Recently, we asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about the most paranormal experiences they've had at home, and WOWZA, some of your houses must seriously be possessed by the devil himself! Here are some of the wildest, creepiest, and most bone-chilling responses we received.
1. "I have a basic LA condo built in the '80s. One morning, while at the bathroom sink getting ready for work, I heard this odd scratching noise. I looked around assuming it was the cat, and I happened to look at a cheap painting I had hung on the wall.
"It slowly rotated left, then slowly moved back, causing the odd scratching sound. This was in a windowless bathroom. No earthquake, any kind of vibration, and no wind. I freaked out and took it off the wall."
—sdk
2. "I lived in a house when I was 19 or 20 when my roommates and I all worked as bartenders and waitresses at a local bar and just lived up the street. It was a slow night, so one of my roommates went home early. She called us a few hours later saying that she could hear a baby crying — she even went from room to room trying to figure it out, but she got so terrified that she called us.
"We all ran home and found her white as a sheet, clutching the phone and crying. We all slept in her bed together that night. Then a few nights later, the fire department showed up saying a neighbor called and reported that our house was on fire. It wasn't. Turned out our whole neighborhood had burned down in the 1900s...and a baby died...in our house."
—Anonymous
3. "My parents rented the house we grew up in. It was haunted, but we were not actually bothered by it. Eventually, my parents found another house to purchase, so we moved. One random night, the landlord from the previous house called asking if we had ever experienced anything weird there. My mom told him we had but had never said anything because it wasn't likely that others would believe us.
"Apparently, his new renter had been home alone with her kids, and when she went to check on them, she found soot coming out of their mouths, ears, and noses. She immediately took them to the hospital. Because of the soot not being a common thing, her children were being withheld from her until an investigation from Child Protective Services could be performed. After reporting to the landlord that she had been experiencing paranormal activities and him confirming with our family that it was true, she was allowed to have her children back. She did not return to the house. Left everything in the house because she was afraid."
—Anonymous
4. "When my son was 3, he started having dreams and visions of people coming out of holes and dancing in his room. He said they were trying to tell him something. He also said he would wake up to see faces in the dark, and they were screaming at him. There were many nights when his screaming would wake me up, and I would run into his room. It honestly sounded like he was being attacked.
"One night in his room, he was telling me about one of his experiences, and I saw a streak of white light move up over his face. Another time, I ran into his room, and he was up on his knees looking around the room. I didn't say anything and just continued to watch him in the dark. This went on for about 15 minutes, and finally, he looked at me and said one word: 'Manya.' It was apparently his name for whatever spirit he was seeing."
5. "Years ago, my husband and I were trying to see if we could get a modest house by contract for deed. We took my sister along to look at the house. It still had someone's personal items in it as though they had just stepped out — but it was for sale. We all walked through and were hopeful. Suddenly, my sister said, 'Wait, I know whose house this was! This house belonged to that guy my son knew who died in his kitchen! This was Tony's house!'
"At that precise moment, a cabinet door shot open and whacked her on the backside. Never one to be rattled easily, she looked up and said, 'Okay, Tony, I get it!' We checked; it was indeed his house, the cabinet had been tightly shut, and the floor was stable. I've never seen a cabinet door randomly swing open with a force behind it like that. Not enough to hurt, but fast, as though a hand had whipped it open. You had to be there. I wish we could have gotten the house even if he was haunting it. He was known to be a nice guy, very funny, and we wouldn't have minded sharing it with him."
6. "I had just moved in with my best friend. My room was closer to the kitchen than hers, and I didn’t have a door, just a curtain. One night, I heard her walking around the kitchen in the dark and cutting what sounded like vegetables. I’m not one to judge, but I thought chopping veggies in the dark at 2 a.m. was strange, especially when I then heard footsteps come toward my room and stop.
"I asked her about it the next morning, and she had no idea what I was talking about. She said she had stayed in her room all night, but there was a cutting board and knife out in the counter. That place continued to have a ton of weird things happen, like her boyfriend seeing a full shadowy figure walking into my room from the living room while I slept. Eventually, things stopped — I think the ghosts got used to us."
7. "I lived in a split-level house as a teenager and had the lower level bedroom that also had the entrance to the crawlspace. For a few years, my sister was incredibly sensitive to paranormal happenings, and even claimed to have seen a civil war era man in uniform at the foot of her bed one night. Well, she was never comfortable coming into my room or even being near it, as she said she would see shadow figures dart around. Of course, this made me super uneasy, but I tried to ignore it.
"Then, one night, maybe a couple months after my great-grandmother had passed away, I was laying in bed when I heard soft murmuring or humming. I was scared stiff because the noise was definitely in my room — it was so close to me! It is important to note that I was the only one who had a bedroom in the lower level, and at this time of night, no one was in the family room next door. I turned on my bedside lamp and just laid in bed with the covers up to my chin, listening to the humming. Then, I felt my mattress sink and a light pressure against the side of my body like something had sat down next to me. There was a change in temperature near me, and I was terrified. This feeling didn't leave for awhile, and then I started to feel something touching my head, like my hair was being smoothed down; kind of like I was being petted. It all disappeared very suddenly though, and I was feeling warm again. I didn't sleep for the rest of the night. The next day, I told my little sister of my experience, and she told me that she saw our great-grandmother the same night, and that she would sit on her bed and stroke her hair lovingly sometimes. Blew my mind. I was scared at that time, but looking back I'm just happy she chose to visit me."
—Anonymous
8. "When I was in college, I lived in an apartment complex. Every once in awhile, at around 2 a.m., I would hear breaking glass. It was clear as day. I never found any broken glass anywhere around the apartment. My younger brother would come out and party with us, and once or twice he came busting into my room, thinking someone was breaking in. Finally, one night, my girlfriend stayed over. She would kick and push in her sleep, and at some point, she nudged me, and I woke up. When I looked over at her, she wasn't asleep.
"She was sitting at the foot of the bed, facing away from me. When I said her name, she stood up and walked out of the room, and then the sound of glass breaking happened. I looked around and realized that she was still laying next to me in bed. That was the only time I saw anything in that place but heard the sounds pretty consistently."
9. "My mom and I have both suffered from brain aneurysms and strokes. Hers occurred before mine, and I had mine during the height of COVID. By the time I had my stroke, her brain was already gone, and because of COVID, we weren't allowed to see her much in 2020. Soon after, she passed away — only one month after my own battle started. There's no doubt that she gave me the last of her strength so that I could fight and live on.
"I didn't get the chance to say goodbye, and I didn't even know how bad she was doing. It took a while after that, but I started smelling her favorite perfume around the house without having a bottle of it here. When we finally got her ashes back, my cat would stare at the urn for what seemed like forever. I'd see my mom out of the corner of my eye that I lost vision in from my stroke. I never needed her more than when I had my stroke, and I still need her while I heal. She may not be physically around anymore, but she's taking care of me the best she can."
—Anonymous
10. "I saw an orb in my bedroom doorway while going to sleep. The next day, things hanging from my ceiling started moving without a breeze, so I went to leave my room. I walked through the doorway where the orb was seen the previous night, and it was a cold spot. My entire leg felt cold. I left and went to work, and when I came back, I said out loud, 'I can't help you; I need you to leave!" My bedroom door closed on its own, and nothing happened after that."
—Anonymous
11. "One time, on my son's baby monitor, we heard a loud male voice say, 'Stop that!' We happened to know a mother and daughter psychic team and enlisted their help. They tuned in, and both said they saw an evil old man spirit from the '40s who brought in other souls to make mischief. Apparently, this man also smoked a cigar — we often smelled cigar smoke in our hallway outside my son's bedroom."
12. "The house I grew up in was pretty active. One morning when I was 13, I was in my bedroom at one end of the house, and the rest of my family was in the living room at the other side of the house. I absent-mindedly did the 'shave and a haircut' knock on my wall. Something else immediately knocked the last 'two bits' part. I ran down the hall into the living room and verified that nobody else was in that part of the house — Nope."
13. "I've had two encounters in my current home, and they were years apart. One day, I was washing dishes, and I stepped back, and someone touched both sides of me as if they were trying to walk past me, but I was home alone.
"And just last week, this painting just fell off the wall. The nail was still fine, and everything else stayed on the walls. But a few hours later, a knife just dropped from the counter to the floor when I wasn't near it — and it was nowhere near the edge of the counter. I felt like someone or something was trying to connect with me, so I said out loud, 'If you're trying to give me a message, please choose another way, and don't make it scary.' Nothing else happened after that."
14. "One morning, a few weeks before we moved into our house, I was home with my daughter, who is a toddler, and my dog. My husband was at work. I asked my daughter to tidy up her toys so we could go upstairs for a shower. She picked up all her toys and put them in her toy box, and I folded a blanket and put it on the sofa. We then immediately went upstairs together and stayed upstairs for 20 minutes.
"When I came downstairs after showering, I glanced into the living room and saw all of my daughter's toys laid out on the sofa. There was also an imprint of one of her toys on the blanket, as if it has been put there and moved. Nobody else was in the house, and unless the dog suddenly developed the ability to open a toy box and empty the contents neatly onto the sofa, I have no explanation for it whatsoever. My husband refused to believe me, but one of my friends refused to visit us after that!"
15. "My mom and dad passed just five weeks apart of unrelated cancers. We had taken my son with us to my parents’ house to feed their cats. My son was 7 at the time, and he wandered downstairs to explore. At some point, he reappeared upstairs, strangely subdued. At the time, he hadn’t yet learned to lie, nor did he make stuff up. My wife noticed his demeanor and asked, 'What’s up, kid?' He said, 'Pop-pop is outside by the fence. I want to go home now.'"
16. "One night, I was sleeping and woke up to noise coming from my desk — it sounded like someone was shuffling papers, but it was so loud that I remember waking up in a panic. There was no one else in my room but me.
"I yelled for my mom, and as soon as she opened my door and turned on the light, the noise stopped. I told my mom what happened, and she said it was probably a dream and to go back to bed. Years later, she told me that she had actually found papers scattered all over the floor, but picked them up before I could see."
17. "I was watching Ancient Aliens, and the episode I was watching had me literally questioning my beliefs. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a black dot moving from one end of the room to the other. I chalked it up to a bug even though it was moving very fast and perfectly linear.
"A few seconds later, some paintings I had above my fireplace started swinging, and two vases fell off my mantle. I took it as a message and immediately changed the channel to Modern Family. I've never watched another episode of Ancient Aliens since then — even though the show is phenomenal!"
18. "The most terrifying experience I've had was when I was home alone one day and was watching TV in my parents' room. All of a sudden, I heard a woman’s voice calling my name sweetly from the hallway outside. I went out and checked — no one was there.
"I closed the door, and this voice called me again. I checked the whole house to see if anyone was home, but again, no one. When I got back to the room, the woman started to call my name again, only angrier. I was so freakin' scared."
19. "I lived in a house where the owner had previously died. My ex-husband was abusive, and once, as he punched the wall next to my head, I felt a hand cup my ear and something whisper my name. I then felt two hands on my shoulder, and my ex stopped his outburst. I always felt protected by it, whoever it was.
"I often felt the hand on my shoulder when my ex husband was at his worst, but I somehow knew it would be okay. I have since divorced him, moved to the southeast, remarried, and we have a 20-month-old. I haven’t felt it since moving out of that house and away from him."
20. "I was home alone watching TV in the living room and I heard a loud noise coming from the bathroom. It sounded like pill bottles being thrown to the floor from the medicine cabinet. When I got up to check the bathroom, there was nothing on the floor...but medicine cabinet was open."
21. "When I first moved in to my current apartment, I would always close my bedroom door at night and shut down and close my laptop before going to bed. Almost every night for the first few weeks, my bedroom door would open on its own while I was sleeping. I’m a light sleeper, so the sound of it opening would wake me up.
"Then suddenly, I would hear my laptop start playing whatever Netflix show, or sometimes a random movie, I’d have saved in my computer at full volume even though it had been shut down, and I never use it that loud. I'd have to get up, turn it off, and lock my door again."
22. "I was in the upstairs bedroom watching TV with my son, and we both turned to look at the door. We thought we saw my husband open the door slightly, pop his head in, and leave as though he'd forgotten something. I remember seeing that he had a hoodie, and the hood was up.
"I thought it was weird because my husband hated hoodies, and I’ve never known him to own one. But then, I thought maybe he forgot something in the car and he’d be right back? I didn’t think anything of it, and we kept watching TV until my husband came in and I asked him if he'd gone out to get something outside. He was confused — he had been playing video games downstairs the whole time."
23. "After my grandma passed away and the power was cut off to her house, my family and I went back to make sure everything was cleared out. Out of habit, we accidentally hit the ceiling fan switch, not thinking anything of it. All of a sudden, the fan started spinning. The ceiling fan hadn’t worked in the house in, like, 10 years — it was really creepy."
24. "My mom and I moved into my stepdad's house after his mother died, and the house was completely haunted. Like one time, I lost a $20 bill in my room, and my mom was helping me look for it. We tore my room apart looking, but couldn’t find it. I decided to look under the bed again while my mom looked on the shelf that was in my headboard.
"Neither one of us saw it, so we started to give up. Just then, I glanced at the headboard shelf one more time and saw the bill sitting on top of a book in plain sight. I asked my mom if she had found it and put it there, but she denied it. She thought I had put it there and was pulling a prank on her because she'd just checked that spot two minutes earlier. She got so freaked out that she wouldn’t come into my room for a week afterwards."
25. "I was in bed in my house which I had just moved into a few months prior. My room was on the upper floor and had a large walk-in dormer closet attached with access to the attic crawlspace. I was close to falling asleep, ya know, in that half-awake state where sometimes, if something is loud enough, it sort of creeps into your dreams.
"Suddenly, from inside the closet, I heard a deep old woman’s voice say either 'Come in here now' or 'I’m in here now.' I sat up yelling. The worst part? My elderly neighbor directly across the street had died two days earlier. The family had left her stained mattress on the curb for pickup."
26. "I have — and still do, on occasion — hear a child say 'Mom!' when I have to put my son to bed. It happens wherever I am in the house: Behind the chair I'm sitting in, in the entryway to the kitchen, and so on.
"My husband has been around for two of the times this has happened and really hates that we live here now. I grew up in this house, so I know nothing sinister has happened here, but I do work in a children's hospital. Maybe somebody came home with me."
27. "When I was a baby, my uncle shot himself in my grandparents' house. He ended up dying from the injuries. Several years ago, my grandmother passed away, and since I was the only one in the family who didn't already have a house, my son (6 years old at the time) and I moved in. The first night we stayed there, I walked down the stairs from the second floor, and my son was waiting at the bottom.
"He looked behind me and asked who that guy was behind me, but it was just the two of us. I didn't know it at the time, but my son and my deceased uncle had the same birthday, which was a weird coincidence. I believe it was him who my son saw."
28. "I used to live in a beautiful heritage house, and one morning while I was sitting in the breakfast nook having my coffee, an older man in a shiny green suit appeared sitting across from me. He was very tall and handsome and looked kind. He had grey hair.
"From time to time, I'd see this man leaning against the sink in my kitchen. Every time, he'd just look at me and then walk into the hallway. A year or so later, my brother came to visit, and one night, he had a cigarette out on the patio at around 2 a.m. The next day, he said to me, 'So last night, I was having a smoke, and I thought your husband was in the kitchen, but when I looked in the window, it was a tall man in a green suit. He just leaned against the sink and then walked away!' Yup, that was my ghost. I actually miss living there. He kept me company."
—Anonymous
29. "My partner and I joke that the first place we moved into was haunted by a fruit-loving ghost. On one of the first nights there, our bedroom smelled distinctly of banana, and a short time later, we found tangerine peels under the sofa when neither of us remembered eating tangerines!"
30. "It was the first Christmas in my new apartment that I shared with a friend of mine. At around 4 a.m. on Christmas morning, I was woken up by the feeling of something poking my leg. As I fully woke up, my jewelry box — one of the old ones that has a little ballerina — that was always open but never played music immediately started to play music. Surprisingly, I wasn’t scared, and I actually felt a peaceful energy about the experience. This was about 15 years ago, and I won't ever forget that moment for the rest of my life."
—Anonymous
31. "One night, I woke up to see who I thought was my mom standing in my bedroom doorway glaring at me. Our dog was growling at her, which he would never do, so I thought it was weird. I looked away for a split second and looked back, and she was gone. I immediately got up and ran to her room; she was sound asleep, snoring away."
—Anonymous
32. "When I was about 5, I lived in an upstairs two-story apartment, so basically, our second floor was up four stories. One night, I knocked on my wall, and someone knocked back. I thought it was so cool and did it over and over again until we moved.
"A few years later, I asked my parents if they were the ones knocking on the wall when I was younger. That's when they told me that my bed was up against the wall that connected outside, so there was no way someone could have been knocking on my wall unless they had a four-story ladder. I've always felt a presence around me since then."
—Anonymous
33. And lastly: "I once played Bloody Mary...by myself. I immediately felt a coldness and an overwhelming sense of dread fill the room. I closed my eyes and turned around as fast as I could to flip the light on. It wasn't until a couple weeks later that the truly creepy part happened.
"I was alone reading a book, and a dizziness hit me. I heard children's laughter, and then I heard my name being called by a woman — from the same room I'd done the ritual in."
—Anonymous
