Skeptics may believe there is a logical explanation for everything.
Whether it's a creaking noise on the second floor when no one else is home, or demonic hallucinations that may or may not have been part of a dream, people have felt something with every fiber of their being that convinced them there were other forces at work.
Redditor TurtleBoi87 wanted to hear about unexplainable phenomena from strangers on the internet and seriously asked:
"What is the creepiest experience you have ever had?"
Not everyone believes in ghosts. But they also probably would not want to see proof they exist.
The specters are just waiting for the right moment to make an entrance.
A Presence In The House
"I grew up in an old farm house. It was around 150 years old (must be around 175 now) located in a sparsely populated area in north central Iowa. Very rural. There were a lot of small odd occurrences over the years my family lived there, but the most frightening one for me occurred when I was a teenager. I was old enough to be home alone, but not old enough to drive."
"My parents and older sister were all out for the night so it was just me and the dogs at home. I settled in to watch a movie in the living room located on the first floor of the house when I heard someone walking heavily in the hallway above me. This house had plank wood flooring with nothing remotely sound insulating. These steps were distinct, heavy, and unmistakable. I knew I was the only person home and the house was miles from the closest neighbor, let alone town."
"My stomach was in a knot, but tried to be logical and quickly decided it must be a dog (even though the steps sounded much too heavy for our small terriers). I leaned forward in the recliner to call for them, but as I leaned forward I saw that both dogs were already sitting at my feet. And they looked terrified. I took the dogs, the wireless house phone, and ran out of the house, and locked myself in my mom's car in the driveway. I called my parents and waited in the car for them to get home. They had both had enough experiences in the house to not doubt me."
"ETA another story from that house -The family who built the house lived out their lives there, including their daughter. Her name was Minnie and she never married and thus lived in the house her entire life; birth to death."
"A few years after my parents moved I was talking to my mom about all the odd incidents that happened in that house. She asked me if I ever found little gold safety pins around the house. I hadn't. She then shared that she was always finding little gold safety pins when she was alone in the house. Multiple times she had even had them drop onto her, landing in her book or on her sewing project. She would look up and even checked for cracks in the ceiling, but they seemed to fall from nowhere. It made her uneasy, but it mostly just perplexed her."
"Then my grandma told my mom that she had a once met Minnie years ago. My grandma was an RN at the local hospital and when she was a young nurse Minnie came into the ER. She was very old at this point and in poor health. In order to treat her, the nurses had to undress her as she was wearing layers and layers of clothes. My grandma said it was an incredibly frustrating task because all of her layers of clothes were fastened together with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny gold safety pins"
Possessed Laptop
"One time I was in my room trying to go to sleep when my closed laptop randomly blasted screams of what sounded like a woman in pain. I still have NO IDEA how that happened, but it scared the sh*t out of me."
– caitycha
Gramps Has Had It
"I was at home alone with my dogs and one of them wouldn't stop barking. She had a shrill piercing bark. Suddenly a man's voice yells 'SHUT UP.' I was on the phone with my mom at the time and she asked 'who's there with you?.' I said no one I don't know what that was. She told me to gtfo immediately. I didn't, I figure the only person who died while living in the house was my grandpa and I can't blame his ghost. That dog was being super annoying."
A good night's sleep didn't come for these Redditors, who either experienced being in a partial sleep state or witnessed someone who did.
Face Stealer
"As a kid (maybe 12) I walked in to my mums room to kiss her goodnight. I didn't realise she was asleep and as I entered I woke her. She saw me standing in the doorway and jumped straight out of bed. She grabbed me and threw me on to the bed and tried to choke me out, while kind of clawing at my face. I grabbed a pillow to try to put it between us but she was on top of me and screaming. I remember seeing her face in the light coming from the hallway and she was crazed. I kept screaming at her 'it's me! It's me!' But she wouldn't stop. "
"Somehow I got out from under her and I ran out into the loungeroom where my dad was stood up, about to see what was going on. I grabbed him and threw him between me and my mum, who was right behind me and still clawing at my face. He grabbed her and bear hugged her, while her arms reached out over his shoulders, still clawing at me. I don't know how but she woke up, and immediately started crying, really sobbing, and apologising. She said she was stuck in some sort of not quite asleep, not quite awake state and when I stood in the doorway all she could see was that I was wearing her face, and she felt she had to get it off me. We stayed up all night crying and I still won't walk in a room if someone is asleep."
– PiperPug
The Long Night
"Sleep paralysis. Was laying in bed after one hell of a day and the mind was racing like never before."
"Eventually, the body fell asleep but the brain didn't or however the f'k it works. Luckily I prefer to sleep on my sides or face down, that night was face down so I guess I skipped a lot of the nightmare fuel."
"Felt a pressure on my back, akin to say a large cat laying on your back."
"Then came the hallucinations whoo boy. Dark moving figures in my peripheral vison, odd sounds in an empty house, sensations of touch on my arms and legs."
"It was a sh*t night."
– Helluks
"When I was about 10 I was lying in my bed when a pair of hands came up from behind my headboard and started choking me. I remember trying to move or scream but I was completely paralyzed and silent. Then all of a sudden I 'woke up' but I was sitting bolt upright in my bed. Had no idea what sleep paralysis was at the time so it's safe to say it scared the absolute sh*t out of me!"
It's interesting the things the brain interprets what we're seeing.
Cosmic Rays
"When I was younger I've been walking around with a friend of mine in the middle of the night. We walked over an open field when we suddenly stood in a flickering extremely bright and somehow 'dancing' light, we both looked around but there was no light source or something we ran away and when we turned around to see if it's still there it was just gone. Today we still have no idea what happened back then and yeah."
O Brother, Where Art Thou
"Went to visit a friend since I had moved away. We were hanging out in the bathroom and I saw her brother walk by and down the stairs. Couple minutes passed and I asked if her brother was off, she said no he's at work right now. I told her no I just saw him passed by us and he was wearing his sweatpants. He was in fact at work. When he got home the first thing he said was 'you can see it to.' His room was the only room that was ice cold. His mom ran sage through the house and after that his room went back to being warm. His parents or sister would never see this figure, but I did."
Demon Beast
"I started experiencing all the typical haunting stuff. lights flickering, shadows, objects moving, feeling weight on the bed, even being touched."
"Didn't phase me."
"Then I saw a demon beast appear outside my window, just waving at me with the most sinister smile, pure evil, something even hollywood couldn't recreate."
"That got me. Almost left my apartment without my shoes."
"When I returned I was intent on capturing it on video, But it never fully manifested again. I guess it made it's point."
Sinister Silhouette
"Several years ago, before kids) I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. As I crossed from the bed to the bathroom I looked down the long hallway to the guest room at the end of the house. We slept with the doors open then, before kids. The guest room has a big window lined up perfectly to The hall. The shades were shut but there was lots of ambient light in the room. It lit up a black shaped ghost/ vampire perfectly. Only saw it for a second but nearly gave me a heart attack. I have convinced myself that it was just my eyes playing tricks on me,but…."
They say your mind plays tricks on your and your wild imagination confuses your perception of reality.
While that's plausible logic, why do they always have to happen when we're all alone, and usually at night or in the dark?
As a kid, my "imagination" had a field day with me when I spent the night home alone for the first time without a babysitter.
I think I was just paranoid because it was eerily quiet, but I could've sworn I heard the rocking chair behind me creak a few times as I was reading a manga comic book.
When I turned around, the rocking chair was completely still, but the creaking noises simultaneously stopped as I turned around.
It probably didn't help I was reading The Drifting Classroom, one of the most disturbing manga by Kazuo Umezu, a well-known Japanese comic book artist specializing in the macabre and unimaginable horrors.
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