Plenty of people have never had a paranormal experience in their lives, so it’s not surprising that it gets dismissed. For those who have (or think they have) had run ins with the “other side,” though, the experiences are often terrifying, unforgettable and life changing.
These 15 people definitely feel that way about theirs.
#15. Doppelgänger alert
“In college, I worked with a guy named Kyle who had a pretty distinctive look. He had half his head shaved and a biomech tattoo on his scalp. I got a call at work that my uncle had suddenly collapsed and probably wasn’t going to live much longer. Kyle agreed to take my morning shift the next day so that I could go and say goodbye.
I spend the next day at the hospital with my family. My uncle was taken for tests at one point and we decided to go for lunch. We ended up across the street at a Panera bread. I walk in and sitting there is Kyle. I panic, because if he didn’t cover my shift we both were going to get in trouble. The shift change hadn’t been approved by a manager or anything. I come charging up to him and he looks at me and blinks, confused. He greets me by name, but he’s acting all drowsy, like he just woke up or is really high.
I ask him why he isn’t covering my shift and he says “I am covering your shift”. Figuring there was a miscommunication I say “The shift started three hours ago, it was the morning shift” and he repeats “I AM covering your shift”. He still sounds really out of it.
My phone was in the car because we couldn’t have it in the ICU, so I go over and ask my aunt if I can borrow hers to call work. While I do, I see Kyle just sort of wander out of the restaurant. I make the call and to my surprise Kyle is the one to answer the phone in his normal voice. He’s been there the whole time. The second Kyle is by now nowhere to be seen.
Once I thought about it, it made no sense that Kyle would have been there anyway. It was an hour drive from where he lived, and he isn’t the type to eat at a Panera. The second Kyle didn’t have food or anything, he was just sitting there. When I told Kyle about this, he told me a few other stories of people seeing him places he wasn’t or places he couldn’t be. Some of them really creeped me out. Still can’t explain it.
Edit: Kyles other stories in comments.”
#14. No one was awake
“Once at around 2 in the morning I suddenly just woke up, but then I started hearing my piano playing, someone was playing twinkle twinkle little star. I just sat up and listened to it. Since my door is made of glass, I saw the light was on as well, so I thought maybe it’s just my dad trying to comfort my baby brother, except I didn’t hear him cry, and the next morning I asked my family if anyone was awake they said no…Plus my dad isn’t the type of person to just play the piano randomly because he knows it would wake someone up.”
#13. A furry visitor
“Shortly after my dog died (mini dachshund, died from an aneurysm), I was laying in bed. I had just woken up and had the covers over my head. I suddenly heard sniffing right by my left ear. I froze, couldn’t build up the courage to look. Then whatever it was ran up and down my bed a few times then I felt it jump off. No sound of it landing on the floor though. She would run up and down my bed when she was excited.
I’m sure there’s some explanation like I’m losing my mind but it put me on tilt for quite some time.”
#12. What to believe?
“Myself, my half brother, my step brother and several friends have reported the same sketchy phenomenons on a beach in NSW. The whole Point was sacred aboriginal land/burial grounds for something like 27,000 years. Down on the beaches at night you’ll probably trip the fuck out and see black shadows dancing/ moving in and out of the dunes. Reaaaly wigs ya out. Emotions run high. Never feel alone. I always chalked it up to paranoia till I started seeing shit with my own eyes. Now idk what to believe. Will not walk through that bush at night and I’ve walked through many. I just always feel like I don’t belong there and that I’m being watched.”
#11. Say my name
“Once, in the house I grew up in, I heard my name clearly called from an empty room. I was alone in the house at the time and the voice, my name was clear and unmistakable from anything else.”
#10. Working overtime
“Worked in an old building in an upstairs office and would arrive before everyone else most days. I would often hear the front door open and footsteps coming down the hall, and would get up to see who it was. But no one would be there. I thought I was just imagining things and would only hear it when I was concentrating on something else. When I remembered to listen for it I would never hear it. Years later when I was no longer working in the building I was telling someone about it. She told me that someone died (of natural causes) in the office where I was working and other people had ‘heard’ him arrive in the morning and walk down the hallway to his office.”
#9. Keep out
“A few years ago I was setting up a baby shower for my sister in this conference type room in an old building turned sort of hotel on my high school campus. Now I knew the building history of how some students died there in 1910 or so from a typhoid fever outbreak and when they renovated it the construction workers would complain about power tools being turned on and dangling from their cords or the radio being on to a different station every morning they returned. It’s mainly used now for meetings, special events, and a place for alumni/visitors to stay so it doesn’t have 24/7 staff. So I made sure I played some music while I decorated so I didn’t have to be in silence. I started around 10:30pm and things were moving along. I kept hearing whispering but I figured people were staying there and I was just hearing them through the vents. At exactly midnight my playlist ended and I was finishing up the last bit of decorating when I heard the electric piano play 5 notes. Looked over saw that it was unplugged and noped out of there. The next day during the shower I found out that nobody was staying in the building last night. I don’t go into that building by myself anymore.”
#8. Missing time
“Elementary school I had to go talk to a teacher about something after school. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it was something really simple, maybe when I would make up a test or something. The conversation didn’t take more than 5 minutes. Then I walked home, and felt kind of sick on the way. When I reached home, my mom was incredibly worried because I was an hour late. I didn’t take any detours and my house is a five minute walk from school, so this was always a weird occurrence to me.”
#7. Scared of the dark
“Sitting on the end of the bed on my phone, facing my walk in robe. Dogs asleep in their beds at the bottom of the robe. Dogs startle and bolt to be next to me, tails tucked. Immediately after, a glass bowl falls from the shelf above the clothes rails and smashes over their beds. Bowl (ornamental, was up there for storage) had neen there for months and was back from the edge, and we hadn’t moved anything up there in weeks. Slept with the lights on and still can’t look in there in the dark without feeling like something’s looking back.”
#6. I didn’t dare
“My stepma used to own property in a small lake town that was primarily used for summer homes. Some friends and I went camping there about ten years ago. One day we decided to walk the local trails, and we came upon an unmarked cemetery. Some of us were already into paranormal-y stuff, so we went and checked it out. Then we left and continued up the trail.
A very short ways up was a gravel clearing, gated off. In the center of that clearing was a triangle shaped structure about 8 feet high, 5 wide, 3 thick. Essentially it looked like someone cut off the top of a church and tossed it in this circle. We thought it was weird and neat so we snuck in. On the front of the structure was a small door with the thickest, most diesel padlock I’ve ever seen. It was about the size of a balled up first resting in the other palm.
Being the most skeptic but also most intrigued, I decided to go up to it, but as I got close to it, I simultaneously got a panic attack and fell ill. Dizzy, blurry vision, nausea, faintness, chills, cold sweats. Essentially every symptom of the worst migraines I’ve ever had on top of the panic attack.
I almost fell over when one of my friends caught me and pulled me away from the thing and got me back through the gated area. As soon as I was outside of that circle, every symptom stopped instantly. I didn’t dare go back in there, nor did any of my friends.
I’ve been to several places checking out paranormal stuff over the course of 8-9 years at that point, including 4 years living in a house where weird unexplained things happened fairly regularly, and this is the first time I’d seen anything like that. I tried searching for what that structure might be but I never found any results.
I’ve got a whole bunch of other experiences I could share, but overall I’d say this one takes the cake.”
#5. Who let the dog out?
“One time when I was in the first or second grade, I had to leave school because I had a dentist appointment that day.
My gramma picked me up a bit earlier than usual (for an appointment) because, that time, we also needed to do a few things quickly before going to the dentist- namely, getting some gas for the car and stopping at my aunt’s house to let her dog out.
We stopped at the gas station to get gas, then went in to pay. Whilst paying, my gramma’s cellphone started ringing. Note that her cellphone was one of those old Nokia bricks that played “Für Elise” as its ringtone.
It’s apparently my aunt… Calling from her house. Even though she was supposed to be off on a business trip. My gramma answers it anyway, and asks, “Hello?”
On the other end, there was no reply, but she could hear someone or something playing with Daisy (my aunt’s dog), and calling her name, and saying things like, “Good girl”- all the basic dog sayings.
My gramma again asks “Hello?” and she gets a reply- “Hello.” in what sounds like my aunt’s voice. Then the line goes dead. I look up at her, going, “Gramma, what’s going on?” and she just grabs my hand and rushes us out of the gas station.
We zoom over to my aunt’s house to find it deserted, as expected. The phone was still on the wall and Daisy was ecstatic for us to be there, as if she had been left alone all day (like she should have been). Funnily enough, the radio that my aunt always left on for background noise (for the dog) was off when we got there, so we turned it back on as we left.
After we got everything done and went home, later that night, my gramma called my aunt (knowing that she would actually be home by then) and asked her how in the world she had called from her house that afternoon.
My aunt then claimed that she had NOT, but she HAD tried to call… FROM TWO CITIES OVER, where her business trip was. To make sure that we hadn’t forgotten to let Daisy out. She had no idea who was “playing” with her dog or who had said “hello”– because, from HER end, she never got the call to go through.
My gramma and I still have no idea what happened, either.”
#4. Once in a lifetime
“I was sitting doing homework in my teens in my room. For whatever reason, I was lying on my front on the floor, probably colouring in a map for History or something. My eye was caught by movement on my desk, over on the other side of the room – a quick, sudden movement like a spider or wasp might make. The desk was my ‘painting station’ and was covered in pots of paint and miniatures; as I looked I saw one of the miniatures, a heavy, metal model of a weird tall mech thing (eldar wraithlord for those in the know) just scooted along the desk about a metre before falling on the floor with a miserable thud and crack of failed glued joints. Needless to say, the desk was flat. Its little trip was the most unnatural, uncanny thing I’ve ever seen.
I just stared, then dashed from the room as fast as my legs would allow me to. Never happened again but I remember it vividly, not least because I had to repaint the damned thing.”
#3. Mental illness or ghosts?
“All my life I’ve seen people on the side of the road when I drive at night. I always thought they were ghosts of people who died in car accidents. The scariest part is that it turns out I have schizophrenia.”
#2. Let’s go home
“In high school, I used to go running on our road after school let out. There were 7 houses on a strip of road that was about a mile long if you did one lap. In some areas there would be stretches of woods or fields, so I would always take my brother for safety. The neighbor’s house is right beside mine, you can see it through a small patch of woods. After that, there is one more house and then a large stretch of woods and field where there is nothing for a ways until the next house.
We started our run and right as we get to the third house before that wooded area we saw something zip across from the field into the woods. It ran on two legs like a man would but it wasn’t a man because it moved too fast. It wasn’t a bear either because the gait of the run was wrong. My brother swears it had antlers like a buck. We immediately turned back around and ran home and did not leave the house.”
#1. Clumsy grams
“My mom sister and I were in the living room one night watching tv. It was snowing on and off. We heard a thump in the other room that sounded like someone opened&closed or ran into the storm door on the porch, but there was no marks in the snow to account for anything like that happening. Even if a bird or something flew into it, you’d think they would fall stunned before flying away again. My gram had recently passed away and my mom casually said “she’s still learning how to reach us, she’s clumsy”. I let it go without much more of a thought lol.”
