50 Chilling Stories From People Who Have Seen Things They Couldn’t Explain

In eastern Kentucky when I was around 14 a friend and I were on a walk in the middle of the day when we realized there were two moons in the sky. We watched for around 15 minutes as one of the "moons" slowly shrink until it disappeared. 17 years later and my friend and I still talk about it.

I worked as an under-butler in a large Scottish castle in the early 2000s. One night, I was the only person in the house, and decided to throw a load of laundry in before bed. I walked down to service hallway, into the ironing room, and from there to the washing machine room. I got my laundry in, and then started to leave.

I turned the lights off in the washing machine room, and suddenly everything was black. The lights weren’t on in the ironing room. My first thought was “it’s weird that I didn’t turn the lights on in here when I came in, but they aren’t on so obviously I didn’t.” The ironing room had huge ironing tables the size of snooker tables, and as I started to walk through, I kept bumping into them. After a couple of times of bumping into them, I was suddenly filled with a terrible, accompanied, watched, spine-tingling feeling that something was there and not to look toward the sewing room (another room that came off the ironing room). I fumbled my way through the ironing room, back to the service hall in a panic. The hall lights were on and everything was fine.

That is the whole story. I didn’t see anything. However, there are some problems.

To this day, I am confident that I turned the lights on in the ironing room when I went in. It wasn’t possible to move through the room without bumping into things a bunch of times, as my exit demonstrated.

The light in the ironing room was controlled by a very large switch that made a loud clicking noise. I didn’t hear it click off when I was in the washing room.

In the days that followed, the family and the butler returned home, and I had forgotten about the entire incident. A week or so later, I suddenly remembered it happening, and said to the butler “I’ve never heard of any ghost stories at the castle. Are there any?” He kind of dismissively said “oh they say there is a white lady in the ballroom, and [room name redacted] is apparently haunted, but that’s it. Oh and they say the sewing room is haunted.” I kind of gasped and told the butler the story. He seemed fascinated. He told the family, and a couple of them agreed that the laundry room was unsettling.

I don’t believe in ghosts, and think it was likely an unfortunately timed electrical fault and an over-active imagination. Still, I’ll never forget how sudden and strong the feeling of a presence was when I was fumbling my way out of the ironing room.

2 missing hours

Setup: I used to be a home health aide for the disabled/elderly. I stayed overnights to help them get up, use the restroom, change, clean them, etc. I used to take care of a man named Mr. M.

We kept an old large clock alarm that chimed every hour. Every 2 hours we'd roll Mr. M over, and change his pads. We recorded everything that happened in a notebook by the clock.

Story: It was a usual day until around 2:00 am. I heard the chimes ring (twice) wrote down that I was going in, then went in, wrote what I did (changed his pads) wrote the time I got done, then went back to the kitchen where I sat every night, having my laptop set up to pass the time.

About 15 minutes pass, and I hear the clock chime again... 4 times. I look at my computer, thinking the clock was wrong, and no... 4:00 am. I look at the notes, no new notes. I write that I'm going in I go in to change Mr.M's pads... I walk in, and he looks at me and asks "Weren't you just in here?" I said yea, then went with changing his pads (they were dry, a rarity)

I still have no idea what happened to those 2 hours. It was like 2 hours passed in 15 minutes. And 3:00 was skipped completely.

I was watching a youtube series at the time, and my video would have ended in that 2 hours.

I have no idea to this day what the hell happened.

-
To those suggesting a time change/DST, this happened December 11th, 2016

In my old town house, the bedrooms had L-shaped door handles . I lived alone and it was a two story town house with the bedrooms upstairs. Had multiple nights where I’d be laying in bed watching YouTube videos on my IPad, when my door handle would twist and the door would slowly open. The first time, I thought someone broke in. Each subsequent time, I’d go through the town house and no one was there. The hallway light which was also the stair light, had a switch at the bottom of the stairs and top that controlled the same light. Multiple times while in bed, the light would turn on. So I’d get up, do a search of the entire town house. Nothing there. Then the TV would turn on in the living room at some point, and I’d wake up and walk downstairs to the tv being on. This went on for months and I eventually moved. Nothing like this occurs in my current apartment. But could never explain what was happening.

I live in an appartement on the 3rd floor in a pretty old building. A couple of months ago, my girlfriend went on a skiing trip, so I had to spend the nights alone with my cat, which I usually don't mind. My cat always sleeps on our bed, keeping guard like a dog would do. We have a security camera installed, pointed at my front door due to people breaking in a couple of weeks earlier. I woke up in the middle of the night because I heard loud and aggressive banging on my front door, I even felt the door shaking. My cat threw an anxious look at the banging door, and immediately jumped under the bed. I panicked, and figured that I was in a dangerous situation, alone in the middle of the night.

I walked towards the kitchen to grab a knife, because I was afraid someone was banging on the door with bad intentions. I opened the door and the hallway was quiet af. No lights on, no nothing.

I decided to call the cops, afraid of whoever or whatever did it still being in the building.

I immediately checked our security footage, and there is me, waking up in panick, grabbing a kitchen knife and walking up to the front door to find nothing but peace and quiet.

Creepy thing is that on the camera footage, there is no banging or loud noises at all, everything is quiet, just a normal night. I swear I heard all of it, even my cat did. Still creepes me out to this day.

A few years ago I was staying in Alabama with a friend. One day I was driving down a steep road in the rain and fog, it wasn’t quite night yet but it was getting dark. Within the blink of an eye there was a little girl on the side of the road walking towards my car and I thought I was about to hit her head on and she disappeared. I panicked and turned around and there was no one. I’ll never forget it because my brain just can’t make sense of it.

I was in Ghana, West Africa, and two people were arguing about family land or something like that. One of them removed his pants, sat down on his bare a*s and said, "if I'm lying, may I be struck by lightning," and he was immediately stricken by lightning. We all started running. I guess he was lying, It was the most bizarre thing I've ever witnessed. When I came back home I researched into African occult and beliefs but I still don't know or understand what that was. S**t still gives me nightmares.

When I was a student in Chemistry class, I heard a beaker break behind me. I jumped, but nobody else reacted. A few people were looking at me weird. It turns out that nothing broke and I was just hearing things. 30 seconds later someone dropped and shattered a beaker behind me...

I spent a year wondering if I had some weird undiscovered super power.

Short version : 14 years old, pretending to sleep at a friends house and instead walking around the city (Colorado Springs, Colorado ) at around 3am , and suddenly for about 2-3 minutes it’s bright as day across the whole city. I could clearly see mountains probably 5 miles away. And then poof , back to dark.

There was no obvious source of the light.

That was around 35 years ago. Still have no clue what it was.

Edit: (surprised this post got any attention, also amazed at how many others had very similar experiences).

Agree with the feedback suggesting a meteorite is the most likely explanation. It was not a cloudy night so I think electrical ground source bouncing off clouds is less likely.

Those suggesting iridium satellites , this was mid to late 80’s so I don’t think they launched yet.

And yeah, there’s a ton of military stuff in the area , NORAD , the Air Force Academy , Peterson AFB and I think a few others were mentioned. I think these are less likely than a meteorite because of how far up and down the mountain range I could see.

Also folks mentioning a meteorite probably wouldn’t last 2-3 minutes. I think my time perception could be off. I froze up and just stared at the basin for of the city and the very prominent mountains for however long it was. It *felt* like a few minutes , but maybe it wasn’t?

The odd thing with any explanation is that the light source was clearly on my side of the Rocky Mountains (the whole front range was visible) , so the source seems like it had to be from above; yet I couldn’t see any point of light in the sky where intuition says it had to be.

Still , i suppose the have been nestled behind some geography that blocked my view but didn’t block it casting light on the basin of the city/mountain range. That seems plausible.

This happened like a week ago. I went back home to my country for the first time in years. The house has 8 bedrooms and me being 20years old, I didn’t want to have to share a room with anyone so I took one of the empty ones down the hall. Each room had its own switch board panel for its respective lights and ceiling fans. These switches are “heavy” ig you could say, so when u flip them, they make a loud clicking sound. Now it was around 3-4am and i wake up to that same clicking sound. Imagine a child playing with the lights, on and off and on and etc. But at a certain pace. At night, each individual room is locked. If its occupied, we lock it from the inside, so no one could’ve come into the room. I was laying on my side so I didn’t have direct eye contact with the switch panel and honestly I was too scared to moved. But at this point I’ve been hearing this clicking sound for like 5 mins now. So i slowly turn my head and I see a shadowy figure in front of the panel and what looked like an arm extending to the panel. I slowly turned my head back closed my eyes, and just stayed completely still. That sound went on for about another 30 mins before it completely stopped. My family always told me about supernatural events thats happened in this house when i was a kid but I never believed it til now.

A drive that usually takes me less than 3 hours took me more than 4 once. I don't know how it happened. No traffic, didn't take the wrong path, didn't see anything strange in the road, same speed as usual. Everything was normal until I noticed it was starting to get dark, then checked the clock and freaked out.

I saw myself behind me through the mirror. I know for a fact it was there

I was standing on the seaside walkway with a bunch of other people watching the sunset. A red orb came speeding down the coastline at like 50-150m altitude. Didnt think much of it until it instantly stopped and speeded back the way it came until it was out of sight.

No noise, too low for a plane or helicopter and wasn't a flare because it was flying fast, stopped instantly and then flew back the way it came.

Several people saw it but this was before mobile phones with cameras were a mainstream thing.

I, 13 at the time, was about to go to bed. I was brushing my teeth in front of my bedroom window, staring into the dark, when I suddenly heard someone screaming outside. I stopped brushing so I could hear it better. Someone was screaming out my name. I sort of froze and kept listening. More voices joined, all screaming my name and laughing loudly. It was kind of like an audience at a sports game. It went on for about five minutes. When it stopped I (in shock) went downstairs to my parents to ask them if they’d heard anything. it was impossible not to hear as it was very loud. They had not heard anything.

I assume it was some sort of a hallucination. Still feel weird when I’m alone in my room late at night.

I was staying the night with a cousin on his ranch and in his front yard there was a basketball hoop on a homemade wall like concrete bricks stacked upwards, and we both to this day swear on god we saw what looked like a 8 foot tall coyote standing up against the wall tugging on the hoop, we closed the blinds quick and that was the night we established the existence of the ranch’s very own cryptid. I think we called it like “doom dog” or some s**t (we were 9-10)

3:30am.

My buddy and i spent the night repo’ing cars.

We pull up to the light in Manchester NJ of 527 and 70. Going straight. In the left turn lane, getting on to 70 East, a blue, 97-98 Honda CRV.

The person driving had no face.

Just blank. Like the green man from Always Sunny or NoFace from D**k Tracy.

My buddy and I both saw it. Nobody believed it.

Middle of the day, I was out surfing just looking to the horizon and I see something hovering in the sky in distance. I immediately thought it was strange because it didn’t look like a helicopter, was more like a shiny metal ball. It stayed there for a minute or so then suddenly shot across the sky at impossible speed and vanished.

This incident happened to me when I was 10 years old. My friend and I were cycling. It was around 7:15, and it had gotten dark. There was a road where we usually cycled, but it was a dead end. There were bushes on one side and a wall with barbed wires. At the end of the road, there was a residential complex on the right side, and a small route led to the farms.

The middle part of the road was all quiet and dark. My friend and I were just chatting and cycling when I heard a sound. I don't remember it well, but it seemed like a little girl weeping. Just as I was about to ask my friend, "Hey, did you hear that?" he shouted, "RUN! AHHHH!"

When we reached the other side of the road where the residential complex was, I asked him, "What the heck, bro? What happened?" He was shivering in fear and said he saw a woman in the bushes with a big white eye. When some people appeared on the road, we quickly left. We were shivering with fear, and to this day, we don't know how to explain it.

There's an old closed down road through a bunch of fields around the corner from my house, me and my girlfriend were walking the dogs there one night at around 11pm because we wanted to look at the stars. As we pass through the railings at the entrance we both notice someone coming out from deep in the bushes to the left of the road, only visible as it was full white and almost reflecting/glowing from head to toe (even tho it was pitch black with no lights anywhere near, thats why we go there to see the stars). At first I assumed it must've been a cyclist as it appeared to be literally gliding up the road (which is a very steep hill) with no movement other than forward, no head bobbing from walking, but at the same time no movement in the legs and this thing was dead silent, it was close enough to hear if it was a bike. the dogs were barking like crazy but we just kept walking in silence i dont know why i assume we were almost in shock. As it disappeared around the corner my girlfriend turned to me and said "did you just see that", I replied "I didnt want to say anything because I didnt want to scare you". We still dont know what it was but i know for certain it made no sound coming out from the bushes and didnt appear to be dragging a bike through, it was just literally gliding or floating. I didnt realise until after that the reason the road was closed was because it was the most deadly road in my town for collisions so they built a new one and closed it down. Still creeps me out to think about it possibly being someone who lost their life on that road, but im still in denial trying to refuse to believe it. I still tell my girlfriend it must've been a cyclist just so she will still come for walks through there with me, but I know and so does she it was not.

I stole my mom's car one night with this guy, and we were on the way to pick up my friend. She lived down a long, narrow road of desert in Arizona. We are driving, and then we see two stars alongside the moon. They were huge. We both noticed them, and we were drawn to them. So big and bright. Then one moves. It literally hovers slowly toward the other one. We are so intrigued by this weird hovering light and pull over to watch. Then the other one hovers over. So now the two little stars are directly below the moon. Out of nowhere and even bigger star comes flying by (think shooting star) and literally sucks the two stars up as it passes. A huge light emitted and they are all just gone. Creepiest, weirdest s**t ever. We just went home after that.