55 Terrifying Encounters People Wish They Could Rationally Explain

This probably won't get seen, but I'm going to post it anyway.

When I was 16 years old I went to my friend's grandfather's funeral. About 20 minutes into the service I started to get tired of hearing a stranger tell me about a person that I knew most of my life. Looking around the church I noticed a candelabra, next to it was a small wooden shelf extending from the wall (about 3 1/2 feet off the floor). On top of the shelf were 2 brass caps that are used to put out the candelabra after services.

While I was looking directly at the brass caps one of them flew off the shelf like someone slapped it. Nothing else moved except that one brass cap. The cap landed a few feet from the shelf. It didn't simply slide off the shelf and fall, it flew off in an arc. It made a really loud noise when it hit the ground, the priest jumped, and the whole room gasped.

I'm not religious (wasn't then either) and I was dumbfounded. I refused to believe what I just saw. There had to be a rational explanation, maybe a fishing line or something was attached to it. After looking at the cap on the ground for a few minutes (I was sitting with the family so I was pretty close) I couldn't see any string or anything like that attached to it. So I returned to looking at the shelf and whispered to myself "If you can do it once, Tony, you can do it again."

I stared at that shelf like it was my life's work. I s**t you not, about 10 minutes later that second cap flew off the shelf while I was looking directly at it. The second one flew off at a different angle and with greater force landing within a few feet of the priest. I thought this poor b*****d was going to have a heart attack. My friends grandmother started crying uncontrollably, and I was left in utter shock.

When they were having communion I went up and looked at the caps and couldn't see any strings or anything attached to them. I still don't know what I witnessed that day. I don't expect any of you to believe this story, but it is 100% true.

When I was about 5, every few weeks at random times at night, I would see a black cat run across whatever room I was in and disappear. I thought it was maybe just just my imagination.

12 years later, I was talking to my mom and she told me about how the lady who used to live above us hated her. She once put something under our door step. It was some kind of ritual thing. It causes the family of the household to argue non-stop. My parents argued for weeks till my mom washed the doorstep.

One night, my mom was talking to the mother of the lady upstairs. She told my mom that her daughter is heavily into witchcraft and can take her spirit to other places when she fell asleep (out of body experience) and can shapeshift into a cat. I thought the story was stupid and possibly fake until her mother said she usually takes the form of a cat.

Sorry if this has already been told. Tried a search which turned up nothing, but you never know.

Late at night on a highway in Northern Ontario, a woman driving her car is reliieved to finally find a gas station that's still open, so she pulls in. The attendant comes out and walks up to the driver's side. He stands there, waiting until she rolls down her window. She slips it down just a crack.

"How much?" he asks. She tells him to fill it up.

The attendant walks towards the back of the car and stands there a minute. The woman waits, then looks into the side-view mirror. The attendant is just standing there, facing her. She's feeling pretty nervous, wondering why he's not pumping gas. Then he walks back up to the window and taps on it. "You need to open the flap ma'am."

Feeling stupid, the woman reaches down and clicks the gas flap open. The attendant walks back and starts pumping the gas. A minute or so later he finishes, and clicks the nozzle back into place on the pump. Then he stands there for a moment. The woman keeps looking at him in the side-view mirror, feeling quite ill-at-ease. She doesn't like this: being alone at a tiny gas station in the middle of nowhere with only this stranger.

The attendant then walks back up to the window and taps on it. She reaches into her purse and takes out her credit card, rolls open the window just a crack again, and as she passes the card through looks up at the attendant. He's staring down at her with wide, frightful eyes. She looks away quickly, really creeped out, and she rolls the window back up as soon as the attendant grasps the card. But he doesn't go to the cash booth, he just stands there a moment. The woman can't bear to look at him again.

Finally he says, with a voice muffled through the closed window: "Ma'am, there's a problem with your card. Could you please step inside the cash booth?"

"What's wrong with the card?" she asks loudly, with a definite strain in her voice.

"Something's wrong with the barcode. I'll need you to come over to the cash so we can make a call to the company."

There's no way she is getting outside her car, on an empty, dark highway, late at night, with only that weirdo around. Besides, she realizes, as a sudden chill overcomes her, how could he know if there was a problem with the barcode if he hadn't even been to the cash desk to swipe it? The woman's breathing suddenly increases as she feels panic creep upon her.

She summons up a note of restraint in her voice: "Please, can you just call them yourself?"

"Sorry, but I'll need to see some I.D. Could you please just step over to the booth? It'll only take a minute."

Realizing he won't let it be, she whispers a prayer and reaches into her purse to check for cash. Yes! She has a fifty dollar bill. Clutching it in her hand she unrolls the window just a crack yet again and passes it through. "Nevermind, I'll just pay cash."

"Ma'am, are you sure?" he asks.

"What?" she almost yells, as she accidentally looks up at him again. The same wide, fearful eyes staring down at her. She looks away. "Yes! Cash!"

"I can fix the card problem, you just need to come over to the phone with me," he says.

She's really terrified now, and half-screams at the man: "Listen a*****e, it's cash! That's all your getting from me!"

"Alright, alright," he responds, "Now you just wait right here and I'll go get your change. Don't move. I'll be right back."

She can see him out of her peripheral vision, walking backwards towards the booth, always facing her. She can't bear to look his way. She can't imagine what he has in the booth. What if he brings it back with him?

*F**k the change,* she thinks, just as she realizes he also still has her credit card. She can't take this anymore: *F**k the card, I'll cancel it!*

She starts up the car and as soon as it hums to life she tears away and off into the dark night.

The attendant is in his booth on the phone, breathing heavily. An official-sounding voice on the other end asks: "Did you tell her?"

"No," the attendant responds, "I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"He had a knife and a finger to his lips. I tried to get her out of there, but the whole time he was watching me from the floor behind her seat.".

Here's an interesting story I found on 4chan's /k/ (weapons) board a while back, please excuse the odd formatting as it was originally intended as a greentext story but the author gave up shortly after they began, also worth noting that it's REALLY long and requires multiple posts.


be 16

be black and have family down in Alabama


they farm and own a huge amount of land down in Huntsville

uncle owns a big house and a bunch of trailers they put out in the woods for hunting or camping

down south cousins suggest that we go out there to camp

know I'm a city kid from Chicago so they tease the f**k out of me

collect food, k**l a pig and some chickens, and bring necessities to camp out for a few days

we get to the camp and it's obvious something is weird

air has this weird electric smell like right before a storm, like ozone

we think nothing of it and unpack and go down to a little creek to swim for a few hours

All of a sudden some older white guy and a white teenager come out of the bushes

he has a s*****n in the crook of his arm and says hello and ask us what we're doing this far back in the woods

tell him about my uncle, who he knows, and say we're camping out

he tells us we need to be real careful out here and stick together there was a big animal in the woods

His son, who is my age asks if he can stay and hang out with us
he says OK

I'm going to stop greentexting because the story is fairly long and the format is harder to write in.

So we end up playing football. D*****g around with me, there's the white kid "Tanner", five of my cousins, and then four of their friends. In total, there were five girls and six boys. We all were around 15-17.

We ended up just d*****g the day away. So, we head back to the camp and pulling out some stuff for a campfire, even though the trailers both had kitchenettes. Tanner says that his family's property sits up against my uncle's. He wants to run home and ask his dad if he can come out camping with us. My cousin Rooster says he's going to go with him since it's going to get dark soon. One of the girls also wants to tag along.
It's about 7 o'clock, and it's starting to get pretty dark. They take flashlights and take the trail toward Tan's property. The rest of us chill. We make smores, drink and kiss on the girls.

About thirty or forty minutes later, there's the smell of ozone again. You could smell it over the smell of the fire we had started. This really nasty, coppery smell like right after you've had a nosebleed and it's stopped. It wasn't exactly like dried blood, but it was that nasty metallic, back-of-your-throat smell.

We immediately think that it's some kind of electrical malfunction, or someone left a hotplate on or some s**t. We search the trailers and nothing is on, and we can all smell it. All of a sudden, we can hear people booking down the path toward us, and Rooster, Tan and the girl all come running into the clearing, out of breath. And they don't even break stride; they all run into the trailer, right by where the fire is.

We all get the f**k outta there and into the trailers. They end up calming down; even Rooster is crying his f*****g eyes out at this point. All the while, the fire is guttering lower and lower, so my other cousins say f**k it and are about to go outside to get the generator out of a shed between the trailers.

Tanner goes, "F**k no! Lock the front door, ain't nobody else going outside!" He's been crying too, and his eyes are bloodshot and puffy and his pants are dirty as s**t.
He goes on to tell us that they went up to his house. His father said sure, he could go out camping, but to make sure they were careful on the way back, and that maybe they should take one of the hunting rifles just in case.

Evidently, Tanner had seen something in their yard a few days before. One of their pigs had come up, ripped up and half eaten. They assumed it was just some big cats or coyotes, even though they don't usually f**k with live animals.
He had gone upstairs and packed his stuff, and told his dad they would be OK without the rifle because coyotes avoid people. So they started walking back toward where we were camping.

So, Rooster finally stops crying and shaking; the girl already had, but she was just staring out the window with a dumb look on her face. He says they had gotten halfway into the woods toward the camp when they started to hear s**t in the forest. It was almost pitch black by this time, so they weren't sure at first what the f**k it was. The girl says that she heard something in the bushes right off the trail and they all beamed their flashlights over there and there was someone standing back in the woods in a little hollow. Rooster said they shouted at him and told him that he was scaring the f**k out of them and what a d**k he was.

He says that's when he realized that the guy was facing away from them. So they keep walking, and they start smelling the nasty coppery ozone smell. They say that they look off into the forest on the opposite side, and it's a dude standing in the forest, backward slightly closer to the path.
So now they start powerwalking and Tan keeps going, "I should have taken the f*****g rifle."

As they're telling the story, the smell is still super strong even inside the cabin.
They say that after they started walking faster, a kind of low gibbering had started coming from both sides of the wood. And as they started booking it back to the trailer, the girl said she had flashed her flashlight out into the woods to the side of them and had seen something jerking itself through the woods. The gibbering just got louder and louder, and when they could see the light from our camp fire, something had come out of the woods about 40 yards behind them onto the track, and they had just flat out ran as hard as they could to the trailer.

So we're out in the f*****g woods, and we're assuming at this point it's some rednecks or some s**t trying to f**k with us.

All of a sudden, my other cousin, Junior, starts going on about how he went to school with a native kid that was telling him about the 'Goatman' or some s**t. We promptly tell him to shut the f**k up because we don't need any spooky talk right now.
But he just keeps going on and on about how it's the f*****g 'Goatman,' and how we're in his woods and blah blah blah. Now at the time, I had never heard of this goat man or any of that, but then a couple years ago -- the year before I graduated from college -- I had a Menom for a roommate and I ended up asking him about it. And to sum it up, it's basically a f*****g man with the head of a goat and he can shape shift and he gets among groups of people to terrorize them. It's also supposed to be kind of like the Wendigo, and it's bad mojo to even talk about it and even worse if you see it.
Keep in mind, I didn't know this back when I was sixteen. So my cousin is going, "The goat man's going to get in and f*****g get us." The girls are all terrified and my cousins and I are all f*****g trying to figure out if it's just some hillbillies or if it's some animal.
So all of a sudden the smell just goes away. Like to this day, I haven't even experienced anything like it. Like, usually smells fade away or lessen. It just literally was there one second and then not the second.

So it's after an hour, making it around 9 or 10. We've stopped s******g bricks enough to go back outside and stoke the fire again. We figure it was just some a******s trying to f**k with us, so we don't go back home, because we think if we do, they'll chase us through the woods or some crazy s**t.

Nothing else weird happens that night. And we stay another night, and for the main part of the night nothing happens. At about 1 in the morning, we're outside getting drunk and telling ghost stories. As someone is finishing some 2spooky story -- I don't remember what about -- the smell comes back. It's so f*****g strong, that one of the girls literally starts vomiting.

I stand up, and you can actually feel how clammy the air is. I say we should get inside and this isn't right; we should have just f*****g left.
We all go back inside, and we're standing around. My cousin just keeps going on about how it's the goat man. And my cousin Rooster tries to shut him the f**k up, and all the while I'm just feeling that something is wrong, and I can't figure out what the f**k it is.
We end up sitting in there for a while; the smell is just as strong, and we're terrified and all huddled in this camper. We end up cooking brats for everybody because nobody wants to go outside. It's one of those packs with 4 brats. We have a total of 3 packs. I grill them up on the stove and give everybody a hot dog. I get mine. After a while, one of my cousins gets up and goes over to the pot to get another one.

He starts grumbling about about how I get two brats and everybody else only got one, and I look at him like he's f*****g stupid. I tell him that everybody only got one because there were only 12 brats, if he wants more he should open up a new pack and cook some more.

That's when the girl that had been out with Rooster and Tan just starts screaming, "OH JESUS, OH LORD, GET IT OUT!" She's crying and shivering, and then it dawns on the cousin standing up what the f**k is wrong. Me and him both glance around the room, and then I feel my heart f*****g sink. I run the f**k out of the cabin and the girl runs out with us. The trailer door is banging against the side of the trailer as everybody books out of the cabin.

One of my cousin's friends ask us what the f**k was wrong. I start counting us. There's only 11 now.

I created a throwaway for this because I feel so weird about it. I had a really strange childhood with lots of unexplained/psychic things happen until I was in college. I hate thinking about these things. A few of the weirdest:

One year in elementary school I spent almost every recess "feeding" a "monster" that I thought lived in the woods near the playground. I know lots of children have imaginary friends, but looking back on this feels very weird to me. I don't remember ever seeing the monster, but I was very serious about feeding it rocks. In my memory it could eat any rock in the forest, but it loved the white rocks that were on the playground, and it couldn't come out of the forest to get them itself. I would throw it rocks and "talk to it" during recess. The part that gives me the chills is how I called it "the monster" even though I wasn't afraid of it.

Two times in my life I was fed up with having strange things happen and I said "Okay, if there really are paranormal things in this world, give me an unequivocal sign right now."

The first time the emergency roof hatch of the bus I was on ripped off immediately while the bus was in motion. The second time a bird burst through a screen on the second floor of my house, flew down the hallway, into my room and landed on the hanger bar in my closet.

TL;DR I asked the supernatural world for a sign twice and a door ripped off my bus the first time and a bird flew through a window to me the second. I also "fed a monster" during childhood.

My grandparents own a mirror. It's been in the family for ~200 years. So many people from my family have seen someone in the reflection, always in the same place, matching the same description.

Another fairly inexplicable thing, there's a room in my house where compasses go crazy. The pointer thing (?) will move in all directions. If you ask a yes or no question, the pointer will point in either north or south, north being yes and south being no. Weird stuff.

EDIT: Just realised I had a little Freudian slip and said that so many people from my school have seen 'The Figure'. I meant family.

I've told this story before on Reddit, but it's still creepy to me and probably fits here just as well.

I had a girlfriend in high school whose step father had s******y a****d her when she was younger. She had told me about it so I knew. She also would talk in her sleep. And not just say random things, she would start dreaming, then start talking and you could talk back to her. She would talk to you but not wake up.

One afternoon, she fell asleep and started talking. She kinda started to whine, then said 'help'. I asked what she needed help with. She was telling me that she was in her kitchen and that he was in his room. He wanted to play the game. I told her that I was just outside, all she had to do was come outside and I would save her. She continued to whine, and told me she'd get in trouble.

I tried to convince her a couple times to come outside to me, but she wouldn't do it. She was really sounding stressed so I woke her up. It was really weird and I felt so terrible for her. I told her what had happened and she just cried.

It may not seem all that creepy like some of the stories here, but d**n, when it's happening to you, you really get weirded out by it.

Two years ago, I worked in a tuition center as a tutor. But I would 'tutor' a class of 12 students, so it was pretty much a teaching job, just without the degree. Anyway, there was this one girl (about 8 or 9 years old) who would always sit quietly and smile. She didn't talk to other students, and when other students would work diligently, she would just sit there and look at others. Her face would often be tilted, gentle and curious - she seemed intrigued with the faces of the people in the room, often me.

One day I decided what the heck, let's try this out. So I glance over and made eye contact with her and thought to myself 'Hey there [girl name]. If you can understand this, wave to me'. Then she waved at me. I poker-faced my shock, with the exception of my eyes widening. She giggled at that. It was near the end of the day, so I let it go and decided I will test this out more next week.

The next week she didn't show up and my boss told me her mum took her out of the program and moved schools. I never saw her again.

This story (story within a story) was told to me by a friend Mark:

During high school Mark was over at his friend's house, we'll just call him Steve b/c I don't know his name. They were hanging out in Steve's room after just hanging up a poster of Limp Bizkit's "Significant Other" album cover that Steve had just bought. Minutes later Steve's dad comes by and orders him to take the poster down immediately. When he asked his dad why, he says never mind why and to just listen to him and do it. Steve is pissed but listens to his dad and takes it down.

Later Steve asked his dad why he told him to take down the poster. This is the story he told him:

When I was young, your aunt, uncles and I had to all sleep on the floor in one room because we were very poor. One night someone walked into the room, bent over my head and asked me, "Give me your soul." I was so afraid I'd pretend to be asleep. This thing would ask me to give him my soul a few times then get up and walk out of the room. This happened every other night until I reached my early teens. One night after he was walking away I opened my eyes to see his face. What I saw was a thing with the body of a human, he wore a hood and underneath the hood was a face of a lizard.

A few years before you were born we threw a Halloween party at our house with all of our family. We ran out of candy so I drove to the local market to pick some more up. On the way there I was listening to the radio and they said to call in with your scariest story. I pulled over to the side of the road, called them on a pay phone and told the story of this lizard man over the air.

When I got back home I could hear someone crying. I went upstairs into the bedroom and saw my sister crying on the bed. I asked her what was wrong. She said, **"I heard you on the radio. That happened to me too."**

*edit: sorry if it isn't clear but the poster reminded his father of the lizard man.*.

During boarding school this was making the rounds:

Every boarding school has some odd tradition or skill students must undertake before graduation. At my school it was knowing how to swim and at my brother's it was ballroom dance classes. Anyway, this specific school had a very outdoorsy tradition and before graduation students were required to spend a long weekend camping alone in the woods.

A faculty member would drop the student off after classes on Thursday and pick them up after the weekend. Most students looked forward to the experience as a calm spell before graduation week, with all the family drama and stress of moving out of school, began.

A girl is dropped off at the location and has a wonderful time all weekend. She writes in her journal. She takes tons of pictures. She sees lots of wildlife and relishes the calm away from other people. She is very rested by the time she returns to campus.

Two weeks later, after the insanity of graduating and moving out of school, she develops her pictures from the trip. As she flips through the photos she realizes that one whole roll of pictures were of her sleeping.

One school day, a boy named Tom was sitting in class and doing math. It was six more minutes until after school. As he was doing his homework, something caught his eye.

His desk was next to the window, and he turned and looked to the grass outside. It looked like a picture. When school was over, he ran to the spot where he saw it. He ran fast so that no one else could grab it.

He picked it up and smiled. It had a picture of the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She had a dress with tights on and red shoes, and her hand was formed into a peace sign.

She was so beautiful he wanted to meet her, so he ran all over the school and asked everyone if they knew her or have ever seen her before. But everyone he asked said "No." He was devastated.

When he was home, he asked his older sister if she knew the girl, but unfortunately she also said "No." It was very late, so Tom walked up the stairs, placed the picture on his bedside table and went to sleep.

In the middle of the night Tom was awakened by a tap on his window. It was like a nail tapping. He got scared. After the tapping he heard a giggle. He saw a shadow near his window, so he got out of his bed, walked toward his window, opened it up and followed the giggling. By the time he reached it, it was gone.

The next day again he asked his neighbors if they knew her. Everybody said, "Sorry, no." When his mother came home he even asked her if she knew her. She said "No." He went to his room, placed the picture on his desk and fell asleep.

Once again he was awakened by a tapping. He took the picture and followed the giggling. He walked across the road, when suddenly he got hit by a car. He was d**d with the picture in his hand.

The driver got out of the car and tried to help him, but it was too late. Suddenly he saw the picture and picked it up.

He saw a cute girl holding up three fingers.

I got really high one night and was craving McDonald's. Everything was dandy, I got to the drive thru safely and ordered exactly what I wanted from when I first imagined this glorious feast from home. I get to the window to pick up my order and then out of the corner of my eye I see this lady coming towards me and starts shouting! I instantly freeze up thinking w*f did I do?! Did I order the last of the chicken nuggets that night?! She proceeds to get closer... Turns out she was yelling at the McDonald's drive thru person. All I hear for 5 mins is "you a c**k sucking b***h...! Ugly a*s saggy titty ho...!" Back and forth. The situation calms down when the worker gives a last BYE B***H and slams her window but I'm still stuck there waiting for my food.

**I did not write these**

"Daddy, I had a bad dream."

You blink your eyes and pull up on your elbows. Your clock glows red in the darkness — it's 3:23. "Do you want to climb into bed and tell me about it?"

"No, Daddy."

The oddness of the situation wakes you up more fully. You can barely make out your daughter's pale form in the darkness of your room. "Why not sweetie?"

"Because in my dream, when I told you about the dream, the thing wearing Mommy's skin sat up."

For a moment, you feel paralyzed; you can't take your eyes off of your daughter. The covers behind you begin to shift.

A young girl is left home alone with only her dog to protect her. When night approaches, she locks all the doors and tries to lock all the windows but one won't close.



She decides to leave it unlocked and goes to bed. Her dog takes its customary place under her bed.



In the deep of night she awakens to a dripping sound coming from the bathroom. The girl is too scared to go check so she reaches her hand under the bed. She feels a reassuring lick from her dog and falls back to sleep. She reawakens to the dripping sound, reaches her hand down to the dog where she feels the reassuring lick and falls back to sleep. Once more she awakens to the dripping sound. She reaches her hand down and feels the lick of her dog.



Now curious about the dripping sound, she gets up and slowly walks towards the bathroom, the dripping sound getting louder as she approaches. She reaches the bathroom and turns on the light. She is greeted by a horrific sight; hanging from the shower nozzle is her dog with its throat slit open and its blood dripping into the bathtub.



Something on the bathroom mirror catches her eye she turns around. Written on the bathroom mirror in her dog's blood are the words "HUMANS CAN LICK TOO".











This one always creeped me RIGHT the f**k out as a kid.

I work on a ship. One night I was having a meal with my crew mates including one guy, Kane, who had recently recovered from an illness. We enjoyed our dinner, excited that we'd be heading home soon. Suddenly Kane started choking and, shortly thereafter, began convulsing wildly. We managed to pin him down and he was yelling. He then let out a loud scream and a large blood stain appeared beneath his shirt. Kane continued to yell in agonizing pain as a snake-like creature violently burst from his chest and scurried off.

I will never forget that night.