Years ago I had a classmate who was a little on the superstitious side. It was rumored his grandmother, who he lived with, was a witch doctor of some kind. He also firmly believed that the ghost of a young man with blazing red eyes lived in his closet. He would sometimes come to school and tell us stories.
Given that we were all about seven or eight years old at the time, we were rightly spooked. I like to think he was just a gifted storyteller, but there's no question that his tales of his encounters gave us the heebie-jeebies.
After Redditor postymcpostpost asked the online community, "What's your real ghost story?" people told us about their ghostly encounters.
"I lived in Colorado..."
"My Uncle Bill died when I was 4. He and I were incredibly close. He was my favorite and I was his."
"I lived in Colorado but we went down to Alabama for his funeral. I'm 31 now so I don't remember him actually visiting me, but I do remember telling my mom, "Mom, Uncle Bill says it's going to snow!" My mom calmly reminded me that Uncle Bill was gone, and we were in Alabama in 1995. It doesn't snow here."
"Uncle Bill and I got the last laugh when we all woke up the next day and it was snowing in Alabama! Very lightly but it was there."
"My grandmother coming to me..."
"My grandmother coming to me in a dream to tell me she died. I was in China at the time. When I called home my family and girlfriend lied about it. The next night I had the same dream and called home to check in, but they lied again. I finally got my girlfriend to admit it. The dream stopped. When I got home, I was told that the last thing my grandmother said was to ask for me by name."
"I was helping him build out..."
"My biological dad lives in a creepy old farmhouse he renovated. I was helping him build out the office late one night. He went to the bathroom, and I kept plunking away. I was on the floor and set my hammer down. I felt something - a presence - and looked to where I thought someone would be. Nothing. I reach back down for my hammer and it's out of arms reach - maybe five feet further than where I had set it down. I hadn't moved, at all."
"He comes back after he's finished and I tell him what had just happened. He laughed and said, "The little girl must be playing with you." Um, little girl, what? He then tells me that every now and then he hears a little girl laughing, and has even seen her. She's always wearing the same pair of overalls and she just kind of wanders around upstairs. I'm not one to believe in paranormal experiences, but I have no explanation other than a little girl ghost just wanted to play."
Eerie! I have no interest in playing with a ghost girl myself.
"When I was younger..."
"When I was younger, I used to see a 'black cat' that would follow me around. It wasn't an everyday occurrence, but sometimes I would see them, and once I got a real good look at it. Black cat with bright green eyes. Anyway, I never really talked about the cat following me around and don't remember mentioning it to anyone. As I got older, I noticed it less until one day my brother asked me out of the blue what happened to the black cat that used to follow me. That freaked me out a little. I tried to convince myself I was imagining things, but how did he know about the cat and that they were missing?"
"I was told that I needed to make sure..."
"Was visiting a friend in Chicago. She told me under no uncertain terms, the ghost of a woman who lived there wasn't really fond of men staying there."
"i was told that I needed to make sure I closed any door behind me, lest she slam the door behind me."
"Sure as sh!t. First night I'm there. I get up to go pee in the middle of the night. I didn't close the bedroom door when I came back from the bathroom. Door slammed so hard it knocked a piece of art off the damn wall."
Now there's some material ripe for a horror film. The Conjuring universe, perhaps?
"We started hearing knocks..."
"We started hearing knocks on the siding (second floor) as if someone was at the door. This followed loud banging in the basement every night. I decided to record through the night and this snowflake ornament started spinning long after all had gone to bed. There was no draft as the other ornaments didn't move. When I played it back I heard a man's voice repeatedly calling me a hoe. I still live there."
"I get up..."
"When I was about 12 during summer, my sister who is 5 years older than me was out with friends after work. We shared a bedroom. I was up late, doodling in a notebook in bed, and had an older, glass tv next to my bed that was turned off. At one point I looked up and saw (in the reflection of the tv screen) my sister walk out of our bedroom doorway and into the stairwell. When I turned around to greet her, she wasn't there."
"I get up and walk into the stairwell and all of the lights are still off downstairs and in the bathroom next to our bedroom. So I think she must have run downstairs really fast and head down myself to find no one again. At this point, I'm getting a little spooked and I wanted to prove myself wrong so I went outside and her car was still gone. I SPRINT back inside and run back upstairs to my parents' room and wake my mom up to tell her I was pretty sure I had just seen a ghost. She was too tired to do much for it and so I went back to my bedroom, petrified."
"When I thought back on it I realized the girl was in a long-sleeved dress that looked somewhat vintage and my sister was very much a tomboy in those days. But she had blonde hair like my sister and was looking towards me while walking out of the room. I stayed awake with my light on until my actual sister got home and I felt safe to sleep."
"It still creeps me out a bit to think about it to this day. I don't really believe much in an afterlife but I know I saw a young girl walking out of the door. I wasn't really tired, I hadn't been watching anything earlier in the evening to scare me and even further wasn't scared when I first saw her because I thought it was just my sister. I can't explain it though. Never saw her or anything like it again."
"The next morning..."
"My great-grandma died in '92. My auntie got the phone call that night. The next morning, my then-3-year-old cousin came out of her room and sleepily mentioned, 'Mama, Gramma Rose (the one who'd just died) visited me last night. She said to tell you that her hip doesn't hurt anymore.'"
I've seen this movie before. I'd rather not see it again.
"My favorite story..."
"I work in an old building. In the 80s or 90s, there was a bus crash with multiple fatalities, and instead of exhuming the bodies on the side of the road, they transported the bus to our building and turned it into a giant freezer. They exhumed the bodies inside. I've been alone in the building and seen kids run past my office door. We all hear shoes squeak on the wax floor often. Basketballs roll around on their own. It's kind of cool, honestly. It's not really scary. We sort of respect each other's space."
"My favorite story is the time I spent the night there by myself and I felt especially paranoid. I told the ghosts out loud that I was just going to go to sleep, and would prefer to be left alone. I woke up to pee and I heard a girl's voice very distinctly say, "here he comes, let's leave."
"I know someone who survived the crash and I'd really like to talk with him about it, and maybe bring him in. But I also don't want to be insensitive to his trauma."
The paranormal has fascinated humans for as long as we've been around. Every culture has its folklore and almost every individual has something to say about ghosts, whether they choose to believe in them or not. I admit I'm a skeptic, but I do love getting creeped out.
Have some stories of your own? Feel free to tell us about them in the comments below!
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