21 People Describe Their Encounters With The Paranormal And The Stories Will Give You Nightmares

1. A Norwegian insane asylum

When I was a student, the campus was located on what had only 20 years before been an old asylum for the insane. Like, batshit crazy people. They did lobotomies there and what not. Most of the buildings had been refurbished into “normal” school buildings with lecture halls, study group rooms et cetera. Seemed pretty normal, except the small study group rooms that only had one window, that was 1 square feet, 15 feet up on the wall, with bars in front of it. Yeah. Now, walking around the halls at night was creepy enough in itself, but one experience I will never forget.

I was the leader of a student/professor team that was in charge of evaluating lectures, professors, timetables et cetera, and we usually had our meetings after hours. This one time, we were sat in what used to be the old employee cafeteria (according to one of the old professors, who had been around for a long time). Now, I had seen the original blueprints from back when it was an asylum, so I knew what buildings had been the women’s cell wing, the men’s wing, administration (including morgue) et cetera. A little while into the meeting, suddenly all of us (8 people in total) turn at the same time, everybody hearing what seemed like a woman’s scream coming from an open window towards the old women’s wing. We all knew we were the only ones at the campus at the time (small part of a larger college), and we had all heard it – as evidenced by the fact that everyone turned their head.

Now that was fucking creepy.

2. A Swiss WWII-era bunker

I live in the north of Switzerland. We have a lot of old military bunkers from the Second World War. When I was 7 or 8 years old, three friends of mine and I went out to explore one of these bunkers who was built on a hill inside a small forest. The main door was jammed, so we had to break it up. We found a big log nearby and used it as a battering ram. After many tries the door won’t budge. But there was a peephole. It was about 10 cm (4 inch) in diameter. We opened it and illuminated the dark inside. There was a long, ruined and dark hallway with rooms on the left and right side.

We couldn’t see the end of the hallway. It was just too long. Every one of us wanted to catch a glimpse of the inside, when one of my friends says: “There is a small light at the end of the hallway”. This light was not there when I watched through the peephole. So I pushed him away and took a second look. What I saw gave me a shiver. There was not a small light, it looked more like a flashlight pointed directly towards me and behind it was a silhouette of a person. I walked a few steps back and said: “There is someone in there!” At the same moment someone (or something) knocked on the door from the inside of the bunker. This was the moment we got into panic, start screaming and run away. I was so scared I run straight home and locked the door.

On the next day in school, my friends and I talked about the event. We came to the explanation that probably some older Kids have played a prank on us. One week later we went to the same bunker again. But as we saw, the welded connection, that should keep the door locked, where rusty and not broken, we just left without saying a word to each other. It was impossible someone opened this door before us, and this was the only entrance. I still life in the same region. But since then I have never visited the bunker again.

3. Nothing ever good happens in the basement

I’d like to begin saying that there have been many happenings in this house, but I’ll share the most frightening. Backstory: the area where my house is was once open prairie and we have found Native American artifacts laying around the area. When my parents divorced when I was a young teenager my mother and I moved into this house. Now, at first it seemed great! There was plenty of space and it had a very cozy feel to it. However, as time went on strange things became to happen. The more I noticed them the more frequent they would become. I’d hear someone walking downstairs as I was brushing my teeth and would assume it was my mom, but whenever I’d check no one would be there. Footsteps began to be a very common sound in my house, especially at night. So, after some time I came to the realization that, oh shit, my house is haunted!

Now here is where things got really weird. One day my good friend and I had just gotten done from being out in the sun and decided to retreat to my moms house. Considering she had been away on a business trip we figured this would be awesome. My friend and I could go drink or do whatever mischievous actives we wanted to. We were wrong.

We walked inside and headed straight for the basement where it was cooler than the rest of the house. While walking down the stairs I noticed that The Beatles Yellow Submarine poster hanging at the bottom of the stairwell was tilted slightly to the left. No bother I figured, it must have gotten bumped by me or something. I fixed it and we walked into the main room. Mind you, we had pictures and posters hanging everywhere in the basement. What my friend and I saw instantly creeped us out. All 10-15 pictures on the walls were each tilted slightly to the left. Just as the Beatles one had been. But the weirdness of the situation didn’t stop there. The storage room (essentially a dirt floored room that is lifted about 4 feet off the ground) had its door cracked open. So I walk over and see a golden glow emanating out. There is a pull cord light located about 10 feet from the door that is turned on. So I hop up and into the storage room, crawl on my hands and knees to the light, and turn it off. Hoping that all of this had a natural explanation I call my mom up and ask her about it. She says she has no idea what I’m talking about and hasn’t been in the basement for weeks before she left on her trip. Shivers shoot down my spine. I look back into the storage room, and in the dirt there’s a footprint. The most distorted and mangled footprint imaginable. I’m frozen in fear. My friend is too. Without words we look at one another each feeling a sickening, gut wrenching feeling. I slammed the storage space door shut, locked it, and we bolted out of my house as fast as we could. Ill never forget how sickening and mangled that footprint looked, and thinking that I had crawled in there to turn off the light still gives me shivers to this day.

4. 100% positive it happened

My mum often reminds me of this one and I have quite a vivid memory of the event myself.

I was around 3 years old and playing by myself in the living room. I watched my mum pass through the room and into the hall where the front door and stairs are. I have a very vivid image in my head of her stonewashed blue jeans and white trainers. I can still see the scene in my head.

For whatever reason I finish playing and head into the kitchen at the opposite end of the house to find my mum, in a summer dress, rustling up some food. I ask her, as matter-of-factly as children do, “When did you get changed into a dress?”. She asks me what I’m talking about and I tell her that I just watched her come through the living room and go upstairs, dressed in jeans and trainers.

She freaked a little and had my dad search the house for an intruder by nothing was to be found. I still know that I saw jeans-and-trainers pass by me as I played.

5. No one was there

So I have a lot of stories, like the man in black everyone used to see at the coffee shop where I used to work, or when I got plates dropped on my head in my kitchen, or the woman who was only feet…. But I’ll just tell two more recent stories.

First one was when I was walking to work, I was talking on the phone to my friend using those iPhone headphones with the microphone. We’re talking, and then all of a sudden, there is a clattering sound, like she had dropped her phone. I actually thought she had. So I’m expecting her to apologize for dropping the phone, but instead, there’s this really deep guttural laugh. Then there are howls and squeals and what sounds like a car crashing, tires squealing, then a man yelling “Burn, burn, burn!”

I freaked out, and hung up. I called her back, and she was angry for me not responding to her – apparently for about a minute, she had been hearing me, but I was hearing this awful sound.

My other creepy experience was a few years ago, and I lived in this basement apartment. My roommates were in the living room, and I was sitting on the floor of my roommate’s room, working on something. I heard movement in the doorway behind me, and thinking it was my roommate, I just said hi, and kept working. She stepped up beside me (I thought) and ran her fingers through my hair. I asked her something, and when she didn’t answer, I leaned off her leg, which I had been leaning on, and turned to look at her.

Only she wasn’t there.

Weirded out, I went into the living room to ask my roommates if either of them had been in the other room, and they have me a weird look, and said they’d been there watching tv and eating the whole time. Never got an explanation for who had been there.

6. FUCK

I love scary movies. I have no idea why I like torturing myself, but I love getting scared and then having to watch cartoons before bed.

Anyway, my boyfriend took me out on a date night for dinner and a movie. I was super stoked because we were going to see the next Paranormal Activity movie, and the first one had me jumping out of my seat more than a few times. So we go see the movie, I was all hyped up and scared, but it was a good time, everything was normal.

We get in the car and drive home to our apartment and my stomach drops. Our front door is open. My boyfriend immediately asks if I forgot to lock the door and I admitted that I remember him locking the door since I decided against bringing my keys. After a moment of “what do we do,” my boyfriend enters first and quickly takes a look around before deciding that no one was there and nothing was stolen. We make sure to lock and chain the door so we can relax before bed.

I’m in the kitchen when my boyfriend yells for me. I walk over and he looks freaked out. He explains that he was about to open the bedroom door, when it opened by itself. It had to be just a draft right? Right.
So we get ready for bed and I go to leave the bedroom and the door does the same thing for me. Okay…weird. But not impossible there was some kind of draft.

Eventually we head to sleep.

I woke up to pitch black to hearing my boyfriend talking. My eyes were still adjusting to the dark but I could tell he was feeling around the blankets, as if he was looking for something. I finally am able to see he is sitting upright and muttering to himself, like he’s frantically searching for something. I groan and push at him, “What are you doing?” My boyfriend huffed, “I’m looking.” I knew he was sleep talking, so I played along. “Looking for what?” I smiled, waiting for a stupid silly response that I could have endless hours of making fun of him the next day.

“I’m looking for her,” he stressed, now sounding worried and confused. My stomach tightened in nervousness and I quickly scanned our room and saw nothing out of place. After a few moments, I went to ask him what he was talking about. His reply was the same. “I’m looking for her.” Now he sounded incredibly stressed, like his sister was missing or something. I pushed him again and told him to go back to sleep, but he wouldn’t budge and kept feeling around.

That was when he froze. Absolutely stopped moving and breathing. I watching him, my heart beating against my rib cage. Then he smiled and his whole body relaxed. “Ah that’s right….She’s under the bed.” and promptly laid down and went back to sleep.

7. Ominous warning…

Many years ago, as a 14 year old, staying overnight at a friends house, with 3 other friends, similar ages. We’d all grown up together, except one, who was a cousin of the kid who lived there, and we’d never met him before. His older sister, 16 at the time, was the babysitter while the parents were out for the evening.

She decides to unearth a ouija board from a cupboard somewhere, and thinks it’ll be a laugh to scare us shitless. This was back in the days, when you could buy ouija boards as a ‘board game’ from your local toy store.

So we all gather round, and she starts off with a kind of yes/no lie detector, directing questions to the each of us in turn. Cue nervous giggles, but also a feeling of unease, as we all began to feel like this was awesomely amazing, like some kind of secret that we’d all been unaware of before.

Shit gets strange, when the sister asks out loud, that ‘if anybody is here, please show yourself’. A pause of a few seconds, and then a framed picture falls off the wall, and onto the floor. Naturally, we all freak the fuck out. She calms us all down, and insists we go back to the board, because we have to help whoever knocked the picture down.

Ashen faced, and hearts pounding, we start asking questions (And I should also add, the pointer is moving smoothly and rapidly, in a completely different manner than before.)

Are you in the room? pointer says yes. Are you a man? pointer says no. Do you need help? pointer says no Whats’ your name? pointer spells out S-A-R-A-H Tell us a secret, we ask… pointer spells out FLIPACOIN
So we did. Someone leaves the table and gets a 10p piece from out of the loose change jar in the kitchen. This was in the days when 10p coins were big and chunky. The coin goes spinning high up into the air…
…as we watch it coming down, it stops spinning and serenely falls edge down to land on the table. When I say land, it didn’t bounce, it didn’t rock, it just came down and met the table, perfectly balanced on it’s edge, as if someone had reached out, and gently placed it there

Breaking the silence, the pointer starts moving again. Seemingly random letters, we soon realise they’re initials, including middle names. Family tradition for my friend and his sister was to have 3 middle names, something not all of us knew. Aside from the brother and the cousin, no-one else would have known the older sister’s full name, and we’d met the cousin for the first time that night. Somehow, every person present, had their initials correctly spelled out to them.

Pointer pauses, and then spells out 3 last words. CHILDREN. STOP. NOW.

Took me many many weeks to be able to sleep properly. No-one told their parents, and over the years it became our collective shared secret. Couldnt rationalise it then, still cant rationalise it today.

Freaky as fuck.

8. You have a task to do

When I was in high school, a group of friends and I did an archeological dig of a Roman fort in South Shields, UK. I had never been out of the US, so we took the train up to Edinburgh for some sightseeing. We really enjoyed ourselves, until the evening when we went out for drinks. As we were walking back to our hotel, a group of two women, and one man approached our group. For whatever reason, I was overcome with anxiety. As they got closer I saw that they were three of the most beautiful and arrogant looking people I’d ever seen. Bright blue eyes, perfect hair, perfectly fitted, all black clothing. Everyone is my group noticed, they seemed (for lack of a better term) ‘powerful’.

What happened next blew my mind, they came up to us, and inquired as to what we were doing, etc. we sort of half-lied, and stood there awkwardly. Someone mentioned that we were heading to London the following day. One of the women looked at us and said that we must avoid the tube and buses, and that it would be best to get out of the country ASAP.

By that point we were all extremely creeped out, but made it to our hotel, the following morning we took an early flight back to London, and took a cab to our hotel. That was the day of the London tube bombings.
Six years later I’m visiting my girlfriend who was getting her MS at the university of Edinburgh, we’re at some pub, and I see the woman and man who talked to me half a decade ago, she approached me and said that I was right to have taken her advice (I look completely different now).

It was he single most spine-chilling event of my life, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

9. Those chills mean something

When I was really young, around 1.5-3 years old, I was always sick, and quiet. (Some things don’t change lol). My parents moved us from Alaska to Oregon so they could be closer to family to help raise me. We moved around a few times, renting crappy old houses. There was one house we lived in in particular that was old, creaky, the works. Even had an insane land lord. Literally insane, she went to the hospital for psychotic /schizophrenic episodes, and her husband was trying to keep himself together while taking care of her, and trying to manage renting out houses. What I’m saying is that it was not a happy place. My parents could feel it, my grandparents could feel it, and I could too. I told my parents there were skeletons in my closet watching me. When my grandma was alone with me, I told her “man with gun”. And that’s all I said. We were close to the city, so it would not have been anything normal to see a man with a gun around the house…. Me saying small things like that persisted the entire time in that house. I never said anything about monsters, or skeletons, or ghosts, before and after that house. The weirdest part was about a month before we moved out. Someone(s) broke into our house, but didn’t steal or touch anything. There was human feces and urine smeared in weird patterns around the house and walls. We gtfo’d to a different house. I have a couple stories about the next house, one was the most terrifying thing that has happened to me, and the other was a mix of scary/happy.

Most terrifying moment: I was 6 or 7 when it happened, and it scared the piss out of me, so I can remember it very well. I was just starting to wake up out of a night’s rest, gaining my senses slowly. I was laying on my bed facing towards the door. I saw the door open, and a large man walk in, who I assumed to be my dad. I remember a pressure on my legs that felt like hands, and they were shaking me lightly, as if trying to wake me up, but I decided to be a shit-head that morning and pretended like I was still completely asleep. After a moment the shaking stopped. Then I felt a small breeze under my blanket, as if someone was lifting up the blankets by my feet. Right as I felt the chill, two large hands grabbed both of my legs HARD. They started pulling me off the end of the bed, as if trying to drag me underneath. This whole time I thought it was my Dad messing with me, or just trying to wake me up, but the moment I felt those hands on me, trying to pull me off the bed, I was terrified. I had never been scared of my Dad, what was going on? Why did these hands feel so angry? I was clawing at my bed to get a grip on something to pull myself away from the hands. At some point they just let go after resisting for 30-60 seconds. I ran out the door of my room as soon as I was free. I ran to the kitchen and saw both of my parents standing there making breakfast. I was crying, and confused, end even though my dad was standing in the kitchen, I asked him in between sobs something along the lines of “Dad, why did you do that? You scared me. And that hurt.” He just looked at me flabbergasted and said, “I haven’t been in your room to wake you up yet. Are you ok?” I think that was the most confused and scared I’ve ever been in my life.

10. He’s watching over us

My wife and I used to live in this kinda run down duplex. Through the front door was the living room connected to the kitchen with a hallway that went to the rest of the rooms in the place. One night I was walking back to our bedroom and looked up to see a man with a faint blue glow wearing one of the old time railroad outfits. I could see him in my peripheral but when I went to focus on him he was gone. Now this really unsettled me because my grandfather had died not too long prior and he used to work for Frisco. So I moped back into the living room thinking that I was just upset with having lost him and my imagination was playing tricks on me.

Well, in walks my wife from our room down the hallway and she’s a shade paler than usual. I ask her if she’s alright and she just kind of shakes her head. “This is going to sound crazy, but I just saw a guy glowing blue wearing this weird uniform kind of like what you see in movies for guys that used to work on railroads.” My jaw kind of hit the floor.

Neither of us were really freaked even though we were a little startled, but my grandfather passed away before I was with my wife and I never told her what he did for a living.

11. Why don’t you MOVE OUT

My house is definitely haunted. Actually, I don’t know if it’s a haunting, or if my son managed to bring in a poltergeist. They say emotionally disturbed children attract them, so that could be it too.

Anyway, my house was built in 1889. It’s inevitable that someone would have died here. There are two that we know of for sure. One was a child, and he died of an illness, it was listed as natural causes in 1944. The other was an older gentleman, he died of undetermined causes in 1979. Both in the house. The boy died in my bedroom, the older man died in the area that was once the enclosed front porch and is now my daughter’s room.

The little boy is mean, not evil, but mean. I have pictures of him, in silhouette, standing in my bedroom. I will dig them out and scan them if I can find them. The only thing he’s ever done that was potentially harmful was push a dresser down the stairs. The dresser was sitting at least a foot back from the top of the stairs, on solid ground, was not leaning at all. All of a sudden, when my roommate was about 3/4 of the way down the stairway, it comes flying down the stairs. He threw himself out of the way, and the dresser hit the bottom of the stairs so hard that it literally exploded. Creepy shit.

The old man doesn’t do much, just hangs around in our entryway. He covers my daughter up when she’s cold and she claims to have talked to him, but I have never actually seen him myself. When we moved in, there was a satchel full of dried red peppers hanging in the entryway. I took it down and threw it away, it was put back up. This went on for literally months before I asked him to please stop putting them back up, because they had a potpourri smell to them and it was making my roommate really sick. He let me throw them away for good after that. Not that creepy.

There’s a female here too, but I know nothing about her, and no death of a female was disclosed to us when we bought the house. The guys hear her more than I do. My husband has heard her come on to him when he was the only one in our bedroom, multiple times. I’ve only heard her once. Clear as day, in a room that should have only had my husband and I in it, a female said, “Who is this bitch? I thought you wanted to be my daddy.” That freaked me right the fuck out. I blessed the house, with holy water, even though I am not religious. (In fact, I’m leaning towards a belief in no god, but I was fucking scared.) No one slept that night. We heard a woman crying, pounding on the side door, which we use as the front door, begging us to let her in. That door has a peephole, and it was winter, so we could have either seen anyone that was really out there, or seen tracks leading to the porch by looking out our window. There was neither. By dawn the screaming had faded out to crying and by 8 a.m. it was completely gone. My husband and roommate think that whatever it was is gone. I think it was a ruse and she is still here. Just a gut feeling.

12. Coincidence?

I used to work night shifts as a CNA at an assisted living center. There were 2 other CNAs that would work with me. One to help in the main area, and one for the Alzheimer area.

So one night we kept hearing noises like someone was walking on the roof, and one of the CNAs thought she had seen someone outside, so we were on edge already. Then the weird crap started to happen. We start hearing someone running in the 2nd floor hallway, by now we’ve triple checked all the doors to make sure they were locked, and we had done rounds a few times to make sure no one had come in.

Anyway, we were doing rounds again and we had split up to make it go faster. I was on the 2nd floor and I saw the other CNAs at the other end getting into the elevator so I thought I’d catch up to them. On my way over to the elevator I noticed that on the pool table, all the balls as well as the sticks had been arranged in an arrow shape which I thought was odd.

So I got back downstairs and head to the kitchen to grab a little snack. I went to the front desk and ask the others what they were doing upstairs, they said that they had been downstairs the whole time. At this point I’ve had about enough so I go to the kitchen to grab a knife just in case I needed a weapon. Now in about the half minute since I had left the kitchen, someone, or something had spread all the cloth napkins all over the floor.

The other CNAs were scared to the point of tears, and I wasn’t doing so well myself, so we called the cops. Anyway, the cops get there and are on edge themselves, but we do a few more rounds and they’re more than happy to take off. After that everything was pretty quiet.

I’m sure it’s just coincidence, but I found out the next day that a guy that worked in the kitchen had committed suicide. He also had an arrow tattoo.

13. This one is oddly comforting

I had an Aunt that passed away after being diagnosed with cancer (can’t remember which kind). She fought it for several years, but once she knew she was terminal, one thing she told my mom was that she would contact her from the other side, and let her know she was ok.

My mom joked and said something about not wanting freaking ghosts to be haunting her and to go bug one of her other brothers instead.

After she passed, my mom would have sporadic dreams about my Aunt, and the next day she would always call my cousin (aunt’s daughter) who lives several states away and they would talk about the dream.

A couple years went by and my mom had another dream, but when she woke up something was different. She had to call my cousin right away. It was early, but my cousin was awake and my mom told her about seeing my aunt, and she was very happy. In all the other dreams she had been happy, but this time even more so. She kept pointing at her wrist, and smiling, and touching her wrist some more. My mom didn’t know what the deal was, but she knew it had to be something good, as happy as my aunt was.

My cousin started crying, almost uncontrollably.

The day before, my cousin had been going through some boxes of her mom’s old stuff. Even though it had been a couple years, it was still too much to deal with all at once. One thing she did find, though, was a watch that used to belong to my aunt. The battery was dead, and my cousin thought it would be nice to replace the battery and then wear the watch.

My mom hasn’t had a dream about my aunt since.

14. Oh my GOD

I grew up in rural Arkansas. I also grew up during a time when lots of family farms were caving in to the pressure of big agricultural industries and selling off loads of farmland and forest acreage to massive companies that wanted to develop our little area into a mega feedlot (which has largely happened).

When I was in 9th or 10th grade, that new, clearcut style of ag development finally made its was to within a couple of miles of our house. And it was awful. We didn’t have any close neighbors, and we were the only house on our route for probably ten miles in either direction, so it felt very violating to have this development slowly work its way up our road to our house over the course of a couple of years. But, once spring arrived, those new clear cut expanses exploded into fields of tall grasses and brambles, and fireflies loved them. Our place is along one of several bayous that converge into a wide, mossy wetland, so midspring nights are full of light fog that hugs the ground as it rolls away from the wet ground and out into the surrounding forest (and the clearcut fields that replaced it).

Driving home with my friend Patrick one night, we come to a screeching halt on the road as it passes by the border of this new foggy, endless grass field. I have never seen so many fireflies in a single congregation in my life–there must have been millions! And it was truly gorgeous–they would sync up in small groups flashing in unison, then those harmonies would break up, then come back together again, then break up, and on and on.

We watched from the hood of the car for a while and eventually decided we had to go walk out into the field to see the light show from the inside. It was an amazing experience walking through them, and we walked for probably a good two kilometers to about the midpoint of this particular clearcut. Grasses were damp and about mid-chest tall, and the fog was only about the same height, rolling in from the east (direction of the bayou) and still thin enough to see through.

We freeze for a moment when we see the grass tops swaying a bit up ahead, but calm down when we realize it looks like a raccoon or armadillo or something is walking around and we’re just seeing its rustling.

Quickly, though, we can see the top of the animal doing it, the flat back peeking through the grass tops now and again: what is that, a huge dog? Surely not, what dog is four and a half feet tall? And it hasn’t got its head popped up over the grasses looking where it’s going. Still, it’s possible? Or maybe a deer, head down and grazing? It’s too far away to really tell–maybe 100 yards from us–and there’s just not enough available moonlight to see details. At this point we get a little nervous about startling an animal, so we move closer together and I clear my throat to make some audible, non-threatening noise. The motion comes to a total stop–again, no head pops up to see what the noise was. Which we find totally freaky and uncomfortable. I feel Pat touch my back, like a quiet nudge, and I take it to mean we should quietly go back to the car. As soon as we start moving a bit, the “dog” or whatever stands up, and it is clearly human-sized and with head full of long hair. Don’t see any clothes. Don’t see anything other than it is now moving toward us, quickly, at a good pace.

Needless to say, we are now running. We run for the 15 or so minutes it takes us to get back to the roadside without making a peep or turning around, because we are both scared as fuck. Jump in the car, slap the locks closed, and then we’re looking back into the field, but nothing’s visible. We ride back home, breathlessly tell my mom, and basically talk ourselves over it again and again for weeks.

I have no paranormal inclinations, but what would a naked, long-haired person be doing rummaging around on all fours in the middle of nowhere Arkansas where there is precisely one road and one house for about a 15 mile radius? Was it some crazy person who was living in the wilderness? That thought scares me more since we spent so much time in tents and deer stands out there over the years. At the time it just made me think about Pet Semetary! I still freak out about going by that place at night when I visit my parents!

15. What could possible do this

I used to work in a group home for adults with developmental disabilities. I had only been at that particular house for a couple months when my coworkers confided in me that the house was haunted, and she suspected it was by one of the former clients who had died there. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I have to admit the house was a bit spooky at night. One night I was watching TV and accidentally dozed off. Suddenly there was this really loud scraping sound and I jumped off the couch startled and wide awake. I poked around the house trying to find the source until I find that the access hatch to the attic had been ripped aside. It really freaked me out and I waited until my coworker started her shift in the morning to put it back. I never found out what caused the incident.

16. This gave me chills

At the risk of sounding cliche, I consider myself to be mostly a skeptic. I believe in the possibility of paranormal things, especially considering some of the things I have experienced. But, I also believe that a lot of stories you hear or read are probably either fabrications, or something that the teller has worked themselves into believing. I say this not to be judgemental, but to emphasize the fact that I still can’t explain what happened to me, other than to say that it still absolutely terrifies me to even think of it. I believe that either something truly paranormal was going on, or that some outside influence or severe night terrors/sleep paralysis was effecting me.

However, these events only happened in one house. A weird house.

The house I lived in when I was 5 till about 12 was a pretty weird one. It was originally a fairly old small building, with a loft bedroom above the main area. At some point a group of hippies added on to the building. The additions were not very well built or insulated, and were full of these big crazy glass windows and stained glass panels. There was a floating interior balcony area above the kitchen, and a tiny loft room we called, “the hole in the wall” which was just off the kitchen up a ladder. There was no plumbing in the house other than an old hand pump at the sink. The house was weird but I don’t really know if it had much to do with what happened there. I almost think it was more something to do with the land it was on. My mother still firmly believes in Ley lines, and that the property was on a bad one, a really bad one. Many other people who have lived on the property (including the lady who lives there now, who is a family friend), has admitted having weird experiences there. However I am here to tell my story. (I might be able to scan some pictures of the house if I can find them.)

My childhood bedroom in this house was in the older part of the building, it was up a really steep staircase which was kind of weird in itself, it was part bookshelf, and part window. There were two windows in the stairs, one between two of the steps, and one along the side of the stairwell. These windows came out of a workshop/washing room which was directly below my room. My room wasn’t terribly weird other than being a very narrow attic room with a kind of slanted A shape to it, and a weird stained glass window over the main window (which was also the fire exit, via a rope and long drop). The room below it though I never liked, and the woman who lives there now keeps both my old room, and that workroom padlocked. No small feat as my room didn’t actually have a door. She has it boarded up now. I was actually relieved when I saw that because I wasn’t sure she’d believe my story. I never told her all of it, but I did tell her to please not use those rooms. She told me to not worry, that she doesn’t for her own reasons. They scare her too. Anyways, the workroom was creepy by itself. It was full of old woodworker’s tools. I’m talking 18th century stuff. There was this enormous old drill press, and tons of these thin little sawblades hanging all over the walls. The smaller side room in there had these huge rusty white ceramic sinks… I am realizing typing this that this house really is pretty damn creepy. I never liked it but in retrospect I am amazed I never really thought of it this way. So yeah, very creepy all around.

A lot of the details here, I had been keeping buried really deep. About 8 years ago, something I was talking to my mother about in her new home triggered a flood of memories about this time of my life. I went white (according to my mother), fell to my knees off of the couch, and started crying and wailing. I am not prone to hysterics. I was covering my eyes and freaking out, saying, “No, no, oh god… how did I forget this?” or something to that effect. I scared the hell out of my mother.

This is what I remembered.

When things really started getting weird, I was about 7 years old. I’ve always had trouble sleeping. I wake up really easily. A housefly can wake me. I never had an imaginary friend, but I had something that would visit me just as I was falling asleep.

It started fairly gently. Just a weird voice telling me to, “Go to sleep.” I will never forget the sound of the voice though. It sounded neither male or female, and like it was really far away, but right in my ear at the same time. Like a radio station with white noise and static, but a clear quiet voice that you could clearly understand.

I remember not really liking the voice, and wondering why it was bothering me. But I didn’t fear it at first. I didn’t trust it either though. I don’t remember how long this went on, but I remember the voice getting more interested in me, it would tell me to close my eyes, to just listen to it, and every night, to just trust it. “You can trust me. I’m your friend.” I never spoke to it, but I did think to it, I know I was always thinking, “No.” or at least negative. It got progressively insistent, wanting me to trust it. Never, ever angry though. It seemed to want to convince me that it was my friend. It was this that ultimately made me the most afraid of it. I remember thinking at it, “Who are you?” and it’s reply was, “You can call me Nurse.” I guess it thought that would be a name I would trust. But I remember it scaring the crap out of me. I don’t remember the details but sometime after this, when I knew for sure I did not like this voice talking to me* at all*, it started to get angry. I would be wide awake but unable to move. My eyes would be, or at least feel open but I couldn’t see. I would want to scream for my parents (which I sometimes did when I had a bad nightmare) but I couldn’t. The worst part was, the next morning. I wouldn’t remember a thing. I would only remember just as I was falling asleep. Then the fear would come, and the voice.

During this time I also had some of the most vivid nightmares of my life. Things no 7 year old girl should ever, ever, even know about. They were often the same nightmare over and over on different nights too. One I remember very clearly was this hardpan desert area that was covered in glass phonebooths. Every 10 or so feet, a phonebooth. In every one would be the same man in a business suit, and he was always horribly mutilated and massacred in different ways in each booth.

Another weird event that happened in that time, but I am not sure if it is related was, waking up in the middle of the night and sitting bolt upright. I don’t know if it was sleepwalking but I vaguely remember. Mostly I have the details second hand from my mother, who got a pretty big scare. Anyways, I went downstairs and into that workroom I mentioned earler. Below the staircase was a storage area underneath a drafting desk that was built into the underside of the stairs. There were several random boxes of my parent’s stuff, like records etc. stored there. I pulled the boxes out and started digging through them in the dark. I grabbed an item, took it downstairs into the kitchen, and promptly began screaming my head off. I was yelling, “BURN IT!” over and over at the top of my lungs. My parents flew downstairs and understandably wanted to know what the heck was going on. The item I had pulled out was a Ouija board. I didn’t even know what they were, or that my mother owned one.

The previous family who lived in the house had two teenage daughters who had played with Ouija boards in the house, and had some pretty bad things happen to them. The girls are technically the owners of the property now (and they’re in their 40s now I think?), as far as I know they won’t step foot there. So, that’s my rather long winded story. This is the first time I have ever written it down. I am shaking and terribly uncomfortable. I submit this in good faith, hoping that even if people don’t believe me, that they won’t think I’m nuts either. I truly believe every bit of this, but I do also believe it is possible that I was having night terrors, or just a hard mental stage in my childhood. But, I have more belief that something very frightening happened to me in that house.

17. Uno cards

Uno cards. Mother fucking Uno cards. We still have yet to figure it out. We don’t live in that house anymore but a few years ago, I started to find green #4 uno cards. Knowing the pranks my husband pulls, I just assumed it was him being silly. I would find them everywhere – in the silverware drawer, under folded laundry, in a storage box in the closet, tucked in my shoes, everywhere. I would just take them and throw them away because seriously, it’s not like I can do anything with them. I’d find at least one a day.

I finally broke down and asked my husband what the hell was with the uno cards. He looked confused at me and said “I thought you were doing it.. I keep finding them everywhere” so we started collecting them. Never a different color or different number. This went on for nearly a year, and then it stopped all of a sudden. We never got the feeling the house was haunted or anything, but to this day can not explain what the hell was with the cards. I wasn’t doing it, and I honestly believe my husband wasn’t ether because he was just as freaked out about it as I was. To make matters even more confusing, it started right when I found out I was pregnant, and ended right after I gave birth.

18. Goddammit

I received two phone calls and a voicemail from my house phone when no one was home.

19. What the hell

My dad tells this one pretty often:

He used to work 3rd shift at the power plant. One night he and his coworker meet at the bar for a quick drink before work. After they finish their drinks, they leave and his friend follows him on their way to work. They drive through the country to get there (most of central IL is country). They see two people on the side of the road. A woman with her arms draped around a male child, probably 10-12 years old. They’re both wearing odd clothing (think “Leave it to beaver”). Well they didn’t stop. My dad thought he was seeing things.

When they got to work though, the guy asked my dad if he saw the woman and child as well. So they call the police because they think some people are lost out there, and feeling like dicks because they didn’t stop to help.

Well the cops scour the area. They don’t find anybody or even SIGNS of anybody.

My dad found out a few months later telling the story that right on that road was a house that burned down in the 50s. And when he did more research on it, a woman and child did in fact die in that fire.

20. Jittery nerves after this

I invited my new girlfriend to stay the night at my house. It wasn’t the first time, and she normally sleeps on the side of my bed next to the wall. She never revealed to me her special sleeping conditions before hand (Music on low or white noise, and possibly a small light). So it was pitch black and silent as the dickens. She wanted to try sleeping on the other part of the bed. She falls asleep like a light turning off, two seconds and she’s out. I don’t fall asleep quite so easily. So I’m holding her as she’s facing me, and I feel a bit uncomfortable, so I try to put my leg on top of hers. As soon as my leg touches her, she wakes up, looking upward, and exclaims “Whoa!” I look in the same directions, not seeing anything, and at that point she hides under the blankets. This freaks me out, so I do the same.

I shake her, and ask her if she’s awake, and what’s going on. She tells me there is a large dark figure standing over her, like bent over at a 90 degree angle staring at her. She can’t really make out any facial features, except she told me later she could see his mad eyes. I’m thoroughly scared now, and I remember from watching ghost hunting shows that you have to command them to go away. So in my bravest possible voice I say “You are not allowed here, you have to leave.” Without ever removing the blanket from my face. I ask her if it worked, and she decided to check, and she said he was gone. I jumped over her and switched the light on as fast as I could, and we spent the night looking up relaxing videos to calm nerves.

She tells me later that she can see people like this all the time, even at work in crowded lit up places. She doesn’t get scared of them there, she just pretends they are real people.

21. I really hate that door-pounding noise

I work evenings at a funeral home. Unless we have an evening recitation of the rosary or a visitation, it can be pretty lonely. About a year ago, my husband stopped by on a slow night and bring me dinner.

We heard the doorbell for the front door ring. I go up to answer it, but there was nobody there. Eh, ding dong ditch, no big deal. Go back in the office where my husband is eating his burrito. We heard the damn doorbell ring AGAIN. I get up, go to the front door…nobody’s there. Okay, the doorbell is glitching out, or SOMETHING. Nothing paranormal about it.

As I’m walking back to the office, my husband is walking to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water. We cross paths in the hallway in front of the locked embalming room. He asks me if anyone was at the front door. I reply, “no, it’s probably some asshole kids playing around–”

Just then, we hear the most awful, angry pounding on the embalming room door… FROM THE INSIDE.

I’m stunned. He’s stunned. I told him to go back in the office while I checked out the prep room. (Legally, for obvious reasons, he’s not allowed in there.) I unlock the door, alone and nervous as shit. All I see is just a sweet looking elderly lady already casketed, ready for the service the next day. No one hiding under the surgical tables. No one in the cabinets. No one in the refrigerator.

I keep looking for a logical reason for why the embalming room doors rattled so violently, but I can’t find any. I never told any of my coworkers about it because I’m afraid they’ll think I’m not taking my profession seriously. I was afraid to work nights for a solid month.

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