As we enter October, we're all starting to get into the ~spooky~ spirit.
In this spirit, Reddit user Circumventtheman recently asked "Regardless of your opinion of the occult or supernatural, what is the most downright creepy or inexplicable thing that you've ever experienced?" And you guys...some of the responses were TERRIFYING. Here are some of the best!
1. This person's sleep paralysis seemed to predict the future:
"I used to have sleep paralysis a few years ago. One morning, I had a dream where I woke up and stood up from bed. I walked to the kitchen and my mother was there having breakfast. I talked to her, but it was like she couldn't hear or see me. I went outside, and there in my front yard was some type of demon. I started to panic and I tried to scream, but just then I woke up on my bed having the worst sleep paralysis of my life. The sound of the scream got caught in my throat and I just couldn't move at all, even when I was trying with all of my strength.
When I could finally snap out of it, I immediately stood up from bed and went to the kitchen AND MY MOTHER WAS IN THE EXACT SAME SPOT WHERE I SAW HER IN MY DREAM, WEARING THE SAME CLOTHES AND HAVING THE SAME BREAKFAST."
2. This group of friends swerved to avoid a girl who wasn't there:
"In high school, we’d pass time driving on back country roads late at night. No booze or drugs or anything involved, just chit chatting and singing along to music or whatever while we drove around. Once, when it was just one of my girlfriends and me, we were cruising when we suddenly came up on a girl in the middle of the road. We both saw her and screamed — she was so close to us, she couldn’t possibly have had enough time to run out of the way. My friend swerved and slammed on the brakes so hard we wound up horizontal in the street, but when we got out to investigate, no one was there. Total silence, nothing on or off the road in any direction. We were so spooked, we called a friend to tail us all the way home. Over 15 years later, it still scares me so much. I get teary-eyed just thinking about it."
3. This person dealt with a card-carrying ghost:
"In one of my closets, there is a hatch in the ceiling that leads to (I presume) some sort of insulation space or something. One day while cleaning, I decided to shout up at that hatch to see if anybody was up there, mostly as a joke. I said things like 'I know you're up there!' and 'Don't make me come up there and get you!' and 'I'm going to count to five! One! Two! Three! Four...' But I got bored and stopped there, going back to dusting. I stepped back into the hallway I'd just come from and there was a playing card face down on the floor. I picked it up and turned it over: it was a four of hearts.
I am still baffled as to how it got there. There's no furniture in that hallway that it could have fallen from. And there's no way I could have missed it; it was bright red and the floor was more of a grayish-blue. It stood out. I even recognized the deck it was from. It was a deck of cards I hadn't touched in months, maybe years, which was sealed inside a magnetic case and also underneath another box, inside that very closet where I had been shouting at the ceiling."
4. This person saw someone in their back seat:
"Driving down a street in the middle of the day, I checked my rearview mirror for traffic behind me and saw a hand reach up in the back seat. I almost jumped the curb when I swerved out of shock, then looked around to see an empty seat. I pulled into a parking lot to confirm that I couldn't have seen anything. Not only was the back seat empty of people, but there were no loose items either."
5. This group of friends found a vanishing ghost:
"I grew up in Mississippi, and when we were teenagers, we used to go play in the woods off the Natchez Trace, which was a vital trade route in the 1800s where a lot of bad things occurred.
We kept seeing the figure of a man watching us from behind various trees. He'd appear behind one tree, then another 50 feet away, without us seeeing him cross the distance. A few of us decided to flank him and came up alongside him, but there was nobody there. We promptly got the fuck outta there."
6. This person dealt with a couch potato phantom:
"When I was young, I'd wake up when it was still dark out, then head to the basement to watch TV without turning any lights on. This was back when we had an old tube TV — when you turned off a tube TV, there would be a white flash of light for a split second.
Many times, I'd see a light flash reflect off the wall at the bottom of the stairs when I would start walking down. The type of flash that looked like someone turned the TV off. I always left the lights off and tried to be quiet to catch this couch potato phantom."
7. This person's child warned them of a mad ghost:
"Both my kids would look at the same ceiling corner of the baby room and stare intensely. My youngest (who stayed in that room) told us a few times 'George is the ghost who lives there.' One of the times he said that, I inadvertently entered us into a horror trailer and replied 'Oh, is George a nice ghost?' To which my youngest said 'No, he's mad.' He hasn’t mentioned him since."
8. This girl may have discovered her sister's doppelgänger:
"When I was 5 or 6, I went around the house calling for my sister. I went to the living room and saw her sitting on a chair. I ran toward her, calling her, but I got no response, which was weird. When I came closer, I realized that the way she was sitting was unnatural. She was really stiff, staring blankly at the wall, and didn't even notice me. I tried to touch her, but as my fingers got close, I got too scared. I ran to my parents' room screaming, looking for my mom.
My sister was sitting there playing on our computer in different clothes. I asked her what was she doing in the living room, but she had no idea what I was talking about."
9. This family all saw a specter separately:
"My dad and I used to go to my aunt's house for the holidays. I was asleep in the basement bedroom one night and woke up to see a black silhouette leaning over me. It didn’t have eyes or any features or anything, but I specifically remember seeing it and starting to panic before it faded away. I also saw it another time when I got up to go to the bathroom.
I brought it up to my aunt later on, and she said she’d woken up and seen it in the corner of her room before, and that she’d seen it in the hallway too. My dad had also seen it. They never brought it up to me because they didn’t want to scare me."
10. This couple heard someone in their house, but found no footprints in the snow outside:
"Many years ago, my husband and I were living on the upper floor of an old house in Minneapolis that had been converted into a duplex. I was up late reading one night and heard someone walking up the back stairway. The footsteps went past our door and continued to the attic — I could hear someone messing with the doorknob, then the footsteps went back down the stairway and up again. I woke my husband up and he could hear it too. The police came and checked it out and found nothing — the back and attic doors were both locked, and it had recently snowed out and there were no footprints in the snow."
11. This couple's house might be haunted by a small boy:
"In August, I was sitting in my office. Out the window, I saw what appeared to be the head of a young boy with blonde hair run past on the lawn. I went to open the window to investigate, and he was gone.
My wife has also seen a small boy in our house, peeking out from behind the door, and she recorded a video of something knocking on the other side of the door when no one but herself was home.
We had a medium come over, and apparently we 'have a 5-year-old named James who loves to run down the lawn toward the apple trees down the back.' We don't have apple trees, but our section has been subdivided and there used to be an orchard down there."
12. This person saw their dead grandpa:
"My grandpa had a bad back, so sometimes he would get up in the middle of the night and go stand against a corner wall leading into the kitchen.
After he died, my cousins and I would take turns staying with my grandma so she wouldn't be alone. One night, I got up to get some water and he was standing there rubbing his back on the corner like he always did. I gasped audibly and he sorta looked at me and then vanished in a way that made an imprint in my eye for a few minutes, like I'd just stared at the sun except it was his image. Never saw it again after that. The window in the room he died in will still open itself from time to time though, even when we nailed it shut."
13. As did this person:
"I was staying at my grandma's house and my brother and I shared a room. We were talking about how cool it would be to see grandpa's ghost. Sometime in the middle of the night, my brother got up for the bathroom and freaked out, saying grandpa was in the mirror. I thought he was joking, but sure enough, I saw the mirror and grandpa was in it. Transparent, like they are stereotypically portrayed. He was in a suit, fixing his tie. I remember it so vividly. It freaked us out and we slept in a different room instead.
I do not believe in supernatural stuff, but I remember this so clearly and can't explain it. I wish I could see it now that I'm older."
14. This couple might be haunted by the ghost of the woman who drowned in their pool:
"The wife of the guy I bought my house from died in their pool. Every now and then, my wife and I have strange feelings of something rubbing/touching our legs at night. It's a tad unnerving."
15. This boy saw giant owls in his room:
"I had trouble sleeping one night when I was 6. My heart was pounding and I was practically scared stiff. I could barely manage it, but every time I peaked over the covers, I swear I could see the outlines of maybe four or five giant owls standing in my room — it was a small room, too. They looked like they were leaning over slightly because they were so tall they would touch the ceiling. Pretty sure I stayed awake till sunrise."
16. This woman heard someone calling "Mommy":
"I woke up two nights ago, late at night. I didn't know what had woken me, so I just lay there, eyes shut. A few minutes go by and I hear, 'Mommy!' said clearly right by my head. Thinking it was my daughter, I rolled over and said, 'What?' Nobody was there. I got up and all the kids were asleep soundly. There's no way that anyone could've run out of the room — the door was still shut when I rolled over. It was also definitely a real sound, because my son (sleeping in my bed) woke up to it too.
The feeling in my house was horrifying. I couldn't shake the feeling it was watching me. I went back to bed but did not sleep."
17. This person felt their grandfather's presence just before he died:
"When my grandfather unexpectedly died, I was a few hundred miles from him. I was sitting alone, reading, when suddenly I could feel his presence and smell the oil/grease that he used to smell of when he had been working in his workshop.
Five minutes later, my father called to tell me that my grandfather had passed away."
18. This woman wandered into a mysterious bathroom:
"I used to work in a large old hotel. At the time this happened, I was under a great deal of family-related stress. I worked evenings, and I had come in for my shift only to realize I had not brushed my teeth. I grabbed a toothbrush and toothpaste and went into the bathroom that is just off the lobby. It was very slow, so I was sure I could quickly brush and get to work. The instant I entered it was chilly and seemed darker than usual, like they had decided to go with different light bulbs. I went to the sink and felt so uneasy. I could feel someone else, but I knew I was alone. I quickly started to brush, then looked in the mirror to brush my tongue. Suddenly, a cut appeared down the center of my tongue. I kept spitting and rinsing the blood, and then I felt like the room was gonna just close up on me. I spit in the sink one last time and ran out of the bathroom and into the back office. The receptionist stood up the minute she saw me with this look of concern. I thought I must be bleeding everywhere. There was a mirror farther back in the office, behind the front desk, so I rushed to it to see what was happening in my mouth. But when I opened my mouth...nothing. No cut. No blood. I never went in that bathroom again, and I never understood what happened."
19. This person's late father helped console his granddaughter:
"When my dad passed away, it was hard on me but even more so on my daughter. She was barely 2 years old, but my dad was her absolute favorite person in the whole world. Compared to him, I was gum on her shoes, and he loved my daughter literally more than life itself. When he died, my daughter went from room to room looking for him, then walked out and, not being entirely verbal, she lifted her hands in a shrug-like motion which we had taught her meant 'I don't know.' I cried, how do you explain death to a toddler? When I went to lay her down that night, she was absolutely inconsolable. She was upset that her schedule changed — she wanted to play with Grandpa.
I was holding her, also crying, trying to keep myself calm so she could sleep, and failing. Suddenly, there came a click and a little red light from her interactive music chair, and it began to play music. My daughter calmed down and began to fall asleep until the chair clicked off and she began to cry again. The chair clicked back on and began to play another song, and she calmed down. This went on for about 15 minutes before she finally went to sleep. The thing about the chair is that it's interactive; to get it to play music, you have to stand/sit or flip the pages on the book. It also has a power switch which, when I took it out of the room to inspect, was securely in the off position. The batteries were still new, and it has never done that again. I believe it was my dad doing his best to tell us, but mostly my daughter, that he was still there. She dreams about him now and tells me they have a lot of fun together fishing."
20. This person had a strange occurrence with a neighbor:
"Almost a full year ago, at about 1a.m., I heard my upstairs neighbor come home. A little while later, there was a frenetic thumping, as if someone was running across the floor at breakneck speed. Then silence...followed by the most unearthly high-pitched scream I've ever heard in my life, interspersed with low guttural moaning, like a death rattle.
I thought the guy was in trouble, maybe ill. Every time the thumping across the floor began, my heart would start pounding uncontrollably, and I'd break out in a cold sweat. I'd become glued to the spot, transfixed with a sense of cold, creeping dread. After all, the only thing separating me from whatever was making that sound, was my ceiling.
Eventually, I decided I had to be a responsible neighbor. I had to go and check on him, just in case it was a medical issue. As I was about to knock on the door, screaming began again. I ran back home and called the cops. They turned up about 20 minutes later. I heard them talking to the guy, then they all came out of his apartment, he got into his car and drove away, and the cops left. I'm still trying to figure out what was going on to this day."
21. And finally, these best friends were almost lured into another dimension:
"My BFF and I were into paranormal investigations and went way out in the boondocks to a place that was supposedly haunted by victims of a serial killer. Nothing happened, so we started to leave. Suddenly we both got a distant, dissociated feeling and had an urge to go in a certain direction deeper in the woods.
We got in the car and drove that way, almost in a trance. We commented about how the sun looks fake, like lights on a movie set. And we both felt like we needed to get out of the car and go into the woods. We drove for about 5 minutes, then it took 20 minutes to get back going at the same pace. We drove back and forth a few times, with time being wonky each time and us feeling more and more drawn out and confused. Everything outside was dead quiet and unmoving. When we finally left the woods, it was like a spell was broken. We were shaking and confused and in retrospect it felt like we had been in imminent danger. It felt like we were being lured.
The worst part was we both had the same thought separately during the ordeal that if we had gone into the woods we wouldn't have just gone missing, but we wouldn't have even been remembered."