80 Genuinely Horrifying Stories Of People Dealing With The Paranormal

My wife and I used to argue that there was something in this house. one night after we went to bed, I rolled over to see her sitting up. "Whats a matter hun?" I asked. thinking it was a bathroom run or something. She pointed into the living room and said, "someones walking around in there". I turned and looked and there was a silhouette of a man in front of the TV. He place himself perfect to be seen down the hallway. He stood there, what felt like two minutes "staring" at us, then faded out. Normally when you see a shadow its gone in a blink. HE did not do that. It felt purposeful. Like we were supposed to see him. Very uncomfortable feeling.

At the end of my road is a cemetery, walked my dog by there for years and never had an experience. About a month ago I was parked outside of its gates and I heard loud footsteps running towards the car. About a week ago I walked my dog by there again and took a Snapchat video of my dog for my partner, in the video there’s a voice of a man saying “thank you”. Sent chills up my spine.

I've experienced this twice in my life. Once aged 12ish and once aged 38. Same entity. The first time I saw it in a mirror and the second time I saw it just in front of me. I can only describe it as a massive black mist. As tall as the room. The first time it had an arm that tried to reach around me in the reflection. The second time it did nothing. I asked it what it wanted and it disappeared.

Not sure if paranormal but I could hear something whispering in my ear at night and sometimes it would be a yell right in my ear at night. Couldn’t sleep for a week cuz it kept happening.

Imagine learning that the house you've called home for the past decade was secretly the location of a cold case [unaliving] from the 80s and you had to find out by reading a locally published newspaper article. Now all of the doors opening, lights flickering, and the random disembodied voice makes a lot more sense.

When I was a kid, I told my grandparents that before I was me, I watched over them their entire lives. I remember some of the memories. It scared them enough to buy a book about reincarnation. This was is the 80s.

My good friend shared this story with me and I've never been able to shake it (or retell it as well as him). It's a long story so I'll just tell you the first part, which I find the scariest.

He's about 40 and divorced. Back when he was married with a 1 year old daughter, he and his wife bought a house and moved in. It was apparently an old house that needed some fixing up but they got a good deal and were ready for the work.

After a week or so there he notices a life sized doll in the corner of the nursery where his daughter sleeps. It creeps him out because he's a normal human being, so he turns it around to face the corner so it stops staring at him. After putting the kid to bed, he goes downstairs and asks his wife about it.

"Where did we get that doll?"

She looks at him and says "I don't remember, I assumed someone gave it to you for our daughter and we moved it here."

He's a little weirded out because he didnt remember moving the doll and wonders if maybe it was in the house when they moved in and he didn't notice it.

The next morning he goes to get the kid out of her crib and notices something. The doll isn't facing the corner anymore. It's looking at him again.

I'm getting shivers already just remembering him tell me this. That's enough to creep anyone out so he throws it in the closet and shuts the door.

That night he has an argument with his wife. I don't remember what it was about and it's not really relevent, but the point is they were getting into it a bit, loud and focused enough that they didn't notice their daughter crying upstairs. At a lull in the argument, his wife hears her and says she's going to go check on her, but he just tells her she'll be fine, let's hash this out.

Another minute goes by, and suddenly he realizes he's practically having to shout over the noise of his daughter screaming from her room. It sounds different. It's not a normal cry.

He glances at his wife and quickly starts up the stairs. What he saw when he opened the door literally makes my eyes water with fear when I think about it.

The closet door is open. The life sized doll is sitting next to the crib, motionless.

And it's arms are reaching through the bars towards his daughter. Just stiff and motionless, like it was caught in the act before returning to a doll state.

Needless to say, the doll was thrown out and I believe even burned. There's no explanation for that other than something seriously demonic.

The story of that house goes on for much longer but that’s all I have time to write at the moment.

My grandmother had gotten my mother a phone for her room when she was a girl. The lady across the street had passed away a few days before. Supposedly the phone rang and when my mom picked up, she heard "Cher' (Cajun for child), let me speak to your momma". She immediately hung up the phone and told me that there was no mistaking who's voice it was. It was the lady who just passed away.

I used to babysit a ~1 y/o girl; at the time she was learning to talk and every time she saw another toddler she would point/wave and say “baby!” One evening I was taking her for a walk and as we passed a little church graveyard, she leaned out of her stroller, pointed directly into the graveyard, and said “baby! A baby!” but there was NO ONE there. I was so spooked I turned us around to go home and as we were walking away she leaned out again, waved at the graveyard, and said “bye, boy.”

I was living on my own in a new home. My dog and i were watching tv in the living room when all of the sudden she was on high alert and sprinted to the other room. Before I could get there I heard a very loud CRACK three times in a row. When i got in there my dog was standing with her hair standing up on her back. The thick wrought iron hooks my drapes hung from were all snapped in half. Drapes on the ground.

Kayaked into a remote settlement in West Virginia that had some cool history I wanted to check out. Had to get off the kayak and hike a few miles. No houses for miles. Get to a section that has a blackberry thicket. As soon as I walk into it I hear something that sounds like a shotgun blast from the ridge. Get an immense feeling of dread, walk quickly through that section once I’m out the feeling leaves. Feel like I’m being watched the whole time. Have to come back through to get out.

Once im at the spot I hear something that sounds like the blast again comming from the same ridge. The feeling of dread comes back. Get out pretty quick and the feeling leaves again. It wasn’t hunting season. I was also recording it on a go pro. When I got home all my footage was there except both times walking through the blackberry thickett. The footage was all corrupted both times. Spooky!

I personally do not believe in the paranormal but some of the experiences I had at my dad's house as a teenager sometimes make me think otherwise. My whole family experienced plenty of strange happenings at this place but the most jarring occurred when I was 17 years old.

I rarely visited my dad's, but whenever I did make that hour long trip into the nothingness of Wisconsin I was always uneasy of what I might see or hear that night. The house had some very unique features that always struck me as strange, the most notable being a small crawl space in my bedroom that connected to my sister's bedroom adjacent to mine; both sides of this crawl space were fitted with a small door. We never really knew what the purpose of the tunnel was as it was far too small to use for storage and even too cramped for a grown adult to comfortably navigate.

Anyway, this particular night when I went to bed I heard some very strange noises, almost like a faint whimper or crying. I didn't think much of this because it wasn't uncommon for coyotes to come by the house at night looking to prey on our poor barn cats. The night went on and the noises came and went. Struggling to sleep, I went downstairs to grab a glass of water from the kitchen. When I came back into my room I noticed that the door to the crawl space was now ajar and the whimpering had stopped.More than a little startled at this point, I quickly got back into bed and tried my best to fall asleep.

Eventually I was able to fall back asleep but was later awakened when I felt a sinking feeling at the foot of my bed. I assumed that I must have left my bedroom door cracked and one of the house cats had climbed on my bed. I closed my eyes and tried to fall back asleep and was forced awake by the sound of a slamming door. I opened my eyes and noticed that the door to the crawl space had been slammed shut, then I quickly glanced at the foot of my bed and saw the outline of large figure starring at me from the end of my bed. The figure was all black with bright, white eyes. I got out of my bed as fast as I could and ran downstairs; I spent the rest of the night awake on the couch.

I still don't know what I saw or if it was even real. I was ready to chalk it up to sleep paralysis but my sister told me the next morning that she also was woken up by the sound of the crawl space door slamming. That was one of the last times I spent the night there.

And if that wasn't bad enough, 5 years later my dad and step-mom decided to add an extension to the house and when they were digging the foundation for the extension they uncovered grave stones from the 1800's. No thank you...

For a couple of years in highschool I worked at a donut shop in town. Old type place they make the donuts fresh every night. All the workers there would talk about how the place was haunted by a former baker. Big burly guy who eventually just slept in his car pit back. My shift would start right before the restaurant/front closed and before the bakers came in for the night. I'd be alone in the shop. The back where the baking would get done would get absolutely disgusting. Jam and glaze all over the floor to the point before I swept I'd have to scrape the floor with a paint scraper attached to a stick. I as an extremely lazy person figured out I could just duct tape cardboard over the really bad areas and make my job way easier no more jam floors. Well problem with that was that it basically cut my shifts in half. So I'd spend the time I'd normally be scraping jam of the floor simply sitting in the front at the counter. Well one day Im sitting there stealing time from the sweet owners I see some movement out of the corner of my eye. Looked like some one wearing flannel walking from the back to the front of shop then turning and running into the back again. I thought I had just been caught milking the clock by the owner. I never heard any noise of anyone coming in. So I go to the back to check and who caught me, face the music so to speak. No oNE there. I was so convinced I saw some one. I walked upstairs into the offices which i had never been in before. No one. I later asked what the ghost wore when he was alive. Always flannel.

I was living with my parents after college for a few months, back in 2011. They had a really creepy basement with 2 bedrooms down there. I was living in one of the rooms. Long basement with laundry and storage room and a long living room. One day I was walking to the stairs and a penny flew out of the storage room into the living room right in front of me, about 3ft off of the ground. It did a big circle on the floor then stopped. I immediately thought someone was messing with me, but I went in the room if flew out of, and there was no one there. I was actually alone at the house. It made absolutely no sense to me. From the trajectory it flew in front of me, there is no way I could have kicked the penny on accident. My uncle had just passed away of cancer a few weeks prior, maybe he was messing with me from the other side.

Friends of ours, Scott & Sue, lived in apartment in Brooklyn. They had two dogs. One very hot summer day, they went out to do some shopping. When they got home, went to their door and heard the dogs crying behind the door. When they went in, it was ice cold inside and they didn’t have air conditioning. As they walked through the apartment, the dogs cowered behind them. As they stepped into the kitchen, there stood Sue’s Grandmother. The only problem was, she had passed away 5 years ago.

My late aunt’s story she told me once: aunt’s sister (who is passed) was living with their grandmother (think she was late teens, maybe early 20s). They shared a bed and her granny thought she was still home as she went into the bedroom and saw her long dark hair peeking out from the top of the blanket. Didn’t think anything of it, got ready for bed and went to sleep. Next morning, she sees that my aunt’s sister is still asleep in the bed, goes on and starts making breakfast when she looks out the kitchen window and sees her walking up the road with a friend. She had never come home that day/evening (the grandmother worked long hours so just assumed when she got home, she had turned in early). They never knew what it was that their grandmother had shared a bed with.

I went to a private religious college and was taking a biblical studies course. Anytime I tried to read my textbook or my Bible in the apartment, I would black out. Just go unconscious. I could only study for that class outside of the apartment or else I’d black out. Whatever was living with us didn’t want me reading my religion texts.

My bestie I and me were watching TV. Heard the front door open. Went upstairs and it was locked. Checked the house and went downstairs. Friend said “maybe it was your dad.” A picture my dad painted FLEW off the wall. We screamed and ran out. When my mom looked at the pic the wire was intact. Someone threw it.
(My dad passed when I was 10)

This happened about 8 or so years ago around thanksgiving at my grandmas house.

Everyone was asleep except for me. The only people in the house were my grandparents, my mom, brother and I. No one else. (This is key.)

I was on the computer because I couldn't sleep. I turned on a small TV to watch adult swim while i browsed the internet. At around 4:30, I started getting a chill up my spine, and i heard some children laugh. Distinctly the voices of a little girl and boy.

I know im all by myself, as far as being awake, so i turned to look at the tv and it was in the middle of an InuYasha fight sequence so theres no way the laughter was coming from that. I checked the computer sound settings and i had every possible output muted, so it wasnt that either. I sat there confused for a few moments while the giggles of the two children were playing in the background.

I figured maybe the radio in the kitchen was on. It was digital so maybe it just came on for some reason or it had a timer.

I got up, and i kid you not, as i was walking to the door, with each step, the laughter grew louder. From giggling to guffaws to hard laughter. Once the guffaws started, i started to hear a baby cry as well.

Whats going through my mind now is "what the hell kind of radio show is this?" And i just took three steps. Nowhere near the door.

I took a few more steps and the laughter turned hysterical, if not maniacal. The babys cries turned to screams and wails, as if it were in pain. I was trembling and terrified with each step I took to the doorway, but my mind was on autopilot; i needed to get out of there and across the hall to my mom who surely would help me and notice the weird sounds too.

The last couple of steps increased the laughter and crying to an almost deafening decibel. It was like I was at a concert and the speakers were directly in my ears, blasting noise. It was painful and scared the hell out of me. I took all the courage i had and as soon as i reachec the doorway i was going to sprint.

I started to run but then something shoved me. I felt these hands at my chest push me back into the room with enough force to throw me off balance. The crying and laughter stopped as soon as i was back in the room. This all happened within 20-30 seconds, but it felt like 10 minutes.

I was so scared i cried and slept in the tiny arm chair before my grandma came in the room and made me sleep in her bed downstairs.

I had a shadowy figure go across my wall once as a child. The only place it could have come from was the hallway outside my door but everyone was asleep and nobody walked by. We lived in an old funeral home that was turned into an apartment.