25 Bewildering Experiences That Left People With Questions

If you're intrigued by the unknown and its possibilities, this collection of stories may appeal to you. Recently, Redditors were sharing their strange encounters in two popular threads. In fact, 67% of Americans say they’ve experienced something paranormal in their lives. Whether it's hearing an unexplained voice, sensing a presence, or having an eerie encounter with a stranger, many of us have likely had a mysterious experience at some point and these stories might intrigue even the most skeptical among us.

#1 A couple of weeks after my mom died, I was driving home from work, feeling very sad. And a bit angry. I was pissed off at the universe for leaving me alone (I have no other living family left; she was the last).

Image source: GargleHemlock, cuatrok77/flickr I was thinking about how we both loved birds, and would always point them out to each other. I thought: "If all that hippie spirituality stuff Mom loved is real, then the least she could do is send me a bird, maybe, as a kind of sign." It was a long drive, and I saw no birds at all. I thought: "Of course it isn't real. What a silly thing to think. I didn't see so much as a robin, or a wren, or anything." I parked and walked down the path to my house. While I was putting my key in the door, something colorful caught my eye. I turned. There at the end of the path was the most astonishing bird I've ever seen. Every color of the rainbow - a bright yellow/gold head; scarlet chest, iridescent blue back, orangey/gold wings, black striping - it was jaw-dropping. It was the size of a chicken, but a bit taller, with a long tail. It just stood staring at me. I started to laugh, and it got spooked and flapped away over the fence. I lived in a large city, which made it even weirder. My neighbor came outside and saw it too, so it wasn't an hallucination. I got into the house and started Googling colorful birds of that size and shape, and eventually found it - it was a Chinese Golden Pheasant. WTF?? There were no bird sanctuaries or zoos nearby. I never saw it again. I took it as my mom, rolling her eyes at my cynical rejection of her hippie spirituality stuff, saying: You want to see a bird? I'll send you a BIRD. It was so great.

#2 I once went to panera with some friends. We got our food and sat down at the table. About halfway through the meal my friend says “did any of you guys notice that pole before?”

Image source: WillVanGelder, SHVETS production/pexels I look next to the table and there is a huge floor to ceiling black pole literally almost touching me. I swear it was not there when we sat down and at this point I’m freaking out and saying we’re in an alternate universe. I get the attention of a woman who works at the panera and ask her if she’s noticed the pole before and she looks at it genuinely baffled and says she hasn’t. Went back a few weeks later and I swear to god it wasn’t there Still one of the most bizarre things that’s ever happened to me.

#3 A few years ago me and a bunch of friends were on a cabin trip at my friend's parents' cabin. It was in the middle of nowhere and it was late, so the road was pitch black. We were split up into two cars, and I was driving behind the person who knew where we were going.

Image source: RadicalChic, Brady Knoll/pexels At some point, my friend just starts speeding up, annoying fast. I start b***hing that I'm barely able to keep up. Suddenly, she takes a sharp turn down into a wooded area with only a vague trail. I try to follow, but I'm desperately trying to avoid the massive potholes in my tiny-not-fit-for-off-roading car. Meanwhile, the car in front of me is gliding down the path seemingly no problem. I flash my lights for them to slow down, but nothing. I'm *pissed* at this point, and am cursing my friend's name while my passengers sit in silent terror. We finally make it down to a real road, but my friend's car is nowhere to be seen. It was like it vanished out of thin air. Again, the area is pitch black, so if there was any source light we would be able to see it. We're lost as hell and try to call, but we don't have a cell signal. We drive for about 10 minutes before we reach them, find them, and are finally guided to the cabin. I mention to my friend about how annoyed I am that she took a dangerous off road path without warning us and then just disappeared. She then gets a really weird look on her face and says, "What are you talking about? You guys were right behind me and then suddenly you just turned off into the woods. We had no idea where you went, we were really worried." Apparently, she had been on the road the whole time. No one knows who the truck was, where they came from, or where they went. Everyone in both cars never saw a car pull out between us or saw us get broken up. The three people in my car a confident that the truck we saw lead us down the woods was my friend's car. Everyone else in the other car assured us they were on the road the whole time. To this day, none of us know where that car came from or how they snuck in between two cars without 6 people realizing it.

#4 When I was in 5th grade a friend gifted me a hardcover copy of all three Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark volumes in one book. This book quickly became my most prized possession, so I wrote my name inside the front cover just in case I ever lost it at school.

Image source: urhotmetalgf, Professional-Pie1454/reddit At some point I took my book with me to my dad's house for the weekend; which is in another city about an hour away from where I lived with my mom. I had left it at my dad's house that weekend and I guess I just forgot to ever bring it back home with me. Well eventually my dad moved into a new home and I figured my book mistakenly got thrown out. I was very sad about it but accepted my reality lol. Fast forward a few years to 8th grade. I make a new friend in one of my classes and we become very close very fast. I was hanging out at his house one day and decided to look through the books on his bookshelf. I see a copy of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the same one I had that contained all three books in one. I pull it out saying to my friend "wow I used to have a copy of this too no way!" I opened the front cover and right there at the top was my name exactly how I wrote it back in 5th grade. My friend had absolutely no recollection of where that book came from.

#5 When I was 10 or 11 I had a horrible and very realistic dream that I was being chased by these little demon troll like creatures around my house. At the end of my dream I ran into the bathroom but before I shut the door one of the demons scratched from the bottom of my neck to my tailbone. I woke up in the hallway outside of the bathroom with three distinct claw-marks across my back. I still don't know what it was or what really happened.

Image source: anon, cottonbro studio /pexels

#6 One of my brothers and I remember this as clear as day. Our older two brothers were at camp (math or robotics, they’re nerds) and our neighbor was watching us as our parents had to leave abruptly.

Image source: Witty-Ant-6225, Kampus Production/pexels She turned the tv on and started to flip through pages of magazines. My brother said he needed to use the restroom and somehow didn’t come downstairs for a while and so I went looking for him. I found him having a conversation with our grandma in the guest bedroom. I was surprised to see her cos I didn’t know she was visiting us that day. The neighbor called out our names and so we told our grandma that we’d see her later and went downstairs. Our parents had just walked in and the neighbor was telling them what we did that evening and then she left. My brother goes, “We didn’t even know grandma was home this whole time”. Our parents look at us visibly shaken and then they proceed to tell us that they were at the hospital where grandma passed. I am 38 and my brother is in his 40s. To this day we swear it was true. We saw our grandma and talked to her at our home while she lay on her deathbed at the hospital. It’s been 30 years since she passed.

#7 A few years ago, shortly after adopting my dog, my then gf and I were getting ready to go out for food (or whatever it was). Right as we are getting ready to go out the door our dog starts FREAKING out.

He’s losing his mind whining, jumping at us, biting at our arms, and trying to pull us to the living room. We take a few extra seconds, calm him down, say goodbye and head out - we had a train to catch. Took all of 30-60 seconds. As we were approaching the bus stop, about 30 seconds away from the stop, a BMW comes barreling around the corner and jumps the curb exactly where we would have been standing. Had we left when we originally wanted we would have been standing there, we never would have seen it coming. To this day I’m convinced my dog knew, and he delayed us for that reason. He’s never had an outburst like that since. Image source: GSpess

#8 I've told this on reddit a couple years ago, just in case it sounds familiar.

Image source: TinyGreenTurtles, Alejandro Perez/pexels We live in a small town, and my daughter and I were making a quick trip to get some crickets for her gecko. The store is at the end of the road, about 2 city blocks from a park. On the way there, the entire length of the park was road construction. It was bad. We sat and sat, there was a traffic director, cones, etc. Got to the pet store, I waited in the car and she ran in, got crickets, came out. Less than 5 minutes. The only way to get home was through the construction, and we were complaining how it sucked but...it was gone. Zero sign of there ever being construction there. She and I are still completely baffled.

#9 When I was in 5th grade, I went to Science Camp on a mountain in California. We had a night hike that was supposed to teach us about the different cells in our eyes, so we did it without any flashlights at all. Our eyes adjusted to just starlight and it was actually pretty cool.

Image source: Symnestra, Pixabay/pexels Until the counselors made us walk a stretch of the path alone, one by one. We were ten, and at least some of us were still afraid of the dark. (Me.) So I was far too anxious to listen properly to the instructions. One counselor went ahead through the bushes and radioed for the other to start sending kids. My turn comes up, and I drag my feet down the path. Until I hit a fork. I vaguely remember the counselor saying something about it. Or was I remembering wrong? Which way was I supposed to go? Was it even a fork or was I just not able to see properly in the dark? Mind you this was a pitch black mountain in California with nothing around for miles other than the camp. I didn't want to get lost. I looked behind me, briefly considering going back the way I came to admit that I was a dumbass who didn't listen, but when I turned back to the fork there was a man standing there. He was Asian, wearing wireframe glasses and a white t-shirt. (It was barely 50F on the mountain.) I wasn't scared, I felt no malice from him. If anything, I was relieved to not be alone in the dark anymore. He gestured for me to go one way, so I did. Rejoined the rest of my class and the counselor radioed to send the next kid. I didn't think anything of it for the rest of the trip. It took me until I was on the bus ride home, reflecting on the hike, to realize that I'd never seen him before. He wasn't one of the counselors leading the hike, he never came out with us, and he never emerged from the bushes after all the kids had done their solo walk. I have NO idea who or what he was.

#10 My mom and I were driving down a familiar road we usually take. At the stop sign my mother went to turn when we both flinched hard. She (driving) looked at me and we both asked if we just felt something go through us… there were no cars around nothing in street view. To this day it still gives me chills

Image source: Altruistic-Mind-8725, Martin Péchy /pexels

#11 My mother passed away in 2008. When she finally passed and "gave up the ghost", my 2 brothers and I were all holding onto her and doing our best to comfort her. At the foot of the bed both my dog, and her dog, both Jack Russell's, were both very still and staring at her and when she finally passed both dogs heads went up and over to the corner ceiling. They were in complete unison as they watched something go up and out of that bedroom. I'm not a religious person, but I find comfort in what I saw that afternoon.

Image source: jackazz34, Maria Orlova/pexels

#12 I had a friend in high school who I stopped speaking to when she transferred in grade 10. Two years later, I have a dream that I visited her new school and sat at the back of her math class with her. In the dream her teacher was tall, brunette with curly hair, and wearing glasses.

Image source: MasonJ94, Jacky Hong/pexels The next day I get a message on Facebook from said friend, which is completely out of blue because we hadn't spoken in months. She asks me how I'm doing and I tell her about my dream. She freaks out and tells me that she sits at the back of her math class, and her teacher fit the description I gave her from my dream perfectly.

#13 A few weeks after my husband passed away, I was cleaning his clothes out of our bedroom. I moved a pile of shirts (he was messy) and I found a folded up piece of paper with my name written on it. He used to leave me little notes all over the house. Not wanting to get upset, I put it on my dresser and kept cleaning. The next morning my best friend called me and said she saw him in a dream, and he asked her if she would tell me to read the note. I hadn’t told a soul about it. I opened it up and it was a goodbye note, specifically for me to read after he was gone. I should add that his death was sudden and absolutely not a s**cide.

Image source: proveiwashere

#14 My (ex boyfriend) and I were in Idaho vacationing with his parents and grandparents on a lake lot (that they rent every summer). We were sleeping in bed and I woke up freaking out because I saw an old lady wearing what appeared to be a blue night gown. When I quickly went to put my glasses on the figure disappeared. The next morning (keep in mind our first interaction with the family was at this point), his grandma asked “was anyone in my room last night? Who has a blue nightgown?”. Let’s just say I didn’t sleep in that room for the remainder of the trip.

Image source: ohhhexo, Luis Rodriguez/pexels

#15 My story isn't nearly as strange as some of the others but its one that has stuck with me my whole life.

Image source: marblelover707, Sergey Guk/pexels My friend and I used to love to go and hang out in one of the local cemeteries. I guess because we were just weird. This was an older cemetery and was no longer used so it didn't have any new graves in it. One day while we were hanging out and just wandering around we stumbled upon a new looking grave marker. It stuck out like crazy because all of the other markers were old and gray and crumbling. On some of them you could barely make out the names. This marker was much newer and the name and dates was clearly visible. It was also a rather neat red marble color which was really different from all of the others. We didn't think much of it and just continued our trip through the cemetery. We sat down under this big tree in the middle and talked and laughed and did other stupid kid things. After an hour or so we decided it was time to leave. We crossed right by where the new grave marker had been and it was gone. We both kind of freaked out a little bit and searched the whole graveyard looking for the brand new marker and it wasn't there. We checked for it several more times on different visits and never found it again. It was just weird and some thing neither of us could ever explain.

#16 Like other people I occasionally have very prophetic dreams. They always are about something tragic but I’ll describe my most vivid one.

Image source: anon, John-Mark Smith/pexels About 5 years ago I had a dream I was in a horrible 3 car accident with my then-gf and my younger brother. The car was totaled, there was smoke, my gf and my brother went to the hospital and I that I died because I was pierced through the head with some sort of rod. Fast forward 2 years later, and my brother and I get a ride from girlfriend to go to a graduation party for a mutual friend. Gf pulls out into an intersection. I immediately recognize everything from the dream and I flinch to the left. Everything goes black for me for a few seconds after that, but when I regain consciousness I look around and see the exact same scene as in my dream except I lived. The car we were in was totaled. There was smoke from the other two cars involved and a rod that went through the windshield about 6 inches to the right of my head. It was the most intense moment of my life. Since then I have always kept track of my dreams and paid very close attention to them.

#17 One of my earliest memories is being in a Blockbuster looking at the back wall of new releases. I was there with a bunch of teammates for a slumber party a few towns over. I was looking at the wall of movies and suddenly has this weird deja vu feeling that the boy standing to my left was going to come up and talk to me and tell me about a movie I was looking at.

Image source: Manymoonslenore, Ben Schumin/flickr I hadn’t seen his face yet in real life but I saw it in the “vision” if you will. After the deja vu passed the boy turned and did exactly that, his face was the same as what I had just seen in my head. He picked up a movie that had Rosie O’Donald on the cover and told me that I should check out that one because he saw it the weekend before and it was really good. He was a few years older than me and really cute so of course I grabbed it from his hand and said a quick thanks and ran to my friends, completely freaked out at what just happened. I never had deja vu or anything like that happen again. Fast forward 12 years later and I was standing in the same Blockbuster with my then boyfriend who I met in college. He had grown up in that same town and I was spending the night for the first time at his parent’s house. We had been dating for a little over a year at that time. We were browsing together and trying to agree on a movie and he started telling me this story of how he scared a little girl while trying to be nice at that same Blockbuster when he was younger. I immediately had a weird fuzzy feeling and asked him if the movie had Rosie O’Donald on the cover and he looked at me freaked out and said yes it did. After a there-is-no-way-that’s-possible discussion in the aisles of Blockbuster, we got our movie and left thinking maybe it was just a weird coincidence because of course it had to be. When I walked into his parents house I saw that his mom had gotten out old photo albums for me to see and sure enough there was the same boy I saw in that Blockbuster. We looked up the Rosie O’Donald movie that night and it was the same cover we bother remembered. We’ve been married for 15 years, have four kids together.

#18 I grew up in Texas, close to Louisiana. I was around 11 and playing on my grandmother’s driveway with my little sister and cousin.

Image source: alexandrite22, Nothing Ahead /pexels A “bird” (or something of the sort) flew over the driveway, which was wide enough for two vehicles, and it’s shadow covered the entire width of the driveway plus several feet on each side. My grandmother began screaming at me to grab the babies. She and I each grabbed a child and ran inside. She was pale and trembling and I asked her what is was. She said she didn’t know and had never seen anything that size. My grandmother is very rational and non dramatic. To this day, I’m not sure what flew over her driveway. I think about it once a month.

#19 My husband and I were coming back home after college and he turned to look into our next-door neighbor's patio. It was piled to the top of the fence with years of junk and garbage. He loudly exclaimed that it was a fire hazard. He huffed and started going on about a negligent HOA, and how they would hate to have to pay to fix everything. It wasn't something he'd ever brought up before. I had honestly never even thought of it as a fire hazard, just a nuisance.

He refused to sleep. ASMR wasn't working. He had intense anxiety all night. I fell asleep first, but I'm guessing he eventually did too. We woke up to our dog screaming at flames at 4 am. She saved everyones lives. Our neighbors had gone out to smoke at 10 pm and both threw their cigs into their junk pile, as they had done for years. But that is the time it went up in flames. I later asked him about why he had announced it was a fire hazard, just hours before the fire. He shrugged and told me that something felt wrong. A few months later during finals week, he woke me up in the middle of the night and demanded I take my final test right then. He would not take no for an answer. He woke his brother up and made us both coffee. He then monitored us and made sure we had everything submitted and every test taken. He let us go back to sleep at around 6 am. I thought he was just being a dickhead, but when we were all fully awake at a normal hour he just shrugged and told me that he had a gut feeling and that it hadn't gone away yet. Hours later, I was gaming when the wifi cut out. The same neighbors who had started the fire cut our wifi wires with our stolen gardening sheers. He was grinning at us from his patio. He asked us how our finals were going. It took 2 weeks for them to fix the wires and for us to have working wifi again. My husband saved all of our grades that day. Image source: BSJDLDML

#20 Ghost legos.

Image source: RockettheMinifig, woodleywonderworks/flickr I was a kid playing with legos and noticed a few were in the bucket that didn’t look like mine/ the plastic was faded/ older/ definitely of a different generation. I would build spaceships all day then when I went to bed and woke up there’d be holes in the spaceships where the old bricks would be. Being a seven year old my biggest concern was all the air getting out and my crew suffocating before they went to battle so I’d quickly pull them apart and put new bricks in where the old ones were but now that I think about it that always stuck with me as odd.

#21 The day my dad had a heart attack was such a weird and wild day for me. I had weird vibes all day at school, left early and went to go home and sleep it off. I got home and napped; a few hours later I woke up and felt sick to my stomach & I had the weirdest feeling that I needed to be with my dad.

Image source: Ok-Abalone2412, Kindel Media/pexels I drove almost 2.5 hours in toronto traffic for those that know, know. From Toronto to Vaughn to a hockey arena. My dad was playing happily and everything was normal. As he was walking me to the car after his game - he was staying with the guys for a drink— he told me ‘ baby girl- I don’t feel well’ and my father had never called me that before. .5 seconds later he collapsed flat; dead. 210 lbs of dead weight crashing right down on top of me- I screamed and yelled and a few people came rushing out of the arena and started CPR, and got an AED and were able to administer life saving results, with the assistance of the paramedics as well. 45 minutes later he was transferred to another hospital for 2 surgeries & survived both of those too. I still have no idea what told me to go be with him or go to that arena, to be there, to witness? To help? To catch him before he fell? Idk but weird to me

#22 my wife was working late one night I heard breathing in the house, like a dog had somehow gotten in. I couldn't place where it was coming from so I slowly went through the house looking everywhere. I checked our children's bedrooms and turned up nothing, but I was freaked out enough that I stayed up until my wife came home.

Image source: Mr_A, cottonbro studio /pexels Over the next couple of weeks we both experienced this breathing that we referred to as The Breathing Man. She heard it in the loungeroom while I was sleeping. I heard it other times when I was on my own. But it never happened when we were awake in the house together. One night she's out working again and I'm about to go to sleep when I hear this breathing. So I sit up on the edge of the bed and say something to the effect of: "Look, I don't know what you want or why you're here. But whatever it is, get on with it. Just get on with it and get it over and done with and f**k off. And whatever it is, do it to me. Leave the kids out of this and do whatever it is you want to me and do it now. Hurry up and get the f**k on with it and if you're not going to do anything then just f**k off entirely." and basically continued in that vein for five, ten, fifteen minutes, I'm not really sure. I waited and nothing happened. We never heard from the Breathing Man again after that night.

#23 I can smell if someone is sick. To me it seems like your body gives off a specific smell when it is fighting something.

Image source: Windir666

#24 Sitting next to a friend at a camp out/canoe trip, I said "I just feel like I need to move, like I shouldn't be sitting here." He didn't move so I laughed a little at myself and kept sitting there. A couple of minutes later my brain ping'd me again and I was like "you know what I'm just gonna move."

As soon as I stood up, a ball of fire from a flow arts performer on the other side of the camp landed exactly where I was sitting. We were both like :O. Image source: gur_bah

#25 Someone stalked/pranked our household for about three years when I was younger.

Image source: _s_t_e_p_h_s, pedro18/pexels My family would get waves of strange occurrences like being followed by a white car, strange phone calls, doorbell ringing or knocks on windows VERY late at night, someone clearly camping out in these big hollowed out bushes we had in our backyard… The last occurrence I’m aware of in this multi-year string of harassment was someone entered our locked home one morning while I was in the bathroom getting ready for middle school, - they came right up to the bathroom door and jiggled the door handle to get in. Luckily the door was locked. I could hear the person stand there for a solid minute before walking away and leaving the house. Everyone else was asleep - I know because I checked before I went to the bathroom to get ready, and was sound asleep when I ran to my mom’s room after the stranger left to get her help. We were never able to figure out who it was or what happened. Wild stuff. Wild scary when I was a child. Cops never believed us or did anything. Now I’m just wildly curious who it was and why.