A while back, we asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about their creepiest paranormal encounters. The stories were so frightening that we decided to ask for more.
We received many bone-chilling stories from skeptics and believers alike. Read them now, if you dare!
1. "One night when I was about 10, I was closing the blinds on my window before bed when I saw a man. He was standing by one of the trees in the yard. He looked like he had a hat and a long black trench coat on. He was holding an ax, and his eyes looked completely white. I froze in fear and just stood there clutching my chest. The next thing I knew, the man began walking towards my window. In a blink of an eye, he was face to face with me."
"The only thing separating us was the glass. I started screaming bloody murder, and my parents came running. I remember them saying that they found me curled in a ball, rocking back and forth crying. I had told them about the man, but they didn't believe me — until the same thing happened to my mom."
2. "My aunt used an Ouija board when she was a teenager with her best friend. A ghost/demon told them one of them would die within the next year, and the other would die of old age. A year passed, and they stopped thinking too much about this prediction. Then, my aunt's best friend got hit by a car while she was on vacation with her family, went into a coma for a couple days, then passed away. My aunt went to her friend's neighborhood to look for her because she was late returning from her trip and she was worried. Out of nowhere, this golden-haired little girl she’d never seen before and never saw again appeared and said to my aunt, 'Are you looking for [friend's name]? She’s dead.'
"That was only a few minutes after the car accident happened. Everyone, don’t use Ouija boards. People die. Please don’t let it happen again."
3. "One day in 2000, I had a friend come visit. We were sitting in the living room at night, and she froze. She was staring at the window. I started to panic, thinking someone was outside the window looking in at us. I looked at the window, and both of our reflections had our heads tilted. We were both sitting up straight."
"We both jumped up and started running out of the house. On the way to the door, I looked at the window, and the reflection showed us still sitting on the couch with our heads tilted. We spent the night elsewhere, and I started keeping the curtains closed after that. I still cover all windows, especially at night."
4. "My oldest brother died in his sleep 20 years ago. I had not spoken with him for almost a year due to family issues. The night before his funeral, I was VERY upset. I was sitting on the floor in my bedroom, and my wife was sitting on the bed with her arms wrapped around my chest. After crying into her stomach for a while, I said, 'Rupe, I am SO SORRY for not talking to you.' I felt a tap on my right shoulder and then heard my brother's voice say, 'Maj, it's alright.' I looked up, and my wife's eyes were silver dollar-sized. I asked, 'Did you hear that?' She said, 'I heard your brother say, "Maj, it's alright."'"
5. "While staying at a vacation rental, I awoke in the middle of the night after having a bad dream. When I opened my eyes, I saw a woman kneeling at the foot of my bed with her arms down by my feet. Groggy and confused, I sat up to look closer. Whatever it was had no face, short hair, and was wearing a striped sweater. A few seconds later, she just disappeared. I sat there, now wide awake and in total disbelief. I've never believed in ghosts and have no scientific explanation for what happened."
"I know I wasn't dreaming. In fact, I laid awake in bed after that for over an hour. I reluctantly told the owner of the house what happened when she came by to fix the shower drain, and her eyes welled with tears. She told me something similar had happened to her when she lived there, and that her deceased grandparents once visited her in that room. That gave me the chills. It's been six years since that happened, and the memory is still completely clear."
6. "I live in an apartment building in the city. When I first moved there, I was kind of confused as to how the elevators worked because they were super old-fashioned and didn't have numbers on the buttons. I think you just had to count off from left to right, but I'd always forget. One day, I came back from a long day at work and felt super tired. The elevator situation didn't help, and out of frustration, I pressed every single button there was. The elevator just stopped. I didn't feel it moving at all. My dumb ass started to pry the doors open with my hands. It worked, but I wasn't on the lobby floor anymore. I stepped out into a hallway that looked like all the other floors, except the lights were extremely dim."
"It was literally something out of a horror movie, and I got back in the elevator. The door started closing, but just before it fully closed, a white hand shot in between the closing doors. I screamed and closed my eyes. When I opened them, the door was closed."
7. "My husband would leave around 5:00 a.m. for work every morning. I'd roll over and go back to sleep. One morning, he left, and I heard footsteps walking back towards the bedroom, down our hallway on the hardwood floors. I rolled over and said, 'Honey, did you forget something?' I saw a black shadowy figure in the bedroom doorway. It made its way into the room, past the end of the bed, and around to me. It placed both its hands firmly on my chest and started to press down my upper body into the bed."
"I remember that all I could see was it wearing an olive green shirt with a bunch of colorful little things on it like yellow lightning bolts, squiggly lines, etc. I took both my hands, pushed it off, and yelled, 'No!' It completely disappeared. I was too scared to get out of bed and turn the lights on, so I grabbed the remote, turned on the TV, and lit up the room. I never saw it again."
8. "I woke up one night when I was about 10 years old and saw a man standing at the end of my bed. I knew it couldn’t be my dad because this person was taller than him and had medals on his chest. I must’ve fallen back to sleep, but when I told my dad about it the next day, he went really pale and asked me to describe the medals as best I could. I drew him some pictures of what I could remember, and that afternoon my aunt sent over pictures of the medals my great-grandfather had been awarded during WWII. The ones I had drawn included those he was awarded posthumously. I had never seen them before and didn’t even know they existed."
"It gets weirder though. Since then, my two little cousins and little sister have all seen the exact same thing. None of them knew the story prior to them seeing this person at the end of the bed, but all have described the same medals. Our great-grandfather was buried at sea after being captured during the siege of Singapore. It's kind of nice to think that he’s looking over us somewhere."
9. "When I was 11, I was spending the night at my friend's house. We wanted to keep talking but didn’t want to wake her parents, so we decided to text each other. We texted for about an hour, then put our phones down around midnight to go to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I grabbed my phone and saw that I had another message from her. It was sent at 3 a.m., and it said, 'I’m watching you.' I laughed and said I saw her message from the middle of the night, but she looked at me confused and said she hadn't sent me anymore messages that night. I showed her the text and told her I knew she was lying, but she swore up and down that she hadn’t sent it. I didn’t believe her and thought she was messing with me, but she pulled her iPhone out and showed me that she hadn’t sent the message. This was back before you could delete sent messages on iPhones."
"I was still pretty skeptical, but still confused as to how the text came from her phone. We looked into it more and found that while the text was sent from her, it didn’t come from her iPhone. It came from her old phone, which I still had saved in my phone. At this point, she was a little freaked out because she said she hadn’t used her old phone in months. We went to her room to get her old phone, but ended up having to search for it for nearly an hour because she had no idea where it was. We finally found it and it was dead, so we had to charge it. At that point, I was starting to freak out. We finally got it charged and pulled up her messages, but it wasn’t there. She hadn’t texted anyone in months. There was no, 'I’m watching you' text sent to me. We both freaked out. To this day, I still don’t know how that text ended up on my phone."
10. "This happened shortly after my boyfriend unexpectedly passed away. I had such a hard time with his passing and was really depressed. At the time I was living with my family, and my room was down in the basement. I went to take a nap and was lying on my side when I felt the bed sink, as if someone came to lie beside me. Then I heard a male voice say, 'You see, I can still touch you.' This was years ago. I am now married, but every time I think of that moment, I cry. Even after all these years, he holds a part of my heart."
11. "I was in my aunt's 250-year-old house in a secluded area of Rhode Island. I was alone in the house, watching TV, when I heard something upstairs. I turned down the volume, and it sounded like a baby crying. I walked out to the hallway toward the stairs, and it got louder. It sounded like it was coming right from upstairs."
"I went back to the TV room and sat down. Obviously I wasn't going to check! To this day, I can't explain it. No one else was there! They didn't have a baby; they had teenage kids! The house is nowhere close to any other property, so it couldn't have been a neighbor. I believe in science, which points to the fact that ghosts just aren't real. BUT I have no explanation."
12. "My most surreal experience was when my grandad was dying, and my nana, who had died a few years before, 'came back' to get him. My nana and I were super close, but my grandad and I weren’t at all. One night, my mum checked in on him, and I stood at the door. There was no way he could have known I was there, but he started saying, 'Get Amy,' over and over, which was very out of character. I went in and started talking to him, but he zoned out and just started watching the foot of his bed. Then, he turned to my mum and said, 'Rosie's there,' and nodded at the foot of his bed. Rosie was my nana's name."
"I went to the end of the bed, and there was this weird coldness around that part of the room. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I ignored it at first and didn’t say anything, but then I felt a cold feeling very clearly around my hand, as if someone was holding it. It was so strange, and I told my mum, 'He’s right. She’s holding my hand.' I moved out of the way to let mum through, and the feeling instantly left me, and it was warm again. Grandad kept saying, 'And the cat.' They used to have an old cat who had also passed. He died the next day. We still believe that nana saw me waiting in the doorway and told grandad to get me to come in! Very special."
13. "My friend and I were around 14 at the time and asleep in her bedroom. She had a stereo system near her window. We both woke up at the same time and saw a dark shadow on top of her stereo. It looked like a man crouched down. We then both saw it go out the open window. In that same house, she and her mom woke up one night, and both saw a greenish figure/face in the corner of the ceiling."
14. "One night, while I was in high school, I was trying to fall asleep but just couldn't. My bed faced my doorway and my bathroom, and I saw someone walk into my bathroom and close the door. The figure was as tall as the door and as dark as a silhouette. I lied there frozen for around 10 minutes. My eyes didn't leave that doorway. Finally, I worked up the courage to go look and see who or what it was. I peeked my head around the corner of the bathroom, and there was nothing, though the door left wide open. I checked on my parents, and they were sound asleep."
"A few days later, I was showering and heard a strange clicking sound. I shrugged it off and continued washing my hair. Around a minute later, something grabbed my ankle really hard and left red marks on my leg. I opened the shower curtain and felt like there was something invisible in front of my face. Once again, I was frozen. Finally, I opened the door so I could just get out. Click. Whatever it was had locked my door before grabbing me."
15. "I went ghost hunting with friends on weekends while in college in Tennessee. The scariest site we visited was the grave of Sadie Baker, an alleged witch who was buried alive. She was relocated to a proper grave, which was apparently haunted. There was a bright full moon the night we were there, so we could see the whole graveyard clearly. At 3 a.m., weird things started happening. There was a loud scream just outside the graveyard, but we could see it was an empty field. Then, the wind started picking up. The scariest part was when a large stone vase from another grave we'd seen earlier flew through the air and landed feet away from us."
"I was one of the people who actually saw it high up in the air coming at us. All of us ran to the car, covering our heads."
16. "I used to live in an old house my junior year in college that had been purchased by the school to use as student housing. One time, my roommate was spending the night with her boyfriend, so I was in my room alone. I had already turned out the lights and was on my phone before going to sleep. Suddenly, I started seeing white streaks of light above my bed — quick flashes that went from the area right next to my bed toward the wall. This probably happened close to 10 times."
"I had pulled down the blinds on the windows, so I knew it wasn't the headlights of passing cars. I threw the covers over my head and texted my friend who lived down the hall. We laughed it off the next day, but I still can't explain what I saw. Seeing that I apparently go to one of the most haunted colleges in the US (if not THE most haunted), I'm open to the possibility that I saw spirits that night."
17. "When I was in elementary school, a girl named Shayla and her family moved into our town to be closer to a children’s hospital, since Shayla had cancer. She was a year younger than me, and we became friends. She only lived in my town for around a year and a half before she died at only 7 years old. Shortly after she died, my school had a remembrance ceremony for her, which included discussing her favorite songs and her love of rainbows. Later that day during recess, my friends and I noticed a rainbow in the sky."
"It had been a bright and sunny day — absolutely no rain at all. But, what was really unusual was that the rainbow appeared upside down; it was in the shape of a smile. I know that this was Shayla’s way of telling us that she was happy and loved us all very much. It’s been almost a decade now since she died, but I know she’s OK because of her rainbow."
18. "Ever since our family moved into our house, we’ve heard stomping in the attic, even when no one is up there. At night, you can hear kids running down the hallways, even though our family is the only one with kids. There are no pets either. One night, we heard a child sobbing from somewhere inside the house. All the kids were asleep, and no one was crying. Sometimes, toys in the house will turn on unexpectedly, even when they have no batteries. Cabinets will open after being left closed. It wasn’t until this year that we found out a little girl had died in our house many years ago."
19. "I was driving home after meeting friends around 3 a.m. and happened to pass a cemetery. I saw a kid, maybe 4 or 5 years old, riding one of those yellow plastic tricycles on the side of the road. After I passed them, I thought, 'Wait a minute, it's 3 a.m. Where are the kid's parents?' I looked in my rearview mirror, and the kid was gone."
20. "I used to live in an old Victorian house. A lot of weird shit happened there. One day when I was 15, my mom and my siblings went to the house next door, since my mom's fiancé lived there. I was in the bathroom of our house getting ready, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a little girl run past the bathroom door. I assumed my sister had come back, so I shouted at her, but there was no answer. I thought nothing of it and carried on. As I was brushing my hair, I glanced up to look in the mirror and saw the reflection of the little girl standing there, and I froze!"
"She let out a little giggle and disappeared! I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t think they would believe me. The next day, my mom told me she had seen a little girl outside the bathroom in the house next door on the same day! She described the exact same girl I had seen in our house!"
21. "My family moved to a new house when I was 10. The first night, I woke up because I felt my covers get pulled down slightly off my body. I then felt the weight of someone sitting on the end of my bed. I opened my eyes, annoyed that my dad had woken me up for no reason. When I looked down to the foot of the bed, there was nobody there — just the indent as though someone was sitting on the edge. My door was closed, and no one had come in. After moments of silence, I sat up in bed debating whether or not to make a run for it and go down the long hallway to my parents' room. Before I even took the covers off my legs, I heard a man's voice behind me in my left ear say, 'Jessica.'"
"Then, I saw some of my hair by my ear move forward and brush my face, as if someone were blowing air from behind my left shoulder. I spent the rest of the night sleeping in my parents' room, and we moved about a year later. My parents still don't like talking about that house!"
22. "When my great-aunt was ill, my grandma was staying at her house. One night, she saw my great-uncle Harold standing at the top of the stairs. He'd been dead for about 10 years at that point. My great-aunt died peacefully later that night, and my grandma always said that he was her Collecting Angel."
23. "I’m a teacher, and I always lock my classroom during lunch and eat in the lounge. One day when I came back from lunch with the kids, there was a crayon placed in the middle of each square on my classroom rug (there are 20 squares total). The door was locked the whole time. Our school is notorious for being haunted, and this is just one of the many creepy stories. That same year, my classroom phone would ring regularly with nobody on the line, and my printer would just randomly print blank sheets of paper on its own."
24. "When I was in high school, I made my very own Ouija board using some paint and a piece of wood I found. I invited some friends over one evening while my family was out of town. We played with the Ouija board upstairs around sundown and asked if there were any spirits around who would make themselves known. Suddenly, we heard a HUGE slam downstairs. Everyone freaked out, and I was the only one brave enough to go downstairs to check it out. Our house has this door to the outside that my family never uses and always keeps locked (it even had one of those little chains, too). But, when I went downstairs, the door was WIDE open — chain off and everything."
"My parents were three states away, and none of my friends even knew about the door. There's no explanation for how it could have happened."
25. "I've had dreams where my dead relatives come back and visit me. One night, my grandpa was one of those relatives in my dream. The next day I found my mom crying, and she told me that my grandpa had died."
26. "A few years ago, my plane had to make an emergency landing at a tiny regional airport due to a bad storm. I didn’t have money for a hotel, so I was stuck at the airport. All the flights were cancelled, everything was closed, and there was hardly anybody around. The power went out and the generator kicked in, but the lights were really dim. I was pacing around trying to stay awake since there were no places to sleep comfortably. Up ahead, I saw a dark shadow against a wall and figured it was another person stuck like me, so I decided to go over and say hi to them. I got almost close enough to see them well when a big flash of lightning lit everything up, and there was nothing there. When it got dark again, the shadow was gone. I don’t know if it was a ghost, but it was pretty terrifying to experience that all alone so late at night."
27. "I used to live in a haunted house. If you left any towels in the bathroom, you would hear the bathtub turn on in the middle of the night, and all the towels would get thrown into the tub and get soaking wet. After a few days of that, we didn’t leave towels in there anymore. And, when you took a shower, you could hear a female singing inside the wall."
28. "I lived in a horribly haunted house with my two girlfriends. We consistently had weird stuff happening — birds flying into windows, scratching in the walls — but never really thought much of it. One day, I was taking a nap in my bedroom, and I woke up suddenly because I felt a presence. I opened my eyes and saw a giant figure standing over me that looked like the static you'd see on an old TV. It kept creeping closer until I was finally able to break out of my paralyzing fear, grab the TV remote, and switch it on. The figure disappeared into thin air."
"I moved out shortly thereafter but heard that the girl who moved into my room experienced the exact same thing with the same giant creepy figure."
29. Finally: "I’ve had a couple of experiences in my house. One time, as I was coming down the stairs and stepping off the final step, a clothes hanger flew down the stairs and very narrowly missed my head. It didn’t fall — it was thrown at exactly the right height to hit me, and with a lot of force! There was nobody else in the house at the time. Clearly something is out to get me."
Have you ever had a paranormal encounter that you just can't explain? Were you once a skeptic but became a believer after an unusual experience? Tell us your story in the comments below!
