Yahoo Lifestyle 28 People Who Lived Through Such Bizarre And Spooky Experiences, They're Still Haunted By Them Years Later
Reddit user MelodiousOddity asked the community: "What mysterious thing happened to you that you still can't explain?" The thread quickly filled with an array of chilling, hair-raising experiences that left me questioning reality. Here's what people shared:
1."When I was a kid (about 4 or 5), I would sometimes go downstairs for a while and then return to my room during the night. My parents noticed this but weren't too worried, as they assumed I was just using the bathroom or getting a snack or something. One day, I came back upstairs in floods of tears, saying, 'The lady is gone! She said we can't talk anymore.' Obviously, my parents found this very odd. They asked about the lady, and I explained that I would talk to a lady who cleans the kitchen. My parents just assumed I'd been sleepwalking or something."
"Fast forward about seven years to when my younger brother was about the same age. We were all in the car, and my brother said he'd had some strange dreams. Mum asked him what they were about, and he said he dreamt about a lady who cleans the house at night, but she's really friendly, and the dreams feel real. Everyone in the car went silent. No one had ever told my brother about my experiences. Ever since, I've always felt very, very weird when going downstairs during the night. I really wish my brother or I could remember the mystery woman, but we don't."
2."My wedding ring fell off my finger while driving with my hand dangling out of the car window. It was very upsetting to arrive at the hotel where I was staying and realize it had slipped off and wasn't in my pockets or the car. I checked the floorboards, under the seats, the console, and even the trunk. I figured it was probably lying on the side of the road somewhere along a 60-mile stretch of interstate. I was exhausted. It had been a very stressful day of travel. I checked into my hotel room, pushed my suitcase just inside the door of my room, and passed out on the nearest bed. I didn't even stop in the bathroom to pee, bother to get undressed, or take off my shoes. I just laid down on top of the hotel bed and went straight to sleep."
"I woke up the next morning and sat up looking at my ring finger, minus a wedding band. I saw a glint of light on the desk by the window on the far side of the room. I'd been so tired the night before that I hadn't even closed the curtains, so the sunlight poured in. I got up and walked over to the desk to see what it was. It was my wedding ring sitting by itself on the desktop. I must have stared at it for a solid minute, trying to work out how it got there. I didn't have it when I came into the room, and I, up until that minute, hadn't even been on that side of the room. I still can't explain how it got there."
3."When I was 12, our power flickered on and off repeatedly one night, and all the lights turned blue and made the weirdest electrical screaming sound I've ever heard in my life. It also happened to the neighbor's house across the street. It lasted about 20 minutes before everything went back to normal. My grandma was hysterical and threw me into the tub (I'm not sure why), and my grandpa went outside to investigate. After a long time, he came in and reassured my grandma that it was just a downed power pole down the road and that people were already there. Then, he sent us off to bed. However, he didn't go back to bed and sat downstairs watching the door all night with his shotgun. Several years later, he admitted that he actually had no idea what happened and that there was no pole."
4."One night, when I was a kid, I was getting ready to go to bed at my dad's house. I suddenly had this intense fear about the house being on fire. I asked my dad to check and ensure nothing could cause a fire. He said everything was fine, and he went to his room. Four hours later, I was awoken as a firefighter carried me out because the entire front of the house/porch was on fire. The cause was ruled to be a cigarette. Nobody in the house smoked."
5."A couple weeks after my grandmother died, my aunt took pictures of her farm. In one of the pictures, my grandmother is quite clearly walking along the path to feed or milk the cows. We have scoured the picture and the area to try to come up with anything it could possibly have been to explain what's happening in that picture. The figure in the picture is almost immediately recognizable as a person, specifically my grandmother, based on hair, gait, and clothing, but she's facing away from the camera, so you can't see a face. No other people live anywhere nearby, and one of the farm dogs would be aware if it was a squatter. We know the picture was taken weeks after she died, and it was a phone camera, so there's no chance of double exposure. We don't share the picture with people, but I believe in ghosts now."
6."I was in my bathroom after showering around midnight when no one was home. I had bad acne at the time and wanted to take pictures of my face to send to a dermatologist online (COVID era) to get on acne medicine. I took a few videos with my mouth closed, panning around my face and neck to view my acne. While rewatching the video, I heard a distinct whisper of my name, 'Julia.' It was the most clear and distinct whisper. My mouth was closed in the video, and I was locked in a bathroom with no one else around. I still can't explain the whisper. Everyone I show the video to says they clearly hear it. I wish someone would tell me it's just wind, but unfortunately, that's not the case. My mom swore she saw stuff at that place, but I never believed her or in ghosts before this incident."
7."When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I woke up earlier than usual, and everyone was still asleep. I thought I could run myself a bath and get myself ready for school before my mum woke up, and she'd be impressed. At the time, we had this door with a ball hinge in my bathroom. You couldn't turn the handle or anything; you had to push or pull it very hard to open and close it. I ran my bath, and as I took my pajama top off, the door flung open so hard that it hit the side of the bath and almost closed itself again. I screamed as loud as I could, ran out of the bathroom, and sat opposite the door against the wall, crying. My mum ran out and said it was probably just the wind."
"The thing is, I had to slam my shoulder against this door to close it, and when inside, I had to use two hands and all my strength to open it. There is no way the wind could have done it. I told my mum it wasn't the wind because it wasn't possible, so she said it must have been the dog. The dog was in her room, asleep, when it happened. To this day, I still have no idea what happened. It's been 20 years."
8."Once, I went into a bathroom at a well-known restaurant in my hometown. The second I walked in, I felt like I was being watched. When I went to the sink, I saw a face in the mirror. I looked behind me and saw nothing. I turned back to find my hands, the sink, and the floor absolutely drenched in blood. I looked in the mirror again to see if I could see the face, and seeing nothing, I looked back at my hands. Everything was perfectly normal. Water was cascading from the sink onto my perfectly clean hands. I raced out of there and never came back."
9."Growing up, my brother and I were latchkey kids. I was in seventh grade, and my brother was around third grade (the early 2000s). We would be home alone from the time we got home from school until our mom got home around 6:00 p.m. One day, we were watching TV in our living room, and there was a loud thud. It sounded like something fell in one of the bedrooms at the end of the hall. Then, we heard the pitter of feet running. I turned to look down the hall, and then running towards us was like a goblin/gnome/Rumpelstiltskin thing. It honestly looked like a small two or three-foot-tall medieval peasant. I couldn't believe what I saw. It ran down the hall, past us, and then out our back door."
"I watched it the entire time. It's not like I saw it out of the corner of my eye. I remember looking over at my brother, and he said, 'Did you see the little man?' I immediately started crying, grabbed him and our cordless house phone, sat on the front porch to call our mom, and begged her to come home.
I've never had any other paranormal experiences. We don't come from a religious family or one that believes in that sort of stuff; we weren't watching anything scary. I don't know. My brother and I are both grown now and will still tell that story sometimes while camping or at parties, and I can tell most people don't believe us, but it's true. I've read of group/shared hallucinations, but I really don't know what else it could be."
10."When I was 14, the sound system in my room randomly turned on around 2:00 a.m. to a loud static. It woke me up, and I looked over to see the volume number climbing as it kept getting louder. I was pretty terrified until I finally gained the courage to get up and turn it off. The thing had a rotary knob to turn it up, so I have no clue what happened. This was before everything had a remote control, too. I'm convinced that the house was haunted."
11."Twice, my dad has had dreams about friends of his dying, and they both died that same week. He woke my mom up in the middle of the night and said, 'I just had a dream Dave dropped dead in front of everyone.' Three days later, Dave was at the mall with his girlfriend and had a massive heart attack in front of a crowd of people. He also dreamed about my mom winning money at a casino and even told her which slot machine to use. In 15 minutes, she won $5,000."
12."When I was taking care of my dad, we used to eat hot dogs whenever I was too tired to cook. One night, I got home, and as I was turning the stove on, I remembered we'd run out of buns. I double-checked both the fridge and the pantry, but there were none. We were completely out. So, I made clam chowder and noted that I would get more buns the next day. I got up at 6:00 a.m. the next morning and went downstairs to start breakfast. On the countertop, by itself, presented as if a gift was a brand new, unopened bag of hot dog buns. Dad and I had both slept through the night. So, it would seem that between midnight and 6:00 a.m., a bag of hot dog buns just materialized on the counter from the void."
13."A friend was visiting for a weekend. We were chilling in the basement, watching movies, and catching up when I ran upstairs to the kitchen to grab a snack. When I was about to head back downstairs, I noticed what I thought was my friend walking up the stairs to the upper floor, so I assumed my friend was going to the bathroom. When I returned downstairs, they were as I left them, chilling on the couch. After explaining what I saw, we were both terrified and checked the house. Nobody else was ever found in the house, and there was no sign of a break-in. Still can't explain it."
14."On several occasions, street lights have either gone off or on when I walk past them. Once, I was walking with a friend at night, and I told him about it, and then it happened! It creeped us both out. To add to the weirdness, my father claims he has experienced the same phenomenon!"
15."My father died when I was a baby, but he sang me a lullaby he made up. When I had children, my mom taught me the lullaby. I sing it to my oldest every night. One night, I was singing it to her, and I heard a male humming. I assumed it was my husband through the baby monitor, trying to be cute. I then realized the humming was coming from the room's opposite corner than the monitor. That child has some freaky stuff happen around them, so I'll happily just assume it's my dad joining in for a lullaby and not something even creepier."
16."This is a weird one. I was about to get on the feeder road to a busy highway. As I approached the intersection, I heard a booming male voice IN THE MIDDLE OF MY HEAD saying, 'Check your tires before you get on the highway.' It was not a voice I recognized, nor was the radio on. I did a hasty U-turn and went straight to a tire guy I have used in the past. As he checked the front tires, he turned the wheel to reveal the tire, which was so badly worn that you could see the exposed metal wires. My tire guy said, 'Good thing you came in here. If you had gone on the highway, that tire would have blown, and you could have been killed!' I know this sounds like BS, but it happened."
"Nothing like that has ever happened to me before or since. As I said, I did not recognize the voice. It was so jarring that I did that U-turn without even thinking about it."
17."I was asleep with my girlfriend in our bed one night. This was roughly around 3:00 a.m., from what I recall. Our bedroom door was wide open as normal, facing our living room and kitchen. We were both woken up at the same moment a voice called out, 'I'M GOOOOOOOOOOD.' It was a voice that sort of crackled as the words came out. What sticks out to me most is that I could feel the sound vibration hit the bed as it happened. It wasn't a massive vibration or anything; just imagine someone yelling at you from five feet away. You feel it. My girlfriend grabbed me and asked if I heard it, too. I sure as hell did."
"I got up and ran to investigate. I turned on all the lights in the house and investigated the area down the hallway. Nothing was there. We still talk about it to this day, and it brings goosebumps to my arms. We slept the rest of that night with all the lights on. I don't have an explanation for what happened. But it definitely happened, and we were both there to experience it."
18."Once, I walked into a grocery store and noticed everything looked like it was from the 1980s. The people, the products, everything. It lasted about 10 minutes, and then everything returned to normal. I checked with the store employees, and they said nothing unusual happened. Could it be a time slip? It still freaks me out."
19."I was watching TV with my husband, and I was talking about my aunt who had just passed. I was making fun of her soap operas, as I used to when she was alive. Suddenly, a small American flag with the stick securely tucked behind a picture frame above the TV popped up and flew onto the ground in front of the TV. My husband and I were creeped out. My aunt promised to haunt me if she was able to."
20."One time, I lost my engagement ring (and almost my mind). I was going to give one of my dogs a bath, so I took my engagement ring off and put it in my pocket. After the bath, my fiancé asked for my clothes to throw them in with the next load of laundry. I forgot about the ring in my pocket and tossed my clothes over. I noticed I didn't have my ring on a little while later and started looking for it. Then I remembered I had put it in my pocket! I researched and took apart the washer and dryer to find nothing but lint, a shoe horn, and change. About two months later, my fiancé's father sent me a picture of my missing ring, saying he found it in the visor of his SUV! Neither of us had been in his vehicle that whole time, nor had he visited us, so it was really bizarre that it came back to me that way. I'm thankful it showed up, but I'm still at a loss for words."
21."This happened 10 years ago, but I think about it often. I was living in South America, and my friend invited me to go camping at the pyramids. The night prior, I had a vivid dream about a man dressed in blue surrounded by a vibrant blue aura. In my dream, I called him 'captain' in English. The next day, we were on the bus departing for the pyramids, and I heard a guy in front of me say, 'Hola capitán!' so I looked up, and who did I see? A man I had never met in my life dressed from head to toe in the most vibrant blue clothing and a large, vibrant blue hat. There were probably 200 people going on this camping trip, and the man from my dream ended up on the same bus sitting in front of me."
22."My sister and I shared a wooden bunk bed growing up. It was old and rickety. When my little sister in the top bunk rolled over in the middle of the night, the old bed would make creaking noises, and I'd wake up. Anyway, the family left 16-year-old me alone for a few hours one night. I was enjoying the quiet house when suddenly I heard the loud, distinct noise of the upper bunk coming from my bedroom. It sounded like it was being violently shaken. I ran to the kitchen and grabbed the largest knife I could find. I slowly walked down the hall towards my bedroom, and the noise stopped when I reached the door's threshold. I ran to the front of the house and waited for my parents to arrive, the knife by my side. When they got home, I explained what I had witnessed."
"A few days later, our local Catholic priest came by and blessed the house. To this day, I still don't know what was making the bed creak like that and why I remained in the house with the supposed cause of the noise still there."
23."It's kind of a sad but bittersweet memory. My grandma (I call her Mimi) was in hospice. We thought she had a few weeks, and I planned to see her again next weekend. It was my first day back to work after the holidays, and I suddenly felt really sick and went home, which was difficult in my job, especially the first day back. I was standing in my bedroom trying to figure out what I wanted to do, kind of restless, and suddenly, I felt this huge emotional drop, like all-encompassing sadness. I could hardly breathe. I took a shower to calm down, and about 10 minutes later, my mother called to tell me my Mimi passed. I just said, 'I know.'"
24."One time, when I had my old diabetic cat, I had just finished going through the morning ritual of measuring his blood sugar, feeding him, and giving him insulin (I always waited until he ate before giving him his shot). I was getting ready to head out for work when his portrait (yes, I have a portrait of my cat on my wall) suddenly fell. As soon as it happened, I stared at it and thought, 'My cat is going to go into insulin shock today.' I'm always meticulous when checking his insulin and sugar measurements and double-checking to ensure everything is correct. I figured I was just being weird and went to work. As I drove back home after work (I teach college, so it's not regular 9-5 hours), my roommate called me to tell me my cat was in insulin shock. It turns out that right after I had left for work, my cat had thrown up. Thankfully, he was fine, and I got his sugar up, but that was such a weird experience."
25."When I was 16 years old, I was in the kitchen doing homework while my mom was cooking. There was a fly flying around the kitchen, and my mom swatted at it with a dish rag. She accidentally let go of the dish rag, which flew behind her, and the rag vanished. I was looking down at the time, and she said, 'Where did the rag go? I can't find it!' We both neurotically searched the entire kitchen and pulled out everything. We pulled out the microwave, the stove, the refrigerator, and anything that had space around it where the cloth could have gone. It was nowhere. Much later in life, when the house was sold, she and I went back into the empty kitchen to look for it. Still never found it."
26."I was once changing pants in my room before work and took off my belt. After putting on my other pair of pants, I put my belt back on, but it was gone. No one else was in the room, and I spent a good 10 minutes looking for it, as I had simply set it on the floor. It's been 10 years, and I've never seen that belt again."
27."I had just finished replacing all the burned-out bulbs in my rented condo. I talked to my wife and said, 'When the one above the stairwell goes out, I'll call maintenance for that because I'm not climbing up there.' We then looked at that specific light, which burned out at that moment. This was five years ago, and we still talk about it."
28.And: "I was at a friend's house. The friend was in the garage working on his dirt bike. The driveway was empty because his parents had left a while ago. I went inside to grab a soda but decided to look for his cat, whom I hadn't seen all day. I walked into the office, and as I called her name, a deep man's voice said, 'Meow,' right into my right ear. I jumped and ran around the main floor, looking for who said it. I didn't find anyone."
YIKES. Good luck sleeping tonight! Has anything totally mysterious and inexplicable ever happened to you? Tell us in the comments or submit anonymously using this form for a chance to be featured in a BuzzFeed Community post.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
