57 Creepy True Ghost Stories To Never Feel Alone Again

"I didn't know that's what it was called until much later. I was living in a house in Laguna Beach that had been there since the 1920s. In it's history, it had been a speakeasy, a brothel and a house for smuggling illegal immigrants.

One day, my new wife and I were having an argument. I can't even recall what it was about. She walked down the block to get a cup of coffee and cool off, and I was alone in the house. The way the place was built was incredibly haphazard. There was a bedroom and living room on one side, then a bathroom with two entrances. On the other side of the bathroom was a hallway that had windows in one side and two bedrooms on the other. From my bedroom, I could look across the hall into the bathroom, then through the bathroom and down the other hall. I was standing at my dresser, and I just noticed movement out the corner of my eye, and looked down there. There was... and honest to god, this gives me goose bumps just typing it, 17 years later, a black figure. It was maybe three feet tall, and it was only vaguely humanoid. it looked like black scribbles, like someone had scribbled a human shape, but the scribbles moved, like electricity arcing, that's the best way to describe it.

There was no sound that I could remember. I distinctly remember when I saw it I wasn't afraid, just like, WTF? Then it noticed me looking at it. I can't say it turned around, it just, focused on me I guess. THEN I was scared. I didn't move, didn't scream, nothing, I was just frozen, because it just fucking came at me, it RUSHED down the hall towards me. I have no idea what it intended, but as soon as it entered the bathroom, the door closest to me just SLAMMED shut on it. I screamed. I yelled for my wife. She wasn't home. I went the fuck outside, into the daylight, and didn't go back in until she got home about 10 minutes later.

I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe I saw something supernatural, but I know I saw something. I don't know what it was."

"My house was built in 1904. It is a single family home, wood frame setting on a concrete block foundation. I have been living here for about 12 years. Of all the weird things that my siblings and me have seen or heard in this house this one event is my favorite. This happened to my brother. About ten years ago my brother and his best friends had started a garage band playing mostly "Spanish rock," alternative music but in Spanish. His friends could only get together on Sunday afternoons. They would practice into the early evening, and they would usually call it quits by 8 pm. This was the time I usually showed up and went to bed, cause I worked the graveyard shift.

This happened in late fall, so the days were getting shorter, they had just finished a long session when the decision to head to someone else house came about. My brother handed his car keys to his buddy so they could load up the equipment. Everyone had filed out of the basement, but the tricky part was that they needed to walk all the way to the back of the basement, up the back stairs, through the kitchen doorway, down the hall into the living room and out into the front porch. Everyone was outside sitting in my brother's truck waiting for him. My brother was walking up the back stairs when he remembered that he had left his pancakes in a to go container sitting on a speaker in the basement. He made the decision to go back. Now the basement is not clean, with full sight lines, there had been partitions made, and the boiler and main heating unit are right smack in the middle. So after my brother walks back, he is about to retrieve his food container, when out of the corner of his eye he sees it.

It is a shadowy figure, right at his peripheral vision, this feeling of dread and uneasiness washed over my brother. We had been taught that if you are in the presence of a spirit or ghost and you felt a bad vibe, to say quick prayer or to cuss at it. My brother chose the latter, he basically just told it "hey fuck you, I don't have time for this shit".

My brother started to walk to the back of the basement and briskly up the stairs, closing doors and turning off lights as he was walking out. The last light switch is on the opposite side of the front door...luckily the door was open and the light from the street lamp was flooding the living room with its amber light. My brother said he felt something at his back, but at no point did he turn around. As he flicked the last switch the living room went dark, as did rest of the house. As he stepped out he pulled on the door closing it behind him, still holding his food container in one hand he jogged down the few porch steps. He walked towards the front gate...our house resides far from the main street, essentially having a large front yard but no rear garage. As he closed the gap between himself and his friend-laden truck he kind of smiled and thought things over in his head, mad at himself for spooking out when there was no reason.

He climbed into the drivers side of the truck, putting on his seat belt and getting ready to pull out of the parking spot directly in front of the house, when one of his friends asked "Hey wait what about your brother, isn't he coming with us?" My brother answered, "What do you mean? He went to work early tonight, he is already gone, do you see his car anywhere?"

The next question they asked "So then who was walking behind you when you were leaving the house? "

“A few years ago, I moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Melbourne, Australia,” they went on to recall. “It was my first time living on my own. The apartment block had been built in the 1930s. I’d been there for a few months when I came home from work one day and went into the bathroom. I saw something strange: A wooden board, which had covered a hole in the ceiling that led to a small attic space, lay fractured in two pieces on the ground. I examined the pieces. The board was an inch thick, and it would have taken Bruce Lee to break it. I thought the landlord had sent someone to work on the attic. I was frozen stiff with fear. Someone is up there for sure, I thought.

I emailed pictures to the landlord, asking if anyone had been there (with an undertone of annoyance, since she hadn’t warned me). Her reply read, ‘Please call me as soon as you are able to.’ I called, and she explained that her last two tenants had said the same thing happened. She promised to replace the board, and she did.

A month later, I woke up one night around 4 a.m. My body was covered in goose bumps. It felt like someone was rubbing his or her hands on me. Everything was silent, but then I heard a dragging sound coming from above my bed. It was as if someone was pulling a sack of potatoes. I froze, convinced someone was up there. There is no way an animal could make that sound. After five minutes, I worked up the courage to turn on the light, armed myself with a cricket bat and walked to the bathroom.

That’s when I saw that the new board covering the hole was broken in two! I felt sick. The dragging sound had stopped. But I heard something else: whispering. The sound was clear and coming from the attic. It sounded like children’s voices, and I could hear one sentence repeated over and over: ‘It’s your turn … It’s your turn …’

I switched on every light in the apartment to make things feel normal. It was 5 a.m. and dark outside. I watched TV to try to unwind. Then a fuse blew. My pet budgie, Dexter, whom I kept in the kitchen, usually never made a sound at night, but he started squawking like he was being strangled. I’d never heard him make those sorts of noises—he was screaming. I grabbed my car keys, ran out, sat in my car and waited there until the sun came up.

When I saw people walking their dogs, this comforted me enough to go back in. The front door was open, but I figured I might’ve forgotten to close it when I ran out. I went to the kitchen to check on Dexter, but he wasn’t in his cage.

I felt sick again. All my windows were closed, so I looked everywhere inside. When I walked to the bathroom, I heard splashing. Dexter was half drowned in the toilet! I took him out, washed him and dried him. I was so confused. At 8 a.m., I called the landlord and gave her a watered-down version of the night. ‘Oh, wow, you heard the whispering too!’ she said.

I stayed in that apartment for another 18 months. I heard the whispering on a few occasions, and twice the board covering the hole in the ceiling moved. Although I live elsewhere now, the landlord recently called. She said that her new tenants had begged to speak with me about some of the stuff that’s been going on there. Forget it—it’s their problem now.“

“The ambulance company that I used to work for had a ‘haunted’ ambulance: rig 12,” recounts Reddit.com user Zerbo. “A lot of EMTs had stories about it, but I never put much stock in paranormal stuff. That is, until I had my own experience with rig 12.

My partner and I were working in a rural community at 3 a.m., and it was pitch-dark and completely quiet. We were both dozing; I was in the driver’s seat, and she was in the passenger seat. I woke up to a muffled voice, but I thought my partner was talking. I told her I was trying to sleep and closed my eyes. I distinctly heard a male voice say, ‘Oh my God, am I dying?’ followed by a few seconds of heavy breathing. My partner and I sat up straight and looked back into the patient compartment, where it sounded like the voice had come from.

Things were quiet for a couple of seconds; then we heard the click of an oxygen-bottle regulator and a hiss, as if it was leaking. I turned on the lights, and we ran out of the rig. I thought a transient might have climbed in while we were asleep, so we opened the rear doors. No one was there. I checked the oxygen bottles; neither was opened. We didn’t sleep much after that.”

"My grandfather told me this story about how one time he was sitting in a chair in front of the house, when he heard his wife repeatedly calling him from inside the house. The thing is, my grandmother passed away a few years before that. But he told me that the voice was so pressing that he actually got up to look inside the house, and as soon as he got inside he heard a loud crash behind him and turned around to see that the chair he has been sitting in moments ago had been crushed by the cast iron gutter that fell on it. If he hadn't come inside the house he would have probably been seriously injured. I don't know if it's paranormal or not, but every time I think about it it sends chills down my spine."

"When my daughter was like 3-ish, she always slept in the pitch black. No TV on for light, no night light, nothing. One night when putting her to bed, she said "Mommy, make sure the curtain is closed, I don't like to see daddy's shadow walk around the room". She wanted the room so dark so she couldn't see the shadow. This freaked me out. Her dad never goes in her room at night, and he's the only man in the house. That room's closet always freaked me out, like I would get a vibe that I was being stared out by a guy in a military uniform.
Then one day we went into the attic to store winter clothes away, and found an old army duffle bag filled with some guys military stuff. Really freaked me out. We moved not long after that."

"Last night a friend rushed me out of the house to catch the opening act at a local bar’s music night. After a few drinks I realized my phone wasn’t in my pocket. I checked the table we were sitting at, the bar, the bathrooms, and after no luck I used my friend’s phone to call mine. After two rings someone answered, gave out a low raspy giggle, and hung up. They didn’t answer again. I eventually gave it up as a lost cause and headed home. I found my phone laying on my night stand, right where I left it."

“One night when I was 10, I was woken up by my bedroom door opening, followed by someone sitting on my bed,” Reddit.com user kmendo4 recalls of a childhood brush with a very persistent ghostly apparition. “I felt my leg grazed and the bed sink under a person’s weight. It’s just Mom, I thought, and I opened my eyes.

It was not my mom. I found an eyeless boy—he had black, empty sockets—about my age sitting at the foot of my bed. He extended his hand, and in it was a little box. I was startled but reached out. He pulled back. I reached again and said, ‘Give it.’ Then I blinked, and when I reopened my eyes, he was gone. But I could still see the imprint where he’d sat on my bed.

Fast-forward five years. My girlfriend came over to do homework. After she finished, she took a nap while she waited for her parents. When they arrived, I tried waking her up. She opened her eyes suddenly, looking up at a corner where the wall met the ceiling. She pointed there and went back to sleep. I shook her again. She came to full consciousness, and I explained what she’d done. She looked haunted. ‘Up on the wall, I saw a little boy with no eyes. He was there, in a Spider-Man pose, staring at me.’ I freaked out and told her my story about the same kid.

Fast-forward another five years. I was with the same girlfriend, and we had a 2-year-old. We were living in my parents’ house, in my old room. My daughter started waking up at the same time every night, and she’d talk. After a while, I noticed she had almost the same conversation every night. I playfully asked her once whom she was talking to. She said, ‘It’s a little boy. He’s nice. He’s lost and looking for his mommy.’ My daughter’s nightly conversations continued until we got our own place later that year.”

“My neighbor Diane and I had a playful poltergeist for years, and we called it Billy. I’d come home and find something put in a weird place: milk in a cupboard, toilet paper in the fridge, laundry detergent in the bathtub. Diane once called to ask if Billy had been around, because she couldn’t find a gallon of milk. We finally found it outside on her back steps. And sugar… darn sugar! Every morning, my sugar bowl was empty.

When I’d had enough, I would point to Diane’s home and yell, ‘Go see Diane!’ Within five minutes, I’d get a call from her. ‘Thanks a lot,’ she’d say. He’d gone and pulled shenanigans at her place. This occurred for the entire two years we lived there. No one believed us—not even our husbands. My mother thought someone was stealing from us when we were sleeping or out of the house. My sister believed something was going on but didn’t know what. I still can’t explain any of it.”

One of the nation's most infamously haunted locations, the Stanley Hotel, is located in a remote area, only 70 miles from bustling downtown Denver, Colorado. Many have heard of it as it inspired Stephen King's blockbuster horror novel, The Shining.

In October 1974, Stephen King and his wife, Tabitha King, decided to take a trip from their home in Boulder to the adjacent resort town of Estes Park. They reserved a room at the Stanley Hotel only a few days before it closed for the winter. Who knew Room 217 would soon become the inspiration for one of Stephen King's most well-known books, which would subsequently be adapted by Stanley Kubrick into one of the most talked-about horror movies of the century? It all began with a nightmare in which King, helpless, watched as his little son was chased through the Stanley Hotel's hallway by a huge firehose. The firehose would ultimately triumph, wrapping itself around King's son like a giant snake and devouring him whole. King would awaken in a pool of his own sweat, running to his hotel window for a cigarette to calm his nerves down. Just a few years before The Shining would be finished, he would get the first inspiration for it there, gazing out into the solitude of the Colorado wilderness.

According to witness accounts, a terrible event in Room 217 during the hotel's formative years served as an early warning of the murky past that would accompany the Stanley Hotel for the remainder of its existence. One late night, as a snowstorm was approaching, the head housekeeper, Mrs. Elizabeth Wilson, was going around the hotel, igniting lanterns in case of a power loss. Meanwhile, the second floor was gradually saturating with combustible gas from a leak. An explosion rocked the hotel as Wilson entered room 217 and lit a match. The blast destroyed the room, the hallway, and the floor, plunging her into the dining area below. Surprisingly, Mrs. Wilson survived and recounted this story until the day she passed. However, many believe that Mrs. Wilson's ghost is still present in the room which caused her so much trauma. Guests in Room 217 have long reported seeing somebody move furniture around or turn on and off lights. Some unmarried couples claim that a cold force trapped between their sleeping bodies is evidence that Mrs. Wilson is still present.

Although much of Stephen King's setting for The Shining was made up, his depiction of the scariest hotel room was authentic. Room 217 and the Stanley Hotel's reputation continue to terrify, not only in the realms of film and literature but also in the real world. Would you risk staying in Room 217 today? Apparently, Room 217 has become Stanley's most requested accommodation, with reservations on the books for the next several Halloweens. So book in advance!

The creepy, old-fashioned porcelain doll with a Victorian appearance, red lips, rosy cheeks, and blue eyes, referring to Annabelle, may come to mind when one thinks of a haunted doll. However, it's unlikely that anyone still keeps one in their house. Unless that house is Warren's Occult Museum in Monroe, Conn. However, those dolls are not the only ones getting possessed.

Disney's Frozen Elsa doll, given as a Christmas 2013 gift in the Houston region, made headlines when it appeared to start acting paranormal. For two years, the doll was working as it was technically supposed to, reciting phrases from the movie and singing Let It Go when a button was pressed. In 2015, it started randomly alternating between English and Spanish languages.

The woman who purchased the doll claimed that, even with its switch off, the doll would start speaking and singing randomly. In December 2019, the family chose to get rid of the Elsa doll. Despite tossing it in the garbage, the family eventually discovered it hidden inside a bench in their living room weeks later. Following the discovery, Elsa started to speak and sing solely in Spanish, soon after which the family made another attempt to scrap the Elsa doll. The doll was double-bagged and put at the bottom of the garbage can, which was soon picked up by waste collectors.

The family left for a trip sometime later, but when they were back, the haunted doll was waiting in their backyard. In their last attempt, the family sent Elsa through the mail to a Minnesotan family friend, who fastened the possessed doll to the front bumper of his truck. According to the woman's most recent update in October 2020, the doll hasn't returned to Houston. Yet.

On July 7, 1905, Katy DeWitt James, then 29, and her 1-year-old daughter Lulu Belle boarded a train to visit her cousin. Several weeks passed, and there was no sight of Katy or her daughter. Her father hired private investigator Sam Bartell to find his daughter and granddaughter, and what the PI found was disturbing.

Instead of getting off where she was supposed to meet her cousin, Katy got off the train at Weatherford with a notorious pr*stitute, Fannie Norton. Witnesses claimed to have seen Norton take Katy and the baby for a short trip in the area near Deer Creek before returning with just the child, whom she abandoned at a farm before running away. When Bartell finally located Norton, she was brought into custody but soon poisoned herself.

Sometime later, the following August, a father who was fishing with his son near Deer Creek discovered the skeleton under a wooden wagon crossing. The skeleton was fully dressed. The skull was found three feet away with a bullet just behind the right ear. A .38 caliber revolver was also discovered nearby. It was concluded that the body belonged to Katy DeWitt James. It was left there after Norton slayed her the month beforehand.

Eighty years later, the wooden crossing was demolished, and a concrete bridge was built instead. It was promptly given the tragic moniker of Dead Woman's Crossing. People have claimed to have seen Katy as a blue light floating throughout the town and have heard a woman's voice searching for her kid and the sound of rolling wheels.

The infamous Kasha House of Kaimuki in Honolulu, Hawaii, built on two beds of lava rock near the intersection of 8th and Harding, is regarded by many as one of the island's most haunted locations. Although the house appears rather typical, the story behind it is anything but.

According to popular belief, the Kaimuki house is inhabited by a Kasha, a man-eating ghost from Japanese folklore. The Kaimuki house has hosted numerous families and couples over the years. Still, they have all had to flee because of terrible and perilous happenings inside the house.

In the original story, after hearing loud crashes and bangs from a recently moved-in couple's home, the neighbors suspected domestic abuse and informed the police. When they arrived, the couple told the police they were being attacked by an "invisible" force.

Another account goes that in 1942, police were called to the house when a woman called the police and kept repeating, "She's trying to kill my children." As soon as the police officers entered the home, they were powerless to do anything but watch in terror as an invisible force lifted, smacked, and threw the three kids across the room. According to locals and residents, the building has since been demolished and replaced by condos, but the evil energy is still present.

"I was 12 moving from OH to MI with my family. We are moving into a townhouse. My mother went to go get the keys from the leasing office. And my siblings and I stayed outside of the townhouse waiting for her. I decided to go up to the front door and play with the doorbell and knock on the door a lot. I wasn't expecting any trouble because no one was in there. However after doing it a bunch of times the door started to open. Reminding you: this is the door that was supposedly empty and locked. Hence why my mother went to go get the key in the first place.

The door opened and I saw an old white man looking down at me. He never said anything. He looked extremely peeved. His facial expression did not change. He had the most wrinkles I've ever seen on someone's face. And he looked extremely unhappy/annoyed. Ironically, he was dressed like Mr. Rogers (green sweater vest and khakis). I looked up at him and said, "I'm sorry. I didn't know anybody lived here."

After I said that to him he closed the door. My mother returned a few minutes later with the key. My siblings and I all went up to her panicking. I remember the first thing we did was yell "Mama Mama Mama!" when we saw her come back. We told her what happened. My mother had a look of fear on her face. Me and my siblings walked behind her as she walked up to the door. After she unlocked the door we saw that the inside was empty. There was no old man."

"One night, when I was maybe 10-12, I had trouble falling asleep. My bedroom was the entire top floor of our house with my bed and such being on the left side and storage closets and a play area being on the right. I was lying in bed when I heard a noise from the other side of the room and see a rocking horse begin to rock. It was sitting just outside one of the storage closet doors. It proceeded to rock its way halfway across the room and stopped dead under the ceiling light. At this point I was freaking out and just buried my head under my blankets and never peeked out again until morning.

It was all confirmed to not be a dream as the rocking horse was still in the middle of my room when I woke up. Furthermore, I got a stern reprimand from my parents for being up out of bed playing with my toys well past my bedtime. Their bedroom was directly below the storage closet/play area and had heard the creaking of the rocking horse shuffling across the room."

"One night as my girlfriend (now wife) laid in bed, we sensed something next to us. We normally lay on our sides but that night we were laying on our backs, faces towards the ceiling. Our eyes opened up and we turned our heads at the same time to the space next to her side of the bed. Whatever it was took off fast. It went from her side of the bed, right next to my wife, down the side of the bed, up over our feet area and out our closed bedroom door. What was really cool was the vertical window blinds adjacent to the bed where the spirit was swayed as the spirit went by them, kind of like if you ran your fingers on them from right to left. The energy was not only great enough for us to sense exactly where it was, but also great enough to cause physical movement of the vertical blinds. It happened so fast but we followed it with our heads and eyes as it moved out of our room, even though it was invisible, just pure energy. I think about this occurrence a lot. It’s not the first paranormal experience for me or my close family, but it certainly was the most impactful. After it exited the room my wife freaked the hell out and started to cry as she grabbed me for comfort. I was startled by what happened, but I never felt in danger or ill will from it. Whatever or whoever it was was just as startled from what I can tell. We haven’t experienced anything like it since."

In 1972, a 15-year-old girl was visiting some older mates who lived in a house on Ashley Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The older pals were smoking weed and encouraged the teenager to join, but she passed on the offer. However, despite being completely sober, the girl soon experienced the trip of her life.

After suddenly feeling a "strange, bone-chilling cold," the teenager went upstairs in the hope of warming up, but soon she was petrified to see a wall start moving, and what looked like a black shadow started coming toward her. Meanwhile, the friends downstairs started calling her as they saw posters popping off the wall, forming a pile on the floor. As soon as the teenager went downstairs, she saw a clear vision of a man's face that, as she soon found out, no one else saw but her.

Although the mates didn't see what the girl saw, they heard her say something that shook them in disbelief. As if she was possessed by something unearthly, not in her voice, she said: "The drugs and addiction were my fault, and I accept responsibility for that, but I was not that way deep down inside. I want to apologize to everyone involved for what I had done."

When the girl came back to herself and articulated the vision she saw to the guys, everything started adding up. The housemates explained that just some time ago, before they had moved into this house, a previous resident who perfectly matched the girl's vision had passed away from an overdose. Turns out, the man who perished had fallen into heavy narcotics use before his demise, which led him to destroy his relationship with his girlfriend.

The Dakota luxury apartment building, first built in 1884, can still be found near the intersection of W. 72nd Street and Central Park West. Until roughly 1890, The Dakota was not profitable, but by the early 1890s, there was a waiting list to board. Since then, it has attracted and captured many's interest as a structure of legendary proportions and famous guests. Today, it's perhaps best known as the spot where Mark David Chapman gunned down John Lennon in 1980. However, one of New York City's most well-known buildings is also one of its most haunted.

In the 1960s, construction workers claimed to have seen an apparition of a man's body with a small boy's face. Even nowadays, residents claim to see a young child dressed in period attire waving and smiling at them. Also, Yoko Ono, a Japanese multimedia artist, once witnessed Lennon's ghost playing the piano in her and her family's apartment. Apparently, he turned to her and said, "Don't be afraid. I am still with you." Even John Lennon himself, who was receptive to the paranormal, claimed he saw a UFO from one of the apartment's windows and countered the apparition of a crying woman walking down the halls of the building and gave her the name of the Crying Lady Ghost.

Jacqueline, a woman from Oklahoma, claims that even though her memories have become somewhat hazy with age, she still recalls having an imaginary friend when she was younger. Her grandparents, "Granny Junie" and "Pa Hank," as she called them, resided in a modest house with a nice backyard. When Jacqueline was visiting her grandparents' house as a child, she sat under a large tree and made daisy chains out of weeds. Jacqueline admitted that she vividly remembers sitting under the tree with her grandfather and him recounting her stories about his life and his memories of Prohibition. The only issue with this was that Jacqueline's grandfather died in 1981, and she was born in 1982. Jacqueline admitted that she never realized she was talking to a ghost. She also added that her family knew of the grandad's presence in the house.

"So, our oldest kid was about 4 years old and ever since he could speak he would complain about the wind in his bedroom, even when everything was closed up (windows, ventilation). When he started sharing his bedroom with his little brother, things got worse: his little brother (2 at the time) couldn't speak (speech delay), but would cry... A lot... As in: it was difficult to get him to sleep and he would wake up at least 5 times every night crying.

This went on for about a year when we moved because of work. We prepared for the worst case scenario, and expected little brother to even cry more. Surprise: he slept like a baby from the very first tight, never cried again.

After we lived in our new home for a couple of months (big brother was 5 now and little brother 3), we want for a walk in the park. Out of nowhere big brother starts talking: "Do you remember in our old house that I couldn't sleep? That was because if the wind..."

He paused for a little while and then went on: "Little brother always cried because of the wind. He was scared of the wind."

Another pause: "Yeah... The wind always wanted to play hide and seek with us and wouldn't let us sleep. He would also wake us up to play... I don't know if he was a boy or a girl: he had boy clothes, but had long hair."