Real-life can often be as weird—if not weirder than—fiction. I think that many of you Pandas would agree that plenty of us have at least one story about something incredibly strange, even creepy, happening to us. Something that we can’t explain. Something… that our rational minds can’t comprehend... Oh, our friends might listen to us, captivated, breathless, but whether or not they truly believe that our stories happened, like we know we do, is up for discussion.
With just over a week left until the spookiest night of the year, Halloween, we’ve collected some of the scariest stories that can’t explain rationally, shared by Reddit users. Grab some hot cocoa, get a bowl of Halloween treats, wrap yourselves up in a warm blanket, and turn out the lights, Pandas—we’ve got some spooky stories to tell.
Don’t forget to upvote the stories that really sent a chill down your spines, dear Readers. And if you’ve got some inexplicable experiences of your own… the comment section could use some mysterious ghosts to haunt it.
Bored Panda was interested to learn more about why we're so interested in scary stories, so I reached out to writer and Bram Stoker Award-winning editor Doug Murano from South Dakota, the founder of Bad Hand Books. "I suspect that most of us—regardless of our spiritual beliefs—have a longing for something beyond this life. Human beings seem to be pre-programmed with this urge," he said. Scroll down for Doug's insights about our fascination with horror and what makes for a great scary story.
#1
When I was 6 years old, I had a cat named Buster. Buster was actually my step-dad's cat, but because I never had a cat before, I claimed him as my own. Suffice it to say, Buster didn't like being hugged and coddled all the time by a little child, so he hated me. He avoided me at all costs. He was also an outdoor cat, so he would often spend most days outside and then come in for the night.
One night, Buster didn't come back in the house. We usually fed him at night, so I was worried. Our area was also well-known for an abundance of coyotes. My parents were being a bit hush-hush about Buster's disappearance, but I didn't get the hint. That night, when I was drifting off to sleep, Buster jumped onto my bed. He lay down by my head and let me pet him until I fell asleep. Honestly, I was shocked because he had never done this before.
The next morning, I triumphantly walked downstairs and related to my parents that Buster now loved me because he slept in my bed during the night. My parents looked at me inquisitively and sat me down at the breakfast table to let me know that while they were outside the night before, they had found Buster's body in the alley behind our house. They thought he had been harassed by a coyote. But, he was dead, so he couldn't have slept in my bed that night.
To this day, I like to think that Buster just wanted to say goodbye and thank me for trying to love him in the only way a child knew how.
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531points
Writer and editor Doug believes that our love of horror and spooky stories is linked to our desire to find out more about the world around us, what's hiding just beyond our sense. "So much of horror and speculative fiction grapples with death and what happens after we die that I can't help but believe much of our interest in such stories is an expression of a longing for experiences and existences beyond our perceptions," he told Bored Panda.
Doug was kind enough to share what it is that separates merely passable horror stories and the truly great ones. The ones that stick in our minds for years to come (and sometimes keep us awake at night, scared to even get out of bed).
"Great horror stories thread a precarious needle: They maintain a sense of the truly inexplicable while creating a world and a narrative that provides enough answers to ground the story. Over-explanation kills most horror, which is why the shark is scariest when you only see the fin; the alien is most terrifying when it's lurking in the shadows; the killer is most monstrous when he's masked," Doug told Bored Panda that horror needs to be subtle. The monster that we know, the one can see is the monster that we can think about rationally. And that's far less frightening than the unknown, creeping, crawling in the dark.
#2
In 2002 I lived in the east SF bay area with my husband, and 2 toddlers. I was grieving over the sudden death of my mother a month before. She'd had at major heart attack and died @ 52 yrs of age. On an average day, I left my babies at home with my husband to run a quick errand by myself. I drove a block over through downtown Hayward to hit up the grocery store. I was on my way home and stopped at a red light waiting to make a left turn. The intersection had all blind corners so it was difficult to see oncoming cars. My light turned green I glanced both ways waited the appropriate second and stepped on the gas pedal... It would not move. I tried again, nothing. The car behind me honked. I looked down under my pedals quickly to see if something had possibly rolled under the pedal and found nothing. I looked up and suddenly a huge work truck loaded down with equipment ran (his) red light at what must've been 50mph. I was stunned. I gasped, quickly pulled myself together, stepped on the gas pedal and it worked with no hesitation. Suddenly I smelled my mother's favorite perfume... Really amazing experience.
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445points
#3
My parents had just had their first child, my oldest sister, Cathy. They had been living in Italy at the time (my dad was in the Air Force) and had brought her back to the US to introduce her to the grandparents (my dad's parents). So their first night there, my mom was asleep in the front bedroom, jet-lagged. My dad had gone out to hang out with his brothers. And in the middle of the night, this woman walks into my mom's room, waking her up. She sit's down on the bed and says, "Shh, it's ok! I just wanted to welcome you to the family." My mom was scared, obviously, but figured this was some relative or family friend or something that came over. The woman walks over to the bassinet where my baby sister was sleeping. "Is this your daughter?" My mom nodded. "She's beautiful! It's lovely to meet you both." And then she leaves. My mom wakes up the next day and is having breakfast with my grandmother when she brings it up. "Who was the woman that came over last night?" My grandmother had no idea what she was talking about. My mom told her the whole story and my grandmother asked what she looked like. My mom said, "She was tall, had long white hair and was wearing a blue dress." My grandmother's face went as white as a sheet. She rummaged through some old pictures and pulled one out. "Is this her?" she asked my mom who nodded in return. "That's MY mother! She's been dead for 20 years and we buried her in a blue dress."
288points
I was curious to get Doug's opinion about learning to separate what scary online stories are true and which ones are embellished (or even outright made up) for entertainment purposes alone. However, Doug believes that this might not be the right way to look at things. Instead, it's best to enjoy the stories in full, whether they're fact or fiction. A great story is great, regardless if it's based on true events or sprung up from someone's imagination.
"My professional expertise is limited to fiction, but I'll say this: I've seen enough real magic and wonder in the world to make me think twice about whether the supernatural is real—and I think that's a healthy thing. It's perhaps less important to believe any given tale than it is to remain open to experiences while leaving room in your head and in your heart for belief."
#4
This happened 3 times with 3 different people.
I grew up in 2-story house in the Philippines. Upstairs, there was a huge playroom, and 4 bedrooms. When I was around 11 years old, me and my babysitter were hanging out in the playroom. She went to the bathroom, and I got bored so I went downstairs to check out the fridge. I heard her come out of the bathroom, and she started screaming my name. After the 3rd time, she stopped. I thought she figured out that I was downstairs. After a few minutes, I saw her coming down the stairs. As she looked at me, she froze and just stared at me. I asked her what's wrong, and she said she just saw me in the playroom before she went downstairs. She was really freaked out about it, and I don't know--I used to not believe in these things so I just laughed at her.
The second time it happened, I was probably 16. I was hanging out at my brother's room cause it's the room with the fastest internet. And then I heard my 6-year old brother (I have 2 brothers) calling me and looking around for me, I didn't answer back and just waited for him to find me. I saw him go in my room, and then he got quiet. I thought he was looking for something and just found it. As he was walking out of my room, he saw me in my brother's room, and he just froze and stared like my babysitter. I asked him what's wrong and he said, "Why are there 2 of you?" And that's when I freaked out and ran to my mom's room. She laughed at us, but I remember sleeping in her room that night.
The last time it happened was when I was 20. My parents went on vacation with my youngest brother, so me and my other siblings had to stay at my grandparents night. The first night they were away, me and my sister decided to go home and get more clothes. We were both in my room, cause she likes to borrow some of my clothes, and I told her that I'm going to take a shower. That's when she left and went to her room to pack more clothes. I went to the bathroom, and started brushing my teeth. As I was about to get in the shower, my sister walked in the bathroom, and she looked at me so weirdly. And her face turned pale, so I asked her what's wrong. She said she went back to my room and she was talking to me, but then she had to pee so she went to the bathroom and found me there. We both looked at each other, grabbed our stuff, and left.
I still don't know why or what it is, but it still creeps me out when I think about it.
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180points
#5
This happened years ago when I was around 17. One night I was up late watching TV and fell asleep on the couch. I woke up at around 4:30AM and went to bed, everything seemed normal.
The next morning, my mom asked where I had gone the night before. I was real confused.
The night before, she and my dad had been woken up by the sound of the front door of the house closing. They went downstairs at 2:00AM and looked outside. My car was not in the driveway. They figured that I'd gone to give a drunk friend a ride home or something so they weren't worried about it. My dad sat on the couch (the same one I had fallen asleep and woken up on) and ate a midnight snack, watched some TV, and went back to bed around 2:30AM.
We figured out that I had fallen asleep sometime between 12:30AM and 1:30AM because that's when the TV show I remember watching as I drifted off was on. The soles of my feet were extremely dirty, as though I'd been walking around outside with no shoes on.
So, I disappeared, with my car, for a few hours that night. I have absolutely no memory of what happened, and if mom hadn't said anything that morning I wouldn't have even known it happened.
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152points
#6
My family moved into an old house (200+ years) when I was 10. Uncle (weird guy) was going to help us move in and when we got inside the house he got all weird and left. Always avoided coming for birthdays etc. We always joked he saw a ghost and for some reason, we nicknamed the ghost Billy. When my little sister started talking she would say really weird things, like asking if we can shut her door at night so she doesn't have to see the boy walking down the hallway. F**king creepy. Anyways we thought she was also just being a big weirdo, so we continued to have this Billy the Ghost joke. Something would get misplaced "must be Billy" yadda yadda. A few years later we ripped up the flooring because we wanted to go back to the original hardwood that had been covered up forever ago by old owners, and if you know anything about old houses you know they used to insulate the floor with newspaper when newspaper just became a thing. Decided to read some articles for fun, some talking about the first ever refrigerators, really cool things like that. Until we got to the creepy part, a mentally challenged boy named Billy who lived in our home, died while playing outside of it.
I saw a lot of s**t growing up in that house but I'm not a huge ghost believer. The newspaper was a f**king creepy coincidence though, given that for years we had an ongoing Billy the Ghost joke. Uncle also ended up telling us years later that when he pulled into the driveway and was outside of the house he just got this awful feeling.
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144points
It’s not surprising that scary stories, mysterious happenings, and tales about the dark underbelly of the human condition fascinate us, whether they’re fact or fiction. According to psychologist and well-being consultant Lee Chambers, from the UK, there might be an evolutionary explanation for this.
"When considering why the darker side of humanity and entertainment are so compelling, we have to first look at our evolutionary journey as human beings. For the majority of our existence, we were prey and always hyperaware of threats to our safety, which created a negativity bias that we are drawn towards," the mental health expert went into detail with Bored Panda about why we find real horror stories, like true crime dramas, so compelling.
"In today's safe and often sanitized world, we are rarely threatened significantly, and the ability to explore evil, frightening and gruesome entertainment is one of the few ways we can visit this part of humanity while remaining safe and comfortable. There is a level of novelty to it, it removes boredom quickly, and it helps us to discover our emotional limits while understanding the minds of those who go beyond social norms and potentially gaining knowledge of how we might avoid being victims ourselves. They also offer closure, with many stories ending with the mystery being solved, and the criminal being brought to a level of justice," the psychologist told Bored Panda.
#7
My parents had been married for maybe a month. They were in bed sound asleep when all of a sudden, my mom jumps up and wakes up my dad. "Jimmy! Jimmy! There's blood everywhere! We have to help them! Please!" My dad tried his best to calm her down and figure out what she was talking about. My mom had explained that she saw a car with a German license plate on the side of the road. That there had been an accident and they needed help. My dad tried to console her...to explain that it was all just a bad dream, but she wasn't having it. So to appease her, they got in the car and drove to the spot my mom thought the accident was. And sure enough, at the exact spot my mom said, there was a car on the side of the road with German plates and emergency flashers on. Upon closer investigation, there was nobody in the car. If they needed help, help had already come.
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136points
#8
I had just moved back to my home town after attending an art school for two years. The only apartment I could find was a really dumpy loft over a warehouse for 50 dollars a month. This was in 1971, way before these kind of apartments were cool. This was cheap even for back then and though I wondered a bit about that it wasn't totally out of the norm. It did have tall windows and skylights, so it worked great for a studio.
Since it was a loft it was a big wide open space with the bathroom being the only room. There were two other doors, one to the stairs down to the street and the fire escape door that had one of those fire alarms on it if you go out of it. The bathroom was like a box/cubicle with a shower and sink and toilet.
I had been living there for about a month when one night I woke up and went to use the bathroom. The door had a small slide lock on it and I always locked it out of habit. Just as I was about to leave I heard heavy footsteps walk up to the bathroom door and I watched in horror as the doorknob turned and rattled, shaking the whole door.
It was the first time in my life where I was so scared that I actually felt my body go completely numb. I thought for sure that someone had gotten in and I was now going to be raped and killed. The lock was a little whimpy thing a granny could have broken. The doorknob rattled several more times then something hit the door really hard. I then heard the footsteps walk away and go down the steps. I heard the door to the street open and close, then silence.
I think it took me nearly 30 minutes to get the courage to leave that little bathroom. When I finally did I turned on every light in the place and went to inspect the door to the street. There were three locks on that door, two of them could only be locked from the inside and those were locked. Nothing could have come in or gone out that way. I even checked the fire escape but it was locked in a similar way.
I couldn't sleep the rest of that night.
As it turned out that was the scariest thing to happen in that loft. After that, I would hear footsteps and doors open and close all the time, and a few other not so scary things. That place convinced me and quite a few others that these things were real. I ended up living there for three years and would have stayed longer but the place got sold and the new owners wanted to move into the loft themselves.
They only lived there 2 months before moving out....the pu**ies
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130points
#9
In 1975 I was flying an Army helicopter doing night training in Black-out conditions near Fort Hood Texas. I was flying down a draw with a small seasonal creek in it which was the new paradigm, designed to mask the aircraft from Russian radar. I was at the controls, my co-pilot on the map. We were low and slow tree top to tree top. Suddenly I had the compelling sure knowledge that I must do an emergency climb, which I did climbing almost vertically. As I pulled the guts out of the aircraft and with my nose pointed up to the stars in my chin bubble I observed the leaves of a cottonwood tree being pressed aside by the plexiglass of my chin bubble.. After a couple of seconds and now a few hundred feet above the canopy my co-pilot and I stared at each other with wide eyes and the knowledge we barely avoided death. "How did you see that f**king tree?" he asked me. I never did tell him that I didn't, because I have never known how to explain it. I went on to fly helicopters for thirty-seven years, accident free and I still can't explain what happened that night.
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126points
Psychologist Lee explained that seeing evil things portrayed on screen and the fact that they’re happening to someone else, not us, can even have a bit of a “comforting element” to it.
“It can take us on an emotional rollercoaster, have us trying to solve the puzzle and test our fear in a controlled way. The permission to explore evil is powerful, as we so rarely get the chance elsewhere, and in itself, it is healthy and normal in moderation," he noted how people can use these stories to explore the boundaries of their fear.
However, like with most things in life, too much can’t be good for you. "The challenge we face is the fact that consuming too much of this can desensitize us, and cause us to become less empathetic to the suffering of others, more fearful of our own environment, and potentially be more likely to use aggression ourselves. It can also cause us to be triggered by our own previous adverse experiences, make it harder to manage our own emotional balance, and increase our stress levels, so moderating our consumption is something we should have front of mind, even when we get embroiled in the latest series that is pulling us in.”
#10
When I was in uni I lived by myself, it was a nice little studio unit behind a house in a fairly decent area. I would honestly think nothing of walking places at night, there was a 24 hour MacDonald's and a 7 eleven that I would walk to, often between 12am to 3am since I was a massive night owl.
Well one day after finishing an essay at about 2 in the morning I decided I was hungry but didn't really have anything easy to cook so I decided to walk down to the 7 eleven and grab a pie or something. However as soon as I opened my door I was overcome by a suffocating feeling of fear, my heart started pounding, I started shaking, the works. Telling myself that this was ridiculous I walked out to the street with the intent to still go but that was as far as I got. I was terrified for no reason that I could understand, but no less intensely despite that. I ran back inside and ate dry cereal.
Later the next day I heard about a group of drunk guys that were causing havoc down near the intersection at the 7 eleven, they'd beaten up someone from my uni. Even though I can't explain it, I'm convinced something bad would have happened to me that night if I had ignored that feeling and gone anyway.
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120points
#11
I worked at a small town pizza shop during my winter breaks in college. I was good friends with a married couple who picked up occasional shifts to supplement the income from their regular jobs. One time we were swapping spooky stories and they told me about one that had happened just a week earlier. The wife had been spending the evening visiting her sister way out in the country when a heavy snow storm rolled in. The roads were slippery and visibility was terrible as she was driving home. At one point it was so bad she didn't even see the railroad crossing until the lights started flashing and the gate almost crashed onto her hood. Luckily she managed to skid to a stop barely in front of the tracks right before the train came roaring by.
When she got home she was still shaken up and told her husband about the close call with the train and how the gate had almost crashed on the hood of her car.
The next morning her husband told her he wanted to show her something and they went driving out back towards her sister's house until they got to the railroad crossing.
All that was there was an old fashioned crossing sign. There were no lights and no gates.
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119points
#12
The house I grew up in was about 100 years old by the time my parents bought it. I lived there until I was 16. For as long as I can remember, I saw what I described as "a girl that was pink and see through". I always called her Pam. It's been 10 years since I lived in that house and I still remember her vividly. My dad got a bit weirded out when I would talk about Pam and finally when I was 13, my mom put me in therapy because Pam was still something I brought up regularly. In order to stop my parents from thinking I was crazy, I just stopped talking about Pam completely and went on with life. That was until my parents decided to put the house up for sale when I was 16.
Just two weeks before moving into our new house, I was sleeping, but was woken up by Pam standing in my doorway and pointing into the bathroom that was directly across the hall. All Pam said was "look, my mom." And when I looked to see who she was pointing at, I saw a woman hanging by a cord from the light fixture in the bathroom. I remember the woman looked as though she had been hanging there for a while, when all of a sudden the woman's boot fell off and I abruptly woke up. I ran into my parents room to tell them what happened, and my mom looked at me disappointed because I was taking about Pam again after having kept quiet about her for years. I concluded that it was just a bad dream and went back to bed with no other incidences.
Until a few days later. I was once again asleep, and dreaming that I was woken up by crying coming from the bathroom across the hall. I got out of bed and walked over to see what was going on. At that point, I saw the same woman that was hanging from the bathroom light fixture, sobbing and holding a very real little girl under the water in the bathtub. It was then that I realized that the little girl was the little pink see through girl I had seen my entire life. It was Pam. And she was not moving.
I immediately woke up and I was crying uncontrollably. I was 16 years old, and I ran into my parents room like a 5 year old, and jumped into bed with my mom (my dad was working at the time). I told my mom what had happened and my mom could see how upset I was and was trying to calm me down. At that same moment, the pink and transparent version of Pam walked through the door. I looked at my mom and just whispered "oh my god mom. She's in here" and I pulled the covers up to my neck and just looked at my mom terrified. My mom was speechless. At that point, Pam slowly walked up the side of the bed and began shoving me into my mom. I had never been touched by Pam before. I was screaming and crying and kept yelling "STOP TOUCHING ME!" And all that my mom could reply was "I'm not touching you!" As she was being pushed out of the other side of the bed. After what seemed like forever, Pam stopped and slowly walked out of the room. I cried myself to sleep, and my mom stayed awake to see what else would happen.
I never spent another night in that house. But, two weeks after we moved out completely, the house caught fire. The entire back side as well as the entire garage burnt. The official cause was "spontaneous combustion". The house that my family lived in for 25 years has since been bought and sold 8 times within 10 years. No one wants to stay in that house, and I really think that Pam is the reason why.
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114points
Psychologist Lee told Bored Panda that modern TV has “a range of psychological hooks” built into it to keep us glued to the screen. Things like cliffhangers at the end of an episode or the autoplay function to seamlessly move from one episode to the next create the conditions that make us want to consume more content. Or rather, they make it easier to do so.
"Watching the latest shows isn't a bad thing, entertainment can be a great way to relax, often starts great conversations and helps us to explore ourselves in the context of others. It is worth remembering that some TV as an addition to a modern well-lived life is a net positive, but as soon as it starts to invade your sleep, impact what you eat, and how much you move your body, it starts subtracting from the fundamentals that keep us in an optimal place as human beings," Lee said that we have to be mindful of how much time we spend in front of the screen, no matter how engaging the stories we see there might be.
#13
Sharing my mom's two stories that always gave me the chills:
1: When she was younger, her grandmother was staring out the window and the gates to the house were swinging back and forth (it was a hot summer day with no breeze). My mom asked her what she was looking at, and she replied that it was angels moving the gate and that they had come for her. She (grandmother) died that night.
2 involves my grandfather, who died from a brain tumor before I was born. After he died, my grandmother would hear a loud knocking at the front door every night around the same time, but when she would get up to check, no one was there. She thought it might just be neighborhood kids and didn't think much of it, until one night around the same time she heard the knocking, and then every framed picture on her walls came crashing down at the same time. She went to see her priest the next day, and after some talking, she realized her husband, who was blind as a bat, was buried without his glasses. Per the priest's suggestion, she went and buried the glasses next to his grave, and all the knocking stopped after that.
Make of those what you will!
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110points
#14
I dreamt I was being choked and woke up to find my own hands around my throat.
103points
#15
When I was a kid, my brother and I would get stuck with babysitting the neighbors kid; his name was Alex. Alex was really fond of my lego set that I had in the corner of my room--facing the window, he would play for hours (staying preoccupied) while my brother and I would play videogames in the living room.
So one night, when I fell asleep on the couch (while babysitting), my brother came to me and said, "Alex is under your bed and shaking.." I asked, "What's wrong with him?" My brother told me to follow him into the room and try to talk him back out from under the bed.
I go inside to find him on the verge of tears as he was trembling profusely under my bed. I asked Alex, "What's wrong? Why are you under there?" Alex whimpered, "Him..." while looking at the my sliding closet. As I walked toward the bed in order to help him out, he ran; he ran all the way back over to his house and waited on his front steps until his parents got home.
Now, my parents were out to dinner with his, and he explained the whole story in detail to both his parents and mine; his explanation sent shivers down my spine when my brother and I left the house to meet up with his parents and find out what happened.
My mom told me me that Alex was playing with my legos and hear a slight murmur from my closet, something that resembled a faint vocalization of, "come here." He said that he looked behind him and noticed the closet had a slight opening with light peering in from my lamp. He stared at the crack until he saw an eyelid open. He told us that there was a man in my closet. Alex then hid under my bed after he gave out a slight yelp (which attracted my brothers attention).
My family rushes back into my house and into my room. In horror, we find my closet door rocked open and a few things missing. My window had been left open, when it was previously closed, and a few things knocked over which had not been touched previously.
We still don't know what force we were reckoning after that evening. Thank god nothing more severe happened.
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90points
"If you notice yourself starting to delay your sleep, take shortcuts socializing, eating, or keeping fit to keep your TV company, or feel like it's in control of you, it's time to take a step back and build a routine that you can control while still enjoying your favorite shows in moderation. It can even be a lot of fun to take it more slowly and build up excitement and anticipation for the next episode!" Of course, this advice fits our love of all types of media and activities, not just TV. No matter how much you love scary stories and entertainment, don't forget to live your best lives to the fullest, Pandas.
#16
There was a small door that led to attic space in my bedroom (11 yrs old to 13) and it became habit that I would shut the door as I walked into my bedroom a couple times a week. I didn't think anything of it, just assumed my mom didn't close it all the way when she left it.
After a while I made the mistake of joking with her when she made a comment about me not picking up after myself, I said something like 'every night I have to close the attic door behind you, how about you shut it all the way when you're done?' She then informed me that she hasn't been in the attic in months. Asked my brother... nope. Asked my father... nope. So then I started to pay really close attention to it. Making sure it was closed in the morning, checking it after school, checking blaster dinner. Then head up to bed and... open.
After a couple months of wondering, studying, experimenting, I thought I'd see what happens if I just don't shut it. Opened the door before school and checked it after school, still ooen. Checked it after dinner, still open. Before bed, still open. Now I'm laying in bed, mind going crazy with the open door across the room. Decide to check it out so I roll over and focus on the black space into the attic... to see a face staring back at me. Bolt downstairs, wake parents, get ridiculed by brother, switch bedrooms w brother, move into new house about 6 months later (due to expanding household). New physics teacher and his wife bought our house.
I could've forgotten all about that event and chalked it up to me having an over-active mind. But then my senior year I discovered how awesome our physics teacher was. Became my favorite class and by far, my favorite teacher. End of senior year my friend and I took our VHS camcorder around town, doing mostly silly things, but then took it to my old house to see what they've done with the place. We got a very fun tour, I got to tell stories about all the projects my dad did that were still part of the house.
Then the wife leads us upstairs to show us the sewing room. I ask (jokingly), 'Notice anything strange in this room?' and her face goes blank. On camera, she asks what I mean and I try to shrug it off but end up saying something about the attic door. She confirmed that every time she comes up to sew, the attic door is open. She then tells us that the second day of being in the house, their dog (German Shepherd) had gone into the room but would not go back downstairs. He started barking and could not be consoled, and then jumped through the window, landing on the tin roof over the porch and then running off. The dog did not come back until the next day and has not stepped foot into the hallway that leads upstairs since.
I had the initial thought that I could show my parents and brother the story I had on film but I decided to just let it be.
'Attic' is the space in this house that runs parallel (like a cape cod) to the second floor, not above it.
I was 11 and 12 when this was going on so I did not immediately science it all out.
When I told my family that I saw a face, it was just my brother that ridiculed me. My father definitely would've checked it out for actual humans because one of the first comments he made was about a family that recently had a coin collection stolen from their house across the street.
This event itself was easy to shrug off because I could chalk it up to a lot of other possibilities, like the ones mentioned below. It wasn't until 5 years later that it became freaky. The look on the wife's face before she told us about the dog was very telling. Like something they decided to never put much thought into... now my story added depth to their experience and their story added depth to mine.
This did not make me a believer in paranormal. I told the story as a collection of details, not as a confirmation of ghosts. What it did do was make me never be able to be a nonbeliever.
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82points
#17
When I was younger my mom was dating this guy (who we will call JB) and after a few months he invited my mom, me, and my brother to go with him and his son (about my age) out to his lake house for the weekend. It was right on Lake Michigan but up in a more secluded area which was pretty awesome. Well we got up there and for one I already felt really creeped out. It was a smaller two (maybe 3 if you count the really big attic) story house that had the living room/dining room/kitchen on the first floor and had 2 bedrooms on the second floor.
His grandfather had helped to build the place with his (the grandfathers) dad and then he lived there for most of his life working as a tailor in the nearby town. We went up to the attic to get some beach toys because that's where JB kept all of that stuff so he didn't have to haul it every time he went out there. Well when we went up to the attic I noticed in the corner covered in some dust and cobwebs about 8 mannequins, some just upper torsos, and some full body. Not too out of the ordinary considering a tailor had lived there.
Me and JB's son slept down in the living room on the couch since there were no more beds, and near midnightish I heard on of the stairs squeak a few times. Figuring it was my mom coming to check to make sure we were asleep I told his son to be quiet and quickly turned the TV off and hid under the covers. After not hearing any noise for a few minutes I looked out from under the covers and saw three of the mannequins moving around in the kitchen. Like their body parts weren't moving but they were sliding around the kitchen.
I swore I was dreaming but was so terribly frightened I hid back under the covers with a small yelp and then heard the dragging on the floor coming closer and peaked out seeing one of them just a few feet from the couch. I hid back under the covers and shut my eyes tight hoping it would go away.
The next morning I got up and tried not to think about it, really really hoping it was just a bad dream but when we went back up to the attic to put the beach stuff back the mannequins were in different spots and weren't covered in cobwebs any more..... Don't believe me if you don't want to but it happened and I've been scared s**tless of mannequins ever since.
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78points
#18
Used to be a security guard on a campus that was a military fort since the Revolution. It was updated throughout the years and was last used in WWII, which by then the campus was bristling with artillery and earth/concrete bunkers, as well as many brick and mortar buildings.
When it became a college campus, the barracks, hospital, officer's house, everything was converted to classrooms and dorms.
There was one building on campus, a hotel where students learned bartending and hotel services, that was infamous for being haunted.
My shift was 11PM to 7AM, starting at midnight the last coworker left and I had the entire campus to myself. My job was to make sure everything was locked and lights were off, and to scare off any drunks or potheads trying to get into the old concrete bunkers.
But that hotel. It rarely had living guests.
I would go through the building and turn off all the lights, only to turn around an hour later and see a light on again.
I would stand in the hotel lobby - after patrolling and confirming I was alone - and hear things moving on the floor above me.
I heard a chain dragging across the room above me, then a distant scream.
One night I had another officer with me for once, and as we were talking in the lobby the temperature dropped and we heard a little girl giggling.
In the basement, I would see shadows dart across the conference room.
However, the biggest thing that made me "nope out" was when I was in the lobby and looked up the staircase. I saw a woman's legs with black shoes walk from the right to left on the next floor up... And straight through a wall.
Keep in mind that's just the hotel. It used to be the officer's quarters; stories say an officer died if the flu around WWII, and before that a man was executed during the Revolution for being accused of being a spy. Like most hauntings, however, I do not know how much truth the stories hold.
I didn't even talk about the voices I heard in the basement of the old hospital, or the shadow people wandering the colonial graveyard in the middle of the campus.
Footsteps following me in the darkness faces staring at me from the bunker ruins (all of which I would check and make sure it wasn't just kids trying to hide from me)...
Ah, I miss that place.
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73points
#19
Several years back I was with some friends of mine taking care of a neighbor's cat. Friend 1 (call her N) was the person who was actually in charge of this, but asked Friend 2 (A) and I to come with her. We didn't really understand why, but she said that the place just gave her weird vibes, and that was good enough for us to come with her.
We get into the house and it's an old place, really creaky and already kind of... off, I guess. N shows us where the cat's food dish is and she asks A to get the food from the other room. N then asks me to find the cat. I go off, looking around the house for this cat. I'm not exactly a cat person, so I really wasn't looking so much for the cat but looking around the place. There's all the things you'd expect in an elderly lady's house, knitting stuff, old pictures, paintings, etc. Nothing really that out of the ordinary.
By this time A had gotten the cat food and the two of them were waiting for me to come back with the cat. The lady had given us specific instructions about feeding the cat, making sure it was there and stuff. I go back to the kitchen where the food dishes were and tell them that I've checked the entire first floor and upstairs, but I can't find the cat. A then asks if I've checked the basement, to which I say no. N leads us over to the basement, opens the door and turns on the light. It already looked sketchy as hell, and I wasn't gonna go down there. I say this, and N agrees. A shrugs her shoulders and starts going down the stairs. This is when s**t goes down.
To the day, N and I swear we saw the same thing. People have tried to convince me it must have been something else, but I know what I saw.
A's walking down the stairs and this lady appears in the doorway N and I are standing in. She's dressed in a long white dress and is extremely pale, and she seems to have this glow around her. She takes a step down towards A and looks back up at N and I. She brings her finger up to her lips like she's telling us to be quiet, then turns around and pushes A down the stairs. Hard. A goes flying down the stairs, screaming. N and I are frozen in place, chills going through our body. A lands at the bottom and turns around and sees the lady. The lady smiles and walks past N and I and disappears. A gets up slowly, clearly in pain. She gets up and turns around, asking if she has any bruises on her back.
There were two dark handprints on her back.
N and I nodded our heads and said we'd show her after we got the hell out of there. We decided f**k the cat, we're not coming in this god damn house ever again.
To this day I have no explanation for that. N and I swear we saw the same thing.
TL;DR- Taking care of an elderly lady's cat leads to a friend being pushed down the basement stairs by a ghost lady.
We get into the house and it's an old place, really creaky and already kind of... off, I guess. N shows us where the cat's food dish is and she asks A to get the food from the other room. N then asks me to find the cat. I go off, looking around the house for this cat. I'm not exactly a cat person, so I really wasn't looking so much for the cat but looking around the place. There's all the things you'd expect in an elderly lady's house, knitting stuff, old pictures, paintings, etc. Nothing really that out of the ordinary.
By this time A had gotten the cat food and the two of them were waiting for me to come back with the cat. The lady had given us specific instructions about feeding the cat, making sure it was there and stuff. I go back to the kitchen where the food dishes were and tell them that I've checked the entire first floor and upstairs, but I can't find the cat. A then asks if I've checked the basement, to which I say no. N leads us over to the basement, opens the door and turns on the light. It already looked sketchy as hell, and I wasn't gonna go down there. I say this, and N agrees. A shrugs her shoulders and starts going down the stairs. This is when s**t goes down.
To the day, N and I swear we saw the same thing. People have tried to convince me it must have been something else, but I know what I saw.
A's walking down the stairs and this lady appears in the doorway N and I are standing in. She's dressed in a long white dress and is extremely pale, and she seems to have this glow around her. She takes a step down towards A and looks back up at N and I. She brings her finger up to her lips like she's telling us to be quiet, then turns around and pushes A down the stairs. Hard. A goes flying down the stairs, screaming. N and I are frozen in place, chills going through our body. A lands at the bottom and turns around and sees the lady. The lady smiles and walks past N and I and disappears. A gets up slowly, clearly in pain. She gets up and turns around, asking if she has any bruises on her back.
There were two dark handprints on her back.
N and I nodded our heads and said we'd show her after we got the hell out of there. We decided f**k the cat, we're not coming in this god damn house ever again.
To this day I have no explanation for that. N and I swear we saw the same thing.
TL;DR- Taking care of an elderly lady's cat leads to a friend being pushed down the basement stairs by a ghost lady.
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68points
#20
October 20th, I came home from class at around 11:30 and no one else was home. I hung out at home for a bit and at 2:30 I was overcome with sleepiness. Being the bum that I am, I laid down in my bed and set a timer on my phone for a 20 minute nap.
I fell asleep quickly and after around five minutes I was woken up by my bedroom door opening and had a split second of panic before my dog jumping up onto my bed and laying down next to me. I fell back asleep.
After another 5 minutes of sleep, I instantly jolted awake because I was certain there was someone standing next to my bed, behind me. I assumed it was my mother, who would likely be pissed that I was sleeping in the middle of the day. I woke and turned around in one movement and there was no one there. Weird.
I checked my phone and had another 8 minutes of sleep left. I went back to sleep only to be woken by my phone ringing. It was my mother. She said that my great-aunt, who had been in the hospital after a stroke-like event for a week, had died around one o'clock.
My mom then said she knew my aunt was going to die today because she had seen a wraith (a sort of ghost, usually warning of someone dying) that morning, my mom is Scottish and very superstitious but I don't believe in any of that. She said that when she woke up that morning to take my brother to school, she went in my room to see if I was still asleep, she saw a wraith standing next to my bed.
My brain s**t itself.
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64points