sprinkled some holy water around, lit some candles, and said a few prayers. The house felt much less scary when we got back that evening, but it went right back to being creepy and awful by the next weekend. Until Dad moved out five years later, we just put up with it and pretended not to be scared. It's easy enough to put up with something creepy for a couple days at a time, as long as nothing actually happens.

A couple summers ago, I moved in with Dad and stepmom (he got married a year after moving out of the house) while going to school. One beautiful evening, we were sitting around playing a game and having a few beers, when my stepmom brought up that house and how filthy it was because a bunch of bachelors lived there.

We all laughed and talked about the old roommates and wacky things that happened while they all lived there. Then, I said, "Bro and I were sure that place was haunted or something. He says his closet door opened in the middle of the night. I never saw anything weird, but god that place was creepy."

My dad nodded and said, "Yeah. There was some kind of evil presence there. I never told you kids this, but I was pushed down the stairs a few times while going to the basement for laundry. And there was this one time I went to the kitchen, and all our knives were stuck in the ceiling."

[redacted]

It was near Halloween time when my friends and I were telling ghost stories. My friend said she was going to tell a story about her parents' first date. She said she didn't like telling the story, since it was actually true, but we prodded her on.

She didn’t seem very forthcoming at first. Not really raring to tell the story, but we kept pushing and eventually she relented. It was interesting to say the least, the experience was basically a part of history, albeit a dark and disturbing one. But I digress.

To cut to the chase, the parents had spent a nice, if awkward first date, and around the time that they would have said "good night," the male in the situation--my friend's dad--suggested that they go for a midnight hike up Provo Canyon.

He apparently knew the place, since he had done a fair amount of rock climbing in the area. So the two drove up the mouth of the canyon, got out of their cars and started hiking under just the light of the stars, since it was a new moon.

At some point, the male starts getting a "bad feeling," since the pathway ahead, which would pass under some trees, would be dark, and because it was getting to be quite late. They weren’t scared of the woods per se but the trail could get windy and it was easy to get lost, nevermind hurt or something worse. Not really dangerous but you get the idea.

He ignores the feeling and presses on. In later rehearsings of the story, the female would say that she had felt the same feeling at what was probably the same time, though she didn't know the trail like he did. In any case, they kept going on regardless of the bad vibes either or both of them were getting. Ignoring the bad vibes, good plan.

A minute later, the feeling came back to the male. He ignored it again, and started walking a bit of the way into the trees when his foot hit something "soft" in the middle of the path. Under the trees, it was too dark to see just what this soft thing was, and the feeling came back stronger than ever. Instead of finding out what his foot had bumped into, he and the female both agreed to hightail it out of there...

Years later, after being married for some time, they were watching an interview with the serial killer, Ted Bundy. In response to a question asking him to describe the time that he felt the closest to being caught, he explained about the night that he lured a girl into Provo Canyon, and had just killed her when he heard some people coming up the trail. Some people who had potentially ignored some bad vibes and went on looking regardless.

He explained how he hid in the trees just in time, hiding in the underbrush and waiting. He was fairly sure he’d have been caught. Watching out from the brush, he breathed as quietly as possibl and waited, only to watch some guy walk right into the body, and for some reason, just turn around and walk away.

/sixpintsasecond/

When I was in college it was the height of all the ghost hunting shows. I was always really interested in the possibly of it all since I was a kid. I didn't know if I believed in it or not, I just liked the idea of investigating it all - so I started doing research. I read books, watched documentaries, and studied different techniques. The more and more I learned the more I realized that going into a situation "looking" for ghosts or spirits will complete ruin an investigation. What tends to happen with this mentality is that your brain starts finding things that aren't there - so I started to train myself to go into situations as a skeptic and instead of looking for the paranormal, it was better to look for normal explanations for the abnormal.

While doing this I met people from all walks of life who also adopted this method. We eventually made a club in our university that actually became the most active and sought after club to be a part of. We were invited to houses, business, and historic parks (Gettysburg namely) to see what explanations and evidence we could find. We would hand pick teams for special investigations if we considered them "serious." We did this because the club was open enrollment and while we would take days to have refresher courses of do's and don't's during investigations there would still be people looking to find ghosts. Anyway, out of all the investigations we did we had three places we went to that we could not explain what we had capture on video and sound.

One was a theater in our home city. The entire night we caught nothing and thought it was a bust. Even going through evidence - which we would do three times - provided almost nothing....until a co-investigator's mother walked through the room where we were watching a tape of the entire theater and said "Who the hell is up there?" We made her show us. In the balcony seats (which were locked that night and we were not allowed up there because of the antiques in it) there was a lamp lit behind a window curtain.

You can see a figure move in front of the light of the lamp to almost block it (similarly as if you were to put a white sheet in front of a light to deaden the intensity of it) and then you can see something pull back the curtain a little bit as if it were peeking out. It lasted about 15 seconds. We checked our records of where each group was at the time and asked each person if they'd been in the balcony - all responded no. We then asked our guide (who would unlock and lock the sections we were investigating) to which she responded that she did not have a key to the balcony because of what was inside of them. Regardless, she was with my group at the time of the event and every other person at the investigation was accounted for because we were able to match up timestamps from their recordings.

Two Gettysburg. There were three instances at Gettysburg that were unexplainable. This evidence has been lost because we did this investigation close to 7 years ago when we were less organized. The first was a picture - one of the best I've seen. There were actually three pictures that ran together - the first two being just fog that seemed to have a blue hue to it and the last one sending chills down my spine because it was a clear as day man laying on a rock at Devil's Den looking at Little Round Top (from the bottom) dressed in full confederate garb. When first looking at it it looks like the picture was distorted until you realize you can make out the whiskers in his beard and the gold in his patches on his hat and arms of his coat.

The second (which I was not there for) was supposedly a piece of paper that was put on a rock in the woods that said "what's your name" - they walked back about 40 feet or so and recorded and watched for 30 mins to make sure it wasn't tampered with. When they went back there were clear scribbles on the paper, but they weren't anything legible. The third and final Gettysburg story is when I was walking through an area between the Wheatfield and Cemetery Ridge. I was with two or three others and we had about ten feet between us as we walked in line.

This is all on a digital recorded. You can hear something hit me in the back - like if someone threw a rock or something. I stopped and say "Ouch, Joe...what the hell, dude?' to which he says he did nothing....at the time of this we were all stopped and through the recording you can hear us go silent and in the distance hear a drum play a few beats. We did not hear this at the time we were stopped until we listened to the recording later, but Joe (as mentioned previously) is a drummer and went white when he heard it...he listened a few more times before telling us it was a halt from a drum line.

Third one is very lengthy and I guess I'll write it if there is any interest. I don't currently do these investigations and I'll be the first one in the room to be a skeptic with any paranormal claim...but there were a few times that I was stumped. I'm not saying I know if ghosts exist or not...I don't have that answer. I can, however, say that there are things in this world we don't understand. Throughout the years we did the club in the university we became highly recognized - have been given awards from the school for what we have done in our investigation tactics and also community and charitable work.

Doing investigations are absolutely not what you see on TV - they are much more boring and you seldom have anything happen, but it's a labor of love. It's hard to explain it - because once you find that one piece of footage you can't explain you want more. I know I'll get backlash from these claims, I always do when I post my experiences, but I promise on my parent's lives that what I say DID indeed happen. I have NOT tried to emphasize any of it and I have told the stories as they've happened.

/NoTimeForFools/

When I was about 4 years old, we moved to a new town. This is one of those smaller towns where gossip gets around quickly, everyone knows the owners of the local businesses, and the regional schools have about 150 kids per grade, give or take.

As a 4 year old it wasn't surprising that I made a few friends quickly. However, my best friend's name was Jeremy, and he was imaginary. I never really thought it was odd that I met Jeremy when I moved to this town, and while looking back I can see how the situation would creep people out, I didn't really notice it. Jeremy was around my age, and I never saw him at my house. I would go to school, and he would be playing on the jungle gym or sitting down inside on the carpet.

When I left school for the day, he would wave goodbye and I would be on my way. Since no one ever really saw imaginary friends, I never noticed the difference that he appeared to actually be there. He wasn't invisible, but he also wasn't a person like you or me. He was just, I don't know, there. I told my parents about Jeremy and they sort of just brushed it off as whatever.

My parents worked full time and had 5 kids, and I was the second youngest. With a 1 year old in the house, I was designated to the "Oh that's interesting" response every time something new happened. In retrospect, I also realized that I never told my parents Jeremy was imaginary.

So one day I went to school and afterwards Jeremy invited me to his house that weekend. Jeremy didn't really talk, as far as I can remember. It was more like I heard his voice internally. Then again, I was 4 years old and didn't care too much. He told me where he lived and I said I would ask my mom. So I told my mom and she looked his family up and lo-and-behold, his last name was in the phone book on the road he had told me. My mom called his parents up and I'm assuming they just chatted over the phone about who they were and all that nonsense.

I eventually got a nod from my mom and was really excited for my playdate. We drove over there on Saturday and I immediately went inside. My mom chatted with his parents and eventually left. I remember playing around upstairs and his parents making us food although he didn't touch it. His parents seemed nice enough but even my child-brain could tell something was off. When my mom picked me up, I waved goodbye and we went home.

On the way back, my mom asked me how my day was and I told her about all the fun we had. When she asked if I wanted to invite Jeremy over next week I responded in the most innocent way a child can. "No mommy, I don't want to. Jeremy is imaginary and I don't think he would want to come over." I think my mom pulled over and with a strange look in her eyes asked if I had said "imaginary". I reassured her that he was, in fact, imaginary. We drove home quickly and my mom called the police.

I never saw Jeremy after that, but I did learn that the parents actually had a boy named Jeremy who died when he was about my age. He had been really sick, never really asked more about it to be honest. His parents were both taken into custody and I never saw them again but word is they were released because they didn't actually do anything wrong and they moved sometime later. I don't know, that was just what I heard when I was old enough to understand.

I'm assuming they were delusional and believed their child was still alive. They never did anything to me, I didn't have any memory lapses about my time there and I never had to "go into the creepy basement" or "walk towards the light". I don't know how anyone rationalized Jeremy but I think my parents were just happy I wasn't abducted by psychotic baby snatchers. Anyways, that's my paranormal experience for you.

/throwaway4storys/

I should start off by saying my brother is not only a military man, but he's your basic hetero "never let them see you cry" cliche of a military man. He's not afraid of anything, well, except for the entire country of japan. This is his story.
My brother joined the marines when he was 18 and was stationed in Japan. He really enjoyed his time there for a while. The girls, specifically. He made friends with some of the japanese guys his age who worked around the base.

On nights where him and his soldier friends had the night off, the local japanese guys would show them around, bring them to bars, introduce them to girls, etc. One night, after a little drinking and no luck with girls, the guy invited my brother home to play video games. My brother accepted the invite and they played video games for a few hours.

During this time, he tells my brother the main reason he wanted to get home early was because his little sister had been suffering from night terrors, causing her to wake up screaming, crying, and sometimes vomiting. He was worried about her and wanted to be home in case she had an episode.

At this point in the story, I should explain how this guy's house was shaped. The house was built in the shape of a horseshoe, with a garden in the middle. His bedroom was at the very edge of one side of the "U" shape and his sisters all the way at the other end. So they are essentially across the garden from each other. If he looks out of his window, he can see into hers and vice versa.

So anyways, they decide to call it a night, and the japanese guy walks over to the window to look across the garden into his sisters window, to check on her. He lifts the blind and peers out for a fraction of a second before jumping back screaming and looking at my brother like he just saw something horrible.

My brother then goes to look and he stops him. He tells him that he saw a dark cloud with red eyes hovering over his sister's sleeping body. My brother, naturally, does not believe him and decides to look for himself.

He creeps quietly over to the window and lifts the blind but this time, he finds himself eye to eye with what he describes as a "dark black puff of smoke with a face". My brother and this other guy admit that they got under the guys covers and stayed there until it was light outside, too afraid to lift the blankets and see that the smoky figure had come a little closer, and was in the room with them, just on the other side of the thin sheets.

I don't know what to believe, or if maybe they drank more than what they said they did that night and imagined it all, but I know my brother believes what he saw. He sticks to his story, and when he tells it, he looks like someone who saw something truly sinister.

/tsim12345/

I work the evening shift at a hospital that is believed to be, at least by 90% of the staff, haunted. I'm part of the 90%. You see, there have been horror stories about every building, floor, and pretty much every part of the campus. I mostly wander around alone (housekeeper), and that makes it that much worse... at least when my mind is on it, usually I don't think about it.

My personal experience was back in the ultrasound wing of the Radiology clinic. By the time I get around to that area, the lights automatically dim and there isn't anything I can do about it. It's always spooky back there at night, so I usually just get done what I need to and move on. The place is kind of shaped like a J, like a long hallway that curves around.

On the inner side of the curve there's a dressing room that opens up to a mammography suite, and then opens again to the top of the J (if your standing at the bottom of the J, you can see through the doors of both rooms to the top of the J). I was standing back there, tying a bag on my cart, when something moved in the corner of my eye. I looked up and through the dressing and mamo rooms to the other doorway opposite me.

Vividly, I remember it like it was today, a male figure walks past the door, right before my eyes. I literally watched it amble slowly across my field of vision. There are no male ultrasound techs here, and it was NOT my boss. It looked like it was wearing dark clothing, and had long hair, but it was definitely male. I snapped out of it and ran over to see if some freak had wandered in, but no one was there. I grabbed my stuff and ran out without finishing all the work. 'Cause screw that.

Another story, not my personal experience, comes from the second floor of the hospital. Second floor has nothing but offices and computer labs, all adjacent to one corridor that spans the entire length of the building. On one end is a set of elevators, and the other are a pair of double-doors that open into a computer lab.

This floor is infamous for being the domain of something the workers affectionately call "Matilda." The first story I heard about her was from a coworker who knew someone that worked on that floor. He came in for whatever reason, doing office stuff, and was going home late one night. He walks out of the office and starts toward the elevators when something catches his eye, so he turns toward the computer lab. At the end of the hallway there's what looks like a patient peeking into the lab. He walks towards her and asks who she is and what floor she came from. She turns around...
She has no face.

Office guy is frozen in place, scared shitless. He wants to run away, but he doesn't want to turn his attention away from whoever, or whatever, is staring him down from the other end of the hall. What does he do instead? He closes his eyes as tight as he can. After several seconds, minutes, or however long it really was, he opens them and she's gone. He says he's never ran as fast in his life as he did that night, straight outside without ever looking back.

Another "Matilda" happening was when one of the managers left a tape recorder going in his office, also on Second floor, because he wanted to see if he could catch any weird noises or voices. The next day, I'm walking by his office with a coworker and he calls us in there and plays the recording, to see if we hear it, too.

After forever with nothing, a faint voice comes in and says "Turn it off." That was spooky as hell. There are a lot more stories than that about the hospital from hell, but that's all I got time for right now. More than willing to share more later.

/TheCaptainhat/

Many years ago I met up with a girl I knew from High School. I'll call her Sandy. She was more of an acquaintance back then, and we were never intimate. Even though we hung around with different groups of friends, I remember she once invited me to a party at her house, but nothing ever evolved past that. In fact, I met my high school girlfriend Andrea at that party.

It had been several years since graduation, and I met her on the street. We chatted a bit, and to make a long story short, I ended up at her place later that night. Following a glass or two of wine, we ended up having sex on a bed in the living room. Nothing extraordinary, but it was OK. After a few minutes, she got out of the bed and shuffled to the kitchen which was located at the far end of the living room. I was still in bed, but glanced over in a groggy post coitus haze. She entered the kitchen and flipped on the light.

This is where things started to get weird.First of all, the kitchen light must have been an old ceiling fixture with those long fluorescent tubes. It kicked on with a loud groan like an old arc welder. The light that came blasting out the kitchen was a god awful wavelength of intense radiation that bleached everything in its path. While the rest of the living room was still dark, the doorway of the kitchen had this weird glow, and the noise from the fixture didn't help matters any. This brought me to my senses somewhat, but as time passed, an intuition that "something is wrong" hit me.

At first I thought I heard a hushed conversation in the kitchen. I didn't know if Sandy had a roommate, so being buck naked, I instantly grabbed my clothes. Another minute had passed, and because there were no footsteps or the usual awkward "peek around the corner," I figured she must have been on the telephone. The hushed conversation in the kitchen started growing louder and it sounded like Sandy was having a tight lipped argument with someone on the phone. This made me rather uncomfortable, so I got out of bed and stealthily started putting on my clothes.

Now roughly five minutes had passed. I was dressed. I sat on the side of the bed trying to "listen in" and figure out what was going on. My phone theory disappeared when I thought I heard two enraged voices. Problem was that they were unmistakably coming from Sandy. I started thinking about bailing for the front door. Then the kitchen meltdown took a drastic turn as I heard sounds of a cutlery drawer being slammed open.

Panic set in with the unmistakable clanging sound of metal on metal. I started scanning the dark living room for a weapon, and then all grew instantly quiet. The light went out, but not without making a final groan before darkness. I followed the sound of footsteps out of the kitchen and across the living room. I froze.

While Sandy walked up to me with a smile on her face, I was looking at her hands. Even though they were empty, I was shitting bricks. Her voice reverted back to the calm and sweet, and she asked "Do you really have to go?" I lied and told her I got dressed because she "sounded busy." I really didn't know what else to say to her. I noped it out of there as best I could under the circumstances. Never heard from her again.

A few months later I met another female classmate. Curious, I told her that I "bumped into Sandy not too long ago." She said "Oh, poor Sandy! I heard that she was released a while back." WTF, so I uttered an "Oh really?" "She was institutionalized shortly after High School... complete breakdown." I tried creating distance by saying we were only acquaintances, and "I remembered her from that party at her house."

"Oh, thaaaaat party. I'm not sure if anyone ever told you this, but she had planned that party for months in advance to try and snare you. Unfortunately, Andrea beat her to it."
2 minute later edit: Thank god for Facebook. Married in a far away state. No class reunions for me though, ever. Sandy ended up fine. Recently went back to school, and has a "professional" position. Good for her. Class reunion is still out of the question though.

/Ossa250/

I do a lot of solo backpacking in western North Carolina. Usually Pisgah or Nantahala, but I've been all around. I have quite a few stories, most of them aren't really paranormal, but are definitely creepy - especially alone.

About two years ago I was on a 4 day solo trip at Cold Mountain in Shining Rock Wilderness. I came up through Art Loeb trail but got to my put-in later than I had planned. It was immediately clear there was no way I'd make it to my planned site before pitch black and I needed to make camp ASAP.
While walking through a rhododendron and high growth tunnel known as "The Narrows," I get the unmistakable feeling that something is definitely stalking me. 

The dim light keeps fading and I finally find a low lying, swampy area to camp (after passing a couple of claimed spots). I fire up my snowpeak stove, cook, eat, smoke a bowl, and bear bag what I needed to. It's completely pitch black at this time and the feeling of being watched is so strong that it's making my head buzz. I chalk it up to the bud, laugh it off, and get in my small tent.

I lay perfectly still, enjoying the high and listening to the ambient sounds when, suddenly, I feel something reach under the base of my tent near my head on the left side and brush my cheek. I immediately jump 2 feet off the ground and rip my sleeping bag off. I sit there motionless for maybe 5 minutes holding my knife and trying to figure out what the FUCK just happened. I convince myself it's a mouse/rat/whatever and lay back down.

Finally I'm drifting off and all is good, when I hear (sense, really) three or four 'somethings' walking around my site. I quietly get my knife back out and prepare for the worst, when I feel something reach under the tent again. Then again. Then two at the same time on opposite sides. Then 3. I finally break my silence and shout a "HEY! GET!," but they keep pawing and reaching.

At this point I'm pretty certain I'm dealing with coyotes. Even though they're usually pretty timid and are mostly scavengers, they were coming at me HARD. I hear growling and whimpering and I start smacking at their paws with my boot as they keep digging under my tent and yelping. This goes on for about 6 or 7 loooonnngg minutes as I keep shouting and playing midnight Wack-A-Mole.

They seemed to be getting more aggressive and I 'm fearing for my life a little, when out of nowhere I hear a dog barking and growling in the distance, and getting closer. The pawing and scratching stops and I hear the 3 or 4 coyotes snarling in the same direction near where I heard the dog. The dog keeps barking and they keep snarling and then I hear a scuffle and some of the most God-awful animal noises I've ever heard... Then silence. COMPLETE silence that's even louder than the animal noises.

Needless to say I don't sleep a wink, and when morning comes I get out to investigate to find my tent fly ripped and spots of blood all over my campsite. I'm definitely shaken but I break camp and continue up towards the summit. About an hour in I run across a group of 20-somethings searching frantically for a dog. Apparently she disappeared from their site in the middle of the night and they'd been looking for her since morning. They ask me if I've seen her (a German shepherd) and I recount my story from the night before. We all kind of knowingly mull over the possibilities and I promise to keep an eye out.

I never did see the dog. Didn't see them again for the rest of the trip either. I really hope they found her and she's ok, but all I know is she may very well have saved my life.

/Apocoflips/

Sorry if my story telling skills suck, its just something that has always stuck with me.

I have a cousin that lives in a secluded area where everyone owns land. He has something like 600 acres of land where he lets his cattle run free. I went to visit him one summer and he came up with the idea of camping out. He has a little spot where there is a tepee in a clearing underneath a few large trees.

The walking path goes strait through the clearing down to a little trail to a pond then goes back up into some trees. To get to this place we drove his truck through his pasture and up to a tree line. We had to get out and walk a ways into the trees to get there. Thinking back on it I cant really remember how far into the tree line his camping site was but it was a little bit of a walk.

So its my cousin, his girlfriend, a friend she brought and myself. We start to drink and had a small camp fire going. Someone threw a little too much brush on the fire and it got pretty big, to the point that it lit some of the branches of the trees above on fire. It was kind of scary at the moment thinking we almost started a huge fire but it grew and died pretty quickly.

Now later on in the night we are all drinking and im tending to the fire. The girlfriend says out loud that she needs to use the restroom and I thought that she went down the path near the pond. The fire is starting to die down and I need to gather some more brush so I start walking towards the path to the pond.

As I am walking down the path I see a shadow of someone holding a tree branch up seemingly looking back at me. Remembering that the girlfriend had announced that she needed to use the restroom I assume its her so I call out her name. As soon as I do the shadow drops the tree branch and I can no longer see it. At that same moment I hear the girlfriend shout back at me from the camp site.

I looked back and from a distance I could see her coming out of the tepee. I look back at the brush and I see nothing, I stare for a moment but there was no movement. Completely shocked and confused I start to walk back to the camp, heart already racing so fast I thought I might pass out. When I walk up to the camp I see that all of us are there. I tell them what just happened and everyone is a little freaked out. My cousin brushes it off saying were out on his land and theres no way anyone could be out there. We eventually keep drinking but I cannot forget about it.

Much later on I am getting a little tired and my cousin is looking to fool around with his girl so we all lay down in the tepee. I am laying next to the friend just trying to pass out while I can hear them fooling around. They are talking and whispering when I hear the running thud of foot steps outside of the tent as if something is running at the tent then hear kind of a pop and drag like something hit the tent and drug against it. My cousin leaps up yelling and now we are all terrified. He is shouting that we need to get out of there right now and we all left everything and ran to his truck.

We drove back to the house scared shitless talking about what just happened and what I saw earlier. As we are all talking about it we all agree that the thuds sounded like it had two feet as you can hear the difference in a deer or horse galloping. They were big thuds as if it was carrying a lot of weight.

My cousin said he was laying near the edge of the tepee when he heard the steps and looked up to see something hit and drag something across the fabric right above him. The fact that he actually was scared is what made it even more frighting us as he had lived on that land his whole life and had been to that camp site so many times.

/DTru1222/

Two events still as clear as day to me, both seemingly not high on the creepy reading spectrum, but they both gave me that "something very weird just happened" feeling.

One. Had a lucid dream where I was on a mountain road with forest on either side of me. There was a fire tornado whipping through the trees on one side. The road was dark and empty except for me and my friend Joe, and it was windy and li by the fire. Then a small grey figure that kind of resembled Gizmo from the Flintstones (classic little green Martian man with a big helmet) was floating in front of me.

We just stared at each other, from what I remember, but it was very eerie the way he was looking at me and I remember the detail of his skin texture even. We were in a sort of clear calm bubble while the fire raged around us. I woke up, having forgotten all about it, poured some cap'n crunch berries and turned on the news.

The first thing that came on was a report on a raging fire that started overnight in the Shasta's (i was living in the mountains south of the Bay Area). In a flash the dream instantly came back to me, I paused mid crunch, and was just completely weirded out.

Two. We were on a midnight hike on an uninhabited island in Lake Michigan that you can only ferry to, no residents, but there are a few abandoned farms from the 1800s and a one room schoolhouse deep in the middle of the island. We were hiking to the graveyard so the night was already steeped in superstition and ghost stories. It was so dark out that without the flashlights it was no different if your eyes were closed or open, and we were walking the mile and a half to the graveyard without our flashlights.

Only way to navigate was to feel with your feet for the edges of the trail, but it was navigable that way, and spooky and fun. Saw some weird green glow off the trail and we all went to check it out. Turns out it was some green glowing fungus, easy to see without the lights but you'd never see it otherwise, and we smeared some on a stick and used it as a mock torch. The rangers didn't believe us when we asked them later.

Next we stopped by the schoolhouse so my wife could use the outhouse there and I wandered a bit ahead of the group, fumbling along the trail in the pitch black so I wouldn't get light-blind while she used her light. Then I saw a figure that looked like a lady in a white dress about 10 yards up the trail coming towards me, but not walking, just coming closer, hate to say it but floating. I called out hello and asked if she was lost, really thinking someone was there, just wanting to help.

Then the figure evaporated and I got super freaked out. Called out to the group and one of the guys said it must have been the lady of the lake. I don't believe in ghosts, period, but that happened.

There's no getting around it. Then on our way back to the boat ferry the next day to go home we stopped and checked out the island museum and no shit there was a class picture of kids at the schoolhouse from around 1890 and the teacher was a lady in a white dress that died on the island and is sometimes called the lady in the lake. I can't really process this in any other way than a real, true ghost story. I still get goosebumps.

/jazzrz/

Some years back, I was at University with a friend I'd known from school. We weren't best friends, but good mates - we knew about each other and got on well enough. I knew that he was a spiritualist, and he'd sometimes talk about his spiritual guide and whatnot. Not really what I believe in, but each to their own.

Anyway, we were both hanging around the halls of residence where I lived (he lived in another halls), wasting time and watching crap on the tiny TV in the shared kitchen. We were waiting until 2am as that's when WWE (or WWF, as it was called then!) would be showing. As we didn't have Sky (cable, for our American friends) we would often wait up in the halls then walk down to the local 24 hour snooker/pool hall, which would show Sky Sports. Usually, you could ask them to stick the wrestling on and turn the volume up.

Anyway, we're chatting a lot of rubbish and just watching stupid stuff on the tv. Can't remember what we were talking about but I remember after that it wasn't anything creepy. We hadn't been drinking or anything like that either - we were completely sober.

We're chatting away when we realise we need to get going down to the pool hall if we want to catch the wrestling. So we stick on our coats and continue our conversation as we walk outside.

Now, it's weird - the moment I walk through the door, I feel... Cold. It's 2am in England sometime in the Spring, so it wasn't going to be warm out, but I mean... It's like I had chills running up and down my spine. Cliché, maybe, but best way I can describe it is the slow feeling of creeping dread you get when you're watching some scary movie on the ominous music starts to play.

I try and shrug it off, but it's like the dread was increasing with each step down the street. The air actually felt heavy, like it was difficult to breath. I know that sounds like any other creepy pasta story, but it's the only way I really know how to describe that horrible feeling in my gut.

A minute out of the door, I suddenly realise that we're both silent. We were chatting and laughing as we left the halls, but our conversation had just faded out. I remember looking down the street, thinking that perhaps this was me being nervous about any dodgy characters nearby - but the road was clear. It was a clear night, nothing out of the ordinary at all, but to me there was this massive alarm going off in my head. I was terrified of something, and I didn't know what!

Picking up on the silence finally, I simply said, "Hmm, air feels a little thick tonight." My throat was dry by this point. He looked at me with a pale face and said, "Oh God, you can feel it too?"
We managed to hold a halting conversation about what it could be, but it was difficult as we both felt sick to our stomachs. Finally, as we crossed the road, I remember my friend turning even more white and saying, "It's death. Death is here."

I don't really remember much after we crossed the road - weirdly, the strange feeling suddenly subsided and we both laughed it off, even though we'd both felt it. We made it to the Pool Hall, and I didn't think much about it for a few days. It wasn't until later in the week that I was walking from Uni (without my friend) and I passed a building close to the halls, on the road we'd crossed over where my friend had 'felt death'. There were three police cars and an ambulance there. I remember watching with horror as a pair of coroners were removing a body wrapped up in black.

We looked it up in the local paper the next day. Apparently, three homeless people had died together in the building after seeking shelter, and they'd been dead for a few days before being discovered and removed. Never did find out what they died of. I didn't go and watch much wrestling after that.

/Rad_Carrot/

My mother and I like going for walks together, even if the weather isn't entirely the best.
One Autumn evening about 4 or 5 years ago (I would be 21 or 22) we decided to go for a walk on the local walking path in the Minnesota woods near our home.

It was cloudy, a bit late in the evening... A little windy and just spitting rain but we went anyway. As we walked (we walked a decent speed since it was quite chilly) we noticed no one else on the path, which we guessed was just due to the weather and that was fine. The sun was also going down and Minnesota is full of black bears.

We came up on a side path with a pretty bridge to the side and I wanted to go take some photos of us together on it, but my mother said she had a bad feeling deep in the pit of her stomach: "There could be a bear that way, we should stay on the main path." I convinced her anyway, and we went and took a few pictures together, then got back onto the main path. We laughed about her bad feeling and brushed it aside.

When we got back on the main path we noticed a man dressed all in black quite a ways up the main path from us. His back was to us, so he was walking in the same direction we were, down the path. We hadn't seen him behind us at all prior to this, and he was walking fairly slowly. After a while I noticed a break in the trees off of the main path, one less marked and not meant for locals to go on.

I knew if we followed it we would be on a high hill over looking the river that ran by the path. Again I wanted to go, and again my mother's good mood was soured by a bad feeling. We went despite the terrible feeling she had. I had one at this point as well, but only a small nagging in the pit of my stomach. I suppose nerves, maybe brought on my my mother being so nervous herself.

We walked up a ways until the trees cleared out, and it was a beautiful view. At this point the nagging in my stomach got much worse and I too immediately thought: There's a bear here, we're being watched. I scanned the woods around us and a small movement caught my eye. A man in a blue jacket was standing just behind the tree line staring at us. I said to mom, "Look, there's someone there!" and pointed at him.

The man immediately took off like a flash of lightning, running in a direction that would take him deeper into the woods, not back onto the path. Mom turned to see him as I pointed, following his movement with my finger. She didn't see him, but we both agreed at once that it was time to turn back and go home.

We hurried back down toward the main path, but when we made it to the very edge of the trees and the main path, it was blocked by the man dressed in black who had been ahead of us before we went that direction. He had just stepped off the main path and was about to head to the same clearing where we had been standing. When he saw us coming he turned around on a dime (so fast I didn't even see his face) and started walking hurriedly back in the same direction he had been before.

We ran out of the path and got into the car, drove to the other end of the path (where the man in black would be exiting). We saw him coming, but when he saw the car he turned again and started walking the other direction. We went back to the other side and waited, but he never showed up. To this day I think those two men were conspiring and that if we had stayed even a moment longer we may have ended up in that river, dead. I thank my gut feeling and always listen when it begins to gnaw at my insides in warning, and I suggest everyone else does too.

/Vore-/

During my younger years I worked as an ME's assistant in a small town out in the boonies. We had little to do, mostly car accidents, the odd workplace death, once or twice a suicide, and - of course - anyone dying in medial care because that's the law.

As death professionals we're the least superstitious people on the planet. We know that dead people are dead, we don't have the usual fear of bodies and gore, and those who come to us as fresh new employees shed whatever fears they have or move on quickly.

One evening we received a freshly deceased male in his late 50s. The man had been hauling freight from Galveston up into the heartland on an 18-wheeler, apparently done his body no service with a mix of trucker speed, smokes, fatty diner foods, and beer by the barrel, and one night it all just caved in on him, leading to the cleaning staff of the motel he'd stayed at finding him when he didn't check out in time.

The autopsy had already happened a few days ago, cause of death was determined, and he'd been moved to one of the walk in coolers we used to store bodies for transport home. The walk in was this big industrial cooler they use in restaurants or warehouses with those rubber curtains and a massive lockable door. I grabbed the key from the ring to tag the body and bag it for transport (we bagged every body back then because Southwest Airlines was our main air transport and they didn't have the pressure boxes bodies get put into to prevent, errm, seepage).

The picker-upper was on his way and I had 30 minutes to get everything done, paperwork, tagging, double-checking we had the right person, all that. With the MEs papers in hand I went to bag our trucker, opened the door, slid his metal slab onto the cart, wheeled him into the autopsy anteroom, and pulled the bag onto him. There's a science to doing this alone, humans are freaking unwieldy and heavy.

After putting him in and readjusting his slipped face (the ME makes an incision around the back of the head and pulls all the flesh down from his cranium to open the skull and inspect the brain) I zipped the bag shut and went to grab the outer tag I'd printed before. One-use body bags have a double zipper, one at the bottom and one at the top. When a body is moved, no matter where, the mover has to check the name and number on the paperwork with the name and number on the bag and the name and number on the toe tag.

I left the room and when I came back the top of the bag was standing open, exposing the trucker's face. With the slipped face and his jaw ajar as it would be when all muscular function is gone, he looked like he gave me a crooked smile. I zipped the bag shut, scolding myself for not doing my job right, checked paperwork against toe and the new tag, zipped the bottom shut after checking, placed the tag, and wheeled him back.

A little later the driver arrived, I handed her a cup of coffee and the paperwork and went to fetch the body. When I opened the cooler the trucker smiled at me again. Had I pulled the bottom zipper too wide and the top one open? I did the whole "check all tags and paperwork" thing, closed the face part, and wheeled him out.

We sat in the break room for a few minutes while the driver finished her coffee, talked about the Rams and a disastrous Cowboys game a few days back, and she walked out. "Dude, you sure you're done with him," I heard her holler. Outside, her standing at the entrance to the room, my bag had opened again, a toothy crooked grin looking right at us. I know for a fact I'd closed the bag. The scientist in me says it was a faulty bag with tension issues. The rest of me.. yeah, I am not so sure.

/jluster/

Throwaway to thwart identification and association with other accounts.I met a guy my mom dated back in High School. I was about thirteen. Parents and brother were out doing something or other, I was alone. We had three dogs at the time, one was a weimeraner.

Doorbell rang. Dogs kinda go nuts a little. I go to the door, the weimeraner, a 130 lb male, is doing his usual big bad excited thing. Weird guy I've never seen before at the door. I say hi.

He says hi then asks "is here?"

"Uh... yeah, but she's now. She's out right now"
(I was allowed to tell people this now, cause my parents figured between me being 6'2" and the weim plus another big dog anyone that wanted to try and force their way in with just me there was going to be in for a very poor day)

"Oh, ok, well if you could tell her stopped by to say hi I'd appreciate it. Here's my card." He hands me his card, then stops and asks "Oh, is that ?"

"Uh no, he's been gone for a while."
"Oh yeah, sorry, my mistake"

I close the door, think it's weird, but whatever people can be weird. Go back to doing whatever I did. Mom and Dad come home. usual stuff ensues, then I mention the guy and hand mom the card. She and dad look at it.

First time ever I think I've seen both of them go just totally white. Actually truly terrified.

Like mortally afraid and upset but trying not to lose it. Mom holds the card like it's a loaded gun that was pointed at my head. Looks at Dad, and he walks off to the kitchen, calls my grandparents, mom's sibling and her spouse, starts to explain things. Family meeting over dinner is planned. I've never seen my parents like this. While he's on the phone he's getting ready to go haul my brother home from whatever he was up to at the time, and is locking all the doors.

I think at one point he asks mom if she wants him to get one of the hand guns out, but she says no. He leaves, says he'll be back soon.

Mom puts the card in the kitchen, then sits down by me, and tells me what the hell's going on.

She dated this guy in High School. Her younger sibling dated his younger sibling too.

Cute story. Mom and this guy break it off eventually, so do their siblings. Nothing acrimonious, just normal high school stuff. Mom and the guy and the rest of their class graduate. That summer the guy turns 18.

The night of his birthday he murders his entire family.

Mom said the whole town was in shock, totally taken aback by it. Rumors spread. Some people thought the dad could be abusive, was distant and cold towards his son, suspected maybe he hit him from time to time.

At trial, it comes out that his dad, the minute he turned 18, threw him out of the house, hitting him, chasing him off the property. Allegations are made his mother, his sibling did nothing to stop it. Later that evening he came back, broke in, and killed his father, then his mother, then his younger sibling. Cops found him covered in blood sometime the next day, wandering in a daze. I never looked up much of the record, I guess the abuse angle got raised but wasn't pushed hard, dunno how it played into his sentencing. He got put away for just short of 30 years, got a little time shaved off for helping set up an inmate rehab program.

Mom and dad look up the records. He just got out. They figure he must have been trying to make amends, maybe reestablish old connections, they're not sure.

Family meets up, kids all kept at one house in another room, and discuss the situation. Basically go on lockdown for a while. Kids are never left home alone, school teachers and councilors for all the family' kids are told about the guy, told to call police if they see him. We're told to tell our friends to report if anyone unusual starts to ask about us.

I get to explain to my friends that my family's terrified that the guy my mom used to date who just got out of prison for killing his family might randomly show up at my school to try and talk to me for god knows what reason. He never tries to contact any of us again. Eventually sometime later mom sees an article (she'd setup a google alert for his name) and finds he's been caught with child porn. With previous crimes he's sentenced to basically life in prison by the time he gets out he'll be well over 70.

So yeah. Not exactly all that dangerous, but my own personal brush with a guy that killed his entire family then just showed up at my house cause my mom dated him for a while back when they were in high school. Not exactly Stephen King, but it was creepy enough at the time.

/Throwawaydog1099/

In college, a group of friends and I would research haunted/creepy/abandoned places and drive out to explore them. We'd often get places from websites, books, hearsay--basically any way we could back then, so it's safe to say a decent portion of our leads were probably bullshit or made-up.

Regardless of that, we explored our fair share of abandoned houses, mental facilities and haunted areas. Realistically, the biggest danger we ever encountered would have been angry squatters, but you never know (we did hear a woman screaming for help and what sounded like a gunshot at an abandoned mental facility, but after exploring extensively and finding nothing, someone was probably just fucking with us).

One time was different, though. We'd gotten a lead about a small lake in the middle of some woods where a large stone was used for rituals. We figured it was probably all bullshit, but it was close to a good diner and we figured, at worst, we'd get a good omelette out of the trip.

We got to the forest about dusk and parked the car and headed into the woods. There was a faint footpath that you could tell was used with irregularity. We pressed onward and knew we were strapped for time, as we didn't bring any flashlights with us (we planned to get there much earlier in the day than we did) and the forest canopy was making it much darker than it actually was.

We ran into the small lake which we'd read about, but didn't see any large stone or something that might be a centerpiece for the rituals we'd read about. The footpath went deeper in to the forest, so we decided to follow it for 5 more minutes and then turn back.

The path slowly began to ascend a small hill and in the distance we could make out some dark blobs that appeared to hovering in a slight haze. Again, it was pretty dark by this point, so it was hard to make out exactly what we were seeing. We approached slower and realized the "haze" was actually a tall chain-link fence.

That's not the creepy part, though. The part that unnerved us was what the dark blobs were: every ~10 feet on the fence, there was a dead and decaying dog strung up to the fence, attached by a dead snake wrapped around the dog's neck and through the chain links.

The fence was padlocked with a chain but not very tall--we could have jumped it, but it was dark and we had no flashlights. It was on the top of a hill and we weren't able to make out what was inside the fenced off area, as it turned into a fairly steep decline. We let fear get the better of us and ran all the way back to the car, sitting in silence the entire drive home.

I've always meant to go back to that place, even years later now, but I had such a feeling of sickness and dread that I can't bring myself to. It's almost an unspoken rule that none of us even bring up that place with one another.

/cowise/

I've always been a thrill-seeker, so when my friends suggested exploring an abandoned hospital, I was all in. This place was infamous in our town for eerie happenings, but I never believed in ghosts or anything... until that night.

As we crept through the decrepit hallways, the air felt unnaturally cold. We joked around to ease the tension, but I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.

In the basement, we found old medical equipment and files scattered everywhere. That's when we heard it. a faint whisper, almost like a child's voice, coming from the shadows. I thought it was one of us, but we were all accounted for.

We tried to brush it off, but then the whispers grew louder, turning into a chilling cry. Panic set in, and we rushed to leave, but the layout of the hospital seemed to have bizarrely changed, trapping us inside.

We finally found an exit and bolted outside. But when we turned around, a figure stood in the window on the top floor, watching us. It wasn't there before, and no one else was in the building with us.

We swore to never speak of it again, but the nightmares started immediately. Every night, I'd dream of that figure, its face obscured in shadow, whispering my name.

I went back in the daytime, needing closure. The hospital was completely different in the light, less menacing. But in the basement, I found a child's toy, old and dusty, sitting exactly where we'd heard the whispers.

I haven't been back since. That place, whatever's there, it's not right. It's like it's alive, and it knows me now. I can still hear the whispers sometimes, late at night, when the world is quiet.

I don't know what to believe anymore, but I know what I heard and saw. That experience was more terrifying than any horror movie I've ever seen.

/u/WhisperingShadows

This happened when I was a kid, but it still haunts me. My parents took me to an old family estate, deep in the countryside. It had been in our family for generations, but we'd never visited before.

While exploring, I found an old photo album in the attic. It was full of pictures of people I didn't recognize, but one photo caught my eye. It was a family portrait, but there was an extra person in the back, their face blurred.

I showed it to my parents, but they dismissed it as a camera fault. That night, I had a dream about that faceless person standing at the foot of my bed, just staring.

The next day, I went back to the attic. The album was gone. I searched everywhere, but it was like it had vanished into thin air.

I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. It felt like the eyes in all the old portraits in the house were following me.

On our last night, I heard whispers coming from the attic. I was too scared to check, but in the morning, the door to the attic was wide open.

We left the estate and never returned. I asked my parents about the history of the house, but they avoided the topic, which was unusual for them.

Years later, I found an article about the estate. It mentioned a family tragedy and a missing relative, their face scratched out of every family photo.

I still have nightmares about that faceless figure. The way it stared at me, it felt so real, more terrifying than any ghost story.

/u/FacelessWhispers

I used to live alone in a small apartment during my college years. One night, I got a phone call around midnight from an unknown number. I answered, and all I heard was heavy breathing.

I hung up, thinking it was a prank. But the calls kept coming, each time just heavy breathing on the other end.

One night, the caller finally spoke. In a raspy voice, they said, "I see you." I looked out the window but saw no one.

The calls became more frequent, always at midnight. I reported it to the police, but they couldn't trace the calls.

One evening, I returned home to find my apartment door slightly ajar. Nothing was stolen, but there was a photo on my table, a picture of me sleeping, taken from my window.

I stayed with a friend after that, but the calls followed me there. The same heavy breathing, the same time every night.

One night, the caller said, "You can't hide." I was terrified. I didn't know who they were or what they wanted.

Eventually, the calls stopped as suddenly as they had started. I never found out who it was or why they targeted me.

That experience has stayed with me. I still jump at unknown calls, and the fear of being watched never really leaves you.

/u/MidnightMystery

I've never been superstitious, but this experience changed my perspective. I moved into an old house that had been converted into apartments. It had a strange vibe, but the rent was cheap.

From the first night, I felt uneasy. There was a corner in my bedroom where the shadows seemed darker than the rest.

One night, I woke up to see a figure standing in that corner. It was just a silhouette, but it felt like it was looking right at me.

I turned on the light, and it vanished. I convinced myself it was just my imagination playing tricks on me.

But it kept happening, always at 3 a.m. The shadow figure, just standing there, watching.

I started to feel drained all the time, like the apartment was sucking the life out of me. I had nightmares about the figure, and it felt like it was getting closer each night.

I finally decided to do some research on the house. I found out that it used to be a funeral home and that the corner where I saw the figure was where they prepared the bodies.

I moved out shortly after. The night before I left, the figure was closer than ever, almost at the foot of my bed. I didn't sleep a wink.

I don't know what that thing was, but I'm convinced it wasn't just my imagination. That house had something dark in it, something I never want to encounter again.

/u/ShadowWatcher

I grew up near a dense forest, and there were always legends about it. Stories of people going in and never coming out. I never believed them until one camping trip.

I was with friends, and we decided to explore deeper into the woods than we had before. It was eerie, but exciting.

As night fell, we started hearing whispers. We thought it was just the wind, but then the whispers turned into voices, calling our names.

We tried to find our way back, but the forest seemed to change around us. Paths that were there before were gone, and we were utterly lost.

In the darkness, I saw figures moving between the trees, just out of sight. I told my friends, but they said I was imagining things.

We spent a terrifying night in those woods, the voices never stopping. It felt like something was watching us, waiting.

At dawn, we finally found our way out. But the exit was on the opposite side of the forest from where we entered. It made no sense.

I never went back to those woods. The voices, the figures, it was too much. Even now, I can still hear the whispers when I'm alone in the dark.

I don't know what's in those woods, but it's something unnatural, something that doesn't want to be found.

/u/WhisperingWoods

I've always been a late-night driver. One night, on a deserted highway, I stopped at this old diner. It seemed stuck in time, like something out of the '50s, but I was starving.

The place was empty except for the waitress and the cook. They were friendly, in an odd, robotic way. I ordered a meal, and it was surprisingly good.

When I tried to pay, the waitress insisted it was on the house. "A treat for our special guest," she said with a strange smile.

I left, feeling uneasy. When I looked in the rearview mirror, the diner was gone. Just an empty field. I thought I was hallucinating.

I drove back the next day. No sign of the diner. I asked around, but no one had ever heard of it.

I did some research and found an old article about a diner on that spot. It had burned down in the '50s. The owner and his daughter, a waitress, had perished in the fire.

The photo in the article chilled me to the bone. The waitress and the cook were the same people who had served me.

I've never been back to that highway. I can't explain what happened, but I know what I saw and felt. It was like stepping into another time.

That night changed my view of reality. Some things just can't be explained.

/u/LostInTimeDiner

It started when I moved into my new apartment. There was this old, ornate mirror left by the previous tenant. I found it beautiful, so I kept it.

A week in, I started noticing something odd. My reflection seemed... off. It was subtle, like a delay in movement or a flicker in the corner of my eye.

Then, one night, my reflection smiled at me. But I wasn't smiling. I was paralyzed with fear.

I covered the mirror and tried to sleep, but I could hear faint whispering. When I checked, the cover was on the floor, and the mirror was clear.

I decided to get rid of it, but when I tried to move it, my reflection grabbed the edges, preventing me from lifting it.

I brought a friend over to show him, but everything was normal. As soon as he left, the reflection's sinister smile returned.

I started seeing the reflection around the apartment, always in mirrors or reflective surfaces, always watching me.

I moved out, leaving the mirror behind. The last I saw of my reflection, it was waving goodbye, a twisted grin on its face.

I avoid mirrors now. I can't shake the feeling that something in that mirror was trying to get out.

/u/MirroredPrisoner

In our town, there's an old statue of a woman in the park. It's said to be haunted, but I never believed in such tales.

One evening, while walking my dog, I noticed something strange. The statue... it seemed to be crying, tears streaming down its stone face.

I approached, fascinated and scared. As I got closer, the crying turned into sobbing, a mournful, heart-wrenching sound.

I reached out to touch the tears. They were warm, like human tears. That's when the statue's eyes opened, looking straight at me.

I ran home, not looking back. I told my family, but they laughed it off, saying it was just a prank or my imagination.

I avoided the park, but news started to spread in town about the crying statue. Others had seen it too.

A local historian revealed the statue was of a woman who lost her children in a tragic accident and died of grief.

The statue was eventually removed after too many eerie reports. Some say it's cursed, others that it's the woman's spirit.

I still hear the crying some nights, echoing through the streets. It's a sound you can't forget.

/u/TearsOfStone

I live in a coastal town with legends of ghost ships. I always laughed at these tales until one foggy night.

I was walking along the beach when I saw a ship, old and broken, drifting towards the shore. It looked like it was from another era.

The ship was eerily silent, no crew in sight. It felt like it was calling to me, pulling me towards it.

As I got closer, I heard whispers and saw shadows moving on deck. The air grew colder, and my breath turned to mist.

I wanted to run, but I was mesmerized. The ship seemed to be alive, its sails billowing even though there was no wind.

Then, as quickly as it appeared, it vanished into the fog. I was left standing there, shivering, not sure if what I saw was real.

I did some research and found an old tale about a ship lost at sea, vanishing into the fog, never to be seen again.

I've seen the ship a few more times, always on foggy nights. Each time, it disappears before anyone else can see it.

I'm convinced it's the ghostly vessel from the legend, trapped in a perpetual journey along the coast.

/u/FogboundSailor

I bought an old house, cheap due to its reputation. It was said the walls whispered at night, but I dismissed it as local superstition.

After moving in, I noticed a faint murmuring at night, like hushed conversations. I thought it was just the house settling.

The whispers grew louder, more insistent. I couldn't make out words, but it sounded like many voices, some angry, some pleading.

I recorded the sounds and played them to a friend. He heard nothing, but when I listened, the whispers were there, clear as day.

Sleep became impossible. The walls seemed to vibrate with the intensity of the whispers, which now filled every corner of the house.

In desperation, I tore down a wall. Behind it, I found old newspapers with stories of tragedy and crime.

I researched the house's history. It was built on the site of an old prison, where many had suffered and died.

I left the house, unable to bear the constant whispering. It felt like the voices were imprinting themselves into my mind.

I still hear the whispers sometimes, in the quiet moments. It's like they followed me, a haunting reminder of that house.

/u/EchoesOfThePast

I'm an urban explorer, and I've seen some weird things, but nothing compares to the forgotten subway line I found beneath the city.

Maps didn't show it, and no one I talked to knew about it. It was like stepping into a time capsule, everything preserved from decades ago.

The deeper I went, the more I felt like I wasn't alone. I heard footsteps echoing behind me, but every time I looked back, there was nothing.

I found an old train, doors open like it was waiting for passengers. Inside, it was cold, unnaturally cold.

As I explored the train, I heard a whistle and the sound of an engine starting. I rushed out, but the platform was empty, the train silent.

I decided to leave, but the tunnels had changed. I was lost, walking in circles, the feeling of being followed growing stronger.

Eventually, I found my way out, but when I looked back, the entrance was gone, just a blank wall where it had been.

I've tried to find it again, but it's like it never existed. Yet, I can still hear the sound of the train in my dreams.

That place was something else, a fragment of the past, or maybe something more.

/u/SubterraneanEchoes

I inherited an old house from a distant relative. It was a grand old place, but what caught my attention were the paintings. Every room had them, and each painting had eyes that seemed to follow you.

I thought it was just a trick of the light until I noticed the eyes would change. One day they'd look sad, another day angry.

Then, things started moving. Books would fall off shelves, doors would slam shut, and the sound of footsteps could be heard at night.

The locals told me the house was known for being haunted. They said the previous owner had been an eccentric artist who disappeared mysteriously.

One night, I woke up to find all the paintings looking at me. I heard a whisper, "You're not welcome here."

I tried to remove the paintings, but they would reappear, back on their hooks the next day.

Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore. The feeling of being watched was constant, the whispers grew louder.

I left the house and never went back. I heard it was demolished, but the locals say the paintings were never found.

Sometimes, I feel like I'm still being watched, like the eyes from those paintings are following me.

/u/EyesInTheWalls

My family owns a cabin by a lake. It's always been a peaceful place, but last summer, something changed.

I started seeing a shadow on the water, a dark shape that moved against the current. It wasn't a fish or any animal I recognized.

At night, I'd hear splashing outside. When I checked, the water would be calm, but the feeling of being watched was overwhelming.

I asked my family, but they said I was imagining things. That was until my brother saw it too.

We decided to take a boat out, see if we could find what it was. As we got closer to the shadow, the temperature dropped sharply.

Suddenly, the shadow surged upward, engulfing our boat. We felt cold hands grabbing at us before we managed to escape back to shore.

We've stopped going to the cabin since then. No one believes our story, but we know what we experienced.

I've heard old legends about a spirit in the lake, but I never believed them until now.

That shadow haunts my dreams, a reminder of something lurking beneath the serene surface.

/u/ShadowOnTheLake

There's an old playground at the edge of town, overgrown and forgotten. As kids, we'd dare each other to go there at night.

One night, I took the dare. The swings were moving on their own, creaking in the windless night.

I heard laughter, children's laughter, but the place was deserted. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Then, I saw them, ghostly figures of children, playing on the equipment, fading in and out of sight.

I ran home, not looking back. I told my friends, but they laughed it off, saying I was just scared.

Years later, I learned that the playground was built on an old burial ground for a children's asylum.

I've never gone back, but people still talk about seeing strange things there.

The city plans to demolish it, but the machines keep breaking down, as if something doesn't want it disturbed.

I still hear the children's laughter some nights, echoing through the streets.

/u/GhostlyPlayground

I moved into a house with a beautiful garden. The previous owner, an old lady, had taken great care of it.

I noticed something odd. Every morning, the garden looked different, as if someone had been tending to it at night.

I set up a camera to see what was happening. The footage showed a figure, an old woman, gardening at midnight.

I thought it might be a neighbor, but when I asked, they said it couldn't be. The previous owner had passed away years ago.

The figure didn't seem harmful, just tending the garden with care. But the idea of a ghostly gardener was unsettling.

I tried to ignore it, but the garden started to change more drastically. Plants I hadn't planted appeared, and some even seemed to move.

One night, I went out to confront the figure. As I approached, it turned to me, its face was kind but ghostly.

It spoke, thanking me for taking care of her garden, before vanishing into thin air.

The garden is still thriving, and sometimes, I feel like she's still there, watching over it.

/u/MidnightGardener

I moved into an old house and discovered a hidden room behind a bookshelf. It was strange, completely untouched, as if frozen in time.

Inside, there was a child's room, filled with toys and books. The air was stale, and everything was covered in a thick layer of dust.

I started hearing noises at night. laughter, crying, the sound of toys being played with. It was coming from the hidden room.

I opened the room one night and saw the toys moving on their own. It was as if an invisible child was playing there.

I researched the house's history and learned about a family tragedy. A young child had died in that room decades ago.

The activity in the room grew more intense. I would find toys outside the room, placed as if left for me to play with.

I sealed the room again, but the laughter and crying grew louder, echoing through the house.

Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore. I moved out, but I still hear the child's laughter in my dreams.

That room, that house, it's like they're still living in their own moment in time, a moment of grief and loneliness.

/u/EchoesOfThePastChild

Driving home late one night, I saw a woman hitchhiking on a deserted road. Feeling sorry for her, I stopped.

She got in, thanked me, and gave me an address. It was on my way, so I didn't mind. She was quiet, almost too quiet.

As I drove, I asked her questions, but she only answered in whispers. Something felt off, but I couldn't place it.

When we reached the address, it was an old, abandoned house. She insisted it was her home and got out.

Curious, I looked up the address later and found out a woman had been killed there years ago in a hit-and-run.

I returned to the spot where I picked her up and found a small memorial by the road. It was for the same woman.

Since then, I've heard stories from others who've seen her, always trying to get a ride home.

I can't explain what happened that night, but I think I gave a ride to a ghost, a soul stuck reliving her last moments.

That experience has stayed with me. Sometimes, I still see her in my rearview mirror, looking for a ride home.

/u/GhostlyPassenger

I bought an old painting from an estate sale. It depicted a beautiful, serene landscape. But something about it was unsettling.

I hung it in my living room, and that's when strange things began. Objects moved, lights flickered, and a feeling of being watched.

I noticed the painting changing. Small details at first, like the trees' positions, but then more drastically.

The beautiful landscape turned dark and ominous. Figures appeared in the background, their faces twisted in pain.

I tried to get rid of the painting, but it always reappeared, back on my wall, as if glued to it.

One night, I saw the figures moving, acting out some horrific scene of despair within the painting.

I did some research and found out the artist had been rumored to practice dark arts and embedded curses in his work.

I eventually burned the painting, and the disturbances stopped. But the images from it haunt my nightmares.

I now believe some objects can hold onto emotions, pain, and even curses.

/u/CursedCanvas

In my childhood home, there was a staircase that always creeped me out. It was old, creaky, and echoed oddly.

I would hear footsteps ascending the stairs at night, but there was never anyone there. It always sounded like someone was pacing.

One night, the footsteps stopped at my door. I heard a faint whisper, calling my name, but no one was outside.

I learned that the house had been built over an old cemetery, and the staircase was directly above a forgotten crypt.

After that, the activity increased. Doors would slam, cold drafts would appear, and the footsteps became more frantic.

We had a priest bless the house, but it only seemed to agitate whatever was there. The whispers turned into screams.

We eventually moved out, but I still dream about that staircase, the sounds of the unseen footsteps echoing in the night.

I believe that staircase was a bridge between worlds, a pathway for spirits trapped beneath.

Even now, in any staircase, I can't shake the feeling of something unseen, pacing just a few steps behind me.

/u/EchoesInTheStairs

I grew up near a dense forest. There were always stories about a 'Watcher' who lived in the woods, a protective spirit of sorts.

I used to play in the forest, but I always felt like someone was watching me, a presence I couldn't see but felt.

One evening, I saw a figure standing at the edge of the forest, watching me. It was tall, dark, and barely human in shape.

I ran home, terrified. My grandmother told me it was the Watcher, ensuring the forest's and its visitors' safety.

I avoided the forest for years, but the image of the Watcher stayed with me. I decided to find out more about it.

Local legends said the Watcher was the spirit of an ancient guardian who protected the forest and its wildlife.

I went back to the forest, this time as an adult. I felt the same watching presence, but it wasn't threatening, rather reassuring.

Now, I visit regularly, respecting the forest and its guardian. Sometimes, I catch a glimpse of the Watcher, a faint silhouette in the distance.

I've come to understand the Watcher not as a threat, but as a reminder of the balance between humans and nature.

/u/GuardianOfTheWoods