[SPEAKER_00]: What's the scariest thing that you've seen but no one believes you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Story one I was 15 years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in Los Angeles for a convention in a Disney land trip.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a large group of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: My best friend and I were sitting next to each other on the bus.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we were driving from the airport, both my friend and I watched two people exit a house on the corner.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them started to run and the other pulled a pistol out and shot him down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then shot him again.
[SPEAKER_00]: We both looked at each other thinking,
[SPEAKER_00]: We told some adults on the trip and they told us we had not seen that and that it never happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Update, it was February 16th, 2005.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our flight left at three something in the morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: The flight not being long from northern California.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we got on the bus, big like a greyhound from the airport, everyone fell asleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was still dark out.
[SPEAKER_00]: My best friend and I were not tired.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gunshots were not loud.
[SPEAKER_00]: I grew up around guns.
[SPEAKER_00]: The two adults we told were not our parents, but chaperones.
[SPEAKER_00]: They acted like we were crazy, but we know what we saw.
[SPEAKER_00]: To this day, I feel like they were dumb adults.
[SPEAKER_00]: No iPhones, we took all our pictures for the trip on disposable cameras and Nikons.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were headed to the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress Youth Day.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were not religious, but went for the Disneyland trip.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got to Miss School and go to Disneyland.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seemed worth sitting through a day of stuff we had no attachment to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 2.
[SPEAKER_00]: About a year ago, I was up watching movies late at night, when I got hungry and went downstairs for a snack.
[SPEAKER_00]: My room is across from my daughter's room, and her door was open.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I was coming back upstairs, I started turning left toward my room when I heard clear as ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Daddy, can you close the door?
[SPEAKER_00]: I turned around, did not say much, and just closed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once I was back in my room, I laid down to watch television when it hit me that my daughter was not there.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was spending the night at my parents' place.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got up and went to her room and sure enough it was empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: I woke up my wife and she thought I was crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said I was probably tired and maybe it was the television.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember the voice so clearly and it was coming from the direction of her room.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is very possible that it was just my head playing games, but it definitely made me
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 3 My wife and I were driving up through northern Arizona on Highway 89 between Flagstaff and Page.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was about 1 a.m. as we were on 3rd shift at the time and often drove at night to avoid traffic.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw a few sets of eyes glowing in my headlights, a little ways up the road, so I let off the gas, slowing down to avoid hitting an animal in the road.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we drove by, we saw several dogs, maybe coyotes, on the side of the road, and I hit the gas and drove past.
[SPEAKER_00]: After we passed, my wife said one of them was running next to the car, and I looked over and saw it as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably 20 feet off the shoulder of the road.
[SPEAKER_00]: I floored it and looked over and it stood up on its hind legs that is the only way I can describe it and kept pace with us for a couple of seconds before turning away from the road and disappearing.
[SPEAKER_00]: This whole event probably lasted no more than 10 seconds but it was seriously the most terrifying 10 seconds of my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was probably 20 years ago and we still rarely talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 4, about four years ago now, I was at work late dealing with some closing issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: It took longer than usual, so I ended up being the last to leave because it was pretty late around 8pm.
[SPEAKER_00]: My place of work is not in the middle of nowhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nor is it in a bad part of town.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is in a normal nice area, but it is usually abandoned after 7pm.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I got outside, I hopped in my car and prepared to pull out into the street.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I stopped and looked both ways, I suddenly noticed two figures standing to my left on the sidewalk.
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing is, they were both dressed in whitish body suits from head to toe, and were rapidly approaching my car, headed straight for the driver's door, with little room to mistake their intent, whatever the end goal might have been.
[SPEAKER_00]: I slam the gas and turn down the street as fast as I could.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mirror showed them both moving my way on foot, which alarmed me since I live in the nearby neighborhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: Barely a five minute walk from there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not think beyond getting home and locking the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody else was on the street near the parking lot or anywhere nearby.
[SPEAKER_00]: My town is not known for dangerous types or strange behavior, but that moment terrified me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two strangers in head to toe body suits.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not Halloween and they looked suspicious as hell, but nobody else saw them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 5
[SPEAKER_00]: One time our family dog ran away.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was extremely shy and scared very easily, since we got him from an animal testing lab.
[SPEAKER_00]: We gathered all friends and family we could get our hands on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And shortly after he disappeared, there were numerous search parties all together about two dozen people looking for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: After a whole day of searching without any sign of the dog, the sun was slowly setting, and I was standing on the edge of the forest where I had searched and called for him all day.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I suddenly saw a deer about 15 meters from me staring directly into my eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: We stared at each other for at least a minute, no movement, and no sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I asked in a soothing voice, if it had happened to come across a lost beagle, I swear to God to this day, the deer nodded and looked down at the ground where it was standing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then it jumped away into the woods.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought to myself that I had just imagined that nod, and that the dog could not possibly be sitting next to a deer without making any noise.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I could not not check, and yes, there he was, sitting in the exact spot, scared to death, and shaking with fear.
[SPEAKER_00]: I gasped and cutled the dog, took him in my arms and looked into the woods where the deer had disappeared, and there it was again, staring directly at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had tears of joy and felt unbelievably grateful while at the same time completely confused.
[SPEAKER_00]: Since that day I have never eaten deer again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 6 When I was about 15 years old on a school night, I woke up in the middle of the
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to the kitchen to make some hot tea to take back to bed with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our kitchen was attached to the dining room, which was one step down from the kitchen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And both rooms had large sliding glass doors and big windows facing the backyard, all on the same wall.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cabinets and counter where we kept the tea were opposite the wall of windows, forming a small corner.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember walking into the kitchen with the lights off, going to the tea corner, and then standing there looking at the windows and sliding glass doors, when I suddenly felt like someone was watching me through them.
[SPEAKER_00]: That deep gut feeling you cannot ignore.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stood there very still for about a minute, thinking maybe they would not see me if I did not move, and then I went back to my room without making the tea.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I got back to my room, the clock read five in the morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had been standing in the kitchen for three and a half hours, and I had no idea how that was possible because it felt like maybe a minute had passed.
[SPEAKER_00]: To this day, it is still the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom never believed me when I told her, because she said she never felt anything bad in our house, and neither had I, but that night I absolutely did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story seven, I was once waiting for the Metro in Shanghai when I saw a woman in tears frantically run past me.
[SPEAKER_00]: She suddenly stopped in her tracks and seemed to be searching for a train on either platform, but there was none coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was yelling something, but I did not speak the language, so I had no idea what she was saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: She then ran into a nearby bathroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: About 30 seconds later, two men in ordinary clothes came barreling down the escalator, shouting something I could not understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: They began walking up and down the platform yelling and then went into the same bathroom the woman had run into.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few seconds later, they emerged dragging the woman away as she screamed, cried, and fought desperately to get free.
[SPEAKER_00]: The men kept shouting back at her, shaking her violently and striking the back of her head, while forcibly carrying her up the stairs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone on the platform just stared with their mouse open, but no one did a thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mirror seconds later, the entire scene was over, and people went back to staring at their phones as if whatever that was had not just
[SPEAKER_00]: My sister saw something on several occasions throughout our lives, while I never actually saw anything myself and only heard something extremely vividly.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night everything was normal, my mom was out with her friends watching a game, and my dad was watching a movie with my sister and me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a comedy so we all went to bed laughing about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: About half an hour after we were tucked in, I was lying in bed reading a book when I heard someone stomping down the hallway downstairs and then sprinting up the stairs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I assumed it was my sister coming back from getting a drink but I would have seen her leave her rooms since our doors are right next to each other and the staircase is just around the corner.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I thought it must be my mom coming home and being unusually loud.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way my door's angled, let's be see anyone who comes up the stairs.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I watched and waited as the footsteps grew closer.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the moment they reached the top, they completely stopped.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got up to check, turn the corner, and found nobody there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Immediately covered head to toe in goose bumps.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not even two seconds later I heard my sister screaming as she ran out of her room with terror on her face, and without hesitation we ran into my dad's room where he was already standing and asking what was wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: My sister pointed back toward her room crying and said there was a man in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad rushed into the hallway, turned on the lights, checked her room, the closet, my room, and then the rest of the house but found nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: He even called my mom, who confirmed she was still out with her friends, and we could hear the loud bar atmosphere through the phone.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all slept in my dad's room that night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the next seven or so years, my sister repeatedly ran out of her room, crying about the same man standing in the corner watching her, describing him as a very tall man, wearing a top hat and a trench coat, like a detective, completely black.
[SPEAKER_00]: A couple of years later, I came across what is known as the top hat demon, or the Phantom Hat man, and discovered it is a recognized phenomenon, with descriptions and drawings that matched exactly what my sister had described that night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story Nine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was about four years old, visiting my great grandmother in New Jersey.
[SPEAKER_00]: She made a bed for me to sleep on in the living room.
[SPEAKER_00]: I fell asleep easily, but at some point during the night I woke up and saw my great grandfather.
[SPEAKER_00]: He sat on the edge of my bed, smiled, padded my leg, and then stood up.
[SPEAKER_00]: He put his jacket on and walked out the front door.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had been dead for longer than I had been alive, and I had never met him.
[SPEAKER_00]: The adults the next morning all laughed at the silly kid with a big imagination.
[SPEAKER_00]: At my grandma's request I described exactly what he was wearing, a flannel shirt, suspenders,
[SPEAKER_00]: a generic description of any grandpa for the last 100 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone was still giggling at my cute story, but when I got up to show her how he snatches Jacket from the hook by the door and slung it on in one smooth motion, I turned around smiling only to see her completely pale with tears running down her cheeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone got really quiet and we never talked about it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: She knew I had seen him and no one else's opinion matters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Edit, quite quiet indeed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 10 I was working at a bakery on third shift from eight in the evening to four in the morning at a local orchard.
[SPEAKER_00]: The store closed at eight but it was not unheard of for the owners to come in after closing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had been working there for about a week at that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was out stalking the shelves near the end of my shift, so it was probably around three in the morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: I turned to take something off the rack, and there was a man standing by the cold case.
[SPEAKER_00]: He looked to be in his late 40s or early 50s, balled thinned to average build, wearing a red flannel shirt tucked into jeans.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said hello and asked how I was doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I replied that I was doing well and asked how he was,
[SPEAKER_00]: I put the bread on the shelf and turned to ask who he was or introduced myself, and he was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had only turned away for a few seconds, so there was no way he could have left my line of sight without me seeing him, and I never heard any doors open or closed to indicate he had left or gone elsewhere in the store.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told my mom when I got home because I wondered if someone had broken in, and whether I wanted to work somewhere, people could just walk in undetected.
[SPEAKER_00]: She asked me more about it, and I told her it was strange because he was just standing there looking at a covered cold case where he could not even see what was inside, and he did not seem like he was trying to steal anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: She told me it was probably just the owner.
[SPEAKER_00]: I met the owner a few days later and he was not the man I had seen that night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nor was it anyone who worked there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I later heard from co-workers that the owner was still running the place because his son, who was supposed to take over the business, had died of cancer.
[SPEAKER_00]: That night after work I went home and looked up the sun's obituary online and I swear it was the exact man I had seen standing in the store.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 11 I grew up living in an old house in a small town and quite a few strange things
[SPEAKER_00]: The first thing I remember being especially creepy was waking up in the middle of the night when I was six years old and desperately needing to use the bathroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: I climbed down from the top bunk bed and turned to see an old man sitting in a rocking chair by the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tried to wake my sister in the bottom bunk, but she would not wake up and felt almost like dead weight.
[SPEAKER_00]: I eventually gathered the courage to run past the man and out the door,
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad later told us he also felt something was wrong with the house because he would hear kids playing and laughing when he got ready for work early in the morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: He woke up around four in the morning and usually left around five thirty and one morning he heard laughing coming from the hallway near the kitchen.
[SPEAKER_00]: When he went to check, thinking it was one of us kids, he saw someone run around the far corner toward the living room.
[SPEAKER_00]: He followed only to end up back in the kitchen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when he checked our rooms, we were all sound asleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom also said she would sometimes see someone staring at her out of the corner of her eye when she was alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Knowing all of this when we got older, we would sometimes try to scare friends who came over.
[SPEAKER_00]: One day a friend brought her Furby, this was the late 1990s, and we were playing with it in the bedroom when it started acting strange, sounding distorted like the batteries were dying.
[SPEAKER_00]: It shut off with its eyes closed and would not respond anymore, so I told her we had batteries downstairs.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we were leaving the room with the Furby in hand, it suddenly popped its eyes
[SPEAKER_00]: One time I was working at a used car dealership.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the sidelot, there was a huge sliding door that led into the car base where we worked on vehicles.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night I got off really late after dropping some cars at an auction, picking another one up and having to drop it off before going home.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was almost 10 at night and the street was dark and quiet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked toward the side gate and saw lights and shadows under the sliding door and around the door lights.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they looked like people were dancing and moving around.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started walking toward it and heard voices.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a party was going on back there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was really strange because the way the building was set up would not allow lights or shadows from nearby buildings to cast anything in that area.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got closer to take a look and went over to a small rectangular opening about four inches by five inches, cut out so you could reach in to unlock and lock the gate.
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked inside and it was pitch black and completely silent, exactly how it should have been.
[SPEAKER_00]: I took a few steps back away from the opening and again saw the lights, shadows and heard the talking.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went back to the opening and once again it was totally dark and silent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got into my car and started driving away and saw the lights and shadows again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told my boss to check the cameras and he said he did not see anything unusual, but he did see my shadow under the door when I walked by to check it.
[SPEAKER_00]: story 13.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is not that people do not believe me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is more that I hardly believe it myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was late, probably between one and three in the morning, and I was sitting at an intersection waiting for the light to turn green.
[SPEAKER_00]: Across from me was a dark road with trees on both sides, thick woods to the left, and houses to the right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was sitting there listening to music when I saw something move at the edge of the woods to the left.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is rural New Jersey, so things moving in the woods are usually bears or deer, which are not scary, but deer can seriously damage your car if they run out in front of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I turned on my high beams to see what it was, but they did not reach the woods.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw more movement just before the light turned green, made my left turn, and drove off without ever seeing what it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next day I drove the same route on my way to work, and when I reached that intersection, there were police cars and an ambulance at the edge of the woods, where I had seen the movement the night before.
[SPEAKER_00]: I asked a coworker what had happened, and he told me they had found dismembered body parts there
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 14, I was driving with my girlfriend through Wisconsin on the way back home.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was really late around 2 or 3 in the morning, and I stopped at a gas station to fill up.
[SPEAKER_00]: My navigation ended up putting me on a small highway instead of the expressway right away after leaving, but I did not want to complicate things further, so I just followed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: My girlfriend was sleeping, so I had the radio off in drove in silence on this dark, unsettling highway.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were deer crossing signs so I was driving extra carefully because a family friend had recently hit a deer with her truck, which caused major damage and broke her arm from the impact.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw a sharp curve coming up and slowed down to take it safely, and as I was turning I saw a figure emerge from the darkness of the woods.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a large mountain line with blood smeared all over the front of its face and it scared me badly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pulled over just after the turn and tried to wake my girlfriend.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could see it's large shadow crossing the road in my rear view mirror, but by the time she woke up it was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had lived in Wisconsin most of her life and immediately dismissed what I said.
[SPEAKER_00]: Insisting it could not have been a mountain line because they are not common in that area.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told her I knew what I saw, but she insisted I was imagining things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I eventually acted like she was probably right and continued the drive home, but I know exactly what I saw.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 15 I was deer hunting with a friend on some property my uncle owns in a very remote area.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is right off a main road with only a couple of trailer homes along it and to reach the tree stand it is about a 20 minute walk up and down hills through thick forest.
[SPEAKER_00]: To paint a clear picture at the base of the last hill is our two-person tree stand,
[SPEAKER_00]: But the land narrows to about 60 feet, forming a small peninsula with the rest of the lake behind it.
[SPEAKER_00]: About 45 minutes before sunrise, we started hearing knocking sounds from the tip of the peninsula that sounded like mailed deer fighting with their antlers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we got excited thinking there were at least two bucks out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we heard knocking from the other end of the peninsula as well, which made no sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Since that would mean four bucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: The knocking continued for a few minutes and got closer, and then we realized it was far too precise to be dear.
[SPEAKER_00]: When one knock came from the right, a single knock came from the left, when one knocked twice the other did the same, they were mimicking each other perfectly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It could not have been an echo because they were spaced too far apart.
[SPEAKER_00]: The timing was not instant, and the volume was the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the next few minutes, the knocking sounds move closer together, and then for about 10 minutes, there was nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly, we heard what sounded like an animal dying on the peninsula.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a wounded dog yelping, followed by a loud thud, and then silence.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stood up in yelled, asking who was out there, and immediately heard the most blood curdling sound I have ever heard in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It started as a deep growl, and turned into a high raspy howl that made my blood run cold.
[SPEAKER_00]: My friend and I both shouted at the same time, asking what that was, and I yelled again telling it to get out of there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever it was, howled one more time and ran through the woods, and I swear I could feel its footsteps.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was bipedal, and I know what a running deer sounds like, because I grew up hunting and tracking, and this was not that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It crashed through cat tails at the edge of the lake, and into the forest, and because it was winter with no leaves, we could see how fast it moved through deep mud and vegetation.
[SPEAKER_00]: We did not say a word as we climbed down one at a time while the other aimed their gun toward the sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we walked out backward.
[SPEAKER_00]: We left and tried calling everyone we knew, but as college aged kids, nobody was awake and nobody believed us.
[SPEAKER_00]: That afternoon I went back alone to look for tracks in the mud where we saw it run.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I reached the cat tails, it was clear something had already been there.
[SPEAKER_00]: A large branch had been dragged over the area, wiping away the footprints and was lying nearby.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have been back maybe twice since then.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has been about five years and I am always armed and never go alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 16.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was in El Salvador, we went to visit my grandpa up in the mountains.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were a lot of rumors that a dried upstream next to my grandpa's house was haunted, that you could hear the cries of the dead and see the devil walking there at night.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not think much of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That day we left the city very late, and to get there we had to walk because there were not many roads to drive on.
[SPEAKER_00]: So by the time we finally arrived it was about two in the morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: My grandpa was about to open the door to the house when we turned off the lamps.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the dried upstream with its rocks and the surrounding mountains lit by the moonlight.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was looking around when I suddenly saw a figure near a tree and thought it was probably a drunk guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then it did something that made my blood run cold.
[SPEAKER_00]: It stood up extremely tall, blacker than the night itself, and started moving from left to right in a strange way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could not believe it, so I touched my cousin and asked him if he saw the thing by the tree, and he reacted in shock and flashed the light, and there was absolutely nothing there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Throughout the night I felt deeply uneasy, I eventually fell asleep, and later that morning around five in the morning a bunch of crows were making noise, along with what sounded like hooves hitting rocks in the stream.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started crying because I was very young.
[SPEAKER_00]: The houses there are made of clay and tree trunks, so you can sometimes see through the walls, and that night trauma ties me.
[SPEAKER_00]: My grandpa acted strange through all of this, trying to reassure me that nothing was wrong, but it felt suspicious because he slept with a rifle next to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 17, I am returning from a long Reddit break to share this.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was in college, I was hanging out in a friend's room when he said he and his roommate needed to move their cars to different lots, which would take about 45 minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I decided to stay and watch some television.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few minutes after they left, I noticed a digital video disc in a clear case labeled Mossolium.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember watching the creepiest movie I have ever seen, British, disturbing scenes, wearables, mental asylum, a soundtrack that sounded like a haunted calliope, constant shifts in perspective, in time periods between the present and the 1700s.
[SPEAKER_00]: Filmed entirely in black and white, grotesque human sacrifice, and horrific death scenes.
[SPEAKER_00]: actor speaking directly to the camera in long monologues, a scene of a serial killer explaining who his next victims would be and why, which deeply shook me and repeated colored cutaways of flowers blooming and wilting on top of headstones.
[SPEAKER_00]: I shut the movie off before it finished, stood up, and realized it was daylight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both my friend and his roommate were back.
[SPEAKER_00]: I woke them up and they asked how I got inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: Saying I had not been there when they returned, and that I did not answer my phone.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we went to take the disc out of the player, it was empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: They claimed they had never heard of or seen it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have spent decades trying to make sense of this, have endured nightmares and occasional flashbacks, and have even brought it up in therapy with no answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still wonder if anyone else has seen or heard of this presumed independent film or experienced something similar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 18, I was working a late shift at a convenience store, and almost nobody came in from about 1045 until we closed at midnight.
[SPEAKER_00]: The store was very small and from behind the counter I was about six feet from the front door with two security monitors directly above it showing different camera angles on a loop, including the back room, just outside the front door, the parking lot, the shed and the coolers.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was working alone, just me and my phone, and around 11 o'clock, nobody had come in for about 20 minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I glanced up at the monitors and saw the angle of the parking lot, which showed someone's back as they entered the front door.
[SPEAKER_00]: And since it was dark outside, the cameras were the easiest way to see if a customer was coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: When that angle came up, I saw a man from behind entering the store, a black man, not
[SPEAKER_00]: I immediately glanced down at the front door beneath the monitors, and nobody was there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought it was a glitch or an old recording replaying, so I watched through another full camera cycle, which took about 45 seconds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Halfway through that cycle, the door swung open in a young man stepped inside, a black man, not very tall, wearing a letter jacket and holding a grocery bag in his right hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: The strangest part was that he did not buy anything, he just looked around for a minute, and then left.
[SPEAKER_00]: I assume my mind was playing tricks on me, but I was completely shaken and never worked another night shift there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 19, I have told a story a few times to friends, and it never fails to give me goosebumps.
[SPEAKER_00]: During my sophomore year of high school, my girlfriend and I were heading to a school dance in a small Texas town, where my graduating class had about 120 students.
[SPEAKER_00]: She picked me up since I was 15 and not driving yet, and after dinner we realized we had about an hour to kill.
[SPEAKER_00]: We drove down some back roads near her house and she told me she had found the perfect make-out spot, and my teenage brain did not consider how illegal or dangerous it was to
[SPEAKER_00]: gravel for about 40 feet before turning to dirt that was overgrown with grass.
[SPEAKER_00]: Clearly unused for years.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a field to the left, dense woods to the right, and three large gravel piles between us and the trees.
[SPEAKER_00]: She turned the car around to face the exit, shut it off, and we climbed into the back seat.
[SPEAKER_00]: About an hour later, as we were getting dressed to leave, she said she really had to use the bathroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I suddenly became aware of how isolated and dark the place was.
[SPEAKER_00]: As she slowly reached for the door handle, moving her hands so deliberately that it felt unreal, a sharp knocking sound came from the back of the car, unmistakably knuckles tapping on the trunk in a perfect rhythm for about 10 seconds.
[SPEAKER_00]: We froze, holding each other and barely breathing until the knocking stopped in everything when silent.
[SPEAKER_00]: When it started again after she spoke, I panicked, jumped into the front seat, started the car, locked the doors, turned on the headlights and sped out of there, gravel flying behind us as I drove like my life depended on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We stopped a couple of miles away at an electric plant, where she used the bathroom and I sat shaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next day of friend insisted we go back, and in the daylight we saw how completely
[SPEAKER_00]: Fresh boot prints led up to the back of the tire marks and disappeared into the brush.
[SPEAKER_00]: Months later after my girlfriend and I had broken up, I asked her if she ever thought about that night and she immediately shut the conversation down, saying she never wanted to think about it again, and that was the end of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 20.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a place called Apple Hill, a popular local attraction in the valley that is basically a cute family destination where people go to pick apples and other things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went there with my family when I was 11 years old, and my cousins, my sister and I, were busy picking raspberries and turned it into a competition to see who could collect the most berries.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were pretty spread out, and before I realized it, I was far away from everyone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was completely focused on picking berries and had no idea how distant I was from my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: When everything suddenly became very quiet, and I could barely hear their voices anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: A strong gust of wind suddenly pushed against my back, and when I turned around I noticed a small hut not too far away.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was too big to be a shed, but not large enough to be a house, and it looked extremely run down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember staring at it and feeling really uneasy when, out of nowhere, a black cat came up from behind me and rubbed against my leg.
[SPEAKER_00]: I panicked because the hut was already giving me the creeps, and now this random animal was right next to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cat did not back away like normal cats do, and showed no fear at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just looked up at me and stayed there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kept my eyes on the cat because something about it felt wrong, and then the strangest thing I have ever seen happened, something that is still incredibly vivid in my mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heavy winds started again in a small dust devil formed around the cat, and I could feel grains of sand brushing against me as I step back.
[SPEAKER_00]: The dust got thick for a moment, then cleared slightly and began to move.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cat was gone, and the dust devil slowly drifted toward the hut.
[SPEAKER_00]: It felt like the win was pushing me in its direction, and part of me wanted to follow it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The dust double floated straight into the HUD, and for reasons I still cannot explain, the HUD suddenly felt welcoming and inviting, like I wanted to go inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started walking toward it, but then heard my name being called.
[SPEAKER_00]: My sister and cousins had come looking for me, and when I told them what I had seen, nobody believed me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet at the same time none of them wanted to go anywhere near the hut because they all felt uneasy about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am not saying there is a witch at Apple Hill trying to kidnap kids, but I am also not saying there is not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 21
[SPEAKER_00]: I have experienced a few creepy things, most of which are usually explainable, but the clearest one happened a few years ago, and strangely it did not even feel threatening to me since I have always enjoyed the idea of ghosts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had just gotten out of the shower one evening, and it must have been winter because it was already dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: I live in a London suburb where houses are very close together and narrow, but the walls are thick, and I can barely hear my neighbors, and the house itself is fairly old.
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents were downstairs with the living room door closed, and the upstairs was completely silent, which was unusual because my mum normally leaves the radio on in their bedroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was drying my hair with a towel and went to put it away in my parents' room.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I opened the door and walked into the pitch black room.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I suddenly heard a woman's voice say, hello, sounding slightly posh and surprise, as if I had startled her.
[SPEAKER_00]: I froze, stared into the darkness, and replied hello as well, but there was no response.
[SPEAKER_00]: The voice sounded nothing like my mom or any of my neighbors, the radio was off, the double glazed windows were closed, and the house was completely quiet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stood there for about five minutes waiting to hear anything else, but there was nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The voice had been extremely clear and directional, and I could tell it came from the back left of the room near the wardrobe.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it truly was a ghost, I found the experience oddly comforting because she did not feel threatening at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom later suggested it might have been someone from a large family that lived there a century ago, and that somehow me opening the door had startled her, like I was the ghost instead.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that is the case, I almost feel bad for scaring her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 22, I have an uncle who used to go on weekend hunting trips completely alone, usually for squirrel hunting, and he would spend about three or four days at a time deep in the woods.
[SPEAKER_00]: About four years ago, he suddenly stopped going alone and came back early from one of his trips after claiming he saw a little boy running around and playing in the forest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Since then, he only hunts in larger groups of five or six people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Always sticks close to someone and never stays as long as he used to.
[SPEAKER_00]: The places he hunted were off road mountain areas, far from campsites or populated spots, and he had never run into anyone there in all his years of hunting.
[SPEAKER_00]: According to him, he was walking around looking for a good place to sit and wait, when he heard what sounded like a little boy laughing.
[SPEAKER_00]: He stopped, scanned the trees, and then briefly saw a boy run across a forested area in the distance.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was convinced it was a child because the figure was wearing a blue jacket and looked like it was playing some kind of game, like Hayden Seek.
[SPEAKER_00]: The site only lasted a few seconds before the boy vanished, but my uncle said he immediately felt something was wrong and turned around to leave.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was certain it was not campers or another hunter with a child, and given that hunting alone was something he had done his entire life without fear, it clearly affected him deeply.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do not know what he saw, but I believe that whatever it was changed him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 23.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have been a hunter in South Louisiana for as long as I can remember, basically since I could hold a gun, and I started hunting alone when I was about seven years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: One early morning, not long after I had begun going out by myself, around 5.30 in the morning, I heard an awful scream no more than about 20 yards away from me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only way I can describe it is that it sounded like a teenage girl being murdered.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first I convinced myself it was a screech hole, so I was not as scared as I probably should have been, and luckily I never actually saw what made the sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: About two weeks later, I was writing in our family vehicle with my parents when we saw this massive animal standing in the road.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was too big to be a dog, too small to be a bear.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I noticed the long tail in the face of a cat and realized it was a black panther.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few years after that, out of curiosity, some friends and I looked up different animal mating calls.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is when it finally hit me that I had been within about 20 yards of an angry, mating black Panther as a seven-year-old kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents have completely forgotten about the incident with the animal in the road, but it has burned into my memory, especially since for years the Louisiana government has denied that black Panthers are present in the state.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 24.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was upstairs in my house playing on my computer while my wife was out for the night with her sisters when my dogs suddenly started going crazy, which made me think my wife had pulled into the driveway.
[SPEAKER_00]: I waited to hear her come to the front door and walk inside, but instead my dogs just kept barking for a couple of minutes straight.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started to feel uneasy and decided to see what was going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dogs were at the top of the stairs, barking down toward the front door, and as I turn the corner to go downstairs, I saw a figure standing in the darkness and looking up the stairs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I yelled what the hell, and ran back into my office to grab my phone.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I did, my dogs completely lost it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Scrambleing backward on the wood floor like their feet could not get traction.
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked at them and watched their heads track something moving up the stairs, over the railing, and into the guest bedroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: They reposition themselves and stared into the bedroom, and their reactions terrified me.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dogs are normally absolute sweethearts, but my male dog Walter had his fangs out in a way I had never seen before, like a wolf, and my female dog Ellie, who was about nine months old at the time, was barking as hard as she could while literally peeing
[SPEAKER_00]: I stood there frozen trying to process what I was seeing when suddenly I heard a noise very similar to that strange buffering sound you hear in a car when only one or two windows are rolled down.
[SPEAKER_00]: That sound went on for about 15 seconds and when it stopped my dog stopped barking and ran into the guest room sniffing around like something had just vanished.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have had odd things happen in our house before, but this was by far the worst.
[SPEAKER_00]: What made the night even more upsetting was that when I called my wife and asked her to come home, she and her sisters mocked me for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: She believes me now, but at the time, it made the whole experience even worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 25.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love these kinds of questions, reading stories like these is honestly what made me become a Reddit user in the first place.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was even too scared to read a reply while nobody was home at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was little, my mom completely redecorated my bedroom with a teletubby steam because I was obsessed with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am talking about curtains, lamps, sheets, stickers, absolutely everything, and I even had gigantic lifelike pillows of each teletubby that I slept with every single night.
[SPEAKER_00]: I used to sleep with my door open because I was afraid of the dark, but one night I started seeing colorful figures, the size of those pillows standing in my doorway.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would scream and cry for my mom, and she would run in asking what was wrong, and I would
[SPEAKER_00]: She would reassure me it was nothing and lie with me until I fell back asleep, but it started happening every night.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kept seeing colorful figures or figures that looked exactly like the pillows standing in my doorway and I would panic every time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually my mom got rid of everything and gave it all to a family friend because this had never happened before.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she thought maybe the room itself was scaring me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And after that it never happened again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I honestly forgot all about it for years.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few years later, it came up in a conversation between my mom and me, and she reminded me what had happened and where all the teletubby stuff went.
[SPEAKER_00]: The family friend who took it had six people living in the house, including two people with special needs who could function normally in conversation, but had the mindset of children when it came to caring for themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom told me that after they brought my old teletubbies pillows and decorations into their house, strange things started happening there, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Especially in the basement, where one of the special needs girls had her bedroom, and where all my old stuff was placed.
[SPEAKER_00]: They began seeing figures, radios would turn on and off while unplugged.
[SPEAKER_00]: Televisions would change channels by themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Objects would be found moved when no one had touched them, and they would hear strange noises.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not long after, the house randomly caught on fire, and there was a little girl staying there at the time, who tragically died after running back into a closet while everyone was trying to get her out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had met her just days before she died, so the whole thing stuck with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know it probably had nothing to do with my old telatubbies things, but it has always felt strange to me that all of that began right after they brought my stuff into their home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 26, I was 19 years old, living in a small college town where there was not much to do besides waste time walking around Walmart, and sometimes we would deliberately try to scare ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: The town was known for having a high number of witches, so finding abandoned places and
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the easiest ways we found to scare ourselves was going down into the downtown sewers, which were big enough for about six people to walk shoulder to shoulder and slope down into ankle deep water.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was amazed down there with creepy graffiti, small chambers with altars, and sometimes even leftovers from sacrifices.
[SPEAKER_00]: And every now and then you would run into other groups and instinctively hide.
[SPEAKER_00]: The last time I ever went down there, I was with a group of five, and we had been exploring for about two hours when we heard another small group approaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: We hid behind a pile of rocks about four feet high and roughly ten feet wide, turned off our flashlights and waited.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could see firelight approaching from the tunnel we had come from, and hear sloshing footsteps getting louder.
[SPEAKER_00]: 3 people appeared, all dressed in black, and one of them was holding a flaming torch, giving off serious Indiana Jones temple vibes.
[SPEAKER_00]: They stopped about 20 feet from where we were hiding, and turned to face a concrete wall.
[SPEAKER_00]: While all five of us watched, the person with the torch walked up, placed his hand on the wall, and the wall folded inward, imparted for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounded loud and heavy, exactly how you would imagine a solid concrete door sounding, and it seemed mechanical, opening without any visible effort.
[SPEAKER_00]: The three people walked inside in the wall closed behind them.
[SPEAKER_00]: After standing there trying to understand what we had just seen, we went to the wall and found absolutely nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: No opening, no seams, no bends, not even a divot in the concrete.
[SPEAKER_00]: We felt along every inch of it and even tried to imitate what the man had done, but there was nothing there at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: We left without saying a word and to this day I have no idea what I saw,
[SPEAKER_00]: story 27.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was nine years old, I lived in a trailer with my mother, stepfather, brother and sister, and we were always scaring each other by jumping out from bedroom doorways when someone walked down the hall.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because of that, I was extremely jumpy and hated walking into my bedroom in the dark, so I would always reach in and flip the lights which on before stepping inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night, as I reached in to turn the light on, someone grabbed my hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: I screamed in pure terror and ran straight to the living room, convinced my brother or sister had been waiting to scare me.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I got there, my mom asked why I screamed, and I realized everyone, my brother, my sister, and my stepfather were already in the living room with her.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could not even explain what had happened and just started crying.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have seen things in my life that still make the hair on my next stand-up when I think about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was the only time there was physical contact.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something grabbed my hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not my imagination and it was not in my head.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am 46 years old now and even writing the still brings tears to my eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story.
[SPEAKER_00]: 28.
[SPEAKER_00]: We lived in a very large house surrounded by greenery enclosed by a compound wall.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the entire house, including the bedrooms, was on ground level.
[SPEAKER_00]: So our backyard ran directly along the outside of several rooms.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was a teenager, a black cat began appearing from nowhere every evening after twilight, sitting in our backyard right outside my bedroom window.
[SPEAKER_00]: I swear it used to smile when our eyes met and it was the most disturbing thing I have ever witnessed because I could clearly see all of its teeth.
[SPEAKER_00]: I eventually realized the cat only stayed until it could see me and smile at me and then it would leave.
[SPEAKER_00]: I panicked and told my mother, but she laughed it off and said I was being silly, and I could not prove anything because the cat never smiled in front of anyone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night my mother spoke to me in a frightened voice and told me I was right, that she had seen it smile at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had been in the kitchen directly across from my room and saw it clearly from a perfect angle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only that, but if I did not come out of my room, the cat would wait for hours just to see me and smile.
[SPEAKER_00]: After the night my mother witnessed it, the cat never returned.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mother knows what she saw, even if we can never prove it to anyone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have had many strange experiences since childhood, but this one still deeply unsettles me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 29.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to start by saying that I do not believe in supernatural things, and usually rely on logic, reason, and evidence.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this experience genuinely frightened me.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a trailer right on the edge of my property line that gets rented out from time to time, and one winter the tenants moved out and left a blue light on in the back bedroom, shining through the blinds.
[SPEAKER_00]: I take my dog outside every night, so I saw that blue light for three straight nights, even after the landlords came by to inspect and clean the place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Months passed and the lights stayed on every single night without fail, becoming the only thing to look at from my backyard.
[SPEAKER_00]: After nearly six months of seeing it, curiosity finally got the better of me, and I walked closer, noticing the blinds were damaged enough to see through.
[SPEAKER_00]: I realized the blue glow was from a television left on the AV-1 input screen, and inside the room I could see plastic covering the floor in a broken doll lying there, which gave me an overwhelming sense of dread.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went inside, tried to distract myself with television and eventually fell asleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Around four in the morning, I woke up with bright blue light in my eyes and realized my own television was on the exact same AV1 blue screen, even though that had never happened before and has never happened since.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next night terrified to even go outside.
[SPEAKER_00]: I finally did to let my dog out and saw that the blue light in the trailer was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: After nearly six months of shining every night, it disappeared the same night my own room had been glowing blue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 30, I have had some strange and scary things happen to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this one stands out more than anything else because it involved my child.
[SPEAKER_00]: When my son was about four years old, we lived in a three-bedroom apartment.
[SPEAKER_00]: His room was at the beginning of the hallway near the living room, and mine was at the very end, with my bedroom door directly across from the main bathroom, and my bed facing the doorway, which meant I could clearly see whether the bathroom door was open or closed.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night after my son had been asleep for a couple of hours, I was lying in bed reading when I suddenly got that unsettling feeling that something was watching me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked up and saw the outline of my son standing in the hallway just outside the glow of my lamp since the hallway light was off.
[SPEAKER_00]: In his sweetest voice he said, I love you, mommy, and then turned and walked into the bathroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: I heard the bathroom door close, but I did not see the light turn on underneath it, so I got out of bed to help him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I opened the bathroom door and flipped on the light, but the bathroom was completely empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: I immediately went to his room and found him fast asleep, tangled in his blankets in a way that a four-year-old could not possibly fake in a matter of seconds.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea what was standing in my hallway that night, but it was not my son, and I still have no rational explanation for it, and it creeps me out to this day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 31.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a restaurant manager, and one night while closing, I went into the dining room to check whether the server was almost finished sweeping the floors.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I walked down the hallway and stepped into the dining room, I saw the server standing completely frozen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I followed his gaze to the exit door that led to the parking lot, which had blinds on it, and the cord used to raise and lower the blinds was sticking straight out horizontally as if someone were holding it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I froze staring at it for what felt like a full minute trying to understand how that cord could possibly be positioned like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I finally said, what the hell?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the server snapped out of it and looked at me with white eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: We made eye contact, both clearly thinking the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we look back at the door just as the blind cord wiggled slightly and suddenly dropped, smacking loudly against the glass.
[SPEAKER_00]: We both ran back into the kitchen yelling and trying to explain what we had seen to the cooks, who were confused and laughed it off.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we brought them out to look, the cord was hanging normally like nothing had ever happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both the server and I have told the story countless times, but no one believes us even though I swear there is no natural explanation for what we saw that night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 32, about two years ago, when my son was about four and a half years old, he created an imaginary friend named Blossie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Blossie was a purple cube who drove an invisible rainbow car was four years old and had a sister.
[SPEAKER_00]: He came into existence while I was pregnant with our daughter, and even after she was born, Blossie remained part of my son's life.
[SPEAKER_00]: About six months later, my son turned five, and we threw him a big birthday party with friends and family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Three days after his birthday, which I remember clearly because it was also my birthday, we were putting him to bed when he suddenly became extremely upset and inconsolable.
[SPEAKER_00]: He kept saying that Blossie's light had gone out and that it could not be turned back on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing we said could calm him or convince him that Blossie was okay and after a long time he finally cried himself to sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two days later, we found my father-in-law dead in the shower, the result of an aortic dissection.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had survived one year's earlier, but the repair had failed, and because the heat was on, and cold water had been running over his body for an unknown amount of time, the corner listed the day we found him as the official date of death.
[SPEAKER_00]: After going through messages, work responsibilities and unfinished tasks, it became very clear that he had actually died the same night, Blossys Light went out.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had not told anyone about the imaginary friend or that moment until after his death.
[SPEAKER_00]: So no one really believes us.
[SPEAKER_00]: My son was very close to his grandfather, and it has been an incredibly difficult time for him, losing both his grandfather and his imaginary friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now he tells us that Blossie is on Saturn with his ban, which feels especially meaningful since my son is obsessed with space, and my father-in-law always told him that Saturn was his favorite planet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 33
[SPEAKER_00]: Years ago, a friend and I were taking a road trip to Santa Cruz and entered the address for the boardwalk into my garment.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were both unfamiliar with the area and relied completely on the device for directions.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was driving, and the longer we followed it, the stranger had felt, because the garment kept directing us deeper into a forest.
[SPEAKER_00]: At one point I had my friend double-check the address to make sure it was correct, and it was, but the garment still kept leading us farther in.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am naturally terrible with directions, so I assumed maybe we would somehow come out near the coast.
[SPEAKER_00]: After about 30 minutes, the Garmin directed us down a winding one-lane road that dropped toward the bottom of a valley.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could not even see the valley floor because the trees were so dense, and the road went on forever with sharp switchbacks.
[SPEAKER_00]: By then I knew we were going the wrong way, but there was nowhere safe to turn around.
[SPEAKER_00]: After driving down that dark unsettling road for what felt like an eternity, we finally reached the valley floor and the place felt completely wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: It looked like an abandoned mining site with huge rusted equipment and trash blowing across the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: The garment announced that we had reached our destination.
[SPEAKER_00]: My friend and I just stared at each other, confused and uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: because neither of us wanted to be there at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I turn the car around to head back up, a man stepped out of one of the abandoned buildings, looking like someone straight out of deliverance, holding what looked like a pipe, and staring intensely at our cars I sped away.
[SPEAKER_00]: The drive back out was tense until we finally escaped the forest.
[SPEAKER_00]: We eventually made it to the boardwalk and met up with friends who lived nearby, but they had no idea what road we were talking about, and thought we were exaggerating how creepy the whole experience was.
[SPEAKER_00]: story 34.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just outside a scouting summer camp I used to attend, there was a patch of forest known as the Dead Woods, named that because every single tree in that large area was dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: One afternoon around five or six in the evening, I was helping a friend gather sticks and wood for a survival shelter, he was building when we stumbled upon a campsite in the middle of nowhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was nothing near it, and the main campgrounds were almost one and a half miles away.
[SPEAKER_00]: We both felt uneasy and decided to head back.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we walked, it started getting dark, and I had this strong feeling that we were being watched, even though I never saw any animals or people.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we were about half a mile from camp, I randomly looked behind me and up, and sitting in the upper branches of a tree was something that looked like a person.
[SPEAKER_00]: except it had large eyes with vertical slits instead of normal pupils.
[SPEAKER_00]: I quickly pushed my friend out of the dead woods and toward camp, making up an excuse that we would miss dinner if we did not hurry.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I later asked a counselor about what I had seen, he told me I just had an active imagination.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still do not know what was in that tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: Although years later I learned that the campsite itself was owned by the camp, and maintained by the same organization that managed the park.
[SPEAKER_00]: story 35.
[SPEAKER_00]: When my grandmother died I was around 19 years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was my best friend and had practically raised me, and she was the only person who ever truly showed me unconditional love.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when she passed away I felt completely alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had suffered for a long time from cancer that was diagnosed late, connected to the talcum powder ovarian cancer issue that is talked about publicly now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not handle her death well, because losing her felt like losing the only sense of security I had in my life at that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not long after she died, I was walking down the boulevard when I suddenly experienced a vision.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw my grandmother's face, but she looked much younger than I ever remembered her, like an old photos from shortly after she got married.
[SPEAKER_00]: She looked absolutely perfect, and the only word that came to mind was perfection.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew she was standing in a beautiful garden and was deeply content and happy in a way that does not exist on earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sense that she was with someone she loved being with, and I felt that presence was Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: What struck me was that one of the songs played at her funeral, talked about walking in a garden and being with Jesus, and in that moment it felt connected.
[SPEAKER_00]: After the vision ended, something inside me completely shifted.
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt total peace about her passing because I understood that where she was now was far better than continuing to suffer here.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had lived most of her life as a widow, struggled with diabetes and never had much beyond a simple existence.
[SPEAKER_00]: After that experience, I felt stronger and certain that I would be okay without her physically here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It felt like I had been given a moment of grace, something I was allowed to see so I could process my grief, accept her happiness, and move forward with my own life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 36, a friend of mine who works as an intensive care unit nurse, was heading home on the underground after finishing a long shift.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was late at night, around 11 in the evening on a weekday, but the trains were still running.
[SPEAKER_00]: She got on the train, and at the next stop a group of men entered with two young women helping the women sit down in the carriage across from her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their movements made it clear the women were either very drunk or substance-yued.
[SPEAKER_00]: My friend kept her head down, exhausted from work, but looked up briefly when she felt someone staring at her.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the women was looking directly at her without blinking, and something about it felt deeply wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: As she watched, my friend realized the woman did not appear to be breathing, and her skin tone had turned a grayish color that had initially been hidden by heavy makeup.
[SPEAKER_00]: She became convinced that the woman was dead and believed the second woman was as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: The men were unusually quiet and overly protective, positioning themselves around the women.
[SPEAKER_00]: My friend immediately got off at the next station and alerted station staff.
[SPEAKER_00]: She does not know what happened afterward, but she is convinced both women had been killed and were being transported somewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Coming from someone who regularly works with the dead, she is confident in what she saw.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 37
[SPEAKER_00]: Something happened to me a few months ago that still unsettles me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got home from work late and noticed my tire was leaking air.
[SPEAKER_00]: So around two in the morning I went outside to patch it with some hair gel, because I did not want to wake up to a completely flat tire.
[SPEAKER_00]: While I was working on it, it started raining.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as the rain fell, I heard a woman softly crying somewhere to my left.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not hysterical, just a quiet, sad weeping.
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt chills and told myself to keep my head down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked around but saw no one, so I assumed it was a neighbor watching television.
[SPEAKER_00]: The crying slowly grew louder and closer, but I kept working until I heard the same voice ask if I could help her.
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked up and saw a woman walking toward me wearing a dark dress and a loose black code.
[SPEAKER_00]: Growing up in a Hispanic household, I was immediately terrified of encountering a crying woman on the street after midnight.
[SPEAKER_00]: I considered running inside, but convinced myself that if it was something supernatural, it would not matter anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: She asked me to call someone for her, and after two numbers failed to connect, she thanked me and walked into a pitch black alley across the street.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not sleep well that night and shoured with a curtain open.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 38.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the craziest things I have ever experienced is something I did myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was living in the south at the time and had a family friend who needed rides to and from work because there were no buses in the country and his job was in the city about 20 miles away.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night I went to pick him up and he was extremely drunk, which later got him fired.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a cook and a very good one, but he could never stop drinking.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were driving home and he started rambling about the cosmos, aliens, telepathic powers, and all the usual drunk conversations.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have been a meditator since I was a kid, originally because comic books made it seem like a gateway to superpowers, and later because it helped me manage severe depression.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a child I believed I had telekinetic abilities, and for some reason I specifically believed I had pyro kinetic powers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Although as an adult I no longer believe that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I brought it up jokingly, and he went on about how everyone has powers and pulled out a lighter, telling me to show him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I humored him, flipped the lighter open, and at first I was just playing around.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then I decided to actually try focusing like I used to as a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: To my absolute shock, the flame began to sway in whatever direction I wanted, for as long as I wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Being a very science-based and logical person, I immediately assumed it was my breath, the wind or the angle I was holding it at.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I handed him the lighter and tried again while he held it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The same thing happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I tried something that could not easily be explained by wind or angle.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the flames stretched, thinned, and grew to about three times its original height.
[SPEAKER_00]: He started freaking out, and I did too, completely unable to believe what I was seeing.
[SPEAKER_00]: What terrified me most was that he was so drunk that he quickly changed his subject.