People Describe Their Own Spookiest Paranormal Encounters

A Face Looking Back

"I grew up in a house that originally served as an 'old folks home.' "

"At night the whole house would pop and crack. It sounded like people were walking up and down the stairs all night."

"My mom was always on board that the house was haunted. My dad said it was “Just the house settling” the house in 1984 was 100 years old."

"One night I woke up to the sound of a door slamming. I walked down the hall and peeked around the corner, looking down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs was a closet."

"The door was open about six to eight inches, and there was a human face looking at me from inside the closet."

"The face was very shadowed as the house was dark. But there was no glisten to the eyes, just black. It’s face was protruding slightly from the opening between the door and the door frame."

"The skin was a pale grayish white, as I could make out. I didn’t stick around very long to study it."

"I ran into the bathroom and tried to calm down. Finally I mustered the courage to come out of the bathroom and look down the stairs again…. Nothing there."

"There were many experiences in that house that are harder to explain."

- AsphiXiate8888

"Hey, psst"

"When I was younger, maybe like 5, I went to bed and I woke up to the sound of something whispering and I thought nothing of it until I heard 'Hey, psst' and I looked up and saw a black dog with yellow eyes standing on 2 legs."

"I started screaming and crying and yelled for my parents and when they came up the thing hid behind a chair in my room. I was so scared I slept with my parents for a week and never saw that thing again."

"I had multiple dreams about it though."

"In the dreams it always had this power that it could make me freeze and not be able to move and he would always do it in front of my parents and they never did anything."

"Really Creepy sh*t."

- CoolQuip1

Nothing's Wrong With The Doorbell

"I was about 16 and home alone one night at my stepdad's house. Everyone had gone out for the night except me."

"One thing you need to know about this household; it’s in a pretty rural area, in a little village where everyone knows each other and a lot of families lives in the same town. Because of this, no one would ever use the front door."

"Everyone who came over for a visit would just come through the garden and use the back door and walk right in."

"So it’s about 10pm, I’m watching tv, and the doorbell rings. It startled me a bit; who could that be at this hour? Why would they be at the front?"

"So I look out the window to get a full view of the front doorstep. No one’s there."

"As I’m looking out the bell rings again, but there’s no one there to ring it."

"My whole body becomes red hot with adrenaline and fear and I’m frozen to my seat as it rings again. And again. And again."

"I run to grab my phone to try and call my mom to come home cause I’m scared sh*tless. No answer. The ringing stops."

"About an hour later my parents come home and I freak out and tell them what happened and I’m pissed at them for not answering the phone."

"My stepdad chuckles and says 'Oh yeah, that’s my wife. It happens sometimes.' "

"His previous wife and partner for years had died a few years back. He said he tried to have the doorbell fixed only to find out there’s nothing wrong with it."

"Their theory is that when the doorbell rings it’s her reminding them she’s still with them."

- lxtje

"Outstanding reports"

"I used to be a contractor and had to inspect all kinds of places. One was an old psych hospital/asylum that had long been empty."

"I was working on one of the floors and it was starting to feel...off."

"It was August, but got freezing inside all of a sudden. So I decided I was going to calmly, but briskly, leave the building. As I was going down the stairs (i think I was between the 2nd and 3rd floor) something grabbed my ankle."

"I booked it out of there immediately - I absolutely didn't care if someone saw me terrified or panicked. I ran the f*ck outta there, ripped off my PPE and called my contact to confirm I was out."

"And then I left for the day due to 'outstanding reports' and went home and tried to convince myself it didn't happen."

- Wise_Coffee

Mom

"I've always slept with my bedroom door open. I have a small room and it feel smaller when the door's closed, also I was very scared of the dark as a kid."

"I had a mirror across my room that faced the hallway. My bed was facing the mirror so I could see the hallway from my bed."

"Anyways, so there was one night I woke up in the middle of the night for no reason."

"And that night I looked in the mirror and I saw my mom in the mirror, and she was looking down and giving me the creepiest smile."

"I blinked and she was gone."

"I'm not sure if that was a sleep deprived hallucination or what, but it definitely wasn't my mom."

- mystic_mayhem03

"One night I woke up and seen my mom standing in my closet smiling at me. I looked at her for a few seconds and she faded away."

"It creeps my mom out when I tell her."

- halfbreed_prince

A Children's Choir

"I lived in a haunted house for a year."

"At this time it was just me and my three sisters. Ages 13, 5 and 2 (I was 10.) My older sister and I were home from school with a stomach bug."

"My mom had to go get my 5-year-old sister from school and asked us to watch our youngest sister."

"We were sitting in the living room and she was eating some snacks and had a sippy cup of water. The top to the cup must’ve not been screwed on tight enough because when she knocked it over, water spilled everywhere."

"My older sister went to the kitchen to get some napkins to clean it up. When she came back she handed me some of the napkins and we both started cleaning."

"We were on our hands and knees wiping up the water when we started to hear banging coming from the second floor. We both paused, looked at each other, and said nothing. But we both had that look of 'you heard that too, right?' ”

"We stayed silent and kept cleaning."

"Then again, another bang. At this point we stand up and are still silent, just staring at the ceiling."

"Then came the giggles. We heard little kids upstairs laughing. Then the laughing turned to singing. It sounded like a whole children's choir singing."

"My sister scooped up the baby and we ran outside. It was a clear day out that day, but I remember once we got outside it started to rain on us."

"We had no choice but to go back to the house. We stayed on the front porch until my mom got home."

"We saw things in that house that I still have nightmares about, 20 years later, but for some reason that giggling and singing bothered me the most."

- Cat523

My Shadow Roommate

"The apartment where I'm currently living seems to have some sort of resident shadow figure. I tend to see it moving in my office."

"Sometimes when I'm out in the hallway I'll see a shadow that looks like a medium-build man moving in there. Sometimes when I'm in the office at my PC I'll see it out of the corner of my eye like someone's standing at my shoulder and turn expecting to see my boyfriend - but nobody is there."

"Sometimes I'll see the figure down where the stairs meet the front door. The closet near the front entrance (right by where I've seen the shadow lingering at the end of the stairs) has opened itself a few times when I've been home alone & cooking in the adjacent kitchen."

"It's never seemed frightening to me, though, so whatever it is - some trick of lighting or bonafide shadow dude - I don't really worry about it much."

"I did recently have a bad bout of sickness. There was one night that I was running a temp of 103 and was just absolutely miserable, falling in and out of sleep while being anxious about my rising temp & how laboured/difficult my breathing was becoming."

"I was kind of scared since my aunt had died in her sleep due to COVID relatively early on in the pandemic - she had been on the phone with her boyfriend and mentioned she wasn't feeling well suddenly and was going to take a nap. I couldn't help but think of her because of how quickly it seemed like things were accelerating that night."

"At one point I did manage to fall asleep, but was woken up by a shadow figure opening my door & coming to stand over me. It wasn't my boyfriend."

"I was staying completely isolated in a diff part of the apartment to protect him since he has asthma & is a high risk, I asked later to confirm he hadn't randomly decided to break that quarantine that night and he was like 'of course not!' "

"I couldn't see anything but a shadowy outline. The figure was saying something to me; it was unintelligible but seemed like a question. Then it eventually walked back out of the room."

"I would've assumed it was a fever hallucination if my cat didn't jump up from her sleeping position to stare at the figure. Who knows, maybe it still was and I even hallucinated her reaction?"

"But I kind of like the idea that my shadow roommate came to check on me at my sickest point when I was anxious about being alone since my boyfriend couldn't!"

- junipercoffee​

The Audacity Of This Girl

"I used to babysit my niece and nephew when they were 4 and 5 while my sister went to work. She lived down the street from me so I would walk down in the morning before she left and before the kids woke up."

"I got there one morning and after she left I laid down on the couch. I heard one of the kids run down the hall and I immediately pretended to be asleep so they would go back to bed and not get the day started yet."

"I felt my niece run by me on the couch. Her running stomps shook the floor and I could hear the trinkets on the shelves shake. And I felt the wind of her blow by me."

"Then it was quiet but I knew she was still there. She leaned over my ear and moved my hair out of the way and laughed in my ear."

"I just thought to myself 'The audacity of this girl!' "

"Then she hid under the end table of the couch. Realizing she wasn’t gonna go back to bed until I woke up and played with her, I just got up and looked under the end table."

"There was no one there."

"Completely baffled at how she got up and out of the living room in literally 2 seconds without me hearing shook me. So I went down the hall to her room and was starting to freak out."

"My nephew was sound asleep in his bedroom and I got to my niece’s room, she was sound asleep tucked under her covers."

"My heart almost fell out of my body."

- FootstepsofDawn

The Blue Cup

"Years ago, when I was just a kid, my mom and I lived in this old apartment in MA. One day, when I was watching TV while she was cooking, all of a sudden she started to scream, yelling for me to come over and 'look at this!' "

"I ran over. She was standing right by the dining room table, which was empty except for a blue plastic cup at the end of it. I was confused, and asked her what the hell was going on."

"She didn't say anything. She just picked up the blue cup, and set it down at the other end of the table. As soon as she put it down, the cup just slid over all the way to the other end of the table, by itself. It stopped right at the edge."

"I jumped back, perplexed. My mom picked up the cup and did it again. And again for a third time."

"I've always liked technology and science (I grew up to become an engineer) so rather than being scared, I tried to figure out a rational explanation for this."

"I picked up the cup, and looked at it closely. I looked under and around the table. The table was spotless, and there was nothing else there."

"It wasn't a trick, there were no wires or magnets or anything of the sort. I tried the same thing with other objects, and nothing happened. It only happened with this particular blue plastic cup."

"I eventually tried it while looking directly at the cup, literally 2 inches away from it, and followed its path. The cup would actually vibrate as it moved, and did so in such a way that you could only notice it up close."

"Cups move when there's condensation under them, but they usually move a few inches, not the length of a fairly long dining room table. Also, the cup was made entirely of plastic, no seal, and dry. The table was dry as well."

"I've just never seen anything else like that, before or since. And the faint vibration was very, very freaky."

"To this day, I am not sure what caused the cup to move."

"That wasn't the only strange thing I experienced in that apartment..."

- JohnnyTwoTimes21

Steve

"My Dad has heard my mom calling him when she needed him. No phone or anything."

"One example - one time she dropped him off for a half day conference in a big office tower downtown and was going to do some shopping while she waited to pick him up."

"She drives away and 30 min later starts feeling very sick."

"She drives back to the building but doesn't know where in the building he is or where to call him. She said she just tried to focus and thinks his name really hard over and over ... like 'Steve, I need you. Steve, I need you.' "

"10 min later he came running out to the car and was like, 'What, what do you want?' "

"He drove her to the hospital and she needed her appendix taken out."

"Another time, my Dad's driving a car down a busy road. It's one of the ones where the main road has the right of way and all the side roads have stop signs where people have to stop then merge into traffic when there's a break."

"Anyway he's driving along and hears 'Steve!' "

"He looks around. No one's in the car with him, the windows are closed plus he's doing 50 miles per hour - but maybe someone he knows is in traffic?"

"Then he hears it again, 'Steve!' So he slows down and looks in the rearview mirror. He thinks it might be his friend."

"He slows down a bit more... and a dump truck blows through the stop sign at the crossing before him."

"If he hadn't slowed down he would have been flattened like a pancake."

- wellchelle

Avoiding the unexplained might be preferable for some, but it sure does make for a good story.