I'm sure many of us have experienced something that we can't quite explain. Whether it's a ghost, a message from a higher plane, or just a deep feeling in your gut, it's something that can happen to any of us.
So when this Reddit user asked the r/askreddit community, "What's something you witnessed (scary or otherwise) that you still can't explain to this day?" I knew it was going to be full of creepy and beautiful mysteries:
1. "I never met my father-in-law because he passed away when my wife was only 10. She says he used to play 'Brown Eyed Girl' and dance in the kitchen with her when she was little. The song means a lot to her and her mom."
2. "I was on a train, and three other people and I all saw a man with a hat and briefcase go into the bathroom and lock the door. Another guy walked up after a few minutes and tried the door, but it was locked."
"Approximately 10 minutes go by, and now there are two people waiting by the bathroom door, and three of us seated near the door are kind of watching because one of the people waiting is getting visibly impatient. Another few minutes go by, and then a new person walks up, tries the door, and it’s suddenly unlocked — with nobody inside. That guy with the hat and briefcase definitely just disappeared. There are no windows in the train bathroom, no hatches. He was just gone."
3. "I had some experiences when I was a kid living at my parents' house. I was using the computer late at night in the office room, which had portraits of each family member on the wall behind me. I heard a crash, and I turned around to see that my portrait had fallen."
4. "I was driving home around dusk. My headlights were on, but there was still some daylight, enough to be able to see. On the shoulder of the highway, two kids were walking. There were no other cars, so I moved over a bit just to be safe. As I passed them, one of them turned her head to look at me."
"I watched them, a bit creeped out by two kids walking along an empty highway. As I passed them, I glanced at my side-view mirror to keep an eye on them, but they were gone. A quick glance over my shoulder showed an empty highway. In a movie, I would have stopped to look, but in real life, I hit the gas and didn't look back."
5. "I had just rolled over to get comfy in bed after waking up for a moment, but something felt off and weird about my room. It was eerily silent, as if all the sound had been muted, when I noticed a light in the corner of my room. At first I thought it was a car light, until I realized it was coming from my bathroom."
6. "I was driving through Casper, Wyoming, three weeks ago. I needed to meet a friend on my way through for a minute, and we decided to meet near the Menards store in the south end of town. As I am driving up, I swear to everything that on the right side of the road, I witness a full tree render from the ground up out of nowhere, just like in a video game, right in front of me. It’s wintertime, so there are no leaves or anything like that, but I had to stop the truck and gather myself because it was so shocking. Strangest thing I have experienced in a long time."
7. "I was visiting Provincetown, Massachusetts, and went into an art gallery that had all sorts of art from Africa. There were a lot of handmade carvings of animals, masks, etc. No one was in the store except my boyfriend, me, and the owner, who took me around the store and explained in great detail the carvings, what they meant, the tribe that made them, what ceremonies they were used in, etc. It was super interesting! We talked for like 15–20 minutes. Then suddenly my boyfriend grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the store."
8. "When I was very young, our dog suffered a seizure and passed away. He had his local city ID tags on his collar that would jingle as he walked around the house. I'd hear it at night all the time before he died. After he passed, I would distinctly hear his tags jingle occasionally around the house at night. A few months later, when we got a new dog, the sounds ceased."
9. "I was in my 20s, and my then-boyfriend and I were at his parents' house, just the two of us and the family dog. He was opening mail in the dining room, and I was rinsing a glass in the kitchen, within sight of him, about 15 feet away. We were talking when suddenly we heard LOUD footsteps overhead: 'STOMP, STOMP, STOMP, STOMP, STOMP!'"
10. "My brother told me this story about my 4-year-old niece. One morning, my niece was talking about a nice old man who had come to her window the night before. My niece wasn't afraid and said the old man had a friendly smile. My brother and sister-in-law chalked it up to a dream, since the bedrooms were on the second floor. Later that day, they found out that our grandfather had passed away. A few days later, they were looking through a photo album, and my niece pointed to my grandfather and said, 'That's the nice man.'"
11. "I work at a nursing home, and the last week of December, there was a lady who was relatively healthy. A few of her family members and I were in her room, chatting. She got to talking about how she's known since she was a little girl that she was going to die before turning 94. Her family members mentioned how she'd brought this up many times before. She was 93, and her birthday was Jan. 4. Sure as shit, on Jan. 3, she passed away while I was working."
12. "A building I used to work in was haunted. I could 'explain' the giggling girls in the basement ladies' room as plumbing noises, although I can’t explain why you could clearly hear them from outside. You could almost make out what they were whispering and giggling about, and the noise stopped and went away the moment you opened the bathroom door. Once you opened the door, the noise would be gone until some other evening."
"What I never came up with an explanation for was the menacing, creepy old guy who would stand behind my car, blocking me from backing out of the parking space. He only ever appeared in the rear-view mirror. If I turned around to look at him, he would be gone. I originally assumed it was a reflection of the parking lot lights, but it didn’t matter where in the lot I parked, he would still show up. It got so bad, I stopped looking in my mirror before backing up when I was leaving late at night."
13. "My mom passed away from Alzheimer's almost a year ago; grief has been intense and sleep elusive. Last month, I was up and dressed ridiculously early. I decided to read a book on my couch and fell asleep. I had a dream set in my apartment, so it seemed very real."
14. "My parents told me this story about an incident from my childhood that scared them. Apparently, I woke up very early one morning from a nightmare, crying and screaming. When they came to comfort me and ask me what was wrong, I kept telling them about a plane crash and that 'everyone is burning and falling.'"
"They put me back to sleep and went back to bed themselves, but when they did get up and put the news on, 9/11 had happened and was all over the TV. They just looked at each other and freaked out because it was exactly what I had dreamed the night before. I, of course, don’t remember anything. I was 4 years old when 9/11 happened, and I’ve never had anything like that happen to me since."
15. "My little brother was a douchebag, and he’d frequently take my car without my permission or put gas in it while denying up and down that he did so. The kicker is that he was almost always smoking or drinking, so he could have really put me at risk. Dumbass would put the parking brake on when he parked, even though the area where I parked was almost entirely flat, so I always knew when he took it. No one else did this."
16. "When I was little, I was playing by the dumpster at my apartment complex and a dog ran up, and I swore with all that was within me that this dog said 'Hi [my name],' so I immediately took this stray dog home, exclaiming that I was Doctor Dolittle. The very next morning, our complex was full of cops because a little girl had been abducted the night before from the playground dumpster area and was missing. They found, I think, her bike and shoes in that same dumpster I was at."
And finally, here's one for anyone who doesn't mind not sleeping tonight:
17. "When I was a young teenager, my family moved into a house. It started with hearing footsteps in the attic, which wasn't tall enough for anyone to walk around in. We attributed it to rats, but it made my grandmother uncomfortable enough that she stopped visiting. We started seeing things: a woman peeking around corners, a little boy running around, and the shadow of a man at the end of the hallway."
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.