SPINE-CHILLING: 17 People Describe The Creepiest Unexplained Thing That Ever Happened To Them
1. I thought of an ex right around the moment she died.
“Just an incredible coincidence but two weeks ago I was grocery shopping and I thought about a girl who hadn’t come to mind in years (over a decade). We were middle school sweethearts for about a minute and then I just forgot about her until that moment. When I got home I Googled her to see what she was up to (was she still hot?) and I found a blog posting about an hour old from her current SO announcing that she had just passed away from cancer.”
2. Ghost in the pinball machine.
“When I was in the second grade I had this plug in, stand-up Happy Days pinball machine. (yep…I am feelin’ old). If you left it plugged in it would eventually start making sounds as if it was being played. One night I went to bed and it started making the sounds. I reached for the plug and could not find it. I jumped out of bed and turned on the light.
When I did…I noticed two things simultaneously…it was not plugged in AND a ball rolled between the two flippers.
I did not sleep in my bed for a week.”
3. Something under my bed kept tugging on my sheets.
“One night when I was around 12 years old something under my bed kept tugging on my sheets and eventually fully pulled them under my bed. I sat up all night scared shitless. I checked under the bed in the morning and my sheets were balled up under the foot of my bed.”
4. The disappearing albinos.
“One weekend I was walking through my old grade school to get into town (small town maybe 1200 people) when I turn a corner of the building into the parking lot. In the parking lot was one black sedan, nothing notable, no identifying marks… but nothing too unusual. I’m maybe 20m away.
Except the passengers.
There was four completely white, definitely albino-looking men. Bald, black eyes looking straight ahead. A moment after noticing them they all turn and look at me in unison. Their heads snapped instantly and all four of them met my eyes.
I jolted back around the corner then slowly looked back around to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Nope, there was the car and the men still looking at me.
Then I blinked and the car was empty.
I leave the way I came…take the long road into town, all the while feeling as if I was followed.
I’ll never forget that day, hallucination or not, it’s burned into that part of my brain that helps you frequently remember all the scary shit that’s ever happened to you.”
5. The phantom on the field.
“I live in Stuttgart and was walking across an open area that used to be a parade area I guess. Just kind of a wide-open field. My head was down and I was looking at some of the leaves on the ground when off to my left I heard, ‘how are you doing?’
I looked over assuming I was going to see someone I knew, but it wasn’t. Now keep in mind, I’m an atheist and have no belief in anything outside of that which can be proved. Just was worth mentioning. When I looked over I saw a small person about four feet tall. I say person because I still don’t know if it was a man or woman, child or adult. But more than anything, the clothes are what really threw me. The clothes looked as though they were made by someone who had never seen clothes before. As if some made what were supposed to be clothes. That’s the only way I can describe it.
Well, I answered, but quickly looked away. I started to walk away, but reason got the best of me and I thought, ‘you are mistaken, turn around and figure this out.’ Well, I turned around to an empty field. I have no idea where this person went, since I only walked about ten steps.
I have no idea what I saw and actually thought that I had a full-on hallucination. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, but it was definitely an odd feeling.”
6. Her face was three times the length of a normal person’s face, her eyes were completely blank, and she had a smile on her face.
“I was never a believer in ghosts/spirits the paranormal, UFOs, and stuff.
About two years ago me and buddy decided to go on a drive. It was a hot summer’s night and we were bored out of our minds, so we picked up some cigarettes and went on a late-night drive. We decided to drive to the top of the mountain, the base of the mountain is about an hour’s drive from where I lived and it takes about another hour to drive all the way to the top where they have a restaurant/bar. This is in Norway, by the way.
It was pretty late, around 3 am in morning, we knew the bar would be closed but we thought we would just chill on the benches, have a smoke and take in the view at first light.
So, we get to the base of the mountain and start driving up and round, the road twists round the mountain until you get to the top, so when you reach a turn you can barely see around the corner. It was pitch black darkness, only the road was visible due to the street lights, but apart from the road, the edges and mountain side were barely visible.
We had been driving for about half an hour, everything was pretty enjoyable, absolutely empty roads (guess all the sane ones were asleep in bed ready to wake up and go to work in the morning), complete silence, it was just relaxing.
As we turn one of the bends, I get this very uneasy feeling as I see something, definitely a person, sitting on a boulder at the edge of the road. My friend sees this as well but keeps driving, and I’m thinking, WTF bro, but I realize that he is turning the car around and going back because it’s pretty treacherous to reverse on that road.
So we head back, slowly, and I realize that he is fine! He’s not getting any bad feelings, he is in his normal mood. So I convinced myself that I’m acting weird and that its probably just some crazy hiker.
We park the car right opposite this figure, engine still running, and my friend calls out, ‘Hi, there, are you OK?’ (I have to admit I was still pretty scared so I didn’t say anything). No response.
The figure then looks up in our direction and we get the fucking shit scared out of us. We saw that it was a woman, wearing a plain white dress, with very long, beautiful hair, but her face was three times the length of a normal person’s face, her eyes were completely blank, and she had a smile on her face.
I swear to god we both felt so fearful that we were completely paralyzed. We couldn’t yell, or even communicate, not even a single word, it felt like we couldn’t move.
I don’t know how he found the courage to press the gas and get the hell out of there. But I do remember that when we both got home we had a very high fever and we were like that for a couple more days afterwards.”
7. Ghosts really wanted to watch Jerry Springer in my dorm room.
“A dorm at a local university had a student die of alcohol poisoning on his 21st birthday and there have been lots of reports of creepy things happening in the room he died in. Students reported tapping from the inside of the window, shoes being rearranged while they were out, and a loud scraping noise that came from upstairs (people upstairs thought it was coming from downstairs).
Anyways, there is a youth sports camp that uses this dorm for a summer residence and I was a counselor so I stayed in the dorm with the kids. I was assigned to stay in the room that the aforementioned student died in. I grew up in the same town as this college, so I knew all about the ‘ghost’ and didn’t think anything of it, there’s no such thing as ghosts, right? I moved in and the only thing that looked different about the room (compared to others in the dorm) was that there was a crucifix.
During my week shit got weird. Several times I heard loud tapping from the inside of my window. One night, I poked my head outside of my door late one night and yelled ‘lights out’ to some kids running down the hall—my lights promptly turned out inside my room.
Finally, during a break at the end of the week I went back to my room for a nap. I found my TV was on and the volume was extremely loud. I didn’t think much of it, maybe the kids had been playing ps2 in my room and forgot to turn it off. I grabbed the remote, laid on the bed, and hit the power button…the TV stayed on. I took the batteries out, tried again, and still the TV was on. I picked my lazy ass up, walked to the TV, and pressed the power button. Nothing. I turned the volume down. Nothing. I finally unplugged the TV and…Nothing. Totally freaking out, I unplugged the cable cord thinking maybe some weird surge through that was keeping the TV on. Nope. I sat there holding the TV power cord, cable cord, and remote and was watching my TV continue to play. I ran from the room, got another counselor, and showed them. He promptly freaked the fuck out and we left the building to get the camp director—and when he got to my room the TV was off. Fuck.”
8. The thing that shakes my bed.
“I’ve got what I call a ‘bed shaker.’ Whatever it is has been following me around since I was about 8. My mom used to like to prank me when I was a kid and hide near my bed and shake it. One night, I was in bed and the bed was shaking so I yelled at my mom ‘Stop shaking my bed!’ I heard her and my father reply ‘We’re in the living room!’ and I quickly booted it downstairs.
It happened every few years here and there and stopped from the time I was 18 until about a year and a half ago. Now it’s happening every few weeks. I’ll wake up to my bed shaking like fuck, and of course I’m terrified. The one time I was grateful for the bed-shaker was about a year ago. My bed started doing that funky dance, and I woke up. My daughter (who was under a year) started HOWLING. I ran into her room and the wee lamp shade on her nightlight had tipped and the bulb started burning through the shade. Thank FUCK I got in there on time.”
9. Did you hear that?
“My twins were two months old and barely sleeping through the night. As most nights go my wife and I, whose room is adjacent to the nursery, were woken around 2 am to some crying coming from one of the cribs. It was my turn to get up, so I saunter over to Gabe (one of the twins) and I hear a woman say ‘It’s OK, Gabey.’ My wife goes, ‘did you hear that?’ She didn’t say it, I didn’t say it…to this day we have no idea where the voice came from. It wasn’t my wife’s voice.”
10. The lady in white.
“The supposed lady in white.
A buddy and I were relaxing on a porch late one night close to the Michigan border at a friend’s house and staring into the woods I see something. I said hey Donny do you see that, he said yea it looks like some chick just standing there. Now this was about 100 feet away and it kind of freaked us out. So we kept staring and then all of a sudden it zips off to the right as if it were floating. We looked at each other and freaked out so bad we ran inside the house and slammed the door. His sister looks at us crazy and we tell her what we just had seen. She told us we had just seen the lady in white ghost and it was common up there to see her. Still to this day just the thought of remembering that floating/zipping motion still irks me…”
11. Bad luck with the Ouija board.
“The most paranormal thing I’ve experienced was probably the time when a friend of mine and my brother tried to communicate with ‘ghosts’.
Me and my friend were having a drink downstairs and I came out of the kitchen and turned off the light that was shining outside and after I sat down he said that the light just blinked and after a couple of minutes we decided we should try to make contact with ‘ghosts’ to see if there are any in my house. (At this point my Grandfather (3 years dead) at that time and my dog (Less than a year) were the only things I knew of that died nearby)
So after we made the Ouija board my brother came downstairs and joined us. We decided that we were going to give it around 3 tries, the first time nothing really happened except for a little bit of moving of the glass but that could’ve been easily one of us. The second try went basically the same but my brother felt some chills down his spine and I thought that I saw a weird kind of mist walking past the couch he was sitting on.
On the third time, we didn’t something would happen since nothing really happened the first two times but as soon as we wanted to leave, we heard an extremely loud BANG from the side. At that time, I thought the fucking wall collapsed or something in that nature. But it scared the living shit out of everyone after that happened my brother quickly turned on the light and we saw what happened. A portrait of my dog was RIPPED of the wall. (on a side note; it was impossible to get that off with bare hands even) After that we rushed upstairs and tried to sleep. I didn’t have so much trouble with it because if it’s my dog that would be awesome but I’ve heard other things in the house as well which makes me consider it. that was my story.”
12. Shadows that move, lights that go on and off, our names being whispered, a stroller rolling by itself…
“Shadows that move, lights that go on and off, our names being whispered, a stroller rolling by itself, stuff being thrown against us and the final straw that made us move out where scratch marks on my ex’s legs that she had when she woke up and clearly where not possible with human nails. She still has the scars and I have pictures of it somewhere. They look like claw marks. That last one made us move out because we didn’t get any rest anymore.”
13. Flip-flop, flip-flop, flip-flop, walking toward my door.
“One night, I was in bed, getting ready to go to sleep. I was around 17, living in my parents’ basement. I heard someone open the basement door and start walking down the steps. It sounded like they were wearing flip-flops, which was odd, because it was fairly cold outside at the time. They came down the steps, flip-flop, flip-flop, flip-flop, and then stopped. I thought it might be my brother, but he was out with friends, and never wore flip flops. I called out anyway, ‘Jake? Is that you?’ No answer. Flip-flop, flip-flop, flip-flop, walking toward my door. ‘Dad? Mom?’ No answer. The knob on my door started to move. No dice. It’s locked. There was an audible, disappointed sigh. Then, flip-flop, flip-flop, flip-flop, away from my door and back up the steps. I was straight-up scared. I grabbed a baseball bat and went out to the living room dividing the bedrooms. Nothing. No one in the bathroom, no one in my brother’s room, no one on the steps. We had two phone lines at the house, so I called my parents’ line. ‘Dad, did you see headlights come up the driveway, or hear anyone come in the house?’ He hadn’t. ‘Did you or mom just come downstairs wearing flip-flops?’ ‘What? No. Go back to bed, son.’ So I did. Eventually. I thought someone had snuck into our house. It was the most genuinely terrified I’d ever been.
Not until the next day did I realize that, one year ago to the day, my cousin had taken his own life. I was one of the last people to talk to him, and we’d made plans to get together to catch up.
He wore flip-flops almost every single day.”
14. The mysterious face in the photo.
“This happened about 6 years or so ago when I was in high school. Near the end of the fall before Christmas break when there were a lot of projects due the school had an ‘art night’ for students with art/music/drama classes that needed extra time to prepare for their big projects. It was half intense study-time and half everyone just spending time together talking or goofing off. It would last from about 7pm to about 1am or 2am depending on how tired the teachers got.
By this time it was about midnight and most people were either done with their work or given up for the night so a lot of people were just talking, or working on their own things. A couple of the photography students were just taking pictures for fun and developing the film (yeah, they used film for the class). Most of these photos were your typical stupid high school kid photos of girls making stupid faces at the camera that they would of course put in the yearbook because they were also in charge of that. Suddenly there are two loud sharp screams from the dark room and two girls come running out babbling nonsense and crying. We all try to figure out what is happening and the teacher comes in to calm them down too.
They explain that they were developing the photos and one of them had a ‘ghost’ in it. Of course, we’re all curious so we go to the dark room to check it out. The teacher pulls the photo out of the chemicals (I’m not a photographer, don’t know much about the process) and sees a picture of them that they had taken while running around in the “Old Hill Building” as it was called, an old stone building with a couple classrooms and a big storage basement (also the oldest school building still in use in the state, of which the school district bragged about for some reason). The two girls are leaning against the banister to the second floor. Behind them, seemingly out of nothing is very clearly another girl’s face, mouth open, staring at the camera, fading out to the rough shape of a body (Edited for accuracy. They weren’t making kissy faces after all now that I see the original again).
To be honest? The rest of us thought it was awesome. We were trying to figure out what had happened. It didn’t look like the girl that had taken the picture, there weren’t any reflective surfaces, the girls claimed they didn’t do it on purpose to freak people out. We looked at the film and you could still sort of see the face so they developed another one too just to see again. Exactly the same. One picture the art teacher locked in his office to show off on Monday, the other was passed around the rest of the night and eventually given back to the girls.
Come Monday things got even more strange. The girls were freaking out again and showed the art teacher their copy of the photo. The face was gone. Again, suspecting foul play he got the photo from his office and was shocked to say the face was also absent in that photo. EVERYONE was in uproar at this point with how crazy creepy the whole thing was. They decided to develop yet another photo to see what happened, but when it came out? Nothing. No face. Not a trace of it. Nada. The art teacher confirmed it was still the original film (because of the rest of the photos on it maybe? Difficult to remember) and was befuddled by the whole ordeal. He kept teasing the girls about it and they are since terrified of that building. I even had my 5th year high school reunion this September and one of the two girls was there, we talked about it. She says she still gets uneasy seeing that building driving by (not that she is ever really back in town).
I wish I had some sort of story about a girl who died in the building or a gruesome murder but there hasn’t been a murder in the town for over 70 years (very small town). Who knows what happened. All I can say is having seen the photo myself it did not look like a smudge or bizarre photo effect. It was definitely a human face, of a girl I did not recognize. My bet is they faked it with some sort of unique effect, though I normally wouldn’t consider them near as devious or motivated for something that elaborate. Nevertheless, it’s still a fun story.
Edit: I’m messaging one of the girls on Facebook now to try to get a digital copy of the original photo. I can show it to you and then try to Photoshop in what it looked like.
Double Edit: She says she still has it but not with her. She is going to have her mom try to scan it. To be honest, it’s going to be a disappointing candid shot of two girls hanging out, if I can’t get the exact one I’ll still Photoshop a random one to look like the original for all intents and purposes.
Triple Edit: Alright! OP Delivers. I have the original photo. This is a scanned copy of the print shrunk down to normal size and corrected in Photoshop a little bit (her mom couldn’t use the scanner settings so it was like 6000 pixels wide). The picture IS normally in black and white (I didn’t change that) since they were using black and white film.
And this is my artistic rendition of what I remember seeing in the photo to the best of my memory and ability. I remember the face looking more obviously feminine (you could see the hair better, on the actual print the background is lighter looking, this scanned version loses some detail). The girl was Caucasian, between 12 and 20, her mouth was open and the face was a bit more distinct than this version and it wasn’t anyone we could recognize (at least of the people there that night, although again, it was a small school). I should also mention that we checked every other photo that night to make sure they didn’t have one that was posed similarly to the odd ‘phantom girl’ in case something ‘bled over?’ somehow? I was a graphic design student not a photography person, so I’m not certain what sort of crazy stuff can go on when developing film. It was pretty much impossible to see the face in the film (since the negative makes the contrast all weird and it was tiny) so I can’t honestly say I saw it on the film itself, but it was very obvious on the prints, and later it was very obviously NOT on the prints. Definitely a weird experience. I’m still not sure it can be chalked up to supernatural (somehow fucked up the development process the exact same way twice maybe?) but it was definitely fascinating, unusual and strangely chilling.”
15. Dead snakes all over the place.
“My grandmother murdered my grandfather. Pushed him into a doorknob.
We wouldn’t think this, except that the night before he died she called the entire family out because she said she was ‘worried’ about him. When we got there, he seemed to be in as good of health as he had been in the last five years, but the next morning we got a call that he had ‘fallen’ in the bathroom and hit his head on the doorknob. Note that she had been tortuous and cruel to him for the entire marriage, but especially the last five years or so before his death.
In the hospital, the doctor shared his concerns that her story didn’t really make sense, but we didn’t really want to see her in prison at 72, so we just let everything slide.
Fast forward to the day of the funeral. As my grandmother is leaving the house, there’s a dead rattlesnake on her doormat. Weird enough, but that shit happens out in the country. She calls my uncle and he gets rid of it.
On the way to the hospital, her car breaks down, and ten feet in front of the car are two ravens eating a dead rattlesnake. Weirder, but still within reasonable coincidence standards.
When she returns to her house after the funeral, there’s another dead snake on her front porch. I think this one was a rat snake, but at this point it’s getting pretty fucking weird. She calls my uncle again, and he gets rid of it.
Then, the next morning, she walks outside to get the paper, and there’s a fucking buzzard ten feet in front of her porch eating a dead snake. According to her, it just stared at her for a couple of minutes then flew off. We all hate her at this point, but I remember her telling the story and seeing the look of fear in her eyes and having any remaining doubt that she had killed my grandfather removed.
I’m an atheist and think it was all just an amazing coincidence, but thinking about it still kind of gives me the willies.”
16. Pet-sat for a dog that lived in a house where the ghosts hated me.
“I was pet-sitting for a client that goes to the vet clinic I worked at. I was to stay overnight and basically just live there while they were gone. No big deal, I pet-sit on a regular basis. This was the first time I stayed at their house and it was very big and definitely nice (owner was a surgeon). The day went by fine and then night came. I was told to sleep upstairs with the lab. When it was time for bed, she did not want to go upstairs. Had her tail between her legs and was whining. This had me a little nervous since she normally sleeps upstairs with the owners. After 5 minutes of trying, I finally get her up. I went to the bedroom and climbed in bed. Obviously, it’s common for houses to creak and what not at night, so when pet-sitting I always look to the dogs to see if they are nervous. If it’s a normal house noise, they aren’t disturbed. Lights go out, and the dog was pacing like crazy. And then the shadows appear under the door. Constantly moving and definitely not mine or the dog’s. They don’t have any other pets, so this worried me some, but I dismissed it. Then it sounded like a moving team was working in the room next to me. It literally sounded like the entire room was being rearranged. Dressers dragging across the floor and slamming into the walls, causing them to shake and lots of dragging/ screeching noises. (I never had the nerve to open the door to this room, so I’m not positive what was making the noise.) Now the dog started whining, cowering, and won’t stop looking from me to the door. At this point I’m scared and contemplating making a mad dash downstairs. I built up the courage to open my bedroom door after 20 minutes of constant dragging, crashing, and screeching, and dashed down the stairs, dog at my feet. All the noises I heard stopped and the whole house is quiet. I got to the outside door, which was a pain because it sticks and was hard to open. Then to close it you have to slam it shut or it doesn’t latch. I opened it and got outside with the dog. I turned around to slam the door shut and before I reach the handle the door slams in my face. The next morning, I returned with the dog to feed her breakfast. I went in through the attached garage and all is fine in the house. While the dog was eating, I decided to go outside and get the mail. I returned to the garage door, which was locked, and I had left in unlocked. Luckily, I had the front door key in my car and could enter. Needless to say, I didn’t stay there again.
TL; DR: Didn’t believe in ghosts. Pet-sat for a dog that lived in a house where the ghosts hated me.”
17. There is what I describe as the absence of light in the shape of a human, walking toward me, but on the outside of the wall.
“When I was 15, my best friend went to see his pastor uncle out on the East Coast, and came back with quite a tale. He had been exorcised of many different demons. This is not that story, but my own. After his experience, he told me all about it and prayed that I experience something similar. So one night I was standing outside smoking a cigarette, and I had this epiphany. I was going to witness the end of the world, and I needed to be a physically and mentally prepared soldier to help people in the end of times. As I am having this thought, something in my head said, ‘No you are not.’ Like a voice that was not mine. And right at that moment I realized something was standing inside of me, and I proclaimed, Yes, I am! And what I felt was like someone stepping outside of my body and going behind me. I freaked out and ran inside. So I am sitting in my living room by myself freaked out, and the phone rings. I answer and there is this Roar wiz evil sounding non-English crap on the phone. I hung up, threw the phone, then ran to my room. Then I am just sitting in my room praying, and I felt a good presence surround me. After a minute or two, I look up at my wall. There is what I describe as the absence of light in the shape of a human, walking toward me, but on the outside of the wall. Like it couldn’t enter the room, but I could somehow see it through the wall. It was as if you drew an outline around someone, then on the inside its just dark. So dark, it’s the absence of light. At this point I freak out again and run into my brother’s room and just sit there paralyzed. This is the only time I have seen or felt anything like this. I am not super religious, but this surely has affected my views on religion.”
