Every month, I ask BuzzFeed readers like you to tell us your personal "unsolved mysteries" — aka those experiences you've had that you can't quite wrap your head around, or don't logically make a whole lot of sense. From ghost stories to doppelgängers to premonitions, here are 18 of the creepiest, most mind-boggling tales people shared:
1. "I was driving my 3-year-old son to preschool one morning. We had just merged onto the highway when, out of the blue, he said, 'What if someone crashed their car into the wall?' 10 seconds later, out of nowhere a car came speeding up next to us and proceeded to smash into the barrier at 80 mph, completely destroying the car. In complete shock, I turned my head to look at my son in the backseat, and he was sitting quietly with a smile on his face!"
—Anonymous
2. "The house I grew up in had many, many unexplainable occurrences. Every single cleaning lady my mom hired quit shortly after starting, because when they were in the house they’d experience all kinds of wild stuff. One lady said she wasn’t able to vacuum that day because every time she’d plug in the vacuum and go to turn it on, it wouldn’t work...because it would somehow be unplugged again. I remember one time my uncle was in town visiting and when I got home from school, he came into the living room and said, 'Did you just get home?' When I said I had, he looked puzzled and explained, 'I thought maybe you’d came home early because when I was laying down for a nap, I heard someone walking around the house.'"
"Here's another strange happening: My mom had a figurine of a little girl on a shelf by the front door. One morning, as I was leaving to go to school, I noticed she was facing the wall, so I turned her around. The next morning she was facing the wall again, so I turned her around a second time. The next morning...the same thing. I asked my mom about it, and I thought she was messing with me. That night, I woke up at like 3:45 a.m. and went to the bathroom. I remembered the figurine and went to look at her. She was facing out still so I went to bed. As I was heading out to school that morning, she was facing the wall again. I experienced so many things in that house. My mom still lives there and said the occurrences have really slowed down over the years, but every now and then something will happen to remind her that she’s not alone."
—Anonymous
3. "Years ago, I worked for a company that inspected hospitals and nursing homes to ensure they would pass any state surveys or joint commission inspections. My office was in a nursing home and I traveled around to like four hospitals and six or seven nursing homes. One night, I had a dream about one of the residents of the nursing home that my office was in. She was just standing and smiling, looking around like she was taking in the sights of somewhere she may never see again. I woke up and promptly forgot about it and went on with my day. I got to my office and shortly thereafter one of my staff members came to tell me that she’d passed away the night before. I instantly remembered my dream and I was just dumbfounded. This is exact thing happened to me three more times over the next year and a half."
"The last time it happened I went to work and went straight to the patient's room. He was gone and some members of his family were there. One of his relatives saw me and said, 'Sir? How do you know my grandfather?' I explained my job and (this is giving me chills just thinking about it), she said, 'Sir, last night I had a dream that you were playing chess with my grandfather, did you ever play chess with him?' I replied, 'A few times, but not in a very long time because he’s been too ill.' The dream I’d had of him the night before was just like all the others I’d had of residents before they passed, but in this one he’d thanked me for the chess games."
—Anonymous
4. "When I was in high school, my younger brother — who was around 13 at the time — had a 'walkie talkie' that he would always use to talk to someone. It was as if he were using it as more of a cellphone than anything else, and every time he was talking in it, he would say the person he was talking to was someone name Chris. He claimed Chris had apparently had lived in that house before. Chris would tell my brother things, like that he was a teenager just like us, and that he died while living there before. Me and my siblings all thought it was a joke, that maybe my brother and one of his friends were pranking us...until we started asking him relevant questions that no one else would know, and he could answer them."
"I even went as far as hiding in my closet once, and asking him how many fingers I was holding up. Each and every time, he would know the answer. When we would ask him how he knew everything we were doing, he would say things along the lines of, 'I told you, I’m standing right next to you.' At first, it was cool and freaky, but after that, my older brother decided enough was enough. He took the walkie talkies and got rid of them, because none of us could understand how this was possible. My younger brother, who has since passed, changed so much after that experience. Part of me wonders if it had anything to do with his communication with 'Chris'."
—Anonymous
5. "Back in the mid '80s, a couple of buddies and I would spend a week in the spring or fall backpacking in western North Carolina. A father of one of our friends, we called him Joe D., would always tease me about going, saying a moonshiner or a bear was going to get me. He’d just bought a motor home and would tell me that was ‘real’ camping. On Wednesday of that week, we were camped near the top of one of the mountains. It was a clear, near-perfect fall evening. At about 8 p.m., I felt like something was off and started pacing around the campsite. My buddy asked what was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it — I just had a nagging feeling that something terrible was wrong."
"The feeling eased up and — after a while — I forgot about it and went to bed. We came home a few days later on Saturday. I put up my gear and took the first hot shower I’d had in a week. Then, I went to find some dinner. On my way, I saw my brother and several of our friends were down at Joe D’s house. His oldest had a garage there where he worked on cars. I thought this would be a good time to show him I’d survived another camping trip, so I stopped in.
As I went into the kitchen, I saw there was a platter of those little triangular sandwiches on the table — the kind that people in the south bring to a funeral home when someone passes. Joe D’s mother was in her early 90s and had been sick, so I thought she must have passed. Outside I asked one of my friends where Joe D. was. He told me that he’d had a heart attack earlier in the week and had died.
I couldn’t believe it. I excused myself and went back home. I called my mom and asked what had happened. She told me Joe D. had a massive heart attack Wednesday evening. I asked what time, and, yeah, it was around 8 p.m. — when I had that overwhelming feeling. It’s been 40 years since then and it still makes me feel a little strange when I think about it. Thankfully nothing like that has happened since, and hopefully it won’t ever again."
—Anonymous
6. "I know this may sound unbelievable, but I’m going to tell you about it anyway. I think I can predict the future in my dreams. This has probably happened countless times with small events, but here's one major instance I'll never forget. I was 14 at the time. One day, I found my old journal hidden in a drawer I never used, so I decided to read it. I came across this entry from when I was 13, and at the time of the entry, I had a girlfriend. In it, I was writing about a dream I had. I was in an all-white room with someone, and it was clear I was romantically involved with them. At first I was confused why it wasn’t my girlfriend, because I had never seen this person before. I described their appearance to the very last detail, and that’s when I realized it was my current boyfriend, who I hadn't met yet. I told him about it the following day, but he didn’t believe me."
—Anonymous
7. "Back in 2008, I set my cell phone down in my kitchen and it promptly disappeared. I searched everywhere inside the house and outside in my car. I finally came to the conclusion that it must have gotten knocked into the trashcan. Three years later, while cleaning out my car I found the phone under the passenger seat. There's no way that phone was there for three years. Then, in 2017, I lost my wedding ring. I took it off and set it where I normally do, and it vanished. I assumed that one of my animals must have knocked it off of the shelf, but I searched everywhere to no avail. 2020 came around and it was our 20th anniversary. My husband got me a new ring to celebrate. On the day he gave it to me, my missing ring reappeared...ON THE ORIGINAL SHELF."
—Anonymous
8. "My maternal grandmother died in 2014. She and my mother were never close and spent much of my mom’s life at odds with each other. As a result, my mom and grandma were not on speaking terms when my grandma passed and my mother felt terribly guilty about it afterwards. Fast forward a year or so and I got a hysterical call from my mom at work saying she got a call from grandma. Apparently, she got a call from my grandma’s landline phone a year after she died. Though my mother didn’t answer the phone, there was a 30-second voicemail of static with very faint voices in the background. The best part? When I called the number back from my office phone, it rang to a recording that said, 'This number is not in use at this time.' Not disconnected — just not in use."
—Anonymous
9. "I grew up in a haunted house. The house was very old and prior to us moving in, it belonged to my best friend's family for generations. But that house without a doubt was haunted. You could hear people walking down the steps when no one else could’ve been in the house. You could hear people who weren't there call your name out loud. You could hear running around upstairs, like two small children were playing. At the time, we had an alarm system that came with motion detectors for all over the house. They would constantly go off when literally no one was around them. We had no pets or anything to set them off. Several times in the middle of the night, the alarm would go off like someone was breaking in, but there was never anyone there."
"The strangest part ever happened when I was 16. I was in bed and half asleep, with the TV on in the background. I rolled over so my back was toward the TV and I felt someone pull my blanket up to my shoulders, kiss me on the cheek, and turn off my TV. I assumed it was my grandmother (who raised me), but when I brought it up to her the next day, she had no idea what I was talking about and reminded me that she physically couldn’t make it up the stairs.
The activity didn’t stop until we moved out, after my grandfather passed."
—Anonymous
10. "I had a paper route when I was 14/15. I knew most of the neighborhood, but had a few streets towards the end of my route with people I didn't know. I went down a dead end street one day and a lady working in her garden came out and said, 'Stop delivery and I'll pay you what I owe you.' A few days later, I was on my route and turned around before hitting their house. A man working in the garden asked why I stopped delivering the paper. I told him the lady of the house asked me to stop. He said he didn't know why, and to start delivering again. A few days later, that same lady came out, asking why I'm delivering again. I told her about the man working in the garden who wanted delivery again. She said that since her husband passed, she's the only one that works in the garden and he was the one that used to read the newspaper. We looked at each other, and she told me to keep delivering the newspaper. I never saw the man again."
—Anonymous
11. "An older British woman I worked with told me this story. One night, she was walking home from her friend's house. She was in London and it was the '60s. It was late, but she felt safe. A man who was wearing older clothing approached her. He asked if he could walk her home to make sure she got there safely. She agreed, so he walked quietly beside her. When she got to her house, she turned to thank him. He replied, 'Don’t let anyone ever tell you that Jack the Ripper wasn't a gentleman.' She stepped back in fear, and he disappeared. Needless to say, she ran to her door."
—Anonymous
12. "One time when I was very young, my dad was playing with my younger sister — who was a baby at the time — in our playroom. I was in the room next door doodling, and I wanted to show my mom and dad my drawing. As I was leaving the room, I noticed I couldn’t hear my sister and my dad in the playroom anymore, or my mom in the living room watching TV. So, I looked around the house for them, but couldn’t find anyone. The entire house was silent, and something about the lighting was making everything look grayish and kinda wrong. After a moment, it was like I had been spacing out the whole time, and suddenly everything looked normal and all the sound came back. When I walked past the playroom to a show my dad my drawing, he was right there playing with my sister like nothing had even happened."
—Anonymous
13. "I don't know that I believe in supernatural abilities, but I do know that some weird things have happened to me. Periodically since getting my license 10 years ago, I will be driving along down the road and realize I wasn't paying enough attention to my speed, and I will glance down real quick, only to realize I was going way over the speed limit. I will, obviously, slow back down and carry on. But sometimes, I will start to imagine what it would be like to get pulled over (I have been pulled over since, but still catch myself imagining), and thinking about what I would say, if I could I get out of it, if I would cry. Every single time I start going down that rabbit hole of imagination, within five minutes, I will pass a cop."
"I always thank my lucky stars I realized and slowed down when I did. The weird thing is that the town I grew up in did not have a very big police presence. By the time I got my license, we were living about 10 or 20 miles outside that town, in another town with about 100 people, so you still had to go into the town I grew up in to do anything. The second town was small enough that the county sheriff would drive through it a few times on their route, but really only on the weekends to watch the bar crowd, so it's not like I passed cops very often. I started to realize that if I started daydreaming about getting pulled over, I needed to make sure I was going the speed limit, because I knew I would see a cop soon after. And it still happens to this day, every so often.
Another time, I was helping load kids on busses for after school pick up. The busses would go to the school that was across the street from our school. We would line up on our sidewalk and wait with our kids until all the busses got there, and then one of us would stand in the street to stop traffic while all the kids crossed. Sometimes we would stand in the street to let a few kids go if their bus got there early. One day, we had let a few kids go, and I was watching this kindergartener jog across the street and I thought to myself, 'That kid is going to trip on the sidewalk.' I had no reason to think that, none at all. The kid hadn't ever tripped before, nor was he necessarily prone to tripping or accidents. But low and behold, he got to the other side of the road and caught his shoe on the lip of the sidewalk...and down he went. He bounced right back up, without missing a beat, said, 'I'm OK!' and continued on to his bus. I have no idea how I did, but I knew in that moment that he was going to trip."
—Anonymous
14. "Back in the mid '80s, I was living in a very large rental house with my future wife, her sister, and a variety of roommates throughout the years. One afternoon, while everyone else was at work/school, I was sitting on the floor of our bedroom with my back against the bed, reading a book. About three feet to my right was a desk and one of those old, wooden swiveling teacher's chairs, with a leather jacket draped across the back and a helium filled balloon tied to the chair (can’t remember why the balloon was there). The chair was positioned so that I couldn’t see the seat, only my leather jacket. All of a sudden, the chair swiveled about 90°."
"Startled, I stared at the chair. I noticed that one of our cats was sitting on the ground to the right of the chair, looking up at it. At first, I thought that maybe the cat had jumped out of the chair, causing it to swivel, but the cat was sitting very calmly with its tail wrapped around its feet, obviously having been in this position for a while. Seconds later, the balloon popped. Needless to say, the cat and I made a hasty retreat out of the bedroom.
Throughout the years, we often joked that the house was haunted, as you could hear creaking coming from the stairs in the garage that lead to the upstairs apartment. We even named our ghost 'Frederick.' One time, we came home to discover that the heater to our aquarium had been turned to high, and all of our tropical fish were dead. We never looked into the history of the house, and it has since been demolished to make way for a new freeway. We like to blame Frederick anyway."
—Anonymous
15. "I've had a few strange experiences with death and dreams. The first happened when I was in college. When I go to sleep, I have to been in complete darkness. I even keep my phone under my bed, just in case it lights up. One night, I had a dream that I was clothes shopping with my deceased grandmother, who died when I was 11. As we were shopping, she stopped and looked over at an analog wall clock on the wall. I followed her gaze, and it read 3:36. She smiled at me and I woke up in complete darkness. I reached down under my bed to grab my phone and, wouldn’t you know it, it was 3:36 a.m.. I told my mother about the dream and she said, 'You know, Helen (my grandma), died 10 years ago today."
"A second death related dream I had happened a few years later when I was in grad school. My stepfather and my mother moved to another state and found out he had pancreatic cancer. I visited as much as I could, but I was back home in another state the night I had this wild dream. In my dream, I was driving a car with my mother in the front seat and my stepfather sitting in the center of the backseat. I looked in the rearview mirror at him and he smiled and nodded his head, then closed his eyes. I woke up knowing he had just died. I called my mom and she picked up in tears, saying he had just died in his sleep."
—Anonymous
16. "I was about 10 years old. Each week at primary school, two girls from my class would take turns to clear up the staff room after the teachers had finished their coffee break. This was back in the '70s, when is was considered 'normal' for girls to do these chores. It was my friend Anna and I's turn that week, so we waited outside the staffroom’s one door — the only entrance and exit — for the teachers to file past. The first two teachers left, then came Mr. Smith, who was deep in conversation with Miss Cameron. Both smiled at us, then a couple more teachers left. We say Miss. Cameron following behind them, but this time she made no eye contact."
"My friend and I looked at each other amazed! There was no way Miss Cameron could have gotten back into the staff room, as the corridor was narrow and we were right there. There was a small window in the staff room I suppose, but she was about 5 -foot-nothing and on the more voluptuous side. We pondered over this for many years and only now do I have a name for it. It was definitely a ‘glitch in the matrix!'"
—Anonymous
17. "The summer I turned 17, I was lying on my bed getting ready to go to sleep at about 10 p.m. when I heard a scraping sound on the outside wall under my window. We had a big rabbit cage wrapped in chicken wire there. The entire outside of our home was coated with a mixture of paint and sand that produced a very rough texture, which made a distinct sound. This scraping business went on for several minutes, and I was thinking that the rabbits were being spooked by some sort of carnivore. Finally, I got up and pulled the curtain open to see what all the commotion was about."
"Now, our backyard dumped into dozens of undeveloped acres. The nearest neighbor’s lights had to have been one or two miles away. Other than that, it was like standing in a dark closet when looking back there at night.
Immediately after I pulled the curtain open, I was face-to-face with a hooded figure. The hood was pointed — it looked like something a monk or wizard would wear. This entity had no face, but I knew this thing was looking at me. It was darker than my pitch-black backyard. We starred at each other for about 30 seconds, then this thing slid very slowly to the right and disappeared.
I smashed my face against the glass to try to see where it went. When I couldn’t, I jerked my pants on and ran out of the house and into to the backyard. The boogeyman was gone. I don’t know why I wasn’t afraid, but I do believe this entity was demonic. It tried to shake me…but it didn’t work."
—Anonymous
18. And finally, BuzzFeed reader renloveslemmy — who was featured in the previous installment of "real life unsolved mysteries" — shared a new, spooky update to their story. In Part 1, which you can read here (it's story #2), they explained that they heard footsteps upstairs and assumed their husband had been home...only for him to walk through the door minutes later. Here's what's happened since then:
"About two weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night to what I assumed was my son walking around his room. The floor planks are original and they run from his room to ours, with a wall separating the two rooms. He has an ensuite in his room, so I was waiting to hear the toilet flush or something, but he just kept walking around for, like, 20 minutes. Finally, my husband woke up and we both decided I would get up and check. Before I got the chance, we heard our son come out of his room, peek his head into ours, and say, 'Are you guys walking around?' Well shit.
I just said, 'No buddy, it's probably the cats.' He went back to bed, but — just for fun — I went downstairs to check on the cats, even though that sound was clearly coming from our floor. Sure enough, they were both asleep in their beds. We live in an old house and I don't believe in this crap, so I was fully not concerned.
We had another occurrence this past weekend. Our house had an addition added in the late 1800s. It was the servants's quarters. At some point, someone opened the wall from our master bedroom into the upstairs portion of the servants quarters and turned it into a sitting area, with a walk-in closet and ensuite. So, my husband and I were sitting in there, watching TV. Suddenly, our bedroom door unlatched and opened slightly. We assume it was our son, who had been in bed for a while. Annoyed, I turned my head to tell him to go back to bed I watched a little shadow disappear from the doorway. Like I almost missed it, it was so fast!
I got up and walked over to peek down the hall. My son's door was closed (it creaks SUPER loud when you open it, and I never heard it). I walked over to check on him and he was sound asleep. When I got back to my husband, I casually said, 'It's nothing, he's sleeping.' Both of us sat there silently and finally, I had to say it. I said, 'That looked like a kid!' and my husband went, 'YES IT DID!' Again it's so silly — it's probably nothing, but now we joke about the little kid who is haunting the upstairs of our house."
If you enjoyed these stories, you can read more of them here, here, here, and — oh yeah! — here. Do you have one of your own? Have you experienced something paranormal, a glitch in the matrix, or something else just as strange that you can't for the life of you explain? If so, tell us about it in the comments below or via this anonymous form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.