28 Spine-Chilling, Hair-Raising Paranormal Encounter Stories That People Wish They Could Wipe From Their Memories
We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about the most chilling paranormal encounters they've ever had. Many of their responses sent a shiver down my spine. Here's what people shared:
2."I’m pretty sure I lived in a haunted chapel in my tween/teen years. There were a bunch of freaky things that happened, but the one that stands out happened at like 2 one night. My sister and I shared a bedroom. I woke up randomly and heard her crying. I looked over at the bed, and her back was to me. I asked her what was wrong, and she suddenly stopped but didn’t answer me. About 10 seconds later, I could hear crying again. It was clear as day and definitely coming from our room. I kept saying her name, and I even threw a cushion at her to get her to shut up if she wasn’t gonna tell me what was wrong! Finally, I got out of bed and went over to her. Her face was completely still. She was clearly asleep. Then I heard the crying again from just behind me. I always shout at the kids in horror movies when they just hide under the covers, but I ran straight to my bed and hid under the covers until morning."
3."When I was a child, I used to spend every night hidden under the covers with a terrifying fear of what I believed was a woman in a white dress who used to watch me sleep. Even if I wasn’t sleeping, I struggled to watch TV in my bedroom by myself if the lights were off. Then, one night, I supposedly stood in my parents' bedroom, pointed, and screamed at the wall. I could see the woman in the long, white dress, although it was more of a shadow than an actual person that I saw. To be honest, I don’t entirely remember that, as I was very young, but I do recall the constant feeling that I was being watched by this woman."
4."I'm a medium, so paranormal encounters are quite normal for me, but there have been a few that have creeped me out over the years. Perhaps the most creepy, and most recent, occurred four years ago. A local paranormal group asked me to do a walk-through of a home that was experiencing paranormal activity on a daily basis. The house was undergoing a restoration and renovation project, so I wasn't surprised that the owners were experiencing paranormal activity. For my walk-throughs, I go in with no information about the location other than the knowledge that the owners are experiencing activity. During my walk, I encountered a teen girl who led me to the basement of the home. My last memory was walking down the stairs, then kneeling by a wall. According to my husband, who was filming the walk-through, my personality began to change."
"I began to describe and name a person who had kidnapped me and was abusing me. The details, I won't mention, but my husband said it was horrific. I also kept humming a song that he had never heard me hum before. I led him to the far wall of the basement, which did not match the rest of the basement, sat down, and kept saying that I was in the wall. When I came to, I was kneeling by the wall with no memory of how I got there. I touched the wall, and I could hear the girl humming. I told him that she was in the wall. My husband, who was looking quite shocked, grabbed my arm and said we were leaving now.
"Three weeks later, the paranormal group introduced me to the current owners of the home, a police detective, and a relative of the former owner. The relative explained to me how it was his uncle who owned the home, and that in the mid-'70s, his uncle's wife had run off with another man. A year later, the daughter ran away. She was 15 at the time. According to the current owners, the contractor had to fix a leaking pipe that was on the other side of the false wall. When the wall came down, the workers found a skeleton. Police were called, and the preliminary report said the skeleton belonged to 17-year-old girl who had died in the '70s.
"The detective was given a copy of my walk-through, and he wanted to know how I knew she was there. I explained to him that I'm a medium and her spirit took over my body. I don't know if he believed me, but he said that I had solved a 50-year-old cold case. I'm still creeped out because this had never happened before, and I hope never happens again."
—Anonymous
5."I used to buy and sell antiques. I had moved into a newly built home and was lying in bed watching TV while my fiancé was lying next to me reading. All of a sudden, a man's voice screamed in my ear, 'HEY!' and I turned around and said, 'Why are you screaming?' to my fiancé. He didn't know what I was talking about. This went on for about two weeks. It happened at least four more times, and I was alone when it happened. Once, the voice even screamed my name."
"Then, about a month after the first scream, I woke up around 3 a.m. and saw a man standing between my room and the bathroom. My brother lived with us at the time, so I thought it was him. I said, 'What are you doing in here?' It was dark, so it was hard to see, but he had a beard, so I thought it was my brother. Then my eyes adjusted more to the darkness, and I could see it wasn't him. I yelled, 'Who are you and what are you doing here?' My fiancé woke up and asked who I was yelling at. I said I was yelling at the guy in the doorway, but when I looked, he was gone. I never heard the voice in my ear again."
—Anonymous
6."We had just moved into a home on a big property in the rural country where the family who built it was buried in the backyard. I, 13 at the time, woke up and saw a shadow figure of a man in the corner of my room with a cowboy hat on. I flicked on the light, and nothing was there. I didn't tell anyone. Days later, I was flipping through this book about our house, and one of the original inhabitants who was buried there 100 years ago was pictured with a cowboy hat on. Freaky stuff."
—Anonymous
7."It was around 4 a.m., and my partner and I were fast asleep. Out of nowhere, the extremely loud sound of glass shattering somewhere in the house scared both us and my dogs instantly awake (not an easy feat for my ex, as she could sleep through anything). We both got up assuming a) one of my dogs had knocked something down and broken it, or b) someone had tried to break in. We searched every room but found nothing. We checked outside thinking maybe it had been a neighbor's window getting broken. Nothin'. Literally nothing was broken in or around the house. After a cursory Google search, we realized it's apparently not an unheard-of experience to hear 'phantom glass shatter,' and it's often a harbinger of an upcoming negative event. I found out soon afterward that my partner had been having an inappropriate relationship behind my back, so maybe that's true. Either way, I will NEVER forget how unsettling the whole experience was."
—Anonymous
8."I live in a house full of kids. I have six younger siblings, and sometimes I’ll leave the restroom door unlocked in case one of them has to use the bathroom while I’m in the shower. We have heavy doors and a small house, so you can hear every door being opened and closed no matter where in the house you are. One night around midnight, I was taking a late shower and I heard someone turn on the sink. So I said, 'Who’s in here?' No answer. I thought it was weird because usually I’d hear the door being opened, but I didn’t. Then I heard things being moved around, as if someone was looking for something near the sink."
"So I asked again, 'Who’s in here?' At first I thought maybe I was just hearing things, but then I saw a shadow through the shower curtain, and it looked as if one of the kids was in the bathroom with me. My immediate thought was that my baby brother had woken up and decided to play in the bathroom. So I peeked my head out to find that nobody was there. I immediately got out to see if one of the kids was pulling a prank, but as I searched the house, they were all sound asleep."
—Anonymous
9."Once, when I was working in home health, I had an older female patient who would share stories with me about the ghost of her deceased second husband haunting her home. One visit in particular, we were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. As I was taking her vitals and asking how she was feeling that day, her smiling face went blank and she leaned over as if she was looking past me."
"I could hear creaking in the living room doorway behind me and felt a cool breeze. Suddenly, her black house cat leaped onto the table, sat down facing me, and also leaned over as if it was also looking past me. I calmly asked if the ghost was there. The patient did not speak but nodded her head 'yes.' The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end. I immediately took my blood pressure cuff off her arm, gathered my things, and ended the session. I am not a big believer in ghosts, and I do not let my imagination run wild, but someone was standing right behind me that day."
—Anonymous
10."A few years back, my husband and I visited Gettysburg. We booked the battlefield horse cart tour in the morning. We loaded up onto the cart, which held around a dozen tourists on benches facing one another. As we drove through the very first battleground, I felt as if something had punched me in my stomach. I didn't think much about it, but then I got the idea that all of these chatting people should be quiet. I wanted to tell the driver to stop the cart and give us a moment of silence to honor the fallen in that field. I felt it so strongly that tears were running down my face, but I kept silent because I didn't want to look strange."
"We rode on and completed the horse tour. We went out to dinner that night, and I wasn't feeling all that hungry, but I ate anyway. Back at our room, we turned in for the night. I proceeded to have terrible loose bowels THAT SMELLED LIKE GUN POWDER, and I was vomiting. This went on for a couple of hours, and then I finally tried to sleep. As I was lying there on my side, I felt something poke my shoulder. It happened three times. Then I got incredibly cold. It was the coldest I've ever felt in my life — as if my bones and blood were ice. I shivered under my covers muttering, 'Cold. So cold.'
"Evidently I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew, my husband was shaking me violently and yelling my name to 'WAKE UP!!' He said that I wasn't breathing and I wasn't responding. He thought I was dead. The next morning, it was as if nothing had ever happened. I wasn't sick at all and I was hungry. My husband, who is a veteran and saw bloody combat in Vietnam, said that it looked as if I had been gut shot (hence the feeling of being punched in the gut and then the smell of gunpowder). The poking on my shoulder was how they would see if someone was still alive. Then the incredible cold was me bleeding out. That all made perfect sense. The fallen soldier told me all about, it using my body. It appears that I am a sensitive person. I just hope I helped set that poor young man free."
—Anonymous
11."In the fall of 2018, I began my first year at a college located in a renovated seminary building by the Mississippi River in Missouri. Built in 1838, the seminary had closed and was purchased by the college in the 1990s, later being dedicated to fine arts students. My dorm was one of three buildings on the campus. Shortly after I moved in, strange occurrences began. My decorations would fall off the wall, and I heard unexplained noises like running and the fridge slamming when my roommates were supposed to be in class. I'd even find my room door open when it had been locked — and you had to have a key card to open it. I initially chalked it up to various rational explanations."
"Then I started waking up in the middle of the night with what I thought were panic attacks. For two weeks, I would wake up around 3 a.m. feeling as if someone was pushing on my chest and I couldn’t move or breathe. One of the nights, it was so bad that once I was able to move, I ran to the bathroom and sat under cold water and called my mom bawling (not the kind of call she thought she was going to get from her first-year college student child at 3 a.m.). We later found out that the previous year, the room's occupants used a Ouija board, inadvertently inviting in malevolent spirits, one being a woman. My roommates and I tried to make light of the situation, even giving the female ghost the name 'Avery' and considering her an honorary roommate.
"Oddly, after this, no further unusual incidents occurred. However, one day, a mirror fell off the wall, prompting me to exclaim, 'Dammit, Avery,' and then my wooden cross fell (which would have had to be lifted off the hook). At the end of the semester, one of my roommates made a comment that we hadn't heard from Avery in a while. The following morning, I was headed out the door to go to class and walked by one of the mirrors in the dorm room. In the reflection of the mirror, I caught a glimpse of a pale woman with long, dark hair and a white nightgown standing right behind my shoulder.
"The next day, my roommates and I were all sitting in the living room, and the one who had made the comment about not hearing from Avery said, 'Oh, by the way, I saw Avery today.' The entire room went quiet, and each of my roommates' faces went pale. I quietly said, 'I did too,' followed by my other roommates stating the same. Each of us exchanged what we saw and when. Each of us saw the same woman. We interpreted it as her way of saying goodbye when we moved out in the spring, though we couldn't help wondering if the next set of students had any similar experiences."
—Anonymous
12."I was 12 when our family dog died. About six months later, we got a new pet. Her normal routine was to patrol the house after we were in bed before settling into hers. All rooms in the small house connected to a central hallway. My room looked into the living room. One night, the new dog was doing her rounds when suddenly, she stopped in the hall facing the bathroom. Moments later, a translucent image of my first dog slowly exited the bathroom. Both of the dogs approached each other nose to nose, seemingly sniffing. Then my first dog walked into the body of the new one and vanished. I thought I was dreaming and never spoke about it to anyone. Fifteen or so years later, at a family gathering, we got to reminiscing, and my mother started recounting this same event (her view was from behind the new dog). She described the event exactly as I remembered it. Really strange."
—Anonymous
13."There was a shadow person in my mom's house. I'd feel it watching me late at night while I was watching TV or doing homework, but it always disappeared if I turned to look at it. Later, I realized my mom and stepdad had also 'seen' it in the exact same spot by the doorway. A few years ago, I was about to go to sleep in the room behind the area where we always sensed it. The door opened, and I heard someone come in, walk up to me in bed, and lean over me as if they wanted to tell something. When I opened my eyes, nobody was there. I sleep with the lights on when I go visit now!"
14."As I attended university in Pensacola, Florida (over a decade ago), I ended up taking over my relative's home when they moved away. I didn't know until they moved away that the previous owners (an older couple) lived there until the husband died inside the house. The woman was moved out by family. When my relative bought the house, they stopped unpacking the first night and left to pick up food. Upon returning, they saw a dark, shadowy figure in one of the windows in the living room."
"Cut to me taking over the house months later, and one night, I was having a hectic dream. In my dream, I was pretending to be asleep because I saw a figure outside the window of the bedroom, which was on the front left corner of the house. I had sheer curtains on the windows but knew you couldn't see in, even if you pressed your face against the window, due to a covered porch that extended out a good 5 feet, so light didn't come into the room. As I pretended to sleep in my dream, I would very slowly and unassumingly open my eyes to peek and see who was at the window, but couldn't make anything out. I fell asleep in my dream, only to be awakened by something coming from under the bed.
"I again pretended to be asleep, as I was lying on my right side with my hand extended over the edge of the bed. That was a sign I was dreaming because even now, at 37 years old, I don't do that. I watched as the outline of a hand (the entity's body looked as if it was wearing a full black bodysuit, no features, just the silhouette of a humanoid body shape) grabbed my right hand and pulled itself from under the bed. My heart was pounding in my ears, but I had to remember to make it seem as if I was still sleeping, so I tried my best to calm down. As it fully extended its body from underneath the bed, I pretended to move slightly so I was on my back, with my right hand over my stomach and my head leaned slightly to the left, so I could get a better look.
"The entity then slowly descended onto the edge of the bed and tilted its faceless dark head to the right, as if it was studying me. As my heart continued to pound, it used its left hand to feel along my ribs, as if it was counting them, searching for a particular spot. As I realized what it was doing, I noticed its left arm rise up, and the fingers just became this one large, sharp-edge, knifelike weapon. It lunged the sharp edge toward the spot on my ribs that it stopped at, and I immediately sat up, screaming, and swung my left arm/hand toward the area where the entity had just been sitting. Scariest nightmare/encounter I have EVER had. I moved out soon after, as my relative needed to sell the house. Goodbye, good riddance, I don't need you; nor do I want you in my life."
—Anonymous
15."When I was about to turn 10 or 11, I had my first experience that made me believe in the paranormal. It was the night before my birthday, and when you're a kid, you get really excited for your birthday. I was sitting up in bed, hugging my knees while smiling and thinking about how awesome tomorrow would be. I opened my eyes, and standing in the corner of my bedroom was a gray, almost see-through figure. I lived in a trailer home, so the only people who had lived there had been my family and me. I saw the figure and it looked at me, and after a second, it disappeared completely like a gust of wind."
"There was a basket full of stuffed animals where the figure had been standing, so it was practically up to the ceiling; that's how tall it was. As it disappeared, my blanket rack on the wall moved as if it was hit by wind, and the same happened to my curtains. I had no windows open and no fan on. I WATCHED this figure disappear in the direction of my blanket rack and curtains. I haven't seen anything like this since, and no one within my family believed me when I told them about it. I knew what I saw. It wasn't normal. The fact that it was a one-time thing just makes it even more confusing. I'm 20 now, a full believer in the paranormal, and I've even dabbled in ghost hunting. That experience genuinely changed me."
—Anonymous
16."When I was a child in the 1960s, my uncle Bob passed away. He was the only person who tried to protect me from my violent bully older brother. About a month after he died, he appeared in the doorway of my bedroom. It took me 50 years to figure out why, but I finally remembered that he was the one who had always protected me. It bothered me for 50 years until I figured it out. It wasn't scary, but peaceful. People say where I live now is haunted, and I've seen a few things. The most interesting thing is when I'm in bed, it occasionally feels as if someone is sitting on my bed, but when I look, there's never anyone there."
—Anonymous
17."Not me, but my mom’s cousin. Once, she saw a little girl running in a white dress outside and assumed it was just her daughter. She looked away, and the girl was suddenly gone. My mom’s cousin later watched it on the security camera, and it was just a blur."
—Anonymous
18."Hubby and I were visiting the Culloden Battlefield in Scotland. This was the site of the massacre of the Jacobite clans that supported Bonnie Prince Charlie against the British crown. It was a quiet day, very few visitors. We were strolling along a crushed stone path near an old stone cottage. I heard footsteps behind us, so I moved over to let them pass. I turned, and NOBODY WAS THERE. My husband distinctly heard the footsteps too. Spooky!"
—Anonymous
19."One time, I was at my grandparents' house, which is really old, and was sleeping in my room. Then I heard a knock, the door opened, and no one was there. Afterward, I went to get a snack, but the whole fridge was empty, and I felt a scratch or something on my arm. Then I woke up, realized it was a dream, went to take a shower, and noticed my arm was red in the same spot it had hurt in my 'dream.'"
—Anonymous
20."I lived in an apartment underneath my uncle's tattoo shop for four years. The shop is in a small strip mall of local businesses, and the apartment I lived in was the only one there. I’m an introvert, don't go out much, and I spent a lot of time at home, so I quickly learned who was walking and where they were walking. Frequently, long after everyone had left, I’d hear someone walking throughout the whole shop, even though it was empty. The way my place was set up, my kitchen and bathroom were upstairs and shared a wall with the piercing room. One early morning (like 4:30), I was upstairs getting ready for work, and someone walked through the piercing room without walking into it or out of it."
"The footsteps were always from the same 'person.' Another time, I heard the back door to the shop slam shut, but no one had walked to/from it on the inside, and I went out to double-check that it was locked. There was an extra-large storage room that ran along one side of my place, and I’d frequently hear mumbled voices talking and buckets or other things getting pushed around, but it would stop as soon as I opened the door. The ghost never once bothered me; I just heard it all the time. My uncle is my dad's brother, and they’re two of four boys. My youngest uncle did all of the electrical work at the tattoo shop when it opened. He died by suicide when I was barely 7 years old. Everyone thinks that it’s just him hanging around, and that’s why the ghost never bothered me."
—Anonymous
21."I did a ghost tour at the Manly Q Station in Sydney with my fiancé for my birthday this year. In the luggage room, I felt as if I had a child sitting on my lap. Later on in the night, I felt really nauseous in the matron’s ward, but then when I moved away from the ward, I was instantly fine. In the gravedigger’s hut, I heard a demonic-sounding growl twice and saw a ghostly white creepy face, almost like a very creepy smiling mask, behind our tour guide. The worst part for me was the shower block. I saw black clawed fingers curled over one of the shower cubicles, and once I went in, we had to walk single file because of the skinny passageways, and I couldn’t look anywhere except for the floor and the guy in front of me. It was a very interesting, fascinating, scary, and freaky experience. My fiancé and I are going back soon as well!"
22."I lived in a very weird house in southeast London when I was a student. The first few weeks of living there were deeply disturbing. There were strange noises and bumps in the night, things appeared and disappeared unexpectedly, and — the only thing I can't explain — a full pint of water was launched across an empty bedroom. After a month, it all stopped. But for that one month, my housemate and I were so scared, we slept in the same bed!"
23."While my husband and I were visiting his grandparents one afternoon, I started to feel tired and started to space out from the conversation. I happened to glance past my husband’s grandmother and into one of the bedrooms that faced the living room we were in. I saw a tall, shadowy man with a hat and coat on picking up a suitcase and standing directly in the doorway. I snapped out of it and realized that everyone was starring at me and asking me if I was okay because I had apparently made a strange face and looked pale. I didn’t feel scared, but I definitely felt confused. It made me really think about my stance on spirits."
—Anonymous
24."As a kid, I lived in a house where a lot of inexplicable things happened, but the weirdest was on the night we moved out. My mom was alone there late while my dad took some things to my grandparents’ house. There was almost nothing left in our house, but there were some folding metal chairs. My mom stacked them up on the tile floor near the front door and thought, Those are going to fall. She walked into another room and heard it happen. Metal on tile is a distinctive sound. But when she went back to check, they were still stacked. We guess the ghost was saying goodbye."
—Anonymous
25."Ages ago, I worked at a gift shop inside an affluent hotel in Lake Tahoe that had been built in the 1960s. When I interviewed for the position, the manager added, 'Oh yeah, and the gift shop is haunted.' I laughed to myself and said, 'Sure, okay.' It didn't take long to find out she was absolutely correct. It was haunted. There would be a certain time in the afternoon when the store was empty and dead silent and I would hear footsteps. The entryway to the store had a large, wooden floor area, and every day I would hear the clicking of heeled boots walking into the store. I would look up from folding T-shirts to greet whoever walked in, but there would be no one there. Over and over and over, every single day, footsteps."
"Sometimes I would be refilling the postcard rack right next to the front doors, and I would jump because the footsteps were RIGHT NEXT TO ME, but again, there would be no one there. After a few months of working at the gift shop, I was at the cash register with a heavy load of customers. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tall man wearing a cowboy hat walk through the front door, continue by me, and walk toward the back of the store, where we had clothing and a dressing room. After I had rung up the last person, I turned to ask him if I could help him find something, only to see there was nobody there. There is only one entrance to the store, and I saw nobody with a cowboy hat leave.
"Not long after that, I got into a conversation with one of the hotel security guards who was one of the original staff that had been there since the hotel opened. He had tons of incredible stories about famous people who had stayed there, and had all the dirt and gossip. He told me that sometime in the 1970s, there had been a man staying at the hotel who had been gambling and drinking heavily. He had come into the gift shop and promptly had a heart attack. He died in the dressing room. I asked what he looked like, and security guard replied, 'He was a tall man who had been wearing a cowboy hat.'"
—Anonymous
26."My grandma's house is haunted. My grandpa went through hell for a year after breaking his leg, and the break essentially released cancer into his body. He ended up losing his leg above the knee, and eventually my grandma had to pull the plug on him. I was only 8 or 9 years old when this happened, but I remember it as if it happened yesterday. My parents dropped my sister and me off to stay the night with my grandma, and I eventually fell asleep on the loveseat that sat at the end of the four stairs leading to the living room. I woke up randomly, and at the top of the stairs was a man wearing a very distinctly patterned bathrobe."
"He was bald and solid, but he wasn’t 'human' colored. He was different shades of gray. I stared at him for what felt like forever but in reality was maybe 30 seconds. I pulled the blanket back over my head and cried myself back to sleep. I asked my grandma about it in the morning, but she dismissed me, and it wasn’t brought up again until I found a picture. The picture was of my grandpa, in the exact robe I saw that night, but this time I could see the colors on the robe. The whole paternal side of the family made fun of me for like a year, and now they’ve all seen him. The fear that I felt that night still lives fresh in my mind, but so does the regret that I didn’t say anything or try to communicate."
—Anonymous
27."It happened in 2007 when I used to live in Arcadia in Los Angeles County. My home was a newly built small, two-story suburban condominium that was located near the Santa Anita mall. One evening, I had a terrifying encounter with something just outside my bedroom in the second-story living room area. I didn't know what it was at that time, but later I learned that people on the internet call it the Glimmer Man. It was a translucent humanoid shape. I saw it sitting on the floor with its legs crossed. It was facing the opposite direction of my bedroom door. My initial feeling was that it was waiting for me to open my bedroom door after I'd spent the whole day in my bedroom. I remember it was around my height (which is 5 feet 11 inches), it had a clearly defined outline, and it distorted lights, cloaking itself like the alien in the Predator movie."
"I was so shocked and terrified at the same time. It noticed me and started to get up from the floor and face my direction, then it started walking toward me! I quickly closed and locked my bedroom door, and I stayed inside until the following day. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to call the police, but I had no idea how to explain my situation. My first guess was that it was an evil spirit, so I thought maybe when the sun rose, it would go away. I even thought that maybe it could pass through a wall, so I was terrified the entire night. I played an audio Bible and prayed to God for him to protect me from evil spirits and demons. I never saw it again after that, but sometimes I still feel its presence. I moved out of there in December 2007."
—Anonymous
28."My husband and I just experienced something over the weekend! We went to visit a family friend, and my husband and I had the guest room upstairs, and our daughter, 16, slept downstairs on the couch. The downstairs bathroom wasn’t working, so I told her if she needed to use the bathroom, it was fine for her to use the one upstairs in our room. Later that night, my daughter was already asleep, and my husband and I were in bed talking. As soon as we were settling down and getting ready to sleep, we heard a voice that sounded EXACTLY like our daughter's call out, 'DAD?' We looked at each other confused because we knew for a FACT that she was completely knocked out, sleeping. We said 'Come in,' but nobody came. My husband got up and opened the door, but there was nobody there. We looked down the stairs, and our daughter was in the same position, knocked out. When I checked my phone to see the time, it was around 3:20 a.m., and that freaked me out even more."
"So the next morning, I asked my friend if they'd ever experienced anything in the house, and how old the house was. She said it was built in the '40s, and a lot of times she would be in the shower and would hear her baby crying super loud. She would literally run out of the shower with soap all over, just to see her baby sleeping all nice and peaceful, not crying! I have to admit that the upstairs of that house did feel off. I didn’t want to be up there by myself, even in the daytime. I was so happy when we left the next day."
29.And this: "I pretty much grew up in a haunted house. I'm really skeptical of anything supernatural, despite my experiences and shared experiences with others, but the memories are very real. There's one story that stands out, but there are SO MANY. When I was about 14, I lived in the little attic space. It was my 'bedroom.' I saw my stereo skip songs, with the buttons being visibly pressed (which stopped when I would tell them out loud to stop), and heard running footsteps up the stairs, and my cousin had seen children sitting beside him in the middle of the night. They were so vivid, he believed they were my younger cousins, who happened not to be spending the night that night."
"Around the same time, I woke up one night to my empty bedroom. I usually did; I wasn't a good sleeper and would sometimes wake up hours before I had to go to school. I sat up, getting ready to go downstairs and turn the television on, when I started hearing very visceral, loud hissing in my ear. The sound also moved. It would seemingly move away and then come closer, then move away. I don't know how to describe it any other way. It was almost as if whatever was hissing was also recoiling away from me. I was frozen and terrified, but I didn't tell anyone what happened because stuff like this was so frequent.
"That week, I happened to be in a fight with my brother. I don't remember what we fought about, but we weren't speaking to each other at all, and I hadn't told anyone, even my friends. I walked in on him telling my mom that the exact same thing was happening to him and that he'd heard hissing in his ear as he sat at the computer late one night doing homework. I had to break the silence and tell my mom that I had the same experience, but almost a week prior. My mom was just surprised we were talking again, and she later asked some family members to help her cleanse the house with sage and prayer.
"That did zero to stop the hauntings, but the activity died down a bit as we got older. Interestingly enough, when I was about 18, my mom sold the house and we moved. She was very religious and left our band T-shirts in a box in the house for someone else to find or throw away because she believed they were demonic (Metallica, Marilyn Manson, Rammstein). I was angry, so I skipped class and broke into our old house via the bathroom window. I felt nothing. No presence, no subtle anxiety, nothing. I now wonder what in the world it was that we experienced, and being a skeptic myself, I still wonder if maybe the gas was leaking or we all shared some sort of delusion. But here we are, and I still wonder what the hell was up with that house!"
—Anonymous
Scaryyy stuff. Do you have a paranormal-encounter story you want to share? Tell us in the comments!
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.