“I Couldn’t Move”: 30 Terrifying Encounters That Sent Shivers Down People’s Spines

There’s something extra unsettling about seeing something terrifying, only to have nobody believe you. Recently, someone on Reddit asked the question, “What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen that no one else believes you about?”

#1

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When I was 10, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw my Mom standing at the foot of my bed, smiling. I said, “Mom?” and she turned around and walked out silently. I got up to follow her and saw her lying asleep in her room.

I asked her the next morning if she came to my room. She said no and laughed it off.

I’ve never forgotten the way that figure smiled. It wasn’t my mom’s smile. And it didn’t blink.

#2

Image source: Facelesspirit, Getty Images/unsplash

My wife experienced something similar to you, OP. It involved….”me”. I have posted this before.

Several years ago, we (wife, kids, dog and myself) lived in an apartment. It was getting late so I took my young daughter to her bed. My wife stayed downstairs (alone) to lock up and turn everything off. My wife used the downstairs bathroom before coming upstairs. As she was turning on the water to wash her hands, I came around the corner, leaned on the door frame and stared at her in the mirror. The door was directly behind her. She looked in the mirror and saw me staring at her. I was smirking as she asked me why I was being weird. After she asked that, my facial expression turned into a scowl. I would not answer her so she turned around and I was gone. Problem is, I was upstairs. That wasn’t me.

I was in my daughter’s room tucking her in. My wife walks into the room with purpose. She was panicking and asked why I did that. Confused, I asked her what I did. She told me what happened and I had to convince her it was not me, but based on her reaction, she knew that but didn’t want to believe it. It would have been impossible for me to pull that off.

#3

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Not unexplainable or paranormal, but creepy nonetheless…one of my earliest memories…i always believed it was the memory of a nightmare or something, until i told my parents about it a few years ago. I was maybe five or six…I remember waking up suddenly in the middle of the night because something was in my room. I opened my eyes and the room was very dark, just a little light from a pole outside across the street. But in the corner, by my closet, was a crouched black shadow. At first, I believed I’d seen a chair piled with clothes or something, but my parents deny that there was a chair in my room back then. Anyways, I could feel it looking at me, watching me. Then the shadow smiled, and I saw a mouth full of long yellow teeth, and then, shining eyes in the dark. I just watched in stunned horror. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, It began to become clearer. It was about the size of a medium sized dog, but it wasn’t a dog. It had long arms and fingers, no neck—just a head on shoulders, or like someone hunched over. I was so scared, I remember crawling out of my bed and creeping to the door, back to the wall, watching it watching me the entire time, but it didn’t move. It just watched me leave and turned its head to follow me as I did. I closed the door and went to the living room, where the tv was still on, and I laid down on the floor in the light and slept there until the morning…

Years later, I’m talking to my parents about random things, and I mention this. As I said earlier, I always thought it was just the memory of a nightmare I’d had as a child. But my mom looked at me a little funny and said, “Oh wow, I can’t believe you remember that.” I said “Wait, what? That actually happened?!” Of course I was freaked out. Then my mom says “Yeah, that was your great grandmother’s orangutan. She’d been fostering her and at some point in the night, she got out and went to your room! She’d loved you so much. She was probably checking on you, and you locked her in.”

Imagine, all those years I’d believe it was everything from a nightmare to an actual demon trying to steal my soul, but the whole time it was just the juvenile orangutan my great-gran fostered for a few months when I was five, sneaking into my room in the night.

#4

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Back in the late 1990’s I used to supervise a crew doing Trauma Scene work. We would go into buildings after homicide, s*****e, unattended deaths, accidental deaths, fire death or pretty much any messed up thing that could happen inside a building, home or office.

The following story happened on one of those scenes I have a few others that have really stuck with me but this one was probably more the works of evil spirits than others that were just sad.

We often got dispatched out sometimes with little details only like Vehicle damage to structure with fatality, or Fire Damage structure with multiple Fatalities, sometimes it was very vague like death inside home.

We were dispatched to a single family house in the outskirts of Los Angeles a working class neighborhood with homes built probably in the early 1950’s, not a bad run down section but just an area where families lived quiet unassuming area.

We arrive to the site, it was a ranch style home with a sweeping driveway to the street, the garage door was open and an older lady was sitting inside the garage smoking.

I walked up to her and introduce myself and said I am sorry for your loss, we are here to help clean up and do whatever we can to help you.

I can tell she is nervous but in most of these situations we run into people crying, shock, or just stone quiet and unable to speak. Most of the time, they have someone there to help them like a family friend, family member or neighbor. However she was all alone, she looked very uneasy and I can see that she has a sofa, tv on a stand and clothes piled up in her garage.

I asked her if she would like to show me the area where the incident occured she said to me “I’m not going back in that house” She then points to a front bedroom window and said that is the room. I did not know what happened there, as usual I wasn’t given much details, not that I needed to know but sometimes it helped knowing if were were dealing with a murder, s*****e, or child death.

I start to ask her if there was anything in that room that might be affected that she would like for us to save or secure for her. She said she didn’t care about anything in that house and she was not going back inside.

I was just thinking to myself, this is sometimes pretty typical, no one likes to go back inside where loved ones were lost.

She starts to tell me a story that made my hair on the back of my neck stand up. She said, that her son killed himself in that room. She said that there were evil spirits in that house. I just said I am sorry, she said no you don’t understand. She said that a year ago her other son killed himself inside the house too, the demons attacked him and took him too. She also said that a few years before that her husband killed himself in the house too.

To me, in all the people I have met in situation where loved ones were lost, you get a sense of grief and sometimes mental illness. I didn’t get mental illness from her, what I got was a poor woman scared out of her mind. I asked her if she wanted me to call anyone for her she said that either a family member or a friend was coming to take her away. I can’t remember exactly what she said.

I asked her to sign our paperwork allowing us to do what we needed to do and asked her if there was anything she wouldn’t want us to dispose of, she said “you can just burn this place down for all I care”

I gathered my crew and we suited up to go inside. We entered the room and it was a smaller bedroom, blue painted walls, a little on the messy side. There was a pool of blood at the foot of the bed, vomit on the bed and on one side of the bedroom walls the entire wall was written in blood.

We could only make out some words as it almost didn’t seem like it was in English.

We later found out from a neighbor that the son who was an adult son had drank acid and then slit his throat and expired sitting on the bed.

We cut out the carpet, wrapped the mattress up, and cleaned up the room so there was no longer any traces of what was left behind.

During the time we worked the old lady took off and we locked up the house.

The thing is we were in the house for a few hours and the feeling inside the house was like that of being in a cave or something the air was thick, the smell inside the house was sick, more than stale but pungent and foul. We all felt like we wanted to get out of there in a hurry.

The way that the old lady was scared to go back inside, the fact that the house took her husband, and two sons, I had not been a huge believer in evil lingering inside a place until then. I honestly felt it and still remember it today.

#5

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I was up visiting my mom. She was sick with cancer. I had just gone in to bed and she came to the door and said hey I need you to come out here. And something made me pause. I noticed the door was backwards. It was opened from the left vs. to the right like normal. So I said what do you need mom? She said I need you to come out here. I had chills. I told her what do you need because we already did all our good nights. She got angry and said if I tell you to come here you don’t question me. Get out here now. My mom didn’t normally talk to me like that, not since I was a teen and I’d earned it . So I said no I’m not going to go with you
She yelled f+++ you. And she didn’t cuss. And she walked away. I waited a few minutes and went out to check on my mom. I said are you ok mom? Do you need me. She had just fallen asleep and she said no honey go on back to bed we’ll talk tomorrow. It wasn’t my mom at the door.

#6

When I was 14, my parents and I took a trip to Los Angeles and stayed in this hotel. We didn’t book expensive because we were only passing through, so the hotel was kind of run down. Like the elevator sometimes wouldn’t close. We stayed for a day and it was good but It was at exactly 3:10 in the morning when the thing happened.

You know how sometimes you wake up and just instantly know the time like you have an internal clock? I was right on when I actually checked the time.

And I had this like, uneasy gut-clenching feeling kind of like I was paralyzed, but I knew I didn’t have sleep paralysis or anything like it so that was strange. We were on one of the higher floors , and there was a community bathroom in the hall.

This laughing suddenly started coming from the ceiling and I was freaking the f**k out because my parents were still asleep. Like resonating through the ceiling and the walls, this really faint childish laughter. I honestly don’t know what possessed me to do it, but I went to the window and I opened it because I just had this sense that something wasn’t right. I looked to my left and I saw this woman open her window. I could only see that she was wearing like this nightgown and brown hair that kind of shielded her face. It was really dark other than the city lights.

And I kid you not, she turned and jumped out the f*****g window. I swear to god, she jumped right in front of me and I heard screaming on the way down. Immediately, I started screaming too and my parents woke up and I told them what had happened. So we immediately went to reception, and they called the police. Police got there, went to where I said she had jumped and found NOTHING. No body, no anything. They went to the room a couple down from ours to the left, and it wasn’t even occupied.

Found out later after we got home that the hotel was THE hotel Cecil. Scariest situation I’ve ever been in.

Image source: TheLennovator

#7

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I saw a creature and, years later, my sister did too.

When I was about 5, I was sleeping in my bed and I wake up and see what I can only describe as a lizard person standing at the end of my bed. He had the height and body of a man (like bipedal, arms and legs ect.), dark green with fine smooth scales like a snake. No clothing and no genitalia or anything, and with pupils split like a cat. His legs are spread shoulders width apart and his arms are held out to his side like a T (Think The Vetruvian Man pose). He smiles and stares at me and I close my eyes. When I open them, he’s gone.

Fast forward about 20 years. I’m 25, and my youngest sister (who is 7 years younger than me and wasn’t alive at the time of the event) is visiting my place. We are telling ghost stories and I ask her if she’s ever seen anything strange. She thought for a minute, and said that once, when she was about 5, she woke up in the middle of the night to see the figure of a person standing in front of her window, legs shoulders width apart and arms out like a T. It was standing in front of a window, so it was backlit and appeared just as a shadow. She ducked her head under the covers and when she looked again, he was gone.

Now, her event happened in a totally different state over a decade after my encounter. She was so much younger than me that I can’t imagine I’d ever told her my story as kids or anything, nor did she remember me telling her my story. I have no idea what happened, but the distinctive pose is so….unusual?

#8

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I saw a ufo pretty close up… I would have doubted my own memory if it wasn’t for the fact that I wasn’t the only one who saw it.

#9

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One of several experiences at my grandparents’ house, but the first time I actually had a close encounter with whatever is in that house to this day. From my earliest memories, I hated having to run back into the rear foyer, where the other refrigerator that they stored sodas in was, to grab my relatives a drink. Especially at night. The refrigerator sits at the bottom of the stairs to the 2nd floor, and I always felt something intensely watching me from the top landing. Anyway, one night my cousin “Kay” and I were sleeping over. Nobody else was upstairs with us, they’d have to walk through the room we were in, to get to other rooms. The entrance to the hallway was next to the bed, which led to 2 more bedrooms, the upstairs bathroom, and the door to the attic at the very end of it. So, that night we slept in the same bed for obvious reasons, and as we were laying there in the dark, trying to fall asleep, we were startled by the sound of footsteps, which started from the opposite end of the hall.

The house is old, and the upstairs floorboards squeak and groan when you walk on them. You can tell exactly where someone is upstairs, from downstairs, by the sounds. We threw the covers over ourselves, and clung to each other, trying to stay as still as possible. I remember even holding my breath. The footsteps slowly made their way towards us, and then stopped right next to the bed. I could feel whatever it was, just standing there, looking at us. We dared not move. We wanted to run and scream, but I was so afraid of what I’d see, or that it would “get” us before I could make it downstairs. Then it turned around, and started back down the hallway. Thankfully my grandpa came up to his room to go to bed right after, so we felt safe that he was upstairs with us, and ended up falling asleep.

The next morning we told them what happened, and of course they brushed it off as the house settling. I felt crazy when all of my relatives would laugh it off when I’d tell them there was something in that house. Only, I’d later find out that they’d end up experiencing things too. Being touched, the radio coming on by itself, hearing something walking around upstairs, doors locking from the inside, things flying and falling, and my pap actually waking to a woman standing across the hall from him, years later.

#10

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Idk if it’s scary or just downright freaky, but one day I swore I saw a backwards squirrel. I actually know I saw this. It ran up the tree before I could get a video of it but its head and tail were on the wrong end. It’s hard to explain but it was definitely a mutant or something. I never saw it again, and I’m not crazy. I just can’t explain it. The way it moved was very off, as well.

#11

Image source: Zombemi

In my childhood home my bedroom was on the upper floor, a spiral staircase leading down from the hallway joining my bedroom and the master bedroom. I can’t remember when it started but I was little when I first started hearing the voices downstairs. I remember laying on my stomach, with my cheek on the carpet listening to the very distinct voices of one woman and two men.
They were, kinda whisper talking, sometimes arguing, always soft enough that I couldn’t understand them but loud enough that I heard them in my bed. A few times I peeked downstairs because of our open floorplan you could see the entire living room….oh god. I just realized, the voices sometimes came from where the old closet once stood.

When I was even younger I used to sit in that closet, in the dark (which I was terrified of) and talk to Grendel, a freaky face I saw in the chipping paint on the wall. Grendel never actually talked though, it communicated by me basically letting it use my body. I’d relax my neck, and it’d nod or shake my head to answer. It felt weird. It took my parents painting the wall and later destroying the closet for me to stop.

Anyway…freaky, uh, it was from where that closet once was or the corner of the living room. EVERY time I peeked down there, they’d stop immediately and I wouldn’t see *anyone*. Again, if someone was there, I would’ve seen them. This wasn’t the only weird thing that happened in that house but it was the only one that happened frequently.

Years later, my mom told me YES, they believed the house had been haunted. They actually got someone to “banish it”, basically do some kind of ritual, before I was born. They thought it was gone. However that woman also took the opportunity to try to play footsy with my dad during her little seance so who tf knows what she did.

#12

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I was in a cemetery with a group of friends when I was 19. I had no information on this cemetery as I was new-ish to the area. We’re walking through and ahead of us is tree with a swing, and one lone headstone. I don’t remember any wind that night, but the swing was moving, and I could faintly see the silhouette of someone sitting there swinging. Next thing I know there’s rustling behind me, all my friends were ahead of me. I turned around and didn’t see anything, and the rustling stopped. I took 3 steps forward and then I felt it. An ice cold hand, wrapped around the back of my neck and then an intense, stabbing pain across my stomach. When I got home, there was a deep red scratch across my stomach where the stabby pain was. I found out I was pregnant 3 weeks later
Edited to add: my pregnancy nearly killed me, and my son. I still wonder if…whatever that was…had something to do with it.

#13

This happened when I was 7, I’m 30 now and I still think about it.

I was at a friend’s house, and my grandma told me to be home by 6pm. Ended up staying past 7, so she came over to get me. I felt kinda bad, but I just grabbed my bike and rode home ahead of her while she walked.

When I got home, I went in through the kitchen and there she was. My grandma, head down, silently chopping something on the counter. I remember this weird cold rush hit me out of nowhere. Something just felt…off.

I sort of panicked and ran out of the house and found my real grandma just turning the corner, still walking home. We walked in together. Kitchen was empty. No one was there. I still don’t know who or what I saw, but I know I saw it.

Image source: reshinksleepy

#14

I once had a dream I was walking solo down a familiar dirt path towards a wooded area. Side note, the path felt familiar to me in the dream, I had never been down this path before. As I walked toward the wooded area, the feeling of familiarity changed and the path ended at an old abandoned cemetary under the tree canopy. The familiarity suggested the path continued and the cemetery should not be there. I was drawn into the cemetery toward a specific grave. The detail was vivid. There was an old stone bench next to a sunken grave. The headstone had an angel on top. The remaining wing had a pine needle dangling off, hanging from a cobweb, drifting in the breeze. It was peaceful and quiet. I immediately woke up and felt like the dream was calling me back. I felt oddly connected. The jolt from waking up was so startling I decided to write the dream down.

Fast forward a couple of years. I was considering buying a house with my girlfriend. After we reached a house we were considering, the realtor called and said she was running late. While waiting, we walked the outside of the house. Behind the house, we noticed a path past the overgrown grass going into some woods. To k**l time, we decide to walk the path to the trees. While walking along and enjoying the sun on my face, I was hit with an intense feeling of deja vu. I knew this place.

As we reached the woods, there it was, the abandoned cemetary. It was the same cemetary in my dream. I told my girlfriend I’d visited this place in a dream and described specific details down to the pine needle. She thought I was trying to pull a stupid prank until she saw the sunken grave, missing wing and stone bench, and even the pine needle hanging off the angel’s wing. She immediately walked back toward our car. The entire expereince was a copy / paste of my dream with the exception of my girlfriend being present.

Later that day, we were back at my house. She asked me how I knew all that detail. I let her read the dream I wrote down. I described the path, trees, cemetary and weather perfectly. She refused to ever talk about the experience again. That was around 20 years ago. The experience still haunts me to this day.

Image source: Facelesspirit

#15

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When I was younger, I had trouble sleeping. I’d toss and turn each night and eventually started a ritual where I’d walk into the kitchen to feed our goldfish, Goldie. I’m not sure why I chose to do this, but I kept it up every night for months to distract myself from the insomnia. I never turned on the lights when I did this. The house was nearly pitch black, aside from a bit of moonlight coming in from the patio doors. One night, I walked into the kitchen to feed the fish and saw something out of the corner of my eye. Something was in the room with me, and I remember experiencing full body chills.

I looked into the living room and noticed a tall, dark blotch standing there, motionless. I remember trying to piece together what it could be. A lamp, a large box of something? I waited for my eyes to adjust, and when they did, I noticed that the shadow was perfectly shaped like a human. But without dimension or facial features. It wasn’t moving. It was unnaturally still. It wasn’t my dad and it wasn’t even a real person. But it’s body was turned toward me. I froze, then booked it back to my room and hid under the blanket for the rest of the night, shaking and nauseated. I actually cried to my parents about it the next morning, where they seemed so confused and creeped out and convinced me that what I experienced was just mental illness.

Now I look back on that time with so much fear and confusion. I know what I saw, but I wish I could go back in time and fully process the situation, as I’d do now that I’m older. To have solid, indisputable confirmation that ghosts or shadow people are real would revolutionize my outlook on life and the universe.

#16

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I’ve been sensitive to these kinds of things since childhood. I was about 17 when my now-husband told me that he’s sensitive too, and that he believes the best thing I could, just like he did, is to suppress it, because more often than not, it only brings trouble for us.

There are two stories that really stuck with me. The first happened when I was around 9 or 10 years old. I woke up because I had the intense feeling that someone was standing next to my bed, like someone was watching me. The room was dark, only a small light on my speaker was on, as music was playing softly while I slept. I remember being very confused at first, who was this, what was happening? I turned toward the speaker to switch off the music, then turned back to see if the figure was still there. When I turned back, it was much closer. That was the moment I actually fainted from fear. My heart was racing, everything went blurry, my ears started ringing, and then boom, it was morning. I told my parents, who never really took me seriously, and all they said was that I should just sleep on the couch in the living room, which was right next to their bedroom, and leave the small kitchen light on. Fun fact, it’s been almost 20 years since then, and to this day, my husband and I still sleep with the kitchen light on, because it softly lights up the bedroom too.

The second story that really shook me happened when my husband and I were temporarily living in a small countryside house. The place had a creepy energy to it, like we were never truly alone. Neither of us could fully shake off that feeling. Every night, I’d wake up with the sense that someone was standing right outside the bedroom door. The door was always closed, but whoever it was never came in.
Then one night, I woke up feeling like something was actually inside the room, standing next to the bed. I couldn’t see anything, but it felt like there were several presences. My heart was racing again. I tried to calm myself down, thinking, “It’s fine, nothing’s wrong, just go back to sleep.”
Then suddenly, my husband sat up in his sleep, looked at me with a terrified expression, and said, “They’re around you and they’re all watching you.” Then he peacefully lay back down and started snoring again.
Needless to say, I fainted again. Not long after that, we moved out.

#17

Image source: Not-A-Deer-, Getty Images/unsplash

I had a tough childhood and bad associations with my childhood home, so I don’t ever know what to think about this. Poltergeist? Ghost? I slept with the lights on every single day. I do not remember a moment I did not feel uneasy in that house.

The least of it was stuff turning up missing and reappearing. I would find stuffed animals that had been gone for months sitting on top of the clean laundry that I had washed myself. Right on top to find. I would half-finish books and then they’d up and disappear and I’d wake up with them on the floor by the foot of my bed. Kitchen implements were a famous one around the house- the shears or the good knife would go missing and reappear in the knife block at will. Forks would turn up on random end tables. Once I was looking for my glasses and when I turned around they were on the floor behind me. Hated that.

There was a patch of grass in the yard that was very much the classic 3 foot by six foot grave looking area where no grass would ever grow no matter how well-seeded. We lived on the site of an old railroad and my father always said it must have been something industrial dumped or buried there but the feeling of something watching you was intense. The area around it had been landscaped so it was a perfect circle with the dead-grass-rectangle right in the middle.

There was also always the sound of crunching gravel like someone walking up the path. It happened so often I quit thinking about it but now that I’ve moved out for years it is very weird. You’d hear gravel crunching in a footstep-type cadence, and then the porch swing would creak like the wind was blowing it back and forth (it was metal and set on a metal stand so a very distinctive rusty metal groaning kinda noise.) Sometimes for over an hour. Then it would just stop. Never anyone out there but the swing was always swaying even though it was under a covered porch near the house and protected from the wind.

There was a mirror in my bedroom that my teenage boyfriend-now-husband hated. He made me cover it up with a blanket whenever he came over. It faced my bed and I’d always slept so uneasily in that room. One night I was asleep and I uncovered it. I saw the quickest flash of a woman in a wedding gown looking dress through the mirror. The angle I saw her at made it so that she would’ve either been floating or hanging. I pissed my parents off by taking it off the wall. I was not messing with that ever again. When my now-husband saw the mirror down he said “did you see the lady?!” Writing this now I feel a little ill.

One last story. Almost funny. It was just my now-husband and I, teenagers, upstairs and doing things we shouldn’t have been. We hear a feminine voice (I assume my mom) yell “not-a-deer! Rosie (our dog at the time) wants out!!”

We dressed so fast, in the “oh-s**t-my-mom-is-gonna-k**l-you” way of teenagers doing s**t they ought not to be. I book it downstairs. My boyfriend stays upstairs, I assume trying to think of how to get out of this.

Nobody home. No cars. Nothing turned on. Signs cowering under the table, won’t come out. I call my mom and I can hear the sounds of her work going on in the background. Needless to say, we did not go outside.

Which I guess leads me to one last story that I forgot until right now, that I just put together.

Our house was surrounded by a little grove of pine trees on all sides. My mom was absolutely stringent about shutting the windows at night. No blinds open, flood light if you’re going to walk to dog. One day she jokingly-but-not said something about having seen something “hopping through the trees” once, and that was that. It scared her so badly that she never opened the blinds at night again. I don’t know what the hell it was she saw. I never asked her to elaborate.

TL: DR- childhood home was weird, man.

#18

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When I was 16 I had a sleepover at a friends house and in the night I woke up, I was awake for some minutes and went to the bathroom. When I stood up I looked in the mirror, then I turned around to close the bathroom door. In front of me were stairs leading to the bedroom.
For a couple of seconds a ghost stood in front of me, so close that I could not see the fave or feet.
It was a young woman with long wavy blonde hair wearing a white dress. The hair and dress were both really dirty with brown spots and earth/dirt on her. It was maby 3 Seconds then she was gone.

I allways wondered if that was a ghost or something else. I thought if it could be my friend or her sister because both had long blonde hair but bith were sleeping. And the bathroom and the staircase was empty.

It felt really scary because now I can’t look into mirrors at night when it’s dark. I allways fear of seeing something when I turn.
I didn’t see anything afterwards though.

But at the time I posted in an online forum but sadly didn’t get replies. And most threads just talked about banshees wearing white dresses.

#19

This happened long time ago.

One day I went with one of my friends to his parents house and I noticed they had changed the front windows, from those tessellated ones, weird and expensive windows to the plane windows they had before. I told my friend that I liked the those ones more and that i was glad they swapped back from the tessellated . My friend somehow puzzled about my comment told me that they had never changed the windows. I thought he was messing with me but I followed and told him about it, how her mother had an accident with a pan and burnt the kitchen so as they had to change the kitchen window they swapped all windows, that it was his mother’s idea..

He interrupted me like I was crazy and told me that his parent’s kitchen had never burnt down, wtf was I talking about? I refused to continue with his joke and just let it go.

A few months later i was with some friends and him, I arrived a bit late and they were talking about a fire on my friend’s parent’s house. i was surprised it had happened twice, but my friend yelled at me that how the hell could knew her mother was going to burn down the kitchen during an accident with a pan.

Confused I just replied, “you have told me this story several times, I only knew because you told me”

Frustrated my friend let it go and that was it, until the next day (we were on weekend) that I saw him again. He looked at me pale as a ghost, mumbling something. I came closer and I could finally hear him.

“My mother wants to change the windows… those weird tessellated ones… My father agreed”

To this day I have no clue what was going on there, I mean from my point of view my friend had told me that story several times, it was common knowledge, but apparently it never happened and somehow I remembered something out of order.

Image source: Drendari

#20

My brother-in-law from out of town used to stay overnight with us occasionally. My ex-husband worked nights at that time so it would be just me and the brother-in-law in the house. It was a tiny one bedroom cottage, so he slept on the couch (which was directly on the other side of the wall from our bedroom and the bed I was sleeping in). He has nightmares and yells and screams a lot during them, and I was kind of used to that. On this particular night, he had gone to sleep in his brand new pair of jeans, and woke up to find that they were shredded from the waist down to the knees over the top of his thighs … It looked as if someone had slashed his jeans with a knife, but he had no marks on his legs whatsoever… We didn’t own a cat, and there were no nails or anything sticking out of the couch. Every few years I would ask my ex and his brother both, “do you swear that you weren’t playing a prank on me??” because that’s the only thing that would explain it, but they can’t figure it out, either.

Image source: Delicious_Collar_441

#21

When I was 17, was visiting my mom for the summer in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She lived with my stepdad in an old house that used to belong to my great grandparents.

One day listening from another room I could hear my mom and stepdad in the living room arguing over her practicing “wicca”magic. He claimed this was why strange incidents in the house kept increasing. I came out to the living room and as they argued I started to notice little noises happening from everywhere around the house. A knock from one room then a bump from another room. At one point we could clearly hear footsteps walking from the room above us. The kind of old floorboards that creaked loudly with every step.

At the time I didn’t believe in the paranormal. I didn’t have any experience with it. But I couldn’t help feeling scared and filled with anxiety as I heard these sounds all around us growing louder and more frequent as the argument escalated. They noticed the sounds too but my stepdad just blamed my mom for the strange activity and the yelling just grew more intense. As the situation hit its peak I spoke up yelling for them to stop. In that moment when we were all yelling at the same time, there was a loud explosion sound from the other side of the house. We all immediately got quiet and looked at each other wondering what it could be. After about ten minutes of all of us looking I finally found the source of the explosion when I opened the kitchen cabinet.

My great grandmother used to keep these old crystal drinking glasses that still sat in the hanging cabinet next to the stove. When I opened it I noticed they were all sitting there in place as usual, except for one. One of the glasses in the front row was completely shattered to tiny pieces as if a bomb had gone off inside it. (Mind you these are large, thick and heavy crystal glass cups) Yet none of the other glasses in the same cabinet had so much as a crack in it. We were all in shock. That was the day I started believing in the paranormal.

Image source: Ecstatic_Vast_735

#22

My wife and I were visiting Atlanta and staying at a Sheraton downtown. It was a nice hotel and we were in a nice room. Nothing creepy about it when we arrived. We went out to dinner and then came back to the hotel and went to bed. Totally normal night. The next thing I know my wife is shaking me, yelling that “It’s flashing, It’s flashing!”. I am a deep sleeper and when I wake up it takes me a few minutes to come to so I am super confused and I ask her “What’s flashing, what are you talking about?” All of a sudden the light that is on the table right next to my head flashes and goes POP! That certainly woke me up because it was right next to me and I hopped up and stodd next to my wife at the foot of the bed. We turned the lights on in the room and stared at the light. It proceeds to flash and pop about 4 more times and my wife and I are both getting the heebie jeebies. We have goosebumps.

But I am naturally not one to freak out about things and assume that there is an explanation for almost anything, so once I come to and wake up a bit more I think that clearly something is wrong with the lamp, so I walk over and unplug it from the wall and think that will solve the problem. Oh boy was I wrong. After unpluggin the lamp, it starts flashing and popping at a rate of about 5 pops a minute. It was unplugged and was getting no electricity! How was this happening? Meanwhile, a few books over near the couch fall off a table and we are really starting to freak out.

So I call the front desk and, not wanting to sound crazy, tell them that we are having an electrical problem with one of our lights and ask them to take a look. About 5 minutes and another 20-30 light pops later, we hear a knock at the door and open it. For some reason, probably because it was around 2:00am, the hotel sent the security guard and not an electrician. This security guard looked terrified and did not want to come into the room, but we explained what was going on and he agreed to look at the light.

This is where it gets even stranger. From the minute we opened the door, the light stopped flashing and popping. Before the door opened it was popping about 10 times a minute. When the security guard was in the room, it did absolutely nothing. He stayed for about 5 minutes and the light did not pop at all. The security guard said to call the front desk if anything happened, but that the light was unplugged and it should be ok.

The second the door closed and the guard was gone, the light started furiously popping and flashing. Probably about once every second. We both felt this intense anger in our bodies like something was furious at us. That was the last straw for us. We grabbed our stuff and left the room. We went downstairs and requested another room that was not close to that one at all.

The next room we stayed in was fine, and we were able to eventually fall back asleep after calming down. I am sure that whatever was happening was something electrical, but to this day I can’t explain it. The thing that really convinced me that this was more than an electrical issue is that the light was flashing and popping about 5 times a minute for about 5-10 minutes until someone from the hotel came and then it stopped completely while they were in the room. Then the minute they left it started popping about once every second without stopping and my wife and I both felt so much anger in our bodies. It felt like something was angry we were there, angry that we had someone come into the room and wanted us to get out.

Image source: GivingThisAGo2

#23

Back in 2012, my friends boyfriend whom I became good friends With as well died in a drowning incident. I was super supportive of my friend (we used to be super close in middle school and that was back in 2006-2007 days). Well I went with her to the funeral and rode with her and her other friends 3 hours away for his burial. They brought me back home to my grandparents house after everything was finished. Grandparents & my momma kept my oldest daughter for me ( she was 2 at the time ) so when I returned home, they all left cause they had plans. I’m sitting with my daughter and I get up to walk into the kitchen from the family room- right next to each other. I hear this far away type of voice say “thankkkk youuuu nickiii”. I jumped so hard cus I was so scared. I believe that was my friends bf forsure.

Image source: nicolejayyxO

#24

Image source: Cryptoisgold, Frankie Cordoba/unsplash

I was on holiday in the middle east in our three story house. Mainline electricity had just come back on and l was asked to turn the generator off, which was on the roof. To access the roof you go through the second floor balcony up a metal stairwell.

I turn the generator off and proceed to walk back down when I catch something out of the corner of my eye, towards the entrance back into the house on the second floor. I turn and Isee it standing there; not looking at me but looking in front of it (which was just the wall to the house behind us). I remember very vividly telling myself not to take my eyes off it as this was either the worlds best hallucination or proof of something else.

As soon as this thought computed, my legs turn into jelly and I lose balance, falling down the stairs and regaining balance by holding onto the railing. I look back and see it had disappeared. It was very tall, about 2 metres, slightly taller than the average door. it’s body was covered with a black robe or cloth. It’s face and skin were pink and white, like its flesh had melted . It had piercing red eyes (think bloodshot enough to see mostly red at 3 metres distance but with white still visible) that were looking directly in front of it rather than me.

From what I remember, I couldn’t sleep for the next few days and would literally pass out from exhaustion as I tried to stay up through the night. There have been a few occasions where I had dreams that came true, a year after this I dreamt I was in the back of my fathers car, my cousin being in the front passenger and my dad in the driver seats, parked in front of a mosque; the following day my grandmother died, and I found myself in that exact noment again, planning her funeral.

I cannot for the life of me shake this experience off and it is the only reason I am not atheist.

#25

Years ago in a small old house in southwest Vermont. It’s morning, snowing outside, and I am cozy under the comforters. Then-boyfriend goes to town to get something and I decide to stay behind. I am just laying there enjoying the sounds of wind and snow against the windows. It was lovely. Then I start to hear some rustling over the comforters around my feet. Like something crawling on the comforter. Thought it was a mouse so I sat up and looked. Nothing. Laid back down and hear it again but this time it was over my feet and legs. Sat up to look and nothing. Laid back down and immediately that sound and sensation comes back. But this time it was all over my feet, legs, butt, back, shoulders. It felt like hands running gently over the thick comforter. I wasn’t scared. I was curious. So I stayed still to observe. And the rustling sounds started to sound like a man’s voice whispering. I kept trying to listen in to discern what he was saying. At that point, I thought I was going crazy. So I got up, made the bed, and went to make coffee. Completely forgot about it.

Until that following summer, my then-BF, his sister and I are driving back to that house and they start exchanging stories of the creepy things that would occur there. Electrical devices going off at once with their beeping, a man standing in the doorway with a top hat, cat losing its mind randomly, lights turning off, windows closing.

So whatever I experienced was that creeper top-hat wearing man ghost trying to feel me up. I don’t blame him. My ex and I did some savoury things the night prior..

Image source: Sterilization4Free

#26

I worked in a men’s prison that was built in 1848, every 16 weeks or so staff were required to work a week on nights 7, 12 hour shifts followed by a whole week off, some staff would outright refuse to do nights and trade their shifts. I would often pick up night shifts as they were fairly easy, you’d sit in an office watching Netflix, keeping an eye on the cameras and doing safety checks at regular intervals, and could then use the week off to relax, work overtime on a really good hourly rate or have a last minute holiday.

Growing up I’d always believed in the paranormal due to having very open minded parents who were believers in the paranormal, and through having my own experiences, so I weren’t really phased at the potential of paranormal encounters. In the two years I worked there, I had many paranormal experiences, but the one that always stands out to me is this one.

I would start at about 9pm and would be locked on a wing without keys, where i wouldn’t be unlocked until the morning. Often times by 9:30pm I would see anomalies on the security cameras and the motion sensors would often pick up on things that weren’t visible on the camera, this was a common occurrence and often persisted regularly throughout the whole night.

One night I’d been watching the cameras for hours, it was about 3am and I hadn’t seen a single thing on the camera, jokingly I said aloud “is no one going to say hello to me tonight?” as I was finishing my coffee, before doing my round of safety checks. I left the office and walked up to the third floor of the wing to do a safety check, when I heard a soft spoken female voice say hello to me. I turned around expecting to see a night nurse doing her rounds, but there was nobody there.

I’m not often freaked out by this kinda stuff, as stated earlier I had many experiences while there including full bodied apparitions of spirits I was later able to identify, being touched and pushed, disembodied voices, footsteps without a source and seeing electronic items function without intact wiring or a power source, but that one by far freaked me out the most, it was an intelligent response and I got exactly what I asked for.

Image source: prince-biohazard

#27

Image source: Ensorcelled_Atoms, Roman Bilik/unsplash

I was living in a trap house in my twenties. We had just gotten bedbugs, and I threw my bed out, so I was sleeping on couch 1, and we had a friend who slept on couch 2.

He had just gotten news that his father died, so he was distraught. Sobbing, deep grief type stuff. I had also been practicing astral projection every night.

So, I started falling asleep, and did my AP routine. I felt myself rise out of my body, still in my living room. I looked over at my friend. There was a hunched thing curled up on his chest. It had either a long nose or a beak, flabby, loose skin and huge eyes like car headlights. It made eye contact with me and I was overwhelmed by the white light coming from its eyes. Then I woke up the next morning. No dreams, lucid or otherwise. Just vivid memories of what had happened.

#28

Oh this reminds me of something with my own mother, one time when I was younger my sister and I were scared so we went to wake up our mom (we experienced many things so often we’d be trying to wake up our parents) we lived in a small condo and our rooms were on opposite ends, we went to our parents room and opened the door and crouched on the end of the bed in the darkness with glowing eyes was our mother? She leapt at us and growled and we went screaming to our room and our mom was there soon after completely normal, asking us what was wrong and everytime we’ve asked her since she’s said that she woke up to us screaming and thought we were being kidnapped or m******d or something.

Another time, same place I was on the couch 7 am and I saw a woman come up from the floor and walk into the bathroom and disappear I still remember what she looked like and she looked nothing like my mom but I still said “Mom?” before realizing my mother was at her computer.

A lot of things happened when I was a kid and a lot of them were shared experiences with my sisters, for instance my sister and I every night dealt with something slowly pulling the covers off of us. We both slept with them tucked under our heads but whatever it was would give a yank and then slowly resume pulling the covers off. (We had bunk beds) we told our father who dismissed it as the cord from my keyboard?? Even though it had been happening since before I had it and the keyboard wasn’t anywhere near touching the beds.

I also got slapped by a doll, one we had lost, I don’t know if anyone remembers those spaghetti haired dolls but the blonde one is the one who hit me and I was terrified but also upset since she was my favorite.

Image source: Zouhe

#29

I have had several experiences so as I remember, I may post more than once:

I have had an experience of a voice clearly saying my name in my ear from over my shoulder. I turned my head to see who it was and when I realized there was no one there, I froze. I did not recognize the voice. It was neither male nor female….

30 years ago I had recurring experiences in a house I rented on Henry St in Mt Horeb, Wisconsin with several different witnesses. I kept smelling this horrible smell coming from the closet in the hallway, which I can only say (having never smelled anything like it) smelled like rotting flesh. I emptied the closet looking for an animal and figured it must be in the walls. The smell got worse over time (several days or more). One day I was sitting at my kitchen table with a friend, and we saw a heavy haze moving toward us from the closet. The smell came back and became stronger as the haze moved toward us. It felt like very negative energy.

Several days later, in the same house, after sensing a “presence” in my bedroom for weeks, a friend and I decided to nicely “ask it to leave.” Suddenly, as we were sitting on the bed, with our eyes closed talking to “it,” we both felt something like a tornado swirling around us. We could feel something “touching” our skin as it swirled. It felt imposing and evil. We both yelled and bolted out of the room. We confirmed that we had felt the exact same thing at the exact same moment. I moved shortly after….

North of Tucson, around 2001, I was watching my parents house while they were on vacation. No pets. No one else with a key. I stopped by every few days. One day when I arrived, the stereo was on and blasting music very loudly. Deafening. It took me a long time to figure out how to make it stop. No CD’s in the player. No radio on. I don’t remember what was playing…

As a child, in Northern Michigan, about 8-9??) I have a very lucid memory of laying in bed on my back and seeing a huge female head floating above me. I can still see it to this day. Short sandy, curly hair. Very angry. Yelling indistinguishable words at me with her finger pointed at me like I was being scolded. She was very loud and I was terrified. I don’t think I could move. I don’t remember if I had been sleeping but it wasn’t dark in the room. I’ve never told anyone.

Image source: Amandakayaks5

#30

My family and I stayed in a nondescript beach house in Florida several years ago. After the first night my then 8-year-old daughter said that she felt scared in the bedroom she was staying, so I volunteered to sleep in there the next night and let her sleep with her Mom. She didn’t specify why she was scared – I chalked it up to just sleeping in a strange place.

I’m not given to remembering my dreams and don’t have many nightmares that I recall, but that night I had a terrifying dream in which an old h*g of a woman – really scary looking – had me tied down on the bed in that room. She was speaking in a raspy but eerily sweet voice, telling me not to worry, but that she was going to cut out my eyes to add to her collection. It was very intense and I woke up gasping and sweaty.

The next morning at breakfast I asked my daughter what bothered her about the room and she said that it was actually her dreams that bothered her. She dreamt she was tied to the bed in that room and an old woman was telling her that she was going to cut out her eyes.

I just about did a very cliche spit take, I was so shocked. I still have no explanation for how we both had the exact same nightmare. We hadn’t watched any horror movies (she was too young at the time) and I’ve never seen or read anything like that in any horror novels or films (and I’ve read and watched countless). I’m still weirded out by it.

Image source: Aderleth75