80 Genuinely Horrifying Stories Of People Dealing With The Paranormal

Asian Horror here: My sister had been living with my aunts since she was a little girl. One night, she dreamt that someone was in her room, and as she was lying down on her side, she felt someone slowly lie down beside her on her queen sized bed. she shut her eyes and told 'it' to go away. Suddenly she felt 'its' nails go up and down her back. She ran out of the room, went to my aunts' room to sleep. Next day she showed the scratches to me. Long thin lines up and down her entire back.

So I spent six months living in my family’s cottage in the far north of Michigan. That place always felt weird, but I chalked it up to my nerves and the odd noises of the woods, as I was born and raised in cities and had never been so isolated before.

Then, the night before I moved out into an apartment with a friend, as I was falling asleep I experienced a powerful hypnogogic jerk (that thing where you feel like you’re falling and sit up really hard) and as I did so I heard a tiny voice in my ear say -

‘Goodbye.’.

My brother passed away on December 22 at 4:40 am in 2004. Ive had a few things happen like things flying off the shelves or hearing my guitar strings being plucked but 2 years ago was probably the weirdest.

So 2 years ago on December 21 I went to bed around 11 pm. I usually keep my phone on silent but I got woken up by my phone ringing in the middle of the night.

I saw a number I didn't recognize, normally I answer anyways, but something felt off so I just didn't. Can't explain the feeling I just felt like I shouldn't answer.

The phone number left a voicemail but I couldn't make anything of it. I also noticed that they called at December 22 at exactly 4:40 am. I tried to call it back in the morning but when I called it said "this number has been disconnected and can no longer be reached". tried to look up the number everywhere and nothing.

So, I work in haunted daycare.


My personal story happened while I worked with the 9 to 18 month babies. At naptime, they all sleep in their own cribs and the teachers all huddle in the furthest corner, so the kids will stay asleep.


One day, the kids are all asleep. Which is a feat in itself. So I'm sitting, facing the room at large, talking to my co-worker. As I'm checking the room, a ball that was left out rolled across the floor. Just straight up moved 4 feet across the floor. It didn't start anywhere near a baby and, even if it had, they were all asleep. The ball was slightly deflated and it even sounded like someone tried to grab it, that sound of fingers trying to find purchase on rubber.


Now, normally I'd attribute this to a trick of the light or the A/C kicking on, but my co-worker, who had been looking at me, turned her head at the sound and said "what was that?"


I told her what I'd seen, we had a nervous chuckle, and we asked the ghost to kindly not wake any of the kids.


Other co-workers have felt taps when no one is behind them, have seen things move on their own, and one even saw something to tall and abstract to be a kid run down the hallway, only to disappear.

Saw a human figure wearing flannel walk through a wall on a thermal camera. My buddy was a firefighter training with it, going through a trailer they did a test burn on.

One time when I was a kid, I was sleeping in my bed but my dog Coda wanted out really bad, so I opened the door and left it cracked for when he wanted back in. I was laying there trying to fall back asleep, but I noticed the door had opened all the way now because the hall light was on and it was distracting. I assumed it was my dog coming back in, so I didn’t think anything of it. Now, he was a big dog, so you can imagine that when a dog jumps on a bed it’s pretty noticeable. But whatever got on my bed was super quiet and light, and I suddenly felt a cold chill. I was facing the wall, and staring with a blank expression because I had no idea what was going on. I knew my dog wasn’t in the room, because I just knew. I always had my dog sleep with me. After I heard some quiet breathing, i decided to get up and leave. I didn’t even look back, I just practically ran out of there and to the opposite end of the house where my moms room was. I knocked on her door and told her there was something in my room, and she pulled me inside and locked her door, and we proceeded to fall asleep about thirty minutes later.


Later that day after I woke up, I felt chills as I walked back towards my bedroom. I was afraid that whatever was in there was still there. As I walked back to my room, I passed the living room and noticed that the front door was cracked open. That freaked me out even more.



Whatever it was, it never happened again in that house, but I still think about that night, and I try to understand what exactly happened and what it could have been.

For myself: I worked in a haunted bowling alley. Our deceased mechanic gave my ponytail a yank in a room where I was the only person (verified by security camera) and there wasn't anything to catch my hair on. He liked to be playful and wasn't malicious.

Had one recently that happened to my husband though. We live on a piece of property out in the swamp. Our house is pretty isolated. My husband woke up to someone knocking on the front door. He said it was the exact mannerism I knock with, and then a voice said "Honey?" exactly the same way I do. He peeked over the headboard to the front porch, and no one was there. (You can see the front door clearly from our bedroom window, and there's no hiding spots for one of the local crackheads to mess with us).

I woke up in the middle of the night when I was, like, 11. I felt as if someone was at my bedroom door and looked. Saw a faint figure of a woman who was not my mother. Felt the hairs in my body stiffen and pulled the blanket over my head until morning. Previous owner was a lady who passed away there, obviously. It’s my only paranormal experience.

Still gives me chills recalling it.

When I was about 14/15 years old, I went for a sleepover at a friends house. We stayed up late watching scary movies, etc. Typical sleepover.

Anyways, we went to sleep in the same bed and at some point in the night I could feel tugging on the blanket, so I opened my eyes and I seen a hand coming over me and grabbing the blanket and pulling it off of me. At first, I just thought my friend was grabbing the blanket in her sleep but I could still feel her back to mine so there was no way her arm would be like that while back to back. I started to prop myself up and I seen a man standing at the foot of the bed. I full panicked and jumped out of bed to run to light switch. I switched it on and the man was gone but her bedroom door that was previously locked and closed was open. With the knob still locked. I closed the door and tried to get my friend to wake up but she was a super heavy sleeper. I have no idea how I managed to fall back asleep but I did.

I NEVER stayed at her house again. haha.

When I was 14 I was mowing my grandfathers lawn, he happened to be living elsewhere at the time, so it was my job to clean up a few things, grab any erroneous mail, and mow the lawn. I was about 2/3 done, and I felt like someone was watching me, knowing I was there alone it gave me the creeps. I was finishing up the back lawn. I turned around and leaning against the fence post was an older man, about 50, wearing a fancy black suit, and a top hat. He looked directly into my face, he tipped his hat at me, and disappeared.

My sister and I are 11 months apart in age. She was four and I was three. We both vividly remember being in our bedroom and there was a small crack in the wall above one of our beds.

We were babbling on about our mother being mean for making us clean our room. The crack started to crack off more and more until there was a head of a white haired old lady. She was telling us to be nicer to our mom and to always listen to her. We threw things at the old lady and ran out of the room screaming.

We ran to our mom trying to tell her what had happened. My mom remembered that day but thought we were just trying to get out of cleaning up our room. When we did go back in the room the crack was just a little crack again. But she told us when we were older she had found plaster on the floor behind the bed with no source from where it came from.

That’s one of many stories I could share.

I was 5 my sister was 7 and we had bunk beds in our bedroom (I was bottom)we saw what we thought was our dad in the doorway. It was almost pitch black but we could see teeth, eyes and some facial features. We were laughing at “his” funny features and the became more and more distorted to the point we were crying. Our dad came running in from an opposite door and whatever we saw just vanished.

My freshman year dorm was haunted for sure and one night I was alone in bed with the lights off doomscrolling on my phone. All of a sudden I heard a low gravely male voice come from a foot away from the edge of my bed. I sat up immediately and flicked the light on and there was no one in that room. Plus my roommate and I were both female. Another time in the room I felt what I can only describe as a hand drag across on my left calf. I never felt alone in that room. It felt masculine for sure.

I used to work as a cook in a tea room that used to be a brothel back in the 1800s. We had the dining area and a little gift shop that sold different kinds of pottery, silverware, etc. I would often be the last to leave and lock up and would hear random sounds like footsteps or something falling on the floor quite regularly but never was phased by it. One night I was called in late to start prepping stuff for the Sunday brunch so probably at around 10-11pm I hear footsteps upstairs and hear the lights coming on. I knew I was the only one there at the time so decided to investigate. Walk up the stairs look around, everything seems normal so I turn out the light and start heading back downstairs when I see the lights come back on. I'm starting to get a bit freaked out so I yell out "hello?" With no response. I walk back upstairs to turn the lights off and as soon as I reached for the switch I see this large vase just sorta lift up and move to the right then drop the the floor. Was I freaked. Called my boss and she casually brushes it off like meh that's regular here.

I smelled my dad's cologne and felt a safe, warm... Presence standing at the foot of my bed. I was perhaps 4 yo.. no older.. my dad died when I was 2.

When I was about 14 I was sleeping over at a friend's house in the finished basement. I was lying on the couch, not asleep yet, when I heard footsteps in the room with me. There was enough light to see there was no one there, and I knew it wasn't his parents because I would have heard them come down the creaky stairs.

It freaked me out a bit, but not as much as when I told my friend about it the next day and he informed me that the previous owners of the house had passed away. In the basement.

Quite a few things have happened to me and my SO but the worst was when I was alone. I was reading a book on my living room couch when the pages suddenly got dark. Mind you, this was a Midwest evening: outside is pitch black. The only light was from the kitchen bulb behind me. It hadn't burned out, instead a 6ft tall something was spontaneously blocking it from right behind me. My cat started growling, crouched low to the ground and stared down the area blocking the light. She backed up into the other room and kept growling. Eventually the shadow left and I could read again. Didn't feel much up to it.

Not mine, but my Abuela's story!

When she had her first son (so my uncle), she would often either be home alone or have her mother come over for the day to help around the house. Well, one day my Abuela tells me that she and her mother were sitting in the kitchen while my uncle was in his room napping in his crib.
The way the kitchen is set up, they can see into the hallway, and thus see my uncle's bedroom door left slightly ajar.
She said that all of a sudden, this little human man darts out of my uncle's room and disappears down the hallway. My Abuela and her mother both freaked out and ran to check on my uncle, but he was sound asleep.

She insists that it looked like a human man, just the size of what we'd say leprechauns or goblins to be.

Our cat [passed away] suddenly this past spring. It was a heart defect and we just found him one morning. He had a very loud and very distinctive meow that he would sometimes give if he was lonely. Now sometimes I hear that meow but it sounds distant, as if it's coming from the other side of the house.

This wasn’t as scary as it was very uncomfortable.

When I was in college I moved into a house with some people I didn’t know very well. Almost as soon as I moved in I regularly got the creeps. But, I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want these people to think that I was odd.

One day, I was sitting in the living room watching TV when one of my housemates came in asked if he could talk with me. He then asked me if, when I’m home alone, do I feel like I’m not all alone. It turned out that we’d both been getting the creeps. Both of us had had experiences seeing things before so we weren’t too freaked out.

He said that he knew someone who did seances and he would ask her to come over and perform one. They did schedule a date and time for the event.

One night, I was home alone painting in a basement room that I’d turned into a studio when I felt someone hugging me. It felt like a hug from a child. Every hair on my body stood on end. I went upstairs, grabbed by jacket and boots, and left the house. As soon as I crossed the threshold the feeling went away. I put on my boots and jacket, and left to find my housemates on campus.

When I found my housemates I told them what had happened and that I wanted to have the seance that night because, although I’m cool with sharing my space with ghosts, I’m not cool with being touched by them. My housemate found the woman and we all returned home along with a group of people who wanted to observe.

We cleared the dining room, some of us sat around the table with our hands on the thing that moves around the Ouija board. The woman started to ask if there was anyone in the house who wanted to communicate…and the thing started to move.

Now, although I’ve had a few ghost experiences, I’m still skeptical so I thought that someone was moving the thing around and I was watching out for deception.

The woman asked again if anyone was there and the thing moved to “Yes”. She asked its name and it spelled “Ned”. When she asked how old it was it pointed to “6”. When she asked why it was there it spelled, “Want mama”. When she asked where it’s mother was it spelled, “Mama go bye bye”. That’s when chills went through my spine and a few of the women started sobbing.

The woman performing the seance told Ned to go to the light because his mother was waiting for him there. We wondered if, perhaps, Ned had passed away in the house but didn’t understand what had happened to him.

I lived in that house for two more years and never had another experience. This occurred pre-internet. If it had happened within the past decade or so I would have searched census records to try to identify Ned.