I Read About Creepy Unsolved Mysteries For A Living, And These 23 Are The Most Unsettling I've Read All Month

Hello, fellow enthusiasts of all things creepy and unsolved! School is back in session, summer is coming to a close, and spooky season is finally (almost) upon us. So, there's no better time to curl up, put on some ghoulish Lofi music (this is my personal favorite), and read some real-life scary stories that are even scarier because they come from BuzzFeed readers just like you.

If you're new here, every month I ask members of the BuzzFeed community to share the most mind-boggling "unsolved mysteries" they've ever experienced — AKA things they just cannot for the life of them logically explain. I've gotten all kinds of hair-raising tales over the years, from ghosts to glitches in the matrix. This month, of course, is no exception. So, without further ado, here are 23 skin-crawlingly creepy "unsolved mysteries" people shared:

1."I was driving with my family somewhere when I looked out my window and saw a familiar but rather uncommon car. It belonged to my friend’s mom. I was watching them out my window and saw her mother in the driver’s seat and her father riding in the passenger’s seat. I even made eye contact with my friend, who sat in her usual spot in the back. These people were all exactly as I normally saw them, down to their unique hairstyles and clothes. My friend was wearing the exact same track and field hoodie she wore every day. I immediately texted her and told her about how I had seen her and her family. She asked where, and when I told her, she was confused. They were never at that intersection. In fact, she had been in her house the whole time. To this day, I have absolutely no idea how or why I saw the exact doppelgängers of my friend’s family in their car right as we drove by."

—Anonymous

2."My family has lived in this house for roughly 62 years. Prior to my family, it has had only two other families inhabit it — the one who had it built, and the family my parents purchased it from. The latter did not own the home for very long – the longest residents were the original family. It was built in 1863 and is a very large three-story home. I love this house – honestly. It's welcoming and warm…usually. Every year, around September, things go a little sideways. For a few weeks, sometimes as long as a few months, things move or disappear, we'll hear inexplicable, odd noises, and some of the warmth of the house seems to dissipate almost. I do not know how to explain it – it basically feels cold."

"One of the odd things that happened was a ring that I inherited from my Grandmother went missing. It was a natural yellow sapphire, graded as top clarity and color, and not an inexpensive ring. I wore it ALWAYS (and still do). As the stone is large, I always took it off at bedtime and put it in my jewelry box. I never ever left it out. So, as I was getting ready for work one day, I went to get the ring, and it was GONE. I KNEW I had put it away safely, as I was hyper-diligent and careful about this ring; it meant the world to me, as I adored my Grandmother. I searched everywhere, and I mean everywhere, ripping the room apart and asking the family if someone had come into my room that night (that did NOT go over well). Weeks went by, and still no ring.

I was heartbroken. My family was angry that I 'lost' it. I came home from work one day, and as I was passing the fireplace, I saw something glimmer out of the corner of my eye. I looked over and saw that my ring had been placed on a taper candle that was on the mantle. It was about one-third of the way down the candle and had been pushed there HARD, as it was kind of embedded in the wax of the candle, peeling it somewhat. Thankfully, the ring had not been damaged. I actually cried; I was so relieved and thanked the house for returning it. Silly, maybe, but, well, I know my family did not touch it. I believe who or whatever 'lives' here with us did.

Over the years, there have been a ton of stories — some amusing, some not so much, and three rather frightening. Still, I adore this lovely old home with all my heart."

—Anonymous

3."My best friend's son died unexpectedly (COVID-related) while in Alaska. We live in Hawaii. Not too long after it happened, I had a dream that he and I were at a crowded, noisy party, but he seemed upset. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, 'She's pregnant and I won't get to hold the baby.' When I told my friend about the dream, it made no sense to us. About a week later, his younger sister told us she was expecting. He knew before she did and got the message to us. I don't usually remember my dreams, but this one stuck with me."

—Joanne, Maui, HI

4."Where we go camping, there is a lake with a huge dam. I was taking a group of friends up there to show them how tall it is. To get to this dam, there’s a very remote mountain road. There’s really not much off of it other than a few campgrounds and logging roads. The turnoff to the lake and dam is about 20 miles up this road. On this particular day, we actually passed a few cars coming down the mountain from the other direction. The odd thing was that every single one of the cars flashed their lights at us. About halfway to the turnoff, a sheriff had the road blocked. He asked where we were headed, and when I told him we were going to the dam, he informed us that there was a large rockslide before the turnoff and that we wouldn’t be able to get to it as the road was closed due to the slide and cleanup efforts. So, we decided to just drive up to a lookout point not far from where we were."

"As we were driving, we came to the turnoff for the lake without encountering the rockslide. We thought it was odd but just assumed that maybe he was thinking of another access road to the lake. So we got to the dam, drove across, hung out for maybe half an hour, and decided to head back to our campsite. As we were approaching the dam to drive back across, a security guard stopped us and asked where we were coming from, how we got there, how long we’d been there, etc. When we answered that we’d only been there about 30 minutes and we came up the mountain road, he said, 'That’s not possible.'

He told us to wait there as we were going to need an escort to get through the rockslide cleanup. We were all wondering what was going on, as we had seen no such rockslide on the way there! Anyway, that same sheriff we spoke to before heading up the mountain came to escort us and was quite mad. He yelled at us, saying that he told us not to go up there. After a good verbal lashing, he agreed to take us through the slide area. So, we started following him.

Within about four miles of being back on the mountain road, we saw the rockslide. There were huge rocks bigger than my SUV, mobile cranes, backhoes, the whole works. There is no way we could have gotten to the lake without driving through it on the way up, but we did. We hadn't seen a rockslide or even construction equipment. We never saw anything. There were four of us in the car that day, and we still bring it up 20 years later. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever experienced."

—Anonymous

5."MANY years ago, when I was about 12, my family and I were on vacation. On driving days, we normally stopped at a motel for the night by 6 p.m. For some reason, on this night, we didn't stop until almost 8. We couldn't find a motel, so we stopped at an OLD hotel. The rooms only had one full-sized bed each, so my parents took one room, and my older sister and I took the room next door. After we got settled, I went into our bathroom to take a shower. Standing there was a very old man in a dark suit and white shirt. He didn't say a word but reached out to touch my shoulder. I screamed and ran out of the room. My sister asked what was wrong and I told her about the man. She went into the bathroom, but no one was there."

"No one left, either, because we would've seen them walk right past us to exit the room. We ran next door and told our parents, and they summoned the manager. The entire floor was checked, and no one matching that description was found. I still have a 100% clear picture of what the man looked like in my head today."

—Anonymous

6."When I was 19, my family and I were on vacation in Hot Springs, Arkansas, having fun at a theme park there. It was me, my mom, my dad, and my three younger siblings. We had been there a couple of days and needed gas before driving the few hours back home. While the car was filling up, I walked into the gas station store, looking for the bathroom. They said it was outside and gave me a key. Even though it was daylight and my parents were right outside at the pumps, I instantly had a horrible gut feeling. It was such a strange feeling; it’s hard to describe. It wasn’t quite fear but like if you could feel evil. Maybe like a warning sign."

"Anyway, the bathroom was on the other side of the gas station, facing away from the pumps. I went inside and did my thing, and as my hand was on the door handle to leave, that feeling of evil got really intense. I felt like I was going to throw up and was overcome by emotions. I knew, without understanding why, that I should not leave.

I decided to call my parents from the restroom and tell them they needed to come get me. They didn't even question it and said they were on their way. I didn't bother waiting outside the bathroom — this feeling of evil was so strong that there was no way I was heading out the door. I know now that feeling evil is probably not real, but it was not like any other feeling I've had before or since.A few moments later, I heard a knock. I knew right away it was OK and opened the door. It’s my dad, asking if I was OK. Because I couldn’t quite explain my feelings, I said yes. He then said that when he drove the car around the back, there was a man with an old truck pulled up to the bathroom with his truck door open. The man was standing directly outside the bathroom door as if he were ready to throw me in his truck the second I stepped out.When he saw my parents, he jumped back in his truck and drove off. My dad was furious. He remembered the make and color of the truck and even noticed the broken back window of his cab. We whipped out of the parking lot with the whole family going after the guy. We actually caught up with him and followed him for a ways. I didn’t know what my dad would have done if he’d caught him, but that intense feeling feeling of fear returned in that moment. We almost ended up at a red light together, but the man in the truck went through it, and we lost him."

—Anonymous

7."All my life, I’ve had really weird dreams. Dreams that seemed too real. In my early twenties, my boyfriend and I were asleep, and I had a particularly wild dream. I dreamt that I was driving down a street I didn’t know and hit a curb hard. I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and flew through the windshield, landing on the sidewalk. I was very hurt; I could feel myself dying. I know that sounds strange, but my breathing got more and more shallow, and I knew I wasn’t going to make it."

"I woke to being shaken and slapped by my boyfriend. He said he felt my body jolt and could hear my breathing slow down. He had been trying to wake me up for about ten minutes or so. That’s not the wild part, though.

Later that night, my best friend called me at work. She said she had something to tell me. I quickly cut her off and told her about the dream and how my boyfriend woke me up. She called me a bitch and hung up. Confused, I called her back. She then told me her friend had passed away the night before. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, hit a curb, and was ejected through the windshield. He passed away there on the sidewalk. Almost 20 years later, and it still freaks me out."

—Jen, San Antonio, TX

8."This was back in the summer of 2013. I had just come back from a family reunion and was watching my three younger cousins for the summer while my aunt and uncle were working. I'd stay the night there to cut gas costs and would swap weeks with my brothers. One night, I was sleeping in one of my cousin's rooms while she shared a room with her sisters. Her room had this big sliding mirror closet. A red-headed woman slunk out from it and crawled into bed with me, cuddling her back into my chest. It was weird because my aunt is blonde, and the oldest of my cousins at the time was 8 years old. So, I had no idea who this woman who had just climbed into bed with me at 2 in the morning could've been."

"I was dog tired from chasing my cousins around all day, so I turned over and went back to sleep, thinking it was in my head. About an hour or two later, I was awoken by a loud gasp. I sat up, and the woman was no longer there. I looked around and saw that one side of the closet was open, and she was just standing there, staring at me. Then, suddenly, she was yanked to the side, and the door slid shut with a loud slam. I bolted out of that room and slept in the living room from that point on.

About a year or two ago, I talked to my aunt, uncle, and the older two of my cousins, asking if they had ever experienced anything strange there. They told me they most definitely had. They said they'd heard voices, my youngest cousin argued with an invisible entity, and my uncle and older cousin saw a paperboy from the 1930s there,  in addition to a few other oddities. When I asked about the woman with red hair, none of them had any idea what I was talking about and claimed to have never seen her before. I know I wasn't dreaming that night, though. I could very vividly feel her warmth against me and smell her perfume as if it had just been sprayed. It was a weird experience and not my first, but indeed my most vivid."

—Anonymous

9."About 10 years ago, one of our steak knives disappeared. I looked everywhere for it, to no avail. Years later, I was getting into my car to head to work when I saw a glint at the base of my windshield wipers. It was my exact steak knife. In perfect condition, just resting by the windshield wiper. I have no idea how it got out there."

—magicalogre70

10."I have been known to bilocate. By this, I mean I have, on more than one occasion, been seen in places that are miles (or even thousands of miles) away from where I actually am. However, I myself do not know where my 'spirit self' has traveled to until my friends tell me that they saw me and even talked to me. In every instance, I have physically been asleep when the sitings occur. My friends who delve into the paranormal tell me this is astral projection."

"One time, I broke it off with a boyfriend in San Francisco and went to LA to work for a month. When I returned home, my ex called me and asked whether I had gone back to the apartment we shared recently. He said he was going down the outside stairs when I passed by him. He said he only noticed it was me when I greeted him. To prove to him that I had been in LA at the time of the occurrence, I showed him my plane ticket. I explained my bilocating experiences to him, and needless to say, he got more scared of me than he was before."

—Anonymous

11."One day, I was driving to work when the strong scent of a flowery perfume filled my car. I was really freaked out and couldn't explain it, as I never wore perfume and didn't have any in the car. The next day, I was at home in my bedroom, and again, the perfume scent filled the room. I never mentioned what was going on to anyone because it was just too weird. The following evening, I was in the bedroom, and my husband was in the living room. He called out to me and asked if I was spraying perfume because the living room was filled with a strong perfume-like smell. I couldn't smell anything in the bedroom. I told him about what had been going on and how I had been smelling it randomly everywhere. We just couldn't logically explain what it was and why it was following us. I like to think it was my grandmother, who had passed away many years before, visiting us. Or the older woman who previously inhabited and tragically passed away in our home many years before."

—Rose

12."We used to live in a home built in 1896. Within the first six months of living there, a couple of things happened that made me feel like the house was haunted. First, I was playing on the floor with my kids when the ceiling fan turned on at its highest speed, all by itself. My 3-year-old son looked at the fan, looked at me, and said, 'That was weird.' When I told my husband about it, he thought I was being dramatic. About six months later, an air conditioning unit turned on by itself as he walked past it. My husband froze, looked at me wide-eyed. and said, 'Maybe you’re right.'"

"After those incidents (within the first year living there), there was always this heavy, occupied feeling in the back half of the house. We didn’t really use it much, so it was easy to ignore/dismiss. But I always had the feeling it was the spirit of a cranky old man who didn’t want us in his house. I felt like he tried to scare us away by turning the fan and AC on, but it didn’t work, so he made himself more apparent. I had friends over the years mention the heavy feeling of those rooms without any prior knowledge of how I felt about them. One friend walked back there, turned to look at me, and said, 'Whoever’s back here is not happy!' implying it was a ghost.

After we’d lived in the house for about three years, I was folding laundry, and out of my peripheral, I saw (what I thought was) my husband walk down the hallway. I was surprised, as it was the middle of the day on a Wednesday, and he was supposed to be at work. So, I stopped folding laundry and went to find him. I searched my entire house and yard and didn't see him anywhere. I called him and asked if he was home/ had stopped by the house. Surprised, he said he was at the office and had been all day.

Fast forward one week. I was home with my kids when my oldest son (about 6 years old) shouted, 'Who was that, mom?' I went to his room and asked him what he was talking about. He then described to me the EXACT thing I’d seen a week earlier. I hadn't told him about it, and he was at school when I'd seen the man a week prior, so I knew he didn’t overhear my conversation with my husband. To this day (he’s 12 now), we still talk about it. We definitely both saw the same thing.

The last instance I'll tell you about happened when we were having a new front door installed in our house. We’d been living in the house for eight years at that point and were about to move. The old door frame had been ripped out, and the new frame was built. My carpenter went home for the day, planning to return the next day for the installation. When he showed up, he said, 'I had the wildest dream about this installation last night. I dreamt that a ghost, who was a cranky old man, kept attacking me as I was trying to install your new door!' For all the years we lived there, every time we’d remodeled a room, I always thought it felt like the house or someone was upset we were changing it.

That house always had a weird, heavy energy. My youngest son NEVER slept through the night when we lived there. We moved in when he was 12 weeks old and moved out when he was 9. He always had nightmares and would run in our room every night. The FIRST NIGHT in the new house, he slept through the night/in his own bed, absolutely fine. We asked him why, and he said, 'I just feel safer in the new house.' What's ironic is that we now live across the street from a cemetery."

—Lizzie

13."I’m the youngest of four kids (one boy and three girls). My father passed when I was almost 4. Consequently, I didn’t know him except from stories from the rest of the family. One beautiful, windless spring day when I was about 14/15, I was helping my mother unload the car from our shopping trip. My arms loaded with groceries, I stopped to admire the beautiful day. I turned to close the trunk, but my arms were too full to shut it. All of a sudden, it closed on its own. I looked to see who had helped, but I was all alone. Not thinking much about it, I headed for the door when I realized I also couldn’t open the front door and screen door with my hands so full. Before my eyes, the screen door opened, and then the much heavier house door as well, seemingly on their own."

"I thought my mother had opened the house door, but when I got inside, she was nowhere to be found. So, who had opened both doors and shut the trunk on the car? It was years before I told this story to a really close friend who said it was probably my father watching out for me. The incident never scared me, and all these years later, I like to believe what my friend said was true."

—Pamela, Seattle, WA

14."Several years ago, my father passed away. Dad had always been very protective of my safety as I traveled back and forth to work over 60 miles away. One morning on the way to work, I was approaching a railroad crossing, and I noticed a man sitting near it. The man looked a lot like my dad, with his checked sports jacket and felt hat. Naturally, I slowed down to get a better look at him. Just at that moment, a train whizzed by; exactly at the time I would have been on the tracks. When the train was completely gone from sight, so was the man I had paused to see. Was my dad still protecting me and keeping me safe? I think so, don't you?"

—Christine, Copperhill, TN

15."I live in a house made in the '60s or '70s. It’s old, creepy, and horribly designed. It also has three stories. My mother is very spiritual and in tune with the afterlife. She puts bells on all of our doors to ward off evil spirits, has collections of wind chimes in and around the house, burns incense to rid the rooms of negative energy, things like that. She always says she sees things in her room in the house."

"I’ve always been a bit of a skeptic, but I try to keep an open mind. My skepticism came to a halt when I was alone one day. My mother and stepfather had gone to work, so I woke up to an empty house. My stepfather does the laundry since the washer/dryer is in the 'down-down stairs,' as we call it, which is the story below the entrance of the house. Anyway, when he comes back upstairs to their room with the clean clothes, he always dumps them onto their bed, and my mother folds them. Then, I take mine to my room. That morning, they hadn’t had enough time to do that, so a pile of clothes was sitting at the foot of their bed.

When I woke up, I heard a slight shuffling and expected to see my mother folding clothes, as I assumed she was still home. Instead, I saw a brightly colored rag suddenly drop back onto the bed. It was like someone invisible was folding it and just dropped it right when my door opened. I called my mother to tell her what I saw, and she said, 'Oh, the maid spirit?'

That wasn’t the only time this 'maid spirit' had tried to help around the house. I’ve forgotten to put things away, and they somehow end up in back in the cabinet or fridge. If I left the refrigerator open, she would close it.

I’m not entirely over my skepticism, but I believe in the maid spirit."

—Anonymous

16."When I was 15, my parents split up, and my brother, my mom, and I went to stay with my aunt. She lived on a big ranch in Florida, where there was a group of trailers that the ranch hands lived in. Everybody had dogs because they frequently hunted deer and wild hog on the ranch. One night, all the dogs were barking, and it woke me up. I got up and looked out my window to see what the commotion was, and right above a tree next to the house was some sort of craft, just hovering. It had round lights that cast a dim blue light beam. I ran to my mom's room and woke her up, saying she had to get up and see it. We walked out on the patio deck at the back of the house together, and the thing was gone. I looked straight up and saw its blue light zooming off into space. I pointed it out to my mom, and we watched it together until it disappeared a couple of seconds later."

"My mom, not having seen it as closely, told me to get back in bed as I had to go to school in the morning. I did, but I was so scared that I hid under the covers and eventually fell asleep. That morning, my alarm woke me up to get ready for school, and as I woke up, I realized my bed had hundreds of fire ants in it. None bit me, but it was so strange. I still sometimes have dreams about that night, and what I really saw."

—Timothy, Dade City, FL

17."I was moving to another house and collecting stuff I had outside to box up. I had two bluebird figurines in my little garden and was deciding which one was mine and which one was my mom's. She had died, and I inherited the bluebird I had given her. As I spoke to my husband, asking out loud which one was my mom's, one of the bluebirds did a little shimmy back and forth, seemingly to let me know it was my mom's. It shocked me that it moved of its own accord. I can't explain it."

—Anonymous

18."When I was about 13, my family had a new home built for us, after which we all experienced paranormal events. Things like banging on the floors as if someone was in our basement, hushed whispers coming from empty rooms and the ends of hallways, and locked doors visibly trying to be pushed open. The (repeat) occurrence that still sends cold chills up my spine, though, is when my 3-year-old brother (who is 10 years younger than me) would wake up screaming about a pair of massive black hands holding him down to his bed."

"My parents understandably believed he was having night terrors or experiencing sleep paralysis. Fast forward a couple of years, and the occurrences became fewer and further in between until they became nothing more than an odd memory. That all changed one night when it happened again. My brother said it felt like he was being held down in his bed by his feet, but he couldn't see anything there this time.

The following evening, my girlfriend and I were walking through the dark house (everyone else was asleep), and I dropped my lighter. Clicking on my phone's flashlight, I bend down to grab it. As I stood up, I glanced over at my parents's closed bedroom door. In front of it was a massive black figure. It had no defining features, but I could tell it was the shape of a man, standing at maybe 7 and 1/2 feet tall.

I froze with my flashlight, still focused on the figure. My girlfriend was down the hall at the back door, looking back at me as I stood there, frozen. The figure slowly moved out of sight behind a dividing wall and disappeared. I stayed there, frozen in fear, for what felt like 15 minutes before I finally went out of the back door as fast as I could. I said nothing to my girlfriend for at least the next hour. She pointed out that I had gone absolutely white and that my whole body was cold to the touch. I never told my brother about what I saw."

—Anonymous

19."This happened to my uncle. My maternal grandmother never liked my uncle — I mean, she really disliked him. The only reason anyone will give is that she disapproved of her daughter marrying him. In the late '90s, my grandmother was dying. My aunt went to the west coast to see her before she passed, and my uncle remained at home. One night, my uncle got up from the couch to go to the bathroom. As he walked into the darkness of the hall, he saw my grandmother, clear as day. She gave him her usual 'I don't like you' look, then disappeared. At that exact moment, the phone rang. My aunt called to tell him that her mother died. He already knew. As my uncle likes to say about the experience, 'She got the last word.'

—Anonymous

20."In 1994, my mother-in-law had a stroke and was hospitalized for about six months. She eventually became unresponsive, and the doctors said that she would never recover. They told us the best option was to remove her from life support. The family made the difficult decision, and a date/time was chosen. The family did not want to watch their mother die, so we all gathered around the kitchen table at my sister-in-law's, where 'Ma' had lived. At about 6 p.m. I literally watched as one of the plants that Ma had owned seemingly JUMPED from the windowsill and onto the floor. Moments later, the hospital called to say that she had just passed away. We chalked it up as Ma saying goodbye."

21."Back in the '80s, when I was 8 years old, I went on a cross-country road trip with my grandparents from Oregon to Florida to visit an aunt who had terminal cancer. My aunt and I had a special bond, as I lived with her from birth until I was 6, at which point I had to move in with my grandparents due to her health. During the trip, I was saved from certain death on three different occasions. The first time, about halfway there, my grandmother gave me a quarter to use on a chicken/egg prize machine at a restaurant we were nearing that we had stopped at before. In the '80s, seatbelts were not required, so I was lying down in the backseat when I stupidly put the quarter in my mouth and began to choke on it. I could not breathe at all; it was pretty securely lodged in my throat. I sat up and felt myself get struck in the back with enough force for the quarter to fly out of my mouth."

"As I caught my breath, I asked my grandparents if either of them had just hit me in the back, and they both replied, 'Not me.' I never did find that quarter, either.

On the second occasion, we were out at a rest stop when I went exploring in a desert-type area. I happened upon a Diamondback Rattlesnake — whose bites can be fatal to humans. Instinctively, I froze. Seconds later, a medium-sized tumbleweed rolled over it and stopped right on top of it. I used that opportunity to hightail it back to the car, lucky to make an escape.

Finally, the third occasion. As we were nearing our destination, we had a tire blowout, and the car started to swerve back and forth. I felt myself being pushed back against the seat and held there so that I was completely immobile, keeping me safe. Meanwhile, my grandparents were being jarred around back and forth in the front seat.

When we finally arrived in Florida not too long after, we were saddened to hear that my aunt lost her battle with cancer two days prior, about the time I was saved the first time from choking on the quarter. Some say they were coincidences, but I firmly believe that my dear aunt saved my life a few times, just as hers was being taken."

—Tonda, Portland, OR

22."Following my divorce, I moved into an old Victorian house. One night, after doing the dishes, I was sitting in a chair watching television. My golden retriever was lying in the doorway that connects the living room to the kitchen. She suddenly lifted her head up and started staring into the kitchen. I didn't think much about it at the time, but later, when I went into the kitchen to get a drink, the cupboard where I kept my plates was open. Normally, in this cupboard, my big dinner plates were on the lowest shelf, the medium plates were on the middle shelf, and bowls were on the top shelf. I had just done dishes, so I knew everything was in its assigned spot when I left. When I walked into the kitchen that night, the medium plates were stacked on top of the big plates, and the bowls were on top of the medium plates. I assume my dog lifted her head to watch whoever rearranged my dinnerware."

"In that same house but on a different day, I had just crawled into bed and turned out the lights. I distinctly heard someone walking up the stairs. This was an old Victorian, so everything creaked. I figured I forgot to put the gate up to keep the dog from coming upstairs, so I hopped out of bed, turned the light on in the hallway...and discovered that, nope, the gate was up, and the dog was downstairs. I slept with the lights on that night."

—JAS, Ohio, USA

23.Finally, "The incident happened one evening when I was alone for the first time in the new home. My adoptive parents had gone out for the evening, and I elected to stay home. I was either 13 or 14 when this happened. The new home was a split-foyer two-level home. It was a very nice home for a medium-sized family. I remember going to take a shower for the evening. The home was obviously well-insulated, which made it nearly too quiet — you could barely hear anything from the outside. Just as I was about to start undressing, I heard the sound of the downstairs door on the bottom floor in the cellar shut loudly. It makes a very distinct sound, and I know I didn't imagine it. The sound alone startled me, and I sat on the toilet seat with the lights on in the bathroom, and I listened."

We had two miniature schnauzer dogs in the house. Neither one was startled by the sound, and neither barked to let me know someone or something was in the house. I didn't dare move. I could hear the sound of footsteps coming up the bottom floor foyer stairs. The house was mostly wall-to-wall carpeting, so you could only hear footsteps if you (or another person) walked heavily.

I heard the footsteps continue as they landed on the linoleum floor in the foyer where the front door was located. They paused. Then, they came up the carpeted stairs into the living room. Once they reached the top, the footsteps stopped again. There were no other sounds within the house — no voices, no other movement, no barking. The dogs were no help, they didn't even react. I turned off the bathroom light, not wanting this unknown being to know that anyone was home.The footsteps started again, entering the dining room to the left of the living room. They were rather faded, but I could still make them out. From the dining room, I heard the footsteps very clearly hit the tiled floor in the kitchen. I knew it wasn't in my head. I had no way to reach a phone, I was stuck in the bathroom, and I kept thinking about how my fate would be sealed while sitting fully clothed on a toilet.The footsteps stopped for a while in the kitchen. Then, they came down the long hallway, which lead to my adoptive parents's bedroom, my sister's bedroom, my bedroom, and the bathroom I was hiding in. They went first into my adoptive parents's room, then my sister's, and eventually into my room. I did not move. I couldn't. I didn't know what to think. I couldn't hear any breathing or any human sounds from whoever was in the house. I truly felt defeated and useless because I was too scared to grab for the door, burst out, and run outside.This part is what scared the hell out of me. The footsteps came back down the hall and stopped in front of the bathroom door. I leaned forward, trying to make out any telltale human sounds. Something. Breathing, swallowing, etc. Nothing, just silence. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream out and warn the thing that I was going to call for help. I didn't. This was the moment that I truly believed I was going to die. That this unknown being was going to come crashing through the door and end my life. Because I am telling this now, you know that this, of course, did not happen.

I stayed and didn't dare move. Sweating, I stayed completely focused on the door. At no point did this being turn or even touch the door handle. I would have thought if someone really wanted to hurt me, they would have tried to open the door at least, or possibly even knock to see if I would answer. Suddenly, without any warning, the footsteps shuffled and moved away, back towards the stairs. I hear them descend, hit the foyer landing, and proceed down the second set of stairs. I could hear the footsteps on the hard floor in the cellar. I heard the downstairs door open and close. It was gone. I sat alone in that bathroom, not knowing how I was going to explain any of this to my adopted parents so that they would believe me.

Finally, I got the nerve to open the bathroom door. Nothing was disturbed and the dogs were nowhere to be seen. In front of the bathroom door, there were two distinctive shoeprints on the carpet. They had flat soles with no markings. My adoptive parents had just had someone come in to clean the carpet that day, so I knew these were fresh. I walked around the upstairs, but there were no other shoeprints anywhere. I recalled that, back when my grandfather was alive, he would always wear hard sole dress shoes with no marking on the bottom.

I began turning on all the lights in the house and looking around. No more prints. This disturbed me very much. I walked to the back door, remembering I confirmed it was locked before I went to shower. It was still locked, with no sign of a disturbance or entry. My adoptive parents eventually came home, and I told them what had happened. Of course, they thought that I had made this entire scenario up and was seeking attention. I stood my ground and even showed them the shoeprints. When I looked down and pointed to the carpet, the footprints were no longer there.

I have kept this story with me for over 40 years. To this day, I still believe it happened. I truly feel that it was my grandfather coming to the new home to see that we were safe."

—Mike C, Boerne, TX 

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