We as humans have spent countless hours working hard to answer as many of life’s questions as we can. We know how far away the Sun is, why the sky appears blue, and we’ve created vaccines to prevent many deadly diseases. But no matter how hard we try, we’ll never have all the answers.
Reddit users have recently been sharing chilling stories of the most unsettling things they’ve ever witnessed that they just could not explain, so we've gathered their creepiest tales down below. Enjoy reading these stories that might have you wondering if ghosts and aliens are actually real, and be sure to upvote the ones that will keep you from sleeping tonight!
#1
Shortly after my mother passed away I was going through and organizing her belongings in her room. I was talking out loud as if I were talking to her. There were some boxes with family photo albums I’d been looking for that I hadn’t been able to find and it was really worrying me. I was sitting on the floor and said aloud “where did you leave those albums, mom?” Very slowly, her closet door opened on its own. A slow, creaking movement from nearly totally closed to halfway open. I was as terrified as I’d ever been in my life… I froze and didn’t move, but I looked at exactly eye level and there was a cardboard box labeled “Albums” in my mothers handwriting on the lower shelf of the closet.
I am not a religious or even spiritual person, and I thought that there might be some imbalance in the hanging of the closet door. I went back to the door many times and tested it by wiggling it back and forth and leaving it in different positions but it’s never moved that way since.
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390points
#2
I was in my 6th grade and going through the stored stuff (looking for old books, letters, scrapbooks...)in the dilapidated part of my ancestral home .
I swear I could see my great great grandfather's brother (whom I had seen only in old photos and had died very young) from outside the window yelling at me to get out. I got scared, ran out and the whole roof came crashing down
I swear I could see my great great grandfather's brother (whom I had seen only in old photos and had died very young) from outside the window yelling at me to get out. I got scared, ran out and the whole roof came crashing down
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324points
To learn more about how this conversation started in the first place, we reached out to the Reddit user who posed the question, "People who have seen something they could never explain, what was the thing?" Lucky for us, he was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda.
The OP, Jacob, shared that he's a big fan of some of the paranormal subreddits but found them to be "very pro or con; in singular direction of the subforum." So he thought, "Hey, why not ask it as a general question and see what people say?"
#3
Not me, but my dad.
When I was younger, my biological mom and her husband kidnapped me and took off to another state. My dad said that he was finally starting to accept that he may never see me again after nearly a year of searching, and then one day when he was on a walk, this little girl came up to him and asked
"Are you looking for a little girl?"
He looked at her, confused, and she just turned around and pointed up the block at a group of kids playing, and said,
"She's right there!"
He walked closer, passed the girl, to try to get a better look and saw me in the group. He turned around to figure out what the little girl's deal was, and she was just gone, without a trace. Turns out my bio mom and her husband had come back to visit family for whatever reason.
I used to call bs because the story is just so insane, but throughout the years, it's the one story of my dad's that never changed. Not one detail. He's told it so many times that I can recite it word for word, and he's always so f*****g awestruck when he tells it; like I can almost *see* him racking his brain, searching for the most logical explanation. I was ~2-3 when it happened, and I'm now 26. He still can't piece it all together to this day
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318points
#4
Was talking on the phone to my dad in the garden, about 15 years ago. Saw an orange light slowly come up over some trees behind my house then take off straight up at a ridiculous speed. Stood there in silence and so did he.
Explained to him what I’d just seen and he said he’d just seen the exact same thing. He was over 100 miles away in Manchester at the time.
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234points
We were also curious if Jacob had ever seen anything he could not explain with his own eyes. As it turns out, that's actually one of the reasons he started this conversation. "I've seen lots of unexplainable things and have gone to Reddit in the past to see if others have experienced something similar or had the answers!" he shared with Bored Panda.
"One particular unexplainable [experience] for me was what I would consider multiple shared encounters in a 'haunted' house," the OP says. "Loud footsteps, things moving, hearing breathing when no one's around. Me and my roommates in university went through the list of how to explain it. We were able to put an X beside all the known possibilities, and it left us all questioning our sanity a little bit."
#5
I think I was 14 at the time, living in a nice part of a very busy city. I woke up, had breakfast and waited for my parents to come downstairs. They didn’t come. I looked for them but couldn’t find them, couldn’t find my sisters either. I went outside an there was no one. Literally zero people in an incredibly busy area on a weekend. I panicked fully. I looked everywhere for people but they just weren’t there?? I fully freaked out thinking everyone disappeared. I even checked if there was something on tv about. There was live tv with people so i calmed a bit, other people still existed. I think it was around afternoon when I stopped looking around and walked home. When I got home my parents and sister were luckily there. They insisted they were in and around the house all day and I even saw them at breakfast, I broke down crying because it was simply not true. To this day I swear people disappeared for half a day. After my break down we went for icecream and my city was busy again, hundreds of people doing their thing. I have no clue what the f**k happened but I feel gaslighted by life.
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216points
#6
I was visiting home, and my mom, my dad, and I decided to go to my maternal grandfather's grave to pay our respects. We have a tradition where for the first 10 years after a person's death, a cross has to stay over their grave, otherwise the person might have a hard time crossing to whatever place comes after you die. He's been dead for 7 years, so my dad checked that the cross was sturdy and didn't need to be propped up or anything. We all checked it. It was definitely not going anywhere. About a week later, we had a wind storm, and after that, I started waking up in the middle of the night because I felt like someone was shaking me awake. This kept up for almost 2 weeks before I had a dream that my grandfather was sitting on the edge of my bed and he asked me to go to his grave and fix the cross because it had fallen. I told my parents about this and we all had a laugh about it. The dreams kept up though, at a disconcerting frequency because I was starting to be exhausted all the time from a lack of sleep. My dad and I, on a whim, went back to my grandfather's grave. Lo and behold, the cross had been knocked down. Gatekeeper said it probably got knocked down in the storm. We picked it up and I stopped seeing my grandfather in my dreams.
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200points
As far as what Jacob thought about the responses his post received, he shared that he was "blown away by the sheer amount" of replies. "There's so many interesting ones," he told us. "What I really enjoyed, overall, was the scope and how the Reddit community does what they do! Many potential answers were shared to explain the unexplainable. And in some cases, [people that have witnessed] things that are just so strange they are isolating could find others to relate to!"
#7
My ex-boyfriend is a diagnosed schizophrenic and he often told me about the things/people he saw and heard. One summer, on several late nights, he kept seeing a big, dark “creature” in the middle of the road on the way to drop me off home. He’d stop the car in a panic and wake me up (I’d always fall asleep on the way home) and tried to get me to see this creature. I never saw anything so I told him it was probably his schizophrenia. Well, on one night I stayed awake on the drive home and I saw the damn creature in the road. It had the body of a huge bear, long horse-like legs, it didn’t seem to have a neck, it was blacker than night, and had a glowing white Cheshire grin. I said, “what the f**k is that?” And my boyfriend said “see, I’ve been trying to tell you.” We watched it cross the road and disappear in thin air. That was the last time he and I ever saw the thing.
This was about 10 years ago.
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192points
#8
Image the situation. Me, 13 years old girl walking with my dog in fresh snow. Really fresh 5 cm of snow. No one around. I see big (really really big) black dog. I look at my dog. My dog is terrified and trying to get home. We run home. I wait for 10 minutes and go check that dog (I was stupid, yes). There are no dog footprints. None at all. On fresh fresh snow. Only footprints of me and my dog. I checked all area - nope, nothing. It wasn't hallucination. My dog nearly peed when he saw that black gaint dog.
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181points
When it comes to how common experiences like this are, Jacob supposes that unexplainable events happen all the time. "The question is how often is it explainable with a little digging or help from others," he added with a laugh. "I know there are a few down right strange things I've witnessed. Some [eventually] made sense, while others were just way out there, and I may never truly understand them. I think lots of people just black those experiences out as one offs because they didn't make sense." But Jacob guesses that those who have experienced "truly impactful moments, or [those who are] intrigued by those one offs, would see those oddities more often!"
#9
not seen, but felt/heard.
was 14, sat at my computer picking/biting my lips, which my dad always hated. someone pulled my hair (as he always did to get me to stop), and said my name.
my dad died when I was 13.
173points
#10
I fly helicopters for a living. I was working on a powerline one year and was going back to our landing zone and noticed an opening in the trees what appeared to be a leg. I came back and tried to get as low as I could into the clearing, thinking, it was a person, it was a full grown cow that had been completely skinned. There were no farms around and the animal didn’t appear to be cut up in anyway. I went back to the landing zone picked up one of my Ground crew members and flew back with him just so he could verify that I wasn’t crazy. The flight back, we were both kind of in awe because we have no idea how that animal got to where it’s at. Even more so that it had no skin on its entire body, it looked like a perfect cow sans skin.
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160points
Finally, the OP added that he really enjoyed getting such a fascinating conversation rolling. "I haven't even had the opportunity to read all the responses, and I'm sure I will get hours more of interesting and educating moments out of it. I hope the rest of the community likewise enjoyed the share!"
#11
One night, years after high school and I'd gotten married, I had a vivid and very sad dream about the first boyfriend I ever really loved. We were 15 and 16, broke up about 3 years later because he really got into drugs. I had this dream maybe 9 years after that.
I dreamed I was walking down a crowded sidewalk in some big city and I bumped into him going the direction I just came from. He was crying and he asked me for help. I can't remember if the dream changed then or I woke up but it was just that little snippet of seeing his face. It was so clear. I still remember how his beautiful blue eyes looked.
I don't know why I waited a couple more years to call his mother and ask about him one day when I recalled that dream for some reason. But I did call her.
It turns out he had died in a freak accident around the time I had that dream.
He had a car in his garage that he was working on. He had climbed on the hood for some reason, to do something, and he fell. Broke his neck and it was fatal.
Now I'm always sad and a little creeped out every time I think of that dream. Probably always will be.
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160points
#12
My best friend died unexpectedly in a motorcycle accident, some lady pulled out in front of him in front of the police station in our town. A little context, he was a great guy, never crazy on a motorcycle, just had a baby, and baby momma wouldn't let him see her/sleeping around. The lady who hit him was the daughter of a wealthy politician in town, and not only didn't get charged with anything, but was gone before the ambulance even got there. Assuming she had drugs in the car or whatever, they let her go to prevent her going to jail.
He wasn't ready to die.
Cut to his funeral. His family was taking photos at the visitation, and he's standing in the background. Clear as day. White skin, hair fixed and same outfit he is wearing in his coffin, 10 ft away from where the picture was taken. Still gives me the chills looking at it. That was almost 10 years ago.
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152points
We hope you're enjoying scrolling through these fascinating and somewhat unsettling stories, pandas. Keep upvoting the tales you can't seem to explain either, and then if you're interested in checking out another Bored Panda article featuring stories of perplexing events, we recommend reading this list next!
#13
When I was like 10 or so, it was storming in the middle of the night. I was asleep in my bed and I was having a dream that I had to pee. If felt so real that I work up and ran to the bathroom. Got in the bathroom realized I didn't actually have to pee. There was a loud crack and what felt like an explosion. Lightning had struck a tree and it fell through the roof into my bedroom.
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148points
#14
A tree fell in front of us while we were driving. It almost killed us. Moments later a group of men dressed in nice clothes just happened to have chainsaws in their car, that was black and black tinted windows. They started cutting up the tree. We quickly turned around and said "nope". I tried to tell myself that it was just Mormons, who happened to have chainsaws in the back of their car. I called my mom the other day to see if she still remembers that incident and she does.
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146points
#15
In college my wife (girlfriend at the time) had a nightmare that her pet iguana (at home with her father) had frozen to death after being left outside. She woke up sobbing and that woke me up. I calmed her down and told her it was just a dream. We both eventually got back to sleep.
The next morning her father called to say that her pet iguana had been left outside overnight and had frozen to death.
This wasn't a recurring dream or worry for her. This was the only time it happened. Nether of us can explain the events without the aid of religion or one in a trillion coincidence.
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146points
#16
My nephew was pointing at a picture on the wall saying “boo!” and laughing, then the picture fell onto the desk below it.
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136points
#17
I got sleep paralysis and then I was pulled off my bed
I was home alone.
I couldn't move but I could see, and I didn't see anything.
I don't go into that room anymore.
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130points
#18
When I was 18 years old, I was driving home from a friend’s house with another friend. We were on the highway doing about 110kmph (70mph) and made this trip often. It’s a big highway between two Towns, so just fields either side. Something on two legs ran alongside my car. I saw it in the rear view mirror and out my side window. It was not a kangaroo, it was human like. Had long arms and obviously extremely fast. My friend saw it too and then it just went off the road back into the grass. Neither of us could explain it.
125points
#19
A voice sounding like my friend's sister calling out his name from a tree line in a park, me and friend were walking home near the middle of the night, both of us heard it. He was called out 3 times.
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114points
#20
I was walking along a park sidewalk blowing off grass clippings. Got under some pine trees and through a break in the canopy an 8-10 pound rock came tumbling out of the sky, bounced and chipped the sidewalk and rolled down into a creek. Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.
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111points