Most people have experienced paranormal events such as hearing footsteps when home alone or having random coincidences happen that are almost too creepy to explain.
So when Reddit user u/Lady_under_the_Lake asked the question, "What is the most creepy, unexplained event that has happened in your life?" the responses that rolled in sounded like horror movie plots waiting to be written.
Here are some of the creepiest responses:
1. "I don't believe in ghosts at all — however...I worked in a building with keypad locked doors. On video, at least five doors were violently thrown open in the same hallway seconds apart. There were cameras on both sides, and neither showed anyone there, and they were in an enclosed building that wouldn't have allowed wind to blow them open (plus the keypad).
"I 100% cannot explain what I saw, even today, but I ended up working nights in the building, alone, without ever seeing anything weird. I did on occasion get hair standing up on my neck and a feeling of being watched."
2. "I was in the work kitchen cleaning my dishes. I put a plate on the countertop, and out of nowhere, I heard a scratching sound and saw that thing moving 4 inches at a slow but steady pace, and then it just stopped after a couple of seconds."
3. "This didn't happen to me but to a friend. He had a doctor's appointment and took his dad with him. It was in another town about an hour away, and since the appointment was for 11 a.m., they left at 9:30 to give themselves plenty of time. They pulled into the parking lot at 10:30. My friend said he remembered checking the clock in the car when they arrived, and remarking to his dad that they made good time.
"They went into the office, and the receptionist pointed out that they were a little late but it was okay because the doctor was running behind. My friend told her that he had an 11 o'clock appointment and was actually a half-hour early, and she pointed to the clock on the waiting room wall...which said 11:15.
"His dad checked his watch: 11:15. My friend ran out and checked the clock in the car: 11:15. Somehow, in the few dozen steps from the car to the office, they'd lost 45 minutes.
"When they got home, my friend's mom verified that they'd left home at 9:30, and there hadn't been heavy traffic or delays of any kind. It's a mystery to this day."
4. "When I was 13, I had a weird flash of a nightmare while asleep. All I remembered was kneeling on asphalt and holding my hand to my mouth, in the worst pain of my life. I told my mom about the dream because it scared me so much.
"Two years later, I was hit by a car while crossing the street and ended up in that exact position, kneeling on asphalt, holding my mouth while blood poured out. My head had apparently bounced off the rearview mirror, and that had knocked my two front teeth back into my soft palate." —u/so_illogical
5. "I saw a guy accidentally drop a 16-inch concrete drill bit from shoulder height. It never hit the ground. It's like it stopped existing on its way to the floor. No sound of it hitting the floor, nowhere to go, just gone."
6. "I was sitting on the toilet when, out of the blue, a quarter seemed to appear and hit the floor. It looked like someone had thrown it, but through my wall. I was home alone, and I still to this day have no idea how. It was as if it just phased through mid-throw."
7. "One time when I was younger, I was upstairs in my room playing some games on a PlayStation. I was home alone because both of my parents had gone out to see a movie. It was a fairly normal night with nothing out of the ordinary happening until I heard an extremely loud crashing noise and what sounded like glass shattering coming from the kitchen area.
"I immediately went downstairs to try to see the source of the noise. I checked all of the windows, and they showed no signs of damage. Confused, I kept walking around trying to find the source of this loud crashing noise until I walked over to the kitchen.
"I don’t know how this happened, but apparently the outer glass screen of our oven just completely fell off and shattered. Slightly terrified, I proceeded to sweep up all the glass and throw it away. I tried explaining the situation to my parents when they got home, but they didn’t believe my story and grounded me for a week because they thought I broke it."
8. "My boss, a coworker, and I were standing at a surface table measuring something when the quarter-ton table moved about 6 inches at one corner across the concrete floor with a loud screech, as if someone had grabbed it and moved it out of the way. We just looked at each other like, 'Did that just happen?'"
9. "One morning, after sleeping in for a while, I walked downstairs and my family gaped at me as though I were a ghost. Apparently, just a couple of minutes earlier, I had silently walked past them and into the computer room as they all said good morning.
"If I had been sleepwalking, I would have had to walk past them again to get back to my bedroom, but they all swear I didn't."
10. "One time, I felt my comforter being slowly tugged off of me from the foot of the bed."
11. "When I was 19, my girlfriend and I were hanging out in my bedroom when she suddenly let out a shriek and ran for the door. When I caught her in the hallway and calmed her down enough to find out what was wrong, she told me that she saw a live lizard crawl out of my mouth and run down my body, jump to the floor, and run in her direction.
"She was dead serious about it and still shaking. Cut to 20 years later and I'm in the house of a different girlfriend in a different town, hanging out in her bedroom. The identical scenario happens: a lizard running out of my mouth, her running out scared, etc."
12. "When I was 12, I woke up in the middle of the night to loud breathing under my bed.
"Being 12 and into reading fantasy and science fiction books, I was convinced there was a demon or cryptid or something that was going to eat me. I finally decided to risk it and run up to my mom's room to sleep in her bed. I made it safely without being dragged under the bed, and I told her what happened. She was convinced I just had a nightmare. The next night I heard it again, and since it was only like 9 at night, I called to my mom so she could hear it. She was like 10 feet away and could hear it clear as day. There was nothing under my bed.
"Over the next couple of months, I kept hearing it, although not nightly. It slowly started to sound more like purring than breathing. My brother came home from college and checked under my bed and made me lift my hands to double-check that I wasn't playing a prank."
13. "When I was about 15, I was home alone in my house at night. It was just me and my three dogs. My dogs were normally very lazy at night — all they would do is lie in their dog beds chilling out until bedtime. But for some reason on this night, they all became very agitated at the same time. They all kept running into different rooms in my house and growled and barked at empty corners, something that they had never done before and haven't done since.
"I checked the whole house and never found anything. I don’t believe in anything supernatural, but that night I slept in my parents' bedroom with the door locked, a gun next to me, and all three dogs on the bed with me."
14. "My wife and I had just gotten married. We lived in a small, one-bedroom apartment, and I got up one night to take a leak and just had a creepy feeling while I was standing in the bathroom. Like, the hairs on my neck were standing up.
"Anyway, I shook it off and went back to bed. The next morning, my wife told me she had a terrible dream about a demon that was watching her. I didn't tell her about my feeling because it would have scared the shit out of her. Still weirds me out a little."
15. "My family was sitting on the back porch watching a thunderstorm. My older brother grabbed a toy gun out of my hand and said, 'Watch this.' He pointed the gun at a tree in the backyard and pulled the trigger.
"As the toy gun popped, lightning struck the tree he was aiming at and the tree fell over. He handed me the toy gun back with a smile and walked away."
16. "Happened to me over 30 years ago: overslept but called in my bullshit story that I was running late due to my car stalling out in front of the church (thinking the little details sell the lie). Small town, everyone knows the spot.
"The next day on my way to work (and on time), my car stalled in that exact same spot. Would NOT restart. It freaks me out so much, I avoid driving by that church to this day."
17. "I remember falling asleep and waking up the week before — I repeated an entire week, and I have no idea what happened. Ever since, I've believed that we're in some form of the matrix or something."
18. "I was around 9 at the time, sleeping in my room, facing the wall. Then, all of a sudden, I got WHACKED in the back. I checked under my bed, drawers, everywhere; there wasn’t anyone there. I had a bruise in that exact spot the next day."
19. "While visiting a theme park when I was younger, I ran into a dude who looked just like me. He warned me that I would lose my money that day and to watch my pockets.
"Later the same day, I noticed my money had fallen out of my pocket, but luckily it was on the ground nearby. What the fuck? I wouldn't have noticed if that dude's comment hadn't stuck in my mind."
20. "I was in my room alone. I heard some shuffling-type noises from my closet and thought it was just the house because the AC needed to be fixed.
"Then I heard someone whisper my name. No one was home. I was the only person there. FUCK. NO."
21. "My dad and I found a human tooth on the floor of his car...no one in my family had lost any teeth recently."
22. "I was walking with my friend in a meadow. Some invisible source was walking with us, directly in front of us, making its presence known by stomping on and thrashing through the tall weeds that were in front of us, almost leading a path for us. After the both of us got scared and pointed it out to each other, it stopped."
