It can be very difficult to give into the belief of the supernatural or paranormal. But even the most skeptical person can be convinced that there are ghosts, poltergeists and other spirits sharing this earthly plane with us.
Ex-Skeptics of reddit shared their experiences with Haunted Houses, creepy children and even relatives from the other side that might send a shiver down your spine. Or, they might actually change your perspective.
Sources at the end of the article. Comments edited for clarity.
I go camping and multi day hiking as a hobby. The weirdest thing I’ve ever heard was a wailing in the night. Idk what this thing was, but I woke up around 2:00 AM, my fire had died and there was an overcast so it was pretty much completely dark.
I was camped in a ravine-like valley, cutting through the mountains of Tennessee; this noise was in the valley coming right at me, from some distance over 500 yds. It really sounded like a man yelling in deathly agony. If you’ve ever heard somebody’s yells who are passing due to trama, that is how it sounded. It’s an odd thing and unsettling to describe.
Anyways, I was lying in the dark, gun in hands while this thing was getting closer and closer. Within 300 yds, it stopped wailing and left me in silence. A couple minutes after it stopped I could hardly make out a figure in the dark about 25 yds to my right. Whatever it was, it was tall, at least 5 ft so and it was moving roughly west to east at a pretty good pace, making absolutely no noise at it went. It seemed to be gliding along, there was no lateral movement with this thing. It just went by and I heard it wail a couple more times far down the valley.
The next day I checked for tracks and didn’t find any of significance, just old deer tracks. I still have no idea what could have made that noise. It was hauntingly human and sounded extremely distressed. I still don’t believe in the paranormal but that definitely made me question it.
Cincinnati_man
Seeing several butterflies at a family friends funeral (he was an avid collector). We wouldn’t have thought anything of it but it was the end of November, definitely not the time for butterflies in the UK.
hobotitwank
My own experiences, shared by multiple people at different times, but within the same place, over an extended period of time convinced all of us, the observers/victims/subjects, that Paranormal per se, exists.
Just how do you explain a levitating bed? High enough for me to leave scratch marks up on the ceiling?
Both me and my wife have to wake up to an irritating knock on our bedroom door in dead of the night, to see my father staring at me and carrying a very angry look, saying absolutely nothing as we ask him was everything alright? Escorting him back to his bed room, opening his bed room door to discover that my father was sound asleep on bed, and the entity who we had escorted being no where?
It all happened in late 1990s to early 2000’s. We sold that house.
entropyx1
I moved into a house with 3 other buddies in the winter of 2015. Everything was going great, my first place I lived in after moving out of my parents house. After a few weeks, I started hearing strange things in the house, and also particularly in my room downstairs. Now I’ve always been interested in the paranormal but nothing had happened personally to me until this one night.
My buddy (who didn’t live there) and I were in my room with the door closed playing some games, and paused it to look on our phones for a bit. All of a sudden we heard a loud meow which sounds like it’s inside the room. There were 2 cats in the house so this wasn’t too strange, but it happened again even louder. No cats in the room. We both looked at each other as the meowing continued, each time louder and louder accompanied now with the sound of footsteps. I wish I could explain how alien sounding these cat sounds were but we were so frozen that neither of us thought to start recording.
Later that evening I went up to my roommate who used to have that room when he was younger (this house was his parents place) and casually asked him if he ever had anything unusual happen to him in there. First thing out of his mouth is “Yeah dude, I used to hear cat sounds all the time and almost weekly I would feel a cat jump onto my bed and sit on me.” Without even mentioning what happened to me, he went on with stories for a few minutes about creepy cat stuff happening to him.
Some very weird things happened over the course of the next few months, such as random objects showing up in different places, waking up in the middle of the night to objects moved around in the bathroom, my roommate waking me up just hysterical cause his TV was turning on and off, and a locked door opening with the only key for it being 100’s of KM away.
The last time something happened to me was when I was cleaning out a dresser on the final day of moving out. I had all the drawers open, picking up my last few items when I jumped back due to a fury of scratching sounds from inside the drawers. It was so real sounding that I literally ran out of the room and I still haven’t set foot in that room since that day over 2 years ago. We all talked about it afterward and we figure it was either that there has been quite a few cats who have passed on the property, and/or their grandma who passed away while we were living there had something to do with it.
I haven’t told this story to many people because it sounds crazy but everything I experienced felt so real that I’m definitely convinced in something now.
wisherone
More on the next page
Driving home last winter, around 9pm, no other cars on the road. I was flipping through the radio stations, probably not paying as much attention to the road as I should’ve been, trying to find something interesting to listen to. I looked up from the radio and see what I thought might be a blue plastic bag or something on the road just ahead. My eyes fixated on it as I tried to stop. It looked completely still and surreal, like really dense and really calm smoke, completely motionless. ABS kicked in but I couldn’t stop in time. I didn’t hear a thud but I got out to look anyway.
This is in rural Maine, it’s really not uncommon to see wildlife in the road, especially with trash from the college nearby. I’ve seen raccoons with bags stuck on their heads, dogs carrying around trash bags, all sorts of critters. I wanted to make sure I didn’t hit one, so I got out to check.
I looked all over outside. No tracks on the road besides my own tire tracks. No foot prints. I had to rationalize what I saw. Maybe it was steam from a storm drain? Not many storm drains in the middle of nowhere Maine. I looked all over the road for an explanation.
Finally I shone my light over towards the woods and I was stopped, I kid you not, directly next to a cross on the side of the road where a pedestrian had been hit and killed a few years ago. Immediately the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I felt my entire body tingling. I got out of there pretty quick.
lightningdeathbear
The only time I’ve experienced something that I would call paranormal is when I went down into the basement of an old house that was up for rent.
It was cold and dark, which was expected, but suddenly all my hair stood on end and I was freezing. I didn’t see anything or even hear anything but every part of me was telling me to get out of there, so I did.
It was just the most intense, threatening “my life is in danger” moment I’ve ever experienced and I can’t explain why.
rar_ekks_dee
When traveling abroad and questioning some of these paranormal subjects, I was handed a $20 note from a random guy with my name written on it and also my two brothers names written on it.
I just didn’t know what to think at the time. At that point I don’t think I’d ever seen a name written on a unit of currency before, let alone mine and my two brothers.
daikonashi
I was raised by my Grandfather. When I was fifteen, he passed away effectively leaving me homeless. The night after he died, I was overcome by the most excruciating feeling of complete hopelessness and despair.
It was then that the room I was in filled with the smell of my Grandpa’s everyday Aftershave. I felt ok after that and have ever since. You could use science to prove that my encounter was something plausible which is fine, all I know is that it was the lift that I needed.
Ironpope
More on the next page!
My husband and I bought a house that is haunted. People died on the land. People are buried on the land. Two homeowners before us were in a Satanic cult and killed animals. There is a Satanic circle in our attic.
We hear footsteps, voices, laughter, whispers, and screaming. We’ve seen things outside our house, full bodied spirits, faces peeking in the windows, and people peeking out from the staircase. We been poked, pinched, scratched, bruised, had bedding torn off, bumped into, and woken up.
The last homeowners sold us our house and land for cheap because they refuse to go back in the house without the Pope and the Holy Lord by their side.
We have debunked some things but there are still things we can’t explain. I want to stop believing in ghosts, but I just can’t.
dinosaregaylikeme
Years ago, I was sitting in my dad’s house, alone, and the lights started flickering, like they were about to brown out. Then they started to flick on and off, faster and faster. The phone rang, I answered it, and there was a dark, deep voice on the other end, chanting in some other language. I hung up the phone, and suddenly my bedroom door shot open and then slammed shut.
I ran outside so fast.
mother*itcher
Our family vacations when I was a kid was always camping and hiking. Lots of hiking. Usually somewhere in Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee. We always did day hikes, so we’d get to the peak and back down in one day without worrying about nightfall.
We were at the top of one of the mountains and I was messing around climbing up on this rock that was even higher up. I walked around the taller rock and this guy, walking stick in hand, red shorts, white t-shirt, is standing there. It surprised me a bit because I didn’t know someone else was on this part of the mountain and he smiles at me and goes, “Careful! It drops off over here!” And he walked around the bend a little, out of sight, and I followed.
I saw the huge drop off, but no fellow hiker. Anywhere. He wasn’t there. I turned around and walked back and met up with my parents again and told them about this. My dad said it must have been a guardian angel. I dunno what it was. Paranormal? Maybe. Not spooky. Just a friendly warning.
He didn’t walk past me to go back down. It was very, very real, I can honestly not explain it.
pigeondancer
I was alone in my shared house one day, I work weird shifts so it was about 1pm in the afternoon and I had just woken up. My housemates leave for work at 8.30am everyday besides weekends. So I’m the only one in the house and have been for a good few hours.
I walk into the kitchen and just as I make my way across the room, the toaster lever flips up as if someone had pressed it down recently. The toaster had never done this before and hasn’t to this day. My father had died a few months previous so I like to think it was him saying hello in a non scary way.
demo19915555
More on the next page!
I used to live in a very old house and things would happen that you just could not explain rationally. It’s really hard for me to explain because it sounds like I’m nuts but my mother also experienced a lot of it.
Doors would open/close and SLAM at random. I witnessed this first-hand dozens of times while living there. Now you could say that it could have been air pressure causing it or some type of draft but that absolutely wasn’t the case. Something that also happened is TVs would turn off/on, one thing that happened frequently is you would leave a room and the tv would turn off behind you.
Random noises like footsteps and knocks. You would often wake up and the door you KNEW was shut would be wide open. This house had a lot of older iron door latches and what not and you could clearly hear those turn when doors would open.
In this house there was a main living room and a sub-living area, between the two there was a door. I once sat on the couch and watched the door knob turn and the door slowly creep open.
My mom and I had moved into this house because she married the man that owned it. Shortly after moving there, he passed away and his previous wife had died in the house as well and he always told stories about weird things happening in the time I knew him.
Aetherin
My personal experience happened a long time ago. I was 5 or 6. My grandmother had just passed away and it was a few days after her memorial, where we had spread her ashes.
My Grandmother loved cats and owned plenty. The cats were very sweet, and also very smart. Two of the cats, Lancelot and Arthur, liked to play in the kitchen. Arthur was an all white kitty that for whatever reason liked to play with the oven. He could open it himself, and liked to rest in there. It was never on, my grandmother always kept it unplugged and all that so he could have his spot.
On the day, a week after my grandmother’s memorial, my uncle came to help clean out the house and take the kitties to his ranch, where he helped foster all kinds of animals. We were looking for Arthur but we couldn’t find him. Everyone was out in the garden looking for him, but I heard light slamming in the kitchen.
I wandered in, and my grandmother was standing there. I was shocked, and a little scared, but she looked like she was making something, as she would when she was alive. She was very focused on it for a few seconds when she noticed me. She gave me one of her sly smiles she used to give me when she would play a prank, or do something my mom would disapprove of, and put a finger to her lips. She pointed at the oven door, which was shaking. I looked at it and when I looked back at her, she was gone.
I opened the oven and it was poor Arthur trying to get out.
LunaTytan
I was at a party and asked my friend to take me home. She had a friend of her’s drive me home and I told her friend, whom I had never met before, to pull over cause her grandmother wanted to talk to her. She pulled over and I gave her messages from her grandmother who had been dead for about two months. I had initials of men that her grandmother wanted her to stop messing with. I had never met this girl, and I’ll probably never see her again, and it felt like I had no control over my mouth. I was still in my body and was conscious of what was happening, but I felt like thoughts were being dropped into my head and the words were coming out of my mouth with no effort on my part what so ever. I thought I was crazy, she was sobbing in the front seat, it was bizarre and I thought nothing else of it.
A week later I was on Twitter and had to get offline cause everyone’s dead uncle wanted to talk to them. I went to dinner with my friend and told her about her dad who used to sit in the corner of his favorite bar drinking tequila. Then some guy walked by me on the sidewalk while we were eating lunch on the patio and I told him I had to talk to him cause his Aunt Rose wanted him to change the light bulb in his mom’s closet. He started crying and thanked me.
I looked up the symptoms for schizophrenia and was convinced I was schizophrenic, but there’s no way I could know someone’s dead aunt’s name and how she died and about the lightbulb in the closet, especially to some guy who I literally pulled off the sidewalk.
I haven’t had an incident like that in years. I miss it, cause I was able to bring closure to a lot of people, but it was scary and overwhelming to deal with. Definitely made me question my sanity, a lot.
babylina
We received an alarm clock as a housewarming gift which we’d left downstairs. I woke up at 3.15am to the sound of the alarm clock going off. We hadn’t set it and had barely touched it at all.
After trying to get my very sleepy boyfriend to go downstairs and turn it off (I was creeped out!) to no avail, I went myself and turned the clock off. I then noticed that the back door was wide open and as far as I know all the doors were locked before going to bed. I went around the house to check for intruders but couldn’t see any other signs of someone breaking in.
I know there is probably a very rational explanation for this. Someone may have broken in – which is more scary than a paranormal explanation in my opinion – but I can’t get my head around the alarm going off. I suppose there could have been some fault with the clock but it’s an odd coincidence!
LizzleBizzleTown
More on the next page!
I lived in a house with a poltergeist for around 15 years. The house was Victorian and the poltergeist just used to steal things and then put them back in odd places weeks later.
We often found mine and my Dad’s glasses in funny places in the morning after we’d put them on the bedside table at night, like the cat’s food bowl or, once, in the garden. My A-Level Latin set-text book of the Aeneid went missing for two weeks before turning up in the fridge (a month before my exam as well, that one was irritating). A coffee table once moved from the downstairs living room to the living room upstairs overnight. We found a plant from the garden dumped on our dining room table once, roots and soil and all.
We set up cameras for a few months at one point after I found my glasses in the garden, because we thought maybe one of us was sleepwalking or the cat was stealing things but no, no sleepwalking, no kleptomaniac cat and no floating objects or anything either. It was like stuff would dematerialise and rematerialise somewhere else.
Blackbaby9696
When I was about 6 I was at my grandmothers house. She used to knit and had very long knitting needles always around. My grandma went to another room for a moment and I grabbed the needle and stuck it in the outlet. Some …thing…pulled me back. Best I can describe is a person dressed in clothes from a long time ago.
Just grabbed my chest and pulled me back, then disappeared. The needle melted from the electricity but I otherwise was fine. Over my tears I told my grandma what happened and she always thought it was an angel.
Necroptotic
I whole heartedly don’t believe in the paranormal.
Here is where all that changed in a moment. My friend and I were seated in my living room. It was a town home with only one door and sliding glass patio door for entrances. The sliding glass door was in the living room, and the main door 15 feet south of the area. We watched some show at pretty low volume and then, I kid you not, a girl whispered “hey” from behind us.
I sat motionless as every fibre of my being was electrified attempting to register what was happening. After 5 to 10 seconds after I thought I was finally losing it my roommate says “did you hear that too?”. We ran through the house attempting to find the perpetrators. Nothing. No sign of entrance (everything was dead-bolted), no other person there. It made no sense. But that “hey” will never leave me. It was a voice.
I heard it clear as day like it was a friend 5 feet away attempting to get your attention.
BeefstewAndCabbage
At my ex’s mother’s house. We were in the living room late at night watching TV. I felt a chill come over my skin and I felt like someone was watching me. I looked at her, and she was watching TV. I tried to shake it off as nothing and kept watching TV too.
I just couldn’t shake the feeling though. I looked down the hallway and saw someone standing in the hallway staring at me. It was a middle aged woman. She turned and walked around the corner, and disappeared. Later, I did research on the house and found out that a single mother in her 40s committed suicide in the house about 80 years ago.
I didn’t believe in ghosts until I saw that.
MejorSnowball
More on the next page!
Something that happened to my sister gave me a more open mind, although I’m still skeptical.
She was staying in a hotel room – she shut the curtains and went to bed. At one point during the night, she woke up to the television on static and the volume was up high. Freaked out a bit, she got up to get the remote, but before she could get there, the television switched off. She found it hard to go to sleep after that, but she managed. In the morning, the curtains were open and tied back. They had been closed all night – she doesn’t sleep walk and it was unlikely that anyone had entered the room. The door was double locked, & it would have been very weird for staff to come in.
She was out of there within 5 minutes. The receptionist told her after that they’d had a few guests upset about the ‘haunted’ room.
Max2589
I had a series of things happen in the same apartment… Saw a door swing and shut that usually required your full body weight to close, saw a trashcan fall/fly over in the next room and could not come up with an explanation. But the craziest thing was pulling out a saucepan from the cupboard with its glass lid shattered INTO it, with absolutely zero rationale.
When I dumped the glass, I found that three bits of glass were fused to the bottom of the pan. No clue at all how that could have happened. There was a steam vent in the top, so no amount of superheated vacuum could have created the implosion necessary to break/fuse the glass.
muffinscruff
When I was a child I had a ghost girl that I would play with in my room until a “big black lady came and scared us out” upon which I wouldn’t return to my room. Turns out a little girl who lived there was hit by a car out in front of the house and a black lady was killed in the house.
I also get crazy deja vu where I can react to things that haven’t happened yet and I would have no way of knowing they would happen.
Things also like to fly across my room for no reason.
Chansharp
I was working at a summer camp.
One of the dorms was an old farm house on a hill overlooking a portion of the rest of the camp. This just happened to be the dorm I was in charge of, along with a co worker. Late one night, we had a dance outside on the basketball court. Me and my co worker got all of our campers down to the dance, and a few minutes later my boss approached me. She asked me why all my kids weren’t there, to which I said they are. She pointed up the hill to this house and in the upper window, there was a silhouette of someone looking down at the tennis court.
I grabbed my flashlight and walked across the parking lot, up the hill to the house. I opened the door and yelled “Hey, who ever is in here needs to come down to the dance!” no answer. I checked the whole house, under beds, in closets, everywhere. I figured they had left before I got there, as I saw the light go out as I walked across the parking lot.
I walked out the front door and turned around to shut it, when it slammed shut in my face and locked. I ran back down to the dance.
runeman412