Even though I’m not sure if I believe in ghosts, UFOs, and other unsolved mysteries of the paranormal, I sure do love reading stories about these kinds of experiences.
And I want to believe! Because what’s better than getting creeped out, right?
AskReddit users talked about their craziest paranormal experiences.
Let’s get spooky!
1. What was that?
“We were visiting my in-laws around Christmas and we were chatting in their den, having some drinks and catching up.
They had a Christmas tree in the corner of the den. Nobody was sitting near it. My husband and father inlaw we sitting in lounge chairs and I was sitting with my mother in-law on the couch on the opposite side of the tree. The two dogs were napping between us. We were all at least 6 feet away from the tree.
All of a sudden their Christmas tress begins to v**lently shake. Like someone grabbed the trunk and was shaking dust off of it. A few ornaments fell to the ground and then it stopped. It shook for a good 10 seconds.
The thing is, we were the only 4 in the house, the dogs were sleeping on the couch with us, the tree had been up for at least a week so no woodland creatures hiding in it and nothing else in the house shook. No glass clinking, no other rumbling sounds, just the tree.
We checked the news to see if there was an earthquake, we checked online (pre smartphones) and the newspapers and no reports of an earthquake. We also live in an area where earthquakes are rare.
So I have no clue what shook the d**n tree. We all saw it, the dogs slept through it. They did not give AF.”
2. The subconscious.
“I had a dream that I was at this cottage party, though I didn’t recognize anyone there (but I knew them?).
All of a sudden, someone is knocking on the door and about 20 people crowd around it. I’m walking up and then everyone turns to look at me saying “they’re here for you.” I’m like f**k this no thank you, but I still go and walk up. It’s this old lady kind of lying on the ground, as if she crawled up there. She’s got stringy long hair and white eyes. I’m like no thank you good day ma’am.
But I somehow feel comforted??? I leave her at the door and walk to my room at the cottage and there’s this old man sitting in my bed. I’m like okay hey. He’s like: “someone d**d recently in your life and you didn’t get to say goodbye. Now is your chance.” I look out the window and he’s also there. I again feel comforted. Then my friends dog woke me up!
I definitely know this was about my friend who had passed away a month before. She had stage 4 stomach cancer and d**d within a month of knowing. Its crazy what our subconscious can do!”
3. Stumped.
“I used to live in a mobile home trailer park growing up.
There was a hallway that went from one end of the trailer to the other, with the bedrooms coming off it on one side. My bed was on the wall opposite the hallway, so I could see into the hallway but not down either side.
When I was about maybe 6-8 years old, if I stayed awake after my dad went to sleep and stared at the doorway I would start to be able to make out a hand stretching from beyond the doorway in the hall, from the right side of the door to the left.
The longer I looked the more of the hand would appear until eventually over the course of a few minutes I could see a a red and white striped shirt/sweater sleeve. If I continued to stare, after a longer period, the body of a boy would appear in the doorway.
I specifically remember hiding under the covers most nights when this would happen, mostly at the first sight of him. I was never antagonized further than him slowly moving (facing my bed) from the right side of the door to the left, and if I continued to stare he would eventually disappear beyond the left threshold.
We moved out of that trailer into a home when I had just turned 9 and that was the end of it. I never really thought about it, and I never told my dad or anyone else about it because by that time I had already chalked it up to just seeing things, and had thought it was my imagination (I’m sure it probably was).
About 15-20 years later, my dad and I were talking about his best friend that had lived next door, but sadly just passed away. We started talking about our trailer and the older lady that had moved in after us. My dad said something like “funny enough, [Dads friend] told me a few years ago that that woman used to see a little boy in a red and white shirt, like a ghost or something.”
I was obviously taken about and told him about what I had seen almost every night for a few years and we were both just a bit shocked at what that might mean.
Never experienced anything else, but that completely stumps me.”
4. White orb.
“A buddy and I saw, as clear as possibly could be, a white orb appear out of the air, slowly float up through the trees, and disappear.
I can explain the entire thing in detail if anyone is interested. I’m not a superstitious or religious person, but I’ve never heard a good scientific explanation.
Ball lighting might be the best possible explanation.”
5. Terrified.
“It was August of last year, I went over to a friend’s house to stay the night.
Only people there were me, my friend M, his gf A, and my friend at the time N (now my gf). It was 2:30 at night, M was laying down for a bit, A and N were chilling in the living room, and I went outside on my own to have a smoke.
After I spark it up, I’m looking across the street from M and A’s house, and right behind a small concrete brick wall I notice a head that looked like a straight shadow slightly poking above the wall, looking at me. I thought it was just someone being really f**king weird until I put two and two together:
There’s a streetlight shining directly on where this thing is and it STILL looks like it’s complete shadow.
I was smoking my cigarette and watching this thing, making sure that I didn’t take my eyes off of this thing, and it’s just kind of watching me and bouncing back and forth, slowly getting faster as I smoke. By the time I’m done, this thing looks like it’s doing a ritual dance or some s**t with how fast it was going. I put out my smoke and slowly start backing up to the front door.
When I know I’m there, I fumble for the doorknob for a few seconds and as soon as I get a firm grip on it, that thing stops d**d in it’s tracks. For what feels like an eternity I’m standing there in a staring contest with it, and slowly it starts creeping towards the side of the wall. Only then do I decide to nope the f**k out of there, burst the door open, and slam it shut behind me making sure to lock it.
Scared the s**t out of my friends when for like a solid 10 minutes, I’m just constantly peeking through the windows looking like I just had a run-in with de**h itself. Eventually I explain what happened to them and confirmed they were all still inside the house like when I went outside, we all collectively decided that we didn’t need sleep that night anyway.
It never showed up again throughout the night. Didn’t even bother looking over in the area that I saw it the next morning, just wanted nothing to do with it. Still don’t know what exactly I saw that night, and I don’t want to know.
I’m no stranger to the paranormal, have had experiences with it all my life, so not a lot of it scares me, but whatever I saw that night, I could tell just from a glance that it was purely malevolent, and it absolutely terrified me.”
6. Nightmares.
“I always had the terrible nightmares as a child so I’m sure there were plenty of episodes but this one happened in my mid 20’s and was terrifying.
I was house sitting for my parents at my childhood home, no big deal. They have a couple little whiny dogs that refused to settle down and sleep without my dad since they slept with him every night. By about night 3 I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to sleep in my dads room on the bed with them.
I was sleeping on the couch prior to this and in all the years I lived there never slept in that room, in fact I specially picked the other bedroom as a child even though it was visibly bigger and has a beautiful lake view my parents said I refused to take it.
About 2 or 3 in the morning I woke up to that low guttural growl dogs have that instantly makes your hair stand up. Keep in mind these are little yappy dogs that bark constantly, but this was something entirely different. The room was cold as F**K (this is mid July in the tropics so like 95 outside) and even though I’d been d**d asleep, I just knew something was wrong. Bad bad wrong.
Both dogs are growling nonstop so I roll over and halfway open my eyes and see these two little kids in what look like vintage baseball uniforms. I’m talking like turn of the century Victorian Age type s**t. There was nothing inherently scary about how they appeared but the feeling of dread was almost indescribable. They are just looking at me but somehow I knew that whatever these were, they were evil for lack of a better word. I honestly don’t even know how to explain it, but I just knew that something was very, very wrong with whatever I was seeing.
The absolutely primal terror feeling told me this was not the harmless dream variety. I couldn’t stop looking though, I swear I blinked 100 times trying to convince myself it was just a night terror until one half smiled at me, it was just a smile, but at the same time it was like malicious and somehow just off.
I just got this overwhelming urge that told me stop looking, close my eyes, pray, pray hard, and do it NOW. (you have to understand I am very much not the religious or church type) and I just squeezed my eyes shut and prayed out loud like I never had in my life for what felt like forever. It finally passed and about an hour later the dogs calmed down. As soon as I felt like it was “safe” to get out of that room i called my parents and made them cut their vaca short and come home that day.
My brother sleeps in there every night still with no problem, but something is wrong with that room. I’m not a big fan of the whole “evil” tropes, but I honestly don’t have a better word for it. Whatever was there that night was evil.”
7. The haunted road.
“There is a haunted road near where I live. Numerous people have seen the ghost car. The first time I saw it I was driving and my mom was dosing off in the passenger seat.
I see a cloud of dust and a large, old, black car speeding out of a road on my right. I just know he is going to exit that road at the same time I am passing by that road. We are going to collide. So I slam on the breaks. Don’t even look in the rear view mirror first I just lock it up. We come to an abrupt halt, mom comes awake. The car is gone.
No dust cloud coming from the road on my right, no black car. I am shaking asking repeatedly where the car went. She just laughs and says “you saw the ghost car”.”
8. On the farm.
“I grew up on a horse farm with a large indoor riding arena.
If there was an accident, like a horse breaking its leg, we would lay a tarp in the arena, bring the horse in if ambulatory, and wait for the vet to give their shot, “off to the glue factory” my dad would say.
Roughly 500 meters past multiple walls are where the rest of the horses stay indoors. Anytime there’s a horse who’s sick or dying they often whine and kick stalls. One time a border’s horse got the shot, and out of nowhere the entire barn just started screaming. Multiple horses bellowing and scrapping the stall doors with their hooves.
It sounded like an equine m**sacre. Some were so upset they broke into sweats and were just huffing away. It was cold so when I opened the barn door to go back to the house, all the steam and condensation from the horse breath and sweat left the barn at once.
Again, these horses had zero chance to see and could likely barely hear what was happening, and the neighing went off like an explosion. Super creepy.”
9. The old man.
“My high school girlfriend said she saw an old man in her house in the study. I laughed it off because her house was no older than 20 years old and how could it be haunted?
A few weeks later I was walking from the stairs and into the kitchen were she was sitting, out of the corner of my eye I see an older man sitting at the head of the table in the dining room. I tell her but have to rule out my claim as the seed of belief may have been planted in my head.
Months later her friend from Brazil was visiting. My girlfriend and I are fooling around upstairs and her friend burst through the door crying. In Portuguese my girlfriend asks what’s wrong and her friend says she was listen to music with headphones walking around on the main floor when she ran into an old man with a white beard in the study.
There was absolutely no way my girlfriend told her friend as she wasn’t a believer in the paranormal and didn’t make a big deal about it when she told me. To this day it is the one case in my life where I have to truly believe we all saw something in that house.”
10. Yikes.
“Me and some friends were counselors at a music camp in Northern California, and we always stayed in this super old dorm that was a hospital at one point.
My friend Nate was into those ghost hunting shows and we used to do this thing in the dorm late at night called an EVP session (Basically you do an AMA with spirits, and try to get them to answer questions while recording it hoping you pick up some paranormal audio). We never took it seriously, it was mostly something we did for fun after a few drinks.
Well one night we start doing the session and we start hearing some bumps and sounds in relation to the questions we asked. We are still kinda joking around, going “yeah right” but we can feel the room getting a little quieter. Then one of us asks “what is your name?” A few moments go by and we hear Nate ask “that was a joke right?” He had his headphones hooked into his his recorder, and we sat watching him puzzled, because he had this look on his face. He heard something we didn’t.
After some discussion we play back the audio through the speakers on the recorder so everyone can hear.
“What is your name?” We hear our friend ask. We hear in a whisper but clear as a bell something we didn’t hear before:
”I’m Timothy.””
11. This old house.
“The house I grew up in, which my parents still own was always very creepy.
One night I was standing in my room and I looked next to me. There was a little girl wearing a white night gown and she had blonde hair. My mom had a daycare so I was always use to the daycare kids.
However it was 11:00 pm and she was not a daycare kid. For some reason or another I said go back to the playroom… then I realized what was happening and looked back and she was gone with the door slowly shutting itself.
I’ve also had many sleep paralysis instances where I could open my eyes and see the floor next to my bed and see her legs and shoes standing there without being able to move.
I told this story to a girl who lived next to me at a campfire one night and before I explained the girl she came out and said… “was she blonde with a white night gown?” She told me that she had also seen her at her house one night.”
12. Difficult to rationalize.
“2009. Late evening after my grandmother’s funeral.
My aunt and I are at my grandmother’s house going through her paperwork in preparation for the coming disbursement of her estate to the rest of the family. I had my dog, Jack, with me as he went everywhere with me in those days. He was the most chill dachshund anyone ever met. Nothing ever bothered that dog.
Anyway, my aunt and I are discussing some random memories of my grandmother when Jack jumps out of a d**d sleep on the couch, runs to just a few feet away from the empty chair my grandmother always sat in and starts going absolutely insane, barking toward her chair – not the chair itself, though. The angle of his gaze suggested he was looking at someone in the chair.
Now, Jack never barked at anyone in his life, but here he is going absolutely apes**t over… nothing. It was the singular moment in his life that he seemed upset. He wasn’t angry, he wasn’t excited, he just clearly had a big problem with something in the chair.
This went on for a solid 60 seconds as my aunt and I could only stare in shock and disbelief, occasionally exchanging baffled glances. Then, as quickly as it began, Jack stopped barking, stared at the chair for maybe another 3 seconds, then went back to the couch.
My aunt and I exchanged one more puzzled look before she said, “Very funny, mom!”
I had never seen my dog act that way before and never saw it again. I’m on the fence about believing in ghosts or anything, but that experience was very difficult to rationalize.”
Now it’s your turn to creep us out.
In the comments, please share your own paranormal experiences.
We can’t wait to hear from you!
