Recently, Reddit user u/HalfOfABraincell asked the question, "What is a supernatural event that happened in your life that just cannot be explained?" in r/AskReddit. Here are some of the wildest, most haunting, and most completely inexplicable answers they received.
1. "When my grandfather died, my parents were in charge of cleaning out his old house. I ended up helping out a couple of times, and the night before we were finished, I had a dream about my grandfather in his basement pointing at a spot behind the staircase."
"It was so vivid and real that I had to tell everyone about it. The next and final day of cleaning, we went to the spot I was talking about. My dad ended up pulling back some old wood paneling and found a bunch of old photographs of when my grandparents first moved into the house."
2. "In high school, I was getting peer-pressured into doing something I didn't want to do, and would've gotten in a lot of trouble had a teacher come by, but I felt I didn't have a choice. I distinctly remember asking in my head, If I have a guardian angel right now, please fucking pull the fire alarm or something. I kid you not, at that exact second, the fire alarm went off."
3. "My mom and dad were codependent, and they liked it that way. They didn't want other people (other than the kids). They were completely happy to be just wrapped up in each other. My dad died the day before his birthday in a hospice center. Afterward, it was like he was still home."
"His touch lamp beside his recliner would go on by itself. The recliner would rock as if someone was getting in it. And sometimes my mom or my sister would hear my dad saying, 'Honey, fix me a cold drink?' which was exactly how he'd ask my mom to fill up his massive mug with Sprite over ice. My mother died less than a year and a half later. After my mother died, there was never another sign of either of them being there. They've been gone for close to 14 years now."
4. "A family friend of ours, Gary, was terminally ill with cancer. He was a father figure to me. A friend and I were in Moab, Utah, and found a hostel to sleep in for the night. I had a dream about Gary. He looked amazing, completely healthy and back-lit, and was wearing a multicolored sweater. He looked at me with concern in his eyes, pointed backward, and said, 'I'm not doing too good.'"
"I woke up a bit shaken because it felt SO REAL. That day, we drove from Utah to Colorado and stayed in another hostel. At about 5 a.m., I woke up because my phone was ringing. It was my mom, and I already knew what she was going to tell me: Gary had passed. I basically explained to her that Gary had come and told me goodbye. Also, the picture that his wife picked for his obituary was Gary in that multicolored sweater he was wearing when he came to me in my dream."
5. "When I was 12, I was jolted awake at 2:30 in the morning. I wasn't dreaming and didn't know why I woke up. My parents told me the next morning that my grandfather had had a heart attack and went for emergency surgery. He died at 2:30 in the morning."
6. "I had been working as night security for a small office at a sanitation plant. The building was a single entrance, and you had to check in at the security station to get in or out. One night, a worker showed up and checked in, saying he needed to take care of a few things. I checked in his ID and flipped a few lights on for him, then went back about my business."
"Fast-forward a few hours and my shift was about to end, and I still hadn't seen the guy come back. So I went patrolling the building to find him and literally couldn't find him anywhere. I stopped by security to see if we had just missed each other, but nobody was there. I did a second patrol — still no signs. At this point, I went to check cameras to see where he went, but he wasn't on a single camera except the one covering the entrance and security station. He had turned down a hallway and never showed up on the next camera down said hall. At this point, I logged it as an incident and GTFO right as the relief shift showed up. The next day, my boss called me and said that that worker had been on vacation out of state for several days and wouldn't return for several more. Nobody could offer any explanation as to what had happened."
7. "There's a story that when I was 4 or 5 years old, my grandmother was looking through old family photos and asking me who the people were. We got to a picture of my grandfather, and she asked me who he was, and I said, 'Pop poppy Jim!'"
"He had died suddenly at home when my mother was 10 — in the same house we lived in — so I'd never met him. She asked me how I knew that, and I told her, 'Oh, he comes and tucks me in and tells me he loves me sometimes after you go to bed.'"
8. "Many years ago, my parents had separated and my father was planning on taking a trip across the country to California. He was pretty excited about it. I talk to him the day before he's leaving, wish him well, and tell him I'll talk to him after he gets to California."
"The day of his trip, he calls me and tells me he decided last minute not to go. Refuses to really get into why. Just says he changed his mind. Seemed really odd for something that he had been planning for a couple of months.
"That night, I'm sitting at my girlfriend's house and we're watching the news, and they report that USAir Flight 1493 — the flight my dad was supposed to be on — collided with another aircraft while landing in Los Angeles.
"It was several months before he finally told me that the night before he was supposed to leave, he had an extremely vivid dream that he died in a fiery plane crash. So vivid that it scared him out of flying that day."
9. "I once woke up in the middle of the night to a man standing next to my bed, staring at my significant other. He was slightly translucent, and I figured it was just another sleep paralysis episode (I had them before, so I knew the drill), so I rolled over and went to go back to sleep."
"Normally, being able to move isn't part of sleep paralysis, so immediately, my heart began to race as I realized I needed to roll over and check what I had seen. The person was still standing there, staring at my S.O. He then stared at me for a while before turning around and walking to the wall, slowly fading away with each step. The next morning, my S.O. woke up and said she had the worst night's sleep because she kept having the feeling that someone was watching her."
10. "When I was 9 or 10, I had a really bad year and started having serious mental health issues. Well, when things were at their absolute worst, I started having dreams of this blonde lady telling me to hold on and that things would get better."
"It was so comforting and peaceful. I didn't know who she was, so I just figured I imagined her. Well, things finally simmered down, and the dreams eventually stopped. About a year later, my mom was going through old photo albums, and my blood froze. I saw the blonde woman from my dreams. I asked who she was, and turns out, it was an aunt I had who died shortly before I was born."
11. "My granddad died when I was 7, but per his own words, I was his absolute favorite. When I was 21, I was set to give birth to my first son. I was about to get into the elevator for labor and delivery when a man came in saying that he was a volunteer and he'd help me and my husband find our way."
"The elevator was slow, but we spent the time talking about what a blessing children are and how they grow up so fast. Here's the thing: He looked and sounded exactly like my granddad — same stature, same blue-gray eyes, same faint Scottish Canadian accent, same khakis, checkered shirt, and sky-blue cardigan. Even spookier is that the nurses said they didn't have any older male volunteers in that particular building. I don't really believe in ghosts, but I am absolutely certain my granddad paid me a visit that night."
12. "When I was around 6 years old, I was walking down the stairs with no one behind me, and all of a sudden, I remembered getting chills and feeling a faint hand on my shoulder before I basically got pushed down the stairs."
"I was alright — just a few cuts and bruises — but I still remember the feeling of the invisible hand on my shoulder. It haunts me."
13. "One night as I came back to the door of my room from the bathroom, I froze. I can't quite explain it, but it was as if some deep part of my brain was screaming and refused to send the signals to my body to move. I couldn't logic my way out of it, and I was just stuck at my doorframe, looking into my room."
"On the other side of the room, sitting on my windowsill, were the two Amish dolls my grandma had given me a few years before. Amish dolls are stuffed soft-cloth dolls in Amish clothing and no faces. My eyes snapped to the female doll, and I couldn't look away from her. I have no idea how long I looked at her, frozen — maybe 2 minutes, maybe 45 minutes. Time stopped. Then she slowly raised her right arm up above her head and slowly down, back into its resting position. When I could finally move again, I don't remember if I worked up the courage to go back to my bed or if I slept on the couch, but I did ask my dad to take the dolls away the next day."
14. "I was about 15 and trying to sleep when I had an asthma attack. Late in the night, I started hearing a rhythmic breathing from the floor next to the bed. It wasn't scary, but more comforting."
"It helped me calm down and get to sleep, even though I was still sick. At the time, I thought it was a friendly ghost. I later rationalized that maybe I was hearing a family member through the heating ducts. But what I realized years later, when I had a dog, was that it had sounded exactly like a big dog sleeping next to the bed. So now I'm 50/50 on whether a ghost dog came to visit me, or my own dog time-traveled back about 10 years before she was born to comfort me."
15. "I was driving home from work after picking up my baby late at night. Not many cars were around out on the country roads. The one stoplight out there was red for me, so I stopped. It turned green, and I had a sudden voice or thought or whatever in my head that said, 'Don't go yet!'"
"Nothing was coming, and I was still sitting at the green light. Right as I let off the brake, a semitruck came flying through his red light. I was totally shaken!"
16. "I’ve had extremely vivid dreams of relatively inconsequential moments in my future life that I, nonetheless, keep locked away in a little corner of my head. Then, when those moments actually occur, I get wild déjà vu that throws me off until I remember the dreams. It’s a very bizarre thing."
17. "My siblings and I all had the same dream on the same night a year ago. It was exactly one year after our mom had died, and we all had a dream about her that took place in the same location. In our dream, she reassured us that she was okay."
"The next day, we all realized we had had the exact same dream — we all even independently drew pictures of the place we saw her and wrote down the name of the place it resembled."
18. "We had a cat when I was a kid, and we knew it had kittens, since it was pregnant for a while and then wasn't. We had no idea where the kittens were, which was an issue. I was curious about it and looked right at the cat, thinking to myself, Where are your kittens? but without saying anything, if that makes sense."
"My imagination immediately went to the location. I KNEW they were around. I dashed over there, mounted a stone pillar, and peered through a gap in the floorboards. The kittens were right in front of me. I've never experienced another event like it in my entire life."
19. "Early into my relationship with my wife, I had a dream about her in childbirth. Very vivid, and long. Like, I spent days in the hospital with her, and everything was in a strange twilight. When it came time to deliver, things went very wrong, and she and the baby ended up passing away. I woke up quite shaken, naturally, but brushed it off. I am a nurse and have had to deal with traumatic OB situations before, and I chalked it up to me dealing with that stress through a dream."
"Six years later and my wife is pregnant; I have forgotten the dream by now. I get a call late into the third trimester while I am on shift. My wife is going to the ER for a bad BP. I get off my shift and go to meet her. As soon as I step into the room, I remember my dream. It's the same damn room (which is extra spooky because the hospital we were at wasn't even built when I had the dream).
"My wife is admitted, and the doctors want to wait a week to deliver if possible, so she will be kept in a twilight state until that time. Come showtime, my wife gets ready to begin pushing, and it's exactly the same scenario as my dream. Things start going poorly, but the doctor thinks delivery is still possible, but at this point, I finally freak out into full panic and demand a C-section for my wife.
"As I'm in the OR, I see my baby come out lifeless. They do everything they can and manage to resuscitate her. In the meantime, my wife is doing poorly and they are scrambling to control her bleeding. I follow the baby out, knowing there's really nothing I can do. Baby gets life-flighted to another hospital, but before we go, I see my wife stable and headed to the ICU. Both my wife and baby are critical but alive.
"Today, they are both thriving, and my baby is 16 months and just a tornado of energy. I don't know that they would be alive if not for that dream and how it caused me to freak out and demand a change in plan."
20. "One night I woke up and needed to pee, and when I went back to my room, there was a thing next to my bed. I remember it was very dark and spindly (shaped almost like Gollum), and its legs bent backward and it seemed to have wisps of shadow coming off of it. I just stared at it for a few seconds before a woman's voice told me, 'This isn't for you to see. You should go get a glass of water.'"
"So I listened. I was in the kitchen, now awake enough to think it through, and convinced myself that it was our black fluffy cat. But when I went back to my room, I saw that my parents' door was closed and remembered that they'd taken the cat in with them. So then I assumed I'd just dreamed it. Well, when I got back to my room, the book that I'd been reading before bed and had left on the pillow next to me was sitting in the middle of my bedroom floor."
21. "It was a bright afternoon, and I was home alone getting ready for my brother's hockey game. As I was finishing up in the bathroom mirror, I saw something inexplicable to my left in my brother's room. The figure of a tall, lanky man — easily 7 feet tall — appeared at the side of my brother's bed and swiftly walked to the other side of the room, out of my line of sight."
"I could only perceive the figure's silhouette and identified a wide-brimmed fedora and a long nose. Otherwise, he was completely pitch black: void of light, the blackest black I have ever perceived. Confused, I walked into my brother's room, questioning whether I was really home alone. Of course, no one was there. I felt that sinking feeling in my stomach and asked my brother later that night if he ever saw someone in his room. He said no. Months later, I told a friend about what I saw and she said, 'Oh, that's the Hat Man. People all over the world have seen him.' I looked it up on Google Images, and yes, it was the Hat Man."
22. "I had a phase in my mid-teens when I would read the obituaries in the local newspaper. I saw a name that was familiar because it was the same as a family friend. I didn't say anything to my parents, since I figured they already knew."
"A few days later, my mom told me he died and I said I knew because I saw his obituary. She said, 'He died last night in his sleep.' I went back through the newspapers (my mom kept them for a week before throwing them out), but the obituary wasn't there. This was almost 40 years ago and I still think about it."
23. "When I was 15, my family had all gone to the beach (I didn’t like the beach, so they let me stay), so they were gone for the weekend. On Friday at around 1 a.m., I was logging off my PlayStation and heading to bed. My room was right beside the kitchen, and at around 5 a.m., I heard the pots and pans moving around, so I go out to look. On the stove, there was a pot with water boiling. I turned that off and ran outside with my dog."
24. "As I got out of bed one morning, I had a premonition that I'd be involved in a car accident on the way to work. It was a very strange thought, and I considered taking an alternate route but did not. As I got onto the highway, it was raining and a car flew past me, hydroplaned, and slammed into my car."
25. "I had a sort of demonic mask on my shelf, and one day while I was working at my desk no more than 4 feet away from it, it just flew off the shelf and shattered on the floor."
"It didn't just fall off the shelf; it was as if someone threw it across the room. The baffling part to me is that I was the one who made the mask, so I know it's not cursed by some voodoo hex or something."
26. "When I was walking to class in college, I went to cross a busy street and a hand grabbed my shoulder (quite hard) and stopped me. A car zoomed by that would’ve killed me. Nobody was behind me or anywhere close enough to have stopped me..."
27. "Three years ago, I was across the country staying at my parents' house, driving back from a friend's house with my now-wife. As we drew near, there was some type of bundle in the middle of the road."
"I stopped and pulled off to move it, and it turned out to be a barred owl that got clipped by a car. Long story short, I spent the rest of that night getting the owl into a puppy cage, gave it some food and water, and the next day, I dropped it off at a wildlife rescue center.
"I got home the next week, all the way across the country (New Jersey to Oregon). I stepped outside, and there was a barred owl sitting on my fence watching me. It was gone by the time I got back."
28. "When I was a kid (around 6 years old), I lived in a very arid area, and a wide field of red dirt was between my house and my bud's. Every day, walking over there, when I got about halfway across, I'd pick up a dirt clod or a small rock and toss it behind me over my shoulder. About 10 seconds later, it would come flying back over my head and land in front of me. I'd just grin and keep walking."
"I remember this really distinctly, even trying to replicate it later in childhood after I'd moved away, and being sad that it didn't 'work' anymore. Didn't question it as a kid, but looking back, it was just really weird."
29. "Our 17-year-old dog was euthanized last year, and I miss her every day. After she passed, I purged the house of all her stuff so I could donate it to a local shelter. The other day I was in my room, and I started thinking about her and cried some. I looked at her picture for a while, then noticed some piece of paper on the floor. It was a receipt from the pet shop two years ago for dog treats."
30. And lastly: "One night, I had a dream about my grandpa, who had died almost 20 years prior. My family and I were in his home, and he kept telling me, 'We need to clean the house; we need to get the house ready.' When I asked him why, he just said, 'She’s coming home!' My grandma, his wife of 50 years, died the next day."
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.