We asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us their favorite ghost stories. Here are the spine-tingling results.
1. The Dog Who Sees Spirits
"My dog has a nasty habit of scratching the door in the middle of the night. One evening she wouldn't stop scratching the door for any reason. After calling her five times, I threw a pillow towards the door to make her stop. That's when she barked ... from right beside me. She'd been next to me the whole time."
–Victória Koehler, via Facebook
2. Shadowy Figures Descending from the Ceiling
"When I was little, every night when the lights were turned off and I went to sleep, two dark forms would descend from the ceiling near the doorway into my room. They walked quietly up to my bed and one stood on each side of my headboard, looking at me. I would cover my head with the blanket, until one day I had the courage to tell my mother. She put a lamp in my room and told me to pray and ask them to leave. I sleep with a lamp on all night to this day."
–Alba Eres, via Facebook
3. The Phantom Student
4. Caressed by a Spirit
"My father died in 1996, when I was 10 years old and my brother was 12. We slept in a bunk bed, and my brother had the upper bunk, while I had the lower one. One night, I woke up in the middle of the night with someone softly caressing my head. I thought it was my brother and ignored it. When I went back to sleep, the feeling returned. I got out of bed to confront my brother, but he was snoring quietly. I went back to bed and the caressing began a third time. I've never prayed so hard in my life. I prayed until sunrise the next morning."
–Ernani, via BuzzFeed
5. Hands of Blood and Bone
"When I was about eight or nine years old, my mother worked nights and we shared a double bed. One day I felt a strange presence in the bedroom. I had my eyes closed and when I opened them, I saw hands wrapped around the bed from underneath. The hands were made of blood, bone, and hanging skin, and they tried to climb up the bed. I turned away and there was a white "shadow" lying next to me. I managed, after a loooong time, to get up and run to my grandmother's room. She didn't dare come back to the bedroom with me."
–Anonymous testimony
6. Grandmother's Spirit
7. The Bearded Man in Black
"When I was about five or six years old, I woke up to a noise in my room. When I opened my eyes there was a man standing in front of me, with a big brown beard, dark hair, and black clothes. I kept looking at him in fear and backed away on the bed until I was up against the wall. Then I felt the mattress sink down beside me and I started to cry. When I looked again, he had vanished, but it still seemed as if there were someone lying next to me on the bed. I asked it to leave because I was afraid, and the bed returned to normal. I cried myself to sleep, and I still remember the man's face to this day. I'd never met anyone who looked like that, and neither had my parents."
–Beatriz S. Carneiro, via Facebook
8. The Haunted Building
9. Nightmare Time
"My mother always complained that she had a lot of nightmares, but she would never say what her dreams were about. One day while we were at the mall, I suggested that she wait in the food court while I was getting our food. When I returned with our meals, she had a strange look on her face, so I asked her if she was okay. She said she was fine, so we finished our meals and left.
As we were riding down the escalator to leave, I turned to talk to my mother, and I almost had a heart attack because standing behind her was a man in old-fashioned clothing holding one of my mother's shoulders and looking at me with a very angry expression. She saw the shock on my face right away and shouted at me asking what was wrong. When I told her what I had seen, she started crying and said, 'you just described the man that tries to kill me every night in my nightmares.'"
–Ana Carolina Paris, via Facebook
10. The Faceless Figure
11. My Possessed Friend
"One time my husband and I had some friends over to eat pizza. One of my friends who has always been very ~mystical~ began to feel ill in the kitchen and excused himself to our bedroom. Once he was in the bedroom, he started to rock back and forth and giggle in a voice that made my hair stand on end. I ran out of the room, shivering with fear. My husband went in to check on him and soon returned saying our friend wanted to talk to me.
I went into the bedroom where my friend walked up to me with his eyes rolled back into his, made a few little grunts and said, "this is my house." Then he knelt and kissed my feet, rubbed his hand on my belly, and motioned as though he was nursing a baby. When he knelt again the phone rang loudly and he came out of the trance. About a month later I found out I was pregnant, which may explain the gesture he made. My father-in-law had died eight months before this incident, which might explains the 'this is my house.' To this day it still terrifies me."
–Marielly Fresanso, via Facebook
12. Beaten Up by a Ghost
13. The Devilish Joke
"I was once playing with a Ouija board in my room with a friend. We tried to light some candles and, crazy as it sounds, they just wouldn't light, no matter how long I held the match to them. After a little while, I managed to light them, and we turned off the lights and closed the windows. Out of nowhere my friend's mother called her, asking if everything was okay with her. Apparently she suddenly felt a 'pang of worry'. After my friend calmed her mother down, we started using the Ouija board, but nothing happened, other than the candle flames moving kind of strangely. Later in the evening after my friend had already gone home, I felt a sensation of being watched. I ignored it and went to sleep, but had nightmares about being chased by a scary beast with enormous claws, and when I managed to wake up I saw that my legs were scratched up. I couldn't sleep any more, so I threw the Ouija board in the trash, and slept cuddled up next to my mother for two weeks."
–Barbara, via BuzzFeed
14. The Shining Old Man
15. Black Silhouette
"I once spent a weekend at my grandfather's house when I was eight. I was laying on the sofa, and went out like a light. When I woke up again, it was already night, and I saw the black silhouette of a man sitting on the sofa near my feet, looking RIGHT AT ME. I couldn't see his face, not even a trace of his features ... just the silhouette of a burly, bald man. I screamed for my mom, and she came to see what was going on. I told her, but she didn't take it seriously, thinking I had just dreamed the whole thing. But I know what I saw, and it was very real."
–Guilherme, via BuzzFeed
16. The Legend of the Headless Man
17. The Dead Ballerina
"When I was a child, I walked into my bedroom and saw what looked like a Japanese girl in black ballet tights with orange stripes. She was stopped in front of the mirror, looking sideways at me. When I looked again, the girl DISAPPEARED and I ran from the room, making my mother come back with me.
Years later she confessed to me that she had been frightened that day, because before I was born, she had given ballet classes in that bedroom. The black and orange uniform had belonged to a girl that had been a student of hers who had passed away."
–Nicole, via BuzzFeed
18. The Violent Dementor
19. Hallucination
"One evening I was alone in my bedroom doing homework. Suddenly I heard the sound of footsteps coming from downstairs, so I got up to check it out. Before I started downs the steps, I heard the sound of bottles breaking in my father's bar downstairs, which went on for a little while. I made my way downstairs, but when I reached the landing I could see broken bottles and glasses all over the floor and I could hear people screaming in the house, even though I was the only person home. I locked myself in my room and stayed there until my parents got home. And guess what? There wasn't a single broken bottle or glass, or anyone except for me in the house."
–Gil, via BuzzFeed
20. The Hand that Rocks the Nightstand
"I had a nightstand next to my bed, and one night as I was laying in bed, the nightstand just started swaying as if someone were rocking it. The nightstand was extremely heavy, there wasn't any breeze, and I wasn't leaning on it. I sprinted out of the room and to this day nobody can explain what happened."
–Helena, via BuzzFeed
21. The Sinister Funeral
22. The Ghost with the Foul Mouth
"My paternal grandfather passed away, and after the funeral, our entire family returned to the little farm where he had lived with my grandmother because we didn't want to leave her alone. My grandfather was an extremely irritable old fellow who went around grumbling about pretty much anything, including any loud sound, or voice, or laughter. My aunts and cousins and I were sitting on the veranda talking, trying to dissipate the air of sadness. After an exhausting day, we were ready to laugh a little, but as soon as we did, we heard shuffling footsteps from inside the house, and a grumbling voice say, “shove that yelling up your ass”, EXACTLY HOW MY GRANDFATHER DID WHEN HE WAS ALIVE. We all froze; it was as if he were actually there. A short time later, my grandmother ended up moving away from the farm."
–Samanta, via BuzzFeed
This post was translated from Portuguese.