There's no shortage of spooky, creepy, or downright paranormal stories for people to share around the campfire — and on Reddit.
Recently, u/PookaAnderson asked, "What are some of your unexplainable and creepy experiences?"
Over 500 commenters weighed in with their own stories. Here are some of the best responses:
1. "When visiting my family a few towns over, I had a feeling I had to find my brother (he'd gone down a bad path in life). As I drove around town searching for him, I had this gut-wrenching sick feeling that if I didn’t find him, he was going to pass away. I looked around town at the nearby ponds, lakes, bridges, and streets for several hours, but I didn’t run into him. The next morning, police informed my parents that my brother passed away."
2. "My mom and I were driving in Wyoming along a road with a forest on one side and a grass field on the other on the outskirts of a very small town. Suddenly, I saw what looked like a bent over woman with disgusting skin, no clothes on, and only a few strands of hair. She was running across the road much faster than a human could, and she was hunched over with her arms dangling down but not touching the ground or moving. I probably would have played it off as my mind playing tricks on me, but then, my mom looked over at me and asked, 'What the fuck was that?' I've never encountered anything like this ever again, and it still terrifies me."
3. "I was walking on the sidewalk when my shoelace broke for no reason, so I stopped to tie a knot where the lace had broken. When I looked up at where I would have been on the crosswalk, I saw that a car plowed into three people, hurting one of them seriously. My laces were only a few weeks old and never should have broken like that, but it likely saved my life."
4. "I was lying in bed and saw the shadow of what looked like some super small person (like a foot tall) run out of my parents' bedroom and down the stairs. I heard the footsteps and everything. Seconds later, my mom came out of the room, and I asked her what that was. She said she didn’t see or hear anything."
5. "My friends and I were in a well-lit courtyard right by a road. There was some kind of tamed raven that had been flying from person to person all night (it was beside a live music venue), but nobody knew who it belonged to. Suddenly, it flew from someone's shoulder right into the path of a car. My friends and I all saw this bird hit the front left wheel, followed by a thud and an explosion of feathers, and then it disappeared. We gasped and turned to each other, when suddenly we saw the same raven behind us, hopping onto someone else's shoulder — untouched, unbothered, the same unusually friendly behavior as before. Then, a horrible uneasy feeling came over me."
6. "My brother and I saw orbs rise out of the ground 30 feet in front of us while camping in the forest one night."
7. "I was in a travel-mandated quarantine during COVID, so I was alone at our apartment that we were moving out of. My wife, son, and dog were literally across the globe back in the US, but I kept seeing a shadow of my dog under our dining table — both day and night."
8. "I get terrible sleep paralysis sometimes, and I’ve seen so many creepy things: a tall, dark man in my doorway; a short, dark man running on all fours through my doorway; a squid by the side of my bed; glowing orbs above me; a woman in a wedding dress walking across the room; glowing centipedes on my blanket; glowing ants on my floor; and a red and black spider on my nightstand."
9. "A few years ago, my husband was working overseas, so my cats and I took the advantage of being able to cuddle up together in bed and watch TV. As we’re all snuggled up, I saw the coat rack near the door slide across the floor horizontally a few feet and then just throw itself down in the middle of the room. My cats jumped out of bed as fast as they could, and I was screaming. I waited a few minutes (after turning on every light in the house) to check it out and put it back where it's supposed to be. It never happened again."
10. "I was getting some food with a coworker. We both had lights behind us where we were sitting, so our shadows overlapped at one part. My buddy dropped a fry that fell in between our shadows, and we both move out of the way to see it. As we moved, the fry — which we could still see as the light touched it — completely disappeared. Like, a full-on glitch in the matrix. We were both tripping out because we saw it happen right before our very eyes."
11. "I was in the shower one night when I heard a whisper and felt someone tap my shoulder three-ish times. I was home alone. 😀"
12. "When I was around 12, I was on a trip with my cousin and her grandmother to Lake Tahoe. One night in our motel, I saw a black shadow move slowly along the wall across from me. The shadow then came off the wall and turned into what looked like a dark figure wearing a black cloak and hood. It moved toward me and stopped at the foot of the bed. In the morning, I saw a black spot and a small bit of ash on the carpet at the foot of the bed where the figure was standing."
13. "I got a job as a nursing assistant in hospice after care. Part of my job was to clean the dead bodies in the morgue. During my time there, I heard a disembodied voice that whispered 'thank you' in my ear. That really stuck with me."
14. "When I was little, my mom and I were taking photos with our new camera. We turned off all the lights and took a picture of a candle to see if it would still be bright. After we shook out the photo, we saw a small face in the corner."
15. "My late grandparents had this old music player that needed to be cranked with a key to play. When a bunch of family was over for dinner, my dad was talking about my grandma (his mom), and it suddenly started playing for a few seconds. It had not been touched for months before that."
16. "When I was 15, I had a dream that I was looking up through the inside of a car and saw a woman walk past, stop to look down at me, and smile. A few years later, I moved countries for college to study mechanical engineering. In my second year, I was tasked with stripping a car for parts. After tipping it onto its roof, I was underneath stripping the handbrake cable out. I looked up and saw the exact the same woman from my dream smiling at me — and she happened to be in my class as well. Later that month, we were having lunch when she mentioned that she had the weirdest feeling when she saw me in the car. I told her about my dream; it turned out she had the same dream from the other angle."
17. "Twelve years ago, I was driving with another guy and two girls in the middle of nowhere, middle of the night, when we came to a stop behind a bunch of cars waiting on some construction. I distinctly remember rotating yellow lights on the construction vehicles and lots of red light from all the rear car lights. After 30-ish minutes, I get out of the car to see what the holdup is — I shit you not, there's nobody in the construction vehicles. They're just sitting there. I look at the other cars to tell the drivers to go around, but there was nobody in the cars either. I jumped back in our car, and we took off like a bat out of hell."
18. "My older brother, Chris, and I look quite similar. Growing up, members of my family would always call me Chris by mistake. As an adult, I travel a lot for work. Wherever I am in the world — thousands of miles away — whenever someone gets my name wrong, they always call me Chris. This has happened on a near-weekly basis for many years, and they never know about my brother or his name. Truly bizarre. I have no idea why this happens."
19. "I loved playing basketball as a kid and would always play on the basketball court in our apartment complex. But I stopped playing there because of a traumatic experience I had there when I was 11. When I was 16, I decided to face my fear and go back. After a few hours, I decided to leave because it was getting dark, and the court is almost completely surrounded by woods. As I turned to go, I saw something move just at the edge of the woods — it was 11-year-old me standing there crying. I ran away and refuse to go back there unless I'm with multiple people during daylight."
H/T r/AskReddit
Some replies have been edited for length and clarity.