We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about their experiences with ghostly encounters. Many of their stories left me feeling uneasy and prettyyyy creeped out. If you scare easily, well, you've been warned!
1. "When I was younger, my little sister, who was about three at the time, used to have an imaginary friend she called Little Michael. We just assumed she got the name from a kid on Barney, but things started to get weird when she would tell us stories about things my deceased cousin Michael, who died in 1981 (three years before I was born), did in his short time on earth. He passed away when he was just three years old. She would talk about his favorite show, which was the Incredible Hulk, and tell us other, simple, everyday stories that would've been impossible for her to have known. The kicker came one day when I was watching her. I was 13 and we were playing outside."
"She got all sad and sat down on the steps and kept saying Little Michael wouldn't get in the car. She said he didn't like cars anymore because his head was too big now. My cousin Michael died while in the care of a babysitter who was driving home and was struck by a drunk driver. He died from blunt-force trauma to the brain the next day in the hospital. Eventually, the encounters my sister had with Michael slowed down, then stopped. It even came to the point where she didn’t recognize his photo and asked us who the boy was. This happened around the time my aunt became pregnant with her second child, who would've been Michael's sister."
—Anonymous
2. "My best friend and I were home alone at my parent's house. We were waiting for another friend of ours to come pick us up and decided to lock up the house and wait outside. We were standing outside of the dining room talking when we both stopped and looked through the dining room window at the same time. We saw an old man in a suit with white hair and a white beard sitting with his hands flat on the table in front of him. My friend and I looked back at each other. All the blood had drained from my friend's face and she said, 'Did you see him too?' then described that same guy that I saw. I immediately checked the entire house and it was empty. My parents built the house a year prior. I never knew my grandparents, so I'm wondering if it was my grandpa checking out the new digs."
3. "I started working at my current job 10 years ago. I had only been working there for a couple of months when one early morning, I looked up and saw a woman standing in the doorway of my coworker's office. I had to do a double take because that coworker was off for the day and their office was dark and empty, so no one should've been there. I got up and walked into their office and no one was there. I was certain no one had been walking around, as I would've seen or heard them since my work space was positioned outside the only two offices in my area. I casually mentioned it to my coworker in the other office thinking he would just laugh at me. Instead, he asked, 'Has no one told you about the ladies?' Come to find out that for years, people in our office say there are two ladies who 'help' around the office."
"Over the last 10 years, I have seen and heard calculators run tape while no one was near them, heard papers shuffling while all alone in the office, seen and heard doors open and close while all alone, and even had things mysteriously move around the office while no one was looking. Everyone has heard them at some point while working here, but I am the only one who has seen one!"
—Anonymous
4. "When I was around seven or eight years old, I was using the toilet while the bathroom door was open. Suddenly, the door started swinging, so I called out to my parents (I’m an only child, by the way). They didn't answer me, so I put my foot in front of the door and it stopped. As I was washing my hands, the door started swinging again, and at this point, I freaked out and ran to my parents' room. They were sound asleep. I’ve never been able to figure out why the door did that."
—Anonymous
5. "For a while after my grandfather died, every time we'd watch his favorite college football team play a game, the bottle opener he'd gotten us many years prior that played the team's fight song would randomly go off in our drawer. We'd run to it, pick it up, and the music would stop. It was so old, we could never get it to play the music on its own. We'd try and open a bottle with it or touch the sensor to make it play, but it never worked. It would only play on its own during a game. We felt like that was his way of saying he was watching with us."
—Anonymous
6. "I was sitting in the living room on a weekday morning, reading and drinking my coffee. The kitchen was the next room over. I very clearly heard the kitchen door open and close. The dog and I were a bit surprised because the kids were at school and the husband at work, but I thought maybe someone forgot something like lunch or a backpack (kids could walk to school about a block away). I was sitting by the front window that faced the road and had not noticed anyone approaching the house. I called out, 'Hello?' Nothing. The dog and I went to the kitchen, but of course, no one was there. We kept a jingle bell on the doorknob, which had jingled, but the dog had not barked or acted alarmed. There was no way the wind blew the door open because it opened onto an enclosed walkway. Later, I asked the kids and my husband if they had come back home after leaving in the morning. Nobody had."
"Background: We had bought the house from a family who had closed on it previously, but had never lived in it because the husband/father got diagnosed with a brain tumor on the day they closed and died before they finished moving in. They had moved their furniture into the house and had even opened a restaurant in town, but he died before they could actually live in the house. I've sometimes felt his presence near a corner in the living room during the eight years we've lived in the house, but I've never been scared because it isn't creepy. I just feel bad for the family. Even though my marriage fell apart in that house, I actually miss it because it felt more like a home than any of the other (many) places I have ever lived in."
—Anonymous
7. "I was visiting a friend in Sweden who is a medium and has things happen to her all the time, especially at home. Towards the end of my stay, my air mattress was getting a little deflated, so when my weight was on it, it would really dip down. Just as I was dozing off, I felt the edge of the bed dip down like someone was sitting on it. Then, it felt like they laid down to spoon me, draped an arm over me, and leaned over, almost like they were going to give me a kiss goodnight. I sat up so fast, turned the light on, and saw the door was shut and no one in the room."
—Anonymous
8. "I bought a house in Bristol, VA. A friend would bring his dog over, but the dog would not come in. He would stand by the door and shake. I happened to meet a 'sensitive' who told me my house was built on blood and carnage, but that nothing would hurt me. She did say I should trim the doors with metal stripping to keep anything bad out. A few months later, I visited the house with two friends. One slept in my room, one slept in the guest room, and I slept on the sofa. The friend who slept in my room said she was reading when she heard something hit the floor. She got up but didn't see anything. She was a little unsettled, so she laid on her side and pulled the covers up to her chin. Then, she felt someone rubbing her back. When she turned to look, she felt the mattress give as if someone were standing up from it. Needless to say, we were out of there like bats out of hell."
"Two of us visited about two weeks later. I slept in my room and figured I would sleep on my back so nothing could rub it. I was almost asleep when I felt myself being tucked into bed. I opened my eyes and saw the blankets being tucked under me. I felt a fear like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I grabbed the blanket and ran into the guest room. My friend wasn't asleep yet and asked me if something had happened. I told her yes. Her response was, 'I had a feeling.' I later found out that an old man who was wheelchair-bound died in that house."
—Anonymous
9. "This happened to my mom. She was in bed sleeping, but she was having one of those hyper-realistic dreams where you can't tell if it's actually happening or not. Anyway, my grandmom, who had passed a few days prior, called her from her room. My mom went in to see what she needed, and my grandmom told her to sit on the bed. She did, and my grandmom said that she was okay, safe, and that she loved my mom. After this, my mom woke up SOBBING and there was a figure in front of the door. The same thing happened with my grandfather."
10. "I have had so many, but for about 10 years I worked at a Colonial mansion and experienced a lot of weird stuff, like catching glimpses of people in period clothing disappearing into rooms and hearing conversation in Dutch on the second floor despite being the only person in the house. Side note: The house was built by a Knickerbocker Dutch merchant. I often hear some noises that are more than the old house settling or things rattling in the wind. The really funny one: In the staff kitchen, my colleague and I were on opposite sides of the room, suddenly heard someone loudly break wind. This was directly in the middle of the room. We were both very familiar with the acoustics of the room, and it did NOT come from either of us! We just turned and looked at each other and were like, 'Did you just...?' and then started cracking up. Totally heard a ghost fart."
11. "I was about 14 years old and I went with my friend and her family to an ice skating show. Between each act, they'd dim the lights as the next act entered the rink to get to their starting positions. There was only one way into the rink, on the far right end. As a new act was starting, the announcer was introducing them and you could see two figures out on the ice in the dim lights. Each figure went to opposite ends, one on the left and one on the right. The announcer was talking about how the next act used to be a couple, a husband and wife team, until the wife died the year before."
"As the announcer said the husband continued alone, the lights came up and there was only the husband on the ice. He was on the right side, near the door. The figure on the left was gone the instant the lights turned on. I noticed my friend had been watching the left side of the rink like I had, and our heads both snapped over to the right to see the only person on the ice. We both asked each other if the other had seen the other person on the ice. We both had seen two silhouettes while the lights were dimmed. We asked her family, but no one else had seen a second person. They only saw the man. Both my friend and I are convinced we saw the deceased wife still skating with her husband."
—Anonymous
12. "When I was around four years old, my grandmother was watching me at her house. I went to use their upstairs bathroom, and as I finished up, suddenly there was an older woman sitting on a stool in the bathtub. She called me by name and started talking to me. I wasn't scared exactly, but I still ran out of the bathroom to find my grandmother. I told her what happened, and she went to find a picture of her mother to show me. Sure enough, that was the woman I saw sitting on the stool in the bathtub. My grandmother explained that that was her mother, and before she died, she moved into their house so my grandmother could help take care of her. My grandmother would have her mother sit on a stool in their bathtub to help wash her. She died many years before I was born, and I never knew anything about my great-grandmother prior to this. My grandmother also told me that she also saw her mother time from time."
—Anonymous
13. "My father bought a house in 2008 that was basically just a shell. The house had caught fire a few years before, and the owners, an older couple, died in the house. It was the first few days the house was livable, and my young daughter and I were home alone. The cable had not been installed yet, and my little one kept messing with the signal box for the TV and lost signal entirely. I got onto her and was just feeling very annoyed that day for some reason. I decided to pull out the recorder on my phone and ask if anyone was with us. I've always been interested in ghosts and had a feeling the house was haunted from the second I saw it. When I played the recording back, you could hear a man clear as day say, 'Let her play, girl.' I grabbed my daughter and ran to the neighbors. I have a ton of creepy stories from that house, but for this story...I have proof."
—Anonymous
14. "There was this one time when I was a kid and I was visiting this really old lighthouse with my parents. They had already started heading down the stairs, and I was about to follow them when I decided to take one last look at the lighthouse mechanisms. I’m an engineering major, and even as a kid, I liked seeing how everything worked. Anyway, when I turned around, the previously bright, clear sky suddenly blackened and it looked as if sheets of rain were pounding against the glass windows. I could see this old, grizzled man with a raincoat and a lantern standing at the mechanism, which now consisted of a torch instead of an electric bulb, and he was desperately trying to relight the lighthouse in the middle of this massive storm. I did a double take and the man and storm vanished as suddenly as they had appeared."
15. "My grandmother, Beecher, died when I was 15. She lived across the country, and she and my mom bumped heads a lot, so it’s safe to say that I didn’t really have a relationship with my grandmother. The day after she passed, I was getting ready to go to bed. I laid down, closed my eyes, and was just about to nod off when I heard my bedroom door creak open. The hall light was still on, so I assumed it was my mom coming in my room to ask me something. I rolled over and noticed no one was there. I brushed it off and tried to go back to bed. I heard the door creak again. I opened my eyes to see the door open almost all the way, and then close by itself. The floor creaked like footsteps towards me, and the side of my bed went down like someone was sitting on it. I didn’t move. I just remember saying out loud, 'Beecher, you need to leave now.'"
"My bed raised back to normal, my door opened and closed, and that was the end of it. My parents and I are also pretty sure that she was haunting a chest of drawers that we inherited. The magnetic-locking door would swing open at random times, and we heard the sound of laughter from the drawers upstairs whenever my dad was having a bad day (Beecher absolutely hated my dad). I’m pretty sure she finally got the memo that she wasn’t welcome. I haven’t heard or seen anything from her in about two years."
—Anonymous
16. "The Whaley House in San Diego, widely believed to be haunted. I was NOT a believer until the time I was there, looking into the kitchen area (no foot traffic allowed there), and ALL the utensils hanging on a wall started to swing together, slowly at first, then faster, for more than 30 seconds. THEN, they all stopped quickly, as if by a hand."
17. "If there's any haunted house I'd believe in, it's my dad's. I could write about the randomly closing/opening doors, the music boxes/stereos turning themselves on, etc., but I think the wildest is the shadows. Dark, semi-transparent silhouettes of 'people' in/around the house. After moving back in with my dad when I turned 19, I had some very intense experiences, one that I hope, to this day, was simply sleep paralysis. One day, I woke up around 3:00 a.m. (as it always seems to be for this stuff) to the sound of metal clanging in the front yard. So, of course, I got up to go look and noticed two problems when I got to the living room, 1) The blinds were completely open (we keep them closed) and 2) There was one of those shadows I used to see."
"I stood there for a minute, thinking I was still half asleep, and waiting for it to go away after I blinked. But, it didn't go away, which creeped me out even more. I felt like it was watching me the whole time too. So I said nope and went back to bed and tried not to think about it. A couple of days later, I fell asleep playing some games. Again, around 3:00 a.m., I woke up. This time though, I couldn't breathe, move, or scream, and it felt like I was being held down. There was this feeling that started from my feet that felt as though I was being swallowed up/pulled away. It wasn't until that feeling got up to my throat that it all went away. I got up and ran to my room. Sleep paralysis, right? Had to be...except later, I was talking to my mom about why I was always awake past 3:00 a.m., and I mentioned that the house was creepy. She stopped and asked me if I'd ever seen any shadows. She then described, on her own, not only the ones I saw as a kid, but also the one I had just seen. I haven't slept in that room ever again."
—Anonymous
18. Finally: "When my son was about two years old, his great-grandmother, Neno, passed away. Our ritual in the mornings was that he'd call 'mama' from his room (across the hall from ours) when he woke up. I would go in, get him, and put him in bed with us for a little while. One morning, we heard him just chattering and chattering and giggling. He finally called 'mama' after about 10 minutes. When I went in to get him, I asked, 'Who were you talking to?' He said, 'Neno. She said she loves me and I’m a good boy.' I figured she was just checking up on all of us before she went on."
—Anonymous
Have you ever had a ghostly encounter? Tell us about it in the comments! 👻
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.