As The Raven Dreams Podcast - 4+ Hours of Paranormal Stories | Stories about Hauntings, Ghosts and Shadow people

Starting point is 00:00:10 Hey everyone, in 2004, my mom and I moved into my stepdad's house. Some of the craziest most unbelievable things have happened over the years, and as I was recalling some events to my husband, I realized that I had forgotten some of them, probably had a fear. I thought this would be the best place to remember them all, and I'll answer any questions you may have. Also, sorry if this is so long. The first thing I can remember is the freezer door.

Starting point is 00:00:44 It was a super innocent event and we didn't think anything of it at the time. We had gone grocery shopping, and after putting the frozen foods in the freezer, the door would close just fine. But once you turned your back, it was wide open again. This happened time and time again throughout the rest of the night. We checked multiple times to make sure that a box or a box or, something wasn't in the way of the suction. There was no reason for it to open by itself.

Starting point is 00:01:15 Second, while watching TV in the living room, the channel would change, constantly. Not up a channel or down a channel either. For example, if it were on channel 40, it would go to channel 3 or channel 5. Third, I got a new bed. One of the ones where there are drawers along the bottom. of it, three on each side. Because my bedroom was so little, I had the bed pushed up against a wall, meaning that three of the six drawers were inaccessible.

Starting point is 00:01:49 I was in the fourth or fifth grade at the time, aka too weak and little to move the bed by myself. Random items of my mom's started disappearing. One of her slippers, a couple CDs, and some other things that I can't remember. We thought it was my stepbrother playing a dumb prank. One day we decided to rearrange my room, and after the bed was moved, for some reason, we opened up the middle drawer on the inaccessible side,

Starting point is 00:02:20 and everything was in there. The slippers, CDs, the most strange thing we found was a Ziploc bag of old, used wax crayons that I never owned. Fourth, I guess this. The next thing we noticed was the ceiling fan. My parents had a sailor theme in the living room, and attached to the ceiling fan chain was a lighthouse, which would sometimes swing a little if the fan was on high, but it would swing

Starting point is 00:02:50 around as if someone flicked it when the fan wasn't on. Next, my mom, my friend, and I were standing in the living room. We were talking about the lighthouse ceiling fan chain swinging and I was applying chapstick, which I then put on the coffee table. The moment I put it down, I realized I should have put it in my pocket, but it was missing from the table. I said out loud,

Starting point is 00:03:17 where's my chapstick, and, I kid you not, swear on everything, it appeared in mid-air above the coffee table and fell straight down, as if someone was holding it and dropped it. We all ran out of the room and none of us really talk about this to this day.

Starting point is 00:03:34 Then, my mom approached me one morning and told me not to lie to her and that she wouldn't be mad, just tell the truth. Once she realized I had no clue what she was talking about. She told me how the night before, she woke up and heard a little girl's voice humming in her ear, as if I was standing next to the bed. My mom checked the entire house, including my room, to make sure it wasn't me. I didn't believe her at all. Until years later, while babysitting my grandmother, who then lived with them while they were away, I slept in my mom's bed and awoke to a little girl humming in my ear.

Starting point is 00:04:17 It was the scariest moment of my entire life. I was numb from fear and I think I passed out from it because I don't remember falling back asleep. I remember being terrified, feeling every hair on my face, body standing straight up and then nothing. Morning. I haven't told anybody this happened. Lastly, one night my mom was cooking in the kitchen, down the hall, and I was in my room. I heard the front door open. My dog jump around greeting someone. I assumed it was my stepdad and peered down the hall. I saw a man in overalls and a blue-knit hat walking. No sooner than he

Starting point is 00:05:00 turn the corner, my mom comes running down the hallway towards me, pale white crying, and she felt someone come in behind her and say hi in her ear, but she was alone in the kitchen. We both ran to the living room, we realized the driveway was empty, and waited in the empty driveway until my stepdad actually came home. To this day, we don't know who that man was that came into our home. If I can think of any more occurrences, I'll be sure to let you know. I mentioned this in the comments of a previous post, but I wanted to make a dedicated post about it,

Starting point is 00:05:47 because I think it's humorous and cute. So I moved into my current house around a year ago after having a falling out with my previous roommates. It's a tiny house built probably around 1922, and you can tell. It's had little renovation since then, a lot of it needs work, but it's really cozy. My fiancé and I have been here for close to a year now. Since moving in, we've experienced paranormal activity that resembles something of a cat,

Starting point is 00:06:24 which is hilarious to us. And we're not alone in this. We've actually had more than a few people confirmed to us that they've either seen, said cat, or have felt the presence of one. Going back to the first few experiences, as we had, it would just be seeing a little black ball dart around corners or even up the stairs. One day, my fiancé and I are sitting on the couch watching TV. From my living room, the dining room is to the right if you're sitting on the couch and you can see clear into it.

Starting point is 00:06:59 So, we're chilling after a long day of deep cleaning the house, and there was a paper towel roll just sitting in the middle of the table, standing straight up. As we're watching TV, the roll just flies off the table. Well, not flies. More like just fell. Which was weird because it was directly in the middle of the table and nowhere even close to the edge. So it was more like batted off. I get up, pick it up, put it back where it was, and go back to what I was doing.

Starting point is 00:07:34 I don't think anything of it. Some ten minutes later, It happens again. So now I'm wondering what's happened. I'm thinking, was it wind? So I start crossing off things that it could have been. It's the dead of summer, so was the window unit AC on? Nope.

Starting point is 00:07:54 A ceiling fan? No? Nothing. There was no reason for it to just be falling on the floor. Regardless, I shrug it off as just maybe it was some weird gravity phenomenon, or maybe the simulation of life is glitching. Later that week, we have a friend over. He's never really been over, and we never told him about the experiences my fiancé and I have

Starting point is 00:08:20 had. Soon as he walks in the door, he kind of does this, like, weird sidestep maneuver, so I ask, what was that? And he goes, I thought I was going to step on an animal for some reason. And of course, there was nothing. there. A couple of hours later, my fiancé and I and our friend are eating dinner at the

Starting point is 00:08:43 table, and an empty grocery bag in the kitchen falls from the bag of bags. Everybody else does this right, you all save bags, and it just kind of sits there for a minute deflated. Then, it just opens up like something crawled in it, and the top starts

Starting point is 00:09:00 batting around unnaturally, like it's being played with. We all hear this and watch it happen for a few seconds. And then the bag returns to its deflated state. And we're all just like, what was that about? Because, again, it didn't look like the wind. Wind would have made the bag move around the kitchen more. So, we now tell him about our previous experiences, and we all come to the conclusion that it's most likely a cat. So we settle on the most cliche name ever, and we name it Katzper.

Starting point is 00:09:40 I spend a few minutes making fun of the name and ridiculing its antics, and later that night, around 4 a.mish, I wake up to the sound of something move on the bedside table. I brush it off as just sleep delirium and try to go back to sleep. Then, I just feel the gentlest whack on my hand, like a paw was swatting at me. Then I hear something jump on the floor and skitter down the stairs. This time I jumped up.

Starting point is 00:10:09 I turned on the light and I investigated. Nothing. Not a single animal in the house. I know for sure it wasn't a mouse or anything, and I exclaim, All right, you win, you can stay. Another time, we had a few friends over, and someone who we didn't know showed up with another friend,

Starting point is 00:10:29 and he asked my fiancé, Hey, can I meet your cat? And of course we tell her the whole shebang. and she goes, Huh, I thought you guys had a cat. I saw it run up the stairs. And we're just kind of like, yeah, it does that.

Starting point is 00:10:47 So now we just have a ghost cat. And whenever I give it a lot of shit for being a shithead, one of our decorative fake cactuses will just fall from one of the shelves for no reason. But on good days, we'll feel a gentle brush up against our legs when we're sitting on the couch, and an overall sense of comfort from the house.

Starting point is 00:11:09 We've never felt anything malicious or had any other bad experiences living here. Just the cat. According to our landlady, the previous tenant had a lot of pets. It's entirely possible one of them passed and their soul just stuck around. I'm not complaining,

Starting point is 00:11:27 but next time it swats my head in my sleep, I'm getting the ghost cat spray bottle. Long story short, I'm a custodian for a school district. I'm going on three years and every school has been haunted. The first time I was at a high school, as a custodian, your duty is to first and foremost secure the site. I wanted to emphasize this as it's important to the story.

Starting point is 00:12:02 Every new custodian develops an OCD, so to speak of. Checking their doors due to the fact that you can lose your job before you pass probation, It was a long weekend. I was still a noob, and everything was closed on my assignment except this window on the second floor. I was responsible for the top. It was night, by the way. I couldn't find the window, and it turned out to be a back room in a classroom window. I would always check my doors.

Starting point is 00:12:32 One of the doors was left open perfectly, like perfectly straight. Humans just swing and throw stuff around, and no one was around me. I know I didn't leave the doors open, especially because my job depends on it, but we'll let that go. I was at an elementary school, working in the office with my earphones on, and I'm the only person on the site. I'm cleaning a restroom, have my music on, and I hear a thud at the other end of the office. I take my earphones off, go to investigate, nothing fell, nothing dropped, and again, I was the only person on campus. The second story of said elementary school, after you dump trash into a rolling trash can, you just toss them.

Starting point is 00:13:19 No one cares about them. No one strategically puts trash cans anywhere. They're just trash cans. I dumped the trash and threw all the trash cans in the hallway. I went into a room, came out, and I swear, the trash cans were lined up parallel, in a perfect line, the exact distance away from each other I noticed. I got freaked out because no one else was there, and I would never put the trash cans that perfect.

Starting point is 00:13:47 It was so weird. Not too long after, I'm studying on that same second floor on lunch for classes that I'm taking. I hear a doorknob rattle in the next room. I thought a supervisor was coming to check on me, and they'd do that randomly once a month, but no one was in the hallway. What unsettling is that I, for sure, was the only person on campus.

Starting point is 00:14:10 I secure the site every time. Last experience, and most recent, I was talking at a friend's house, and as we were having a conversation, his doorknob started to rattle. I looked at the doorknob, back at each other, and just continued the conversation and laughed.

Starting point is 00:14:28 I can't make this up. I put everything I said on me, but schools are all haunted. I went to college at an older university in the Northeast USA. During my third year, I got to live off campus with some friends in a really neat old house. It turned out, it was the third oldest residential home still standing in the town, and was only 800 to 900 square feet. It was really cute. There wasn't a lot of old charm left in the architecture, but the hallways were narrow and the rooms cut up in that Victorian manner, so it felt,

Starting point is 00:15:19 antique. When my three housemates and I rented the house in August of that year, the landlord was relieved. Initially, it had been rented to a professor and her husband in June, and they were going to take the lease through to the following May, but by July they became distant and squirly, made some excuse and called him after they had packed their things and left the home to say they would not be returning. So, he was happy to have ten. He was happy to have ten. and none of us were particularly rambunctious or big partiers, so it seemed like a decent fit. We moved in and all fell in love with this tiny and quirky house. When I say quirky, let me explain.

Starting point is 00:16:05 There was a ladder to the attic that was built to the wall. There were pavers in the backyard that were arranged at odd angles and patterns, jutting out from the ground and not level, but definitely purposefully, lane. In the basement, whose footprint was much smaller than the house above it, and all built in feldstone, there were those great big joists for the floorboards above that had been hands-saw on centuries earlier. At some point, someone, some students, we guessed, had painted them white and placed green handprints on them. The door to the basement was odd as well. It had a small flap door cut into the bottom, the kind you would put if you kept a cat's litter box in the basement

Starting point is 00:16:53 so that they could go down and use it. But when we closely examined it, it was only one way, from the house, into the basement. Nothing could return back into the house through it. Odd, we thought, but we didn't think too much about it at the time. We just caught on with school and life. One evening, I awoke to the sound of a housemate going down the stairs to grab a glass of water. I didn't think too much about it, except they were being loud as hell at 2 a.m. and turned over. But as soon as they hit the ground floor, they turned around and walked back up again. When they hit the second floor, they started descending. What the hell, I thought, figuring I might have a housemate who was troubled with sleep.

Starting point is 00:17:44 plucking. My roommate was stirring, and I whispered into the dark if he was awake, which he very much was. We listened for the next minute as our housemate ascended and ascended, ascended and descended over and over. At last, we both got up, turned on the light, opened the door, and the noise stopped. No lights were on. No one was on the stairs. We went downstairs quietly so as to not disturb our other housemates to take a look around. We figured it must be a loose shingle banging or some kind of pipe hitting the side of the house and that we would just deal with it tomorrow. We got in bed, shut off our lights, and within two minutes the sound of someone creeping up the stairs,

Starting point is 00:18:31 slowly at first as if testing how loud they could be, began again. The pace grew more quickly and all of a sudden we both. Both heard our other housemates swing open their doors and yell into the darkness. Go to bed. The noise stopped. We got up, opened our door, and looked down the hallway at our housemates hanging out of their doorway. They were bewildered that we weren't on the stairs. And we all checked the house again, returned to our rooms, and slept the rest of the evening.

Starting point is 00:19:03 No more noise. We talked about it the following evening and figured it might be some strange. strange animal, a woodpecker, a raccoon. Maybe they had been banging on something outside, and the sound traveled inward, making it feel like it was coming from the house. That's it. Problem solved. We all went to bed satisfied. The following day, as we were putzing in the backyard, one of my housemates said out of nowhere, do you think those footsteps were a ghost? He had said what we had all been thinking, and we spent the next two hours talking about strange things that had happened to all of us over the previous couple of months. I'd been making a P.B&J in the kitchen one day the week

Starting point is 00:19:48 before. I got out the bread, the peanut butter from the cabinet, turned to the fridge to get the jam out. When I turned around, no bread or peanut butter to be found. Completely gone, without explanation. And there were no other housemates home at the time. This was a tiny little kitchen, maybe only three by four with counters all the way around, so I certainly hadn't placed it out of sight. I opened up every cupboard to no avail. I thought, why not? Taped the button on the microwave, the door sprung open,

Starting point is 00:20:26 and inside were my peanut butter and bread, which honestly was unerving. I didn't want a P.B&J anymore. I put them back on the kitchen. cabinet. I'd forgotten about the jam until I went for a jog the next morning, and when I opened the door at 6 a.m., there it was, on the front stoop, like a lost dog that had found its way home. I threw it out. Also, we had all, from time to time, heard a strange shuffling sound in the basement. I just assumed it was a sump pump because it had that j-z-z-z-ge-ch-kind of cadence, They reminded me that we did not have a sump pump.

Starting point is 00:21:10 When our landlord came to pick up the rent for the following month, the four of us were home. We'd figure we would use this as an opportunity to be slick and ask questions about the house to find out what he knew about its history. He seemed a little on edge when we brought the subject up, but humored us kindly. When I asked if he had heard from the previous tenants, he avoided the subject. When a housemate asked who he had purchased the house from that had lived there previously, he informed us that in fact the house hadn't been lived in for 20 years before we bought it. Turns out, the individual who had lived in the house 20 years plus prior

Starting point is 00:21:51 was a bit of a ne'er-do-well in this college town. So much of a ne'er-do-well that his family arrived to pick him up one day, finding him dead, having overdosed in the dining room. Okay, got it, thanks. We had a ghost, and we decided to name him William. Three to four nights a week, the footsteps on the stairs would start slowly, and then reach such a pace that one of us would get out of bed and a half, open the door and scream, go to bed, William,

Starting point is 00:22:24 and the footsteps would stop for the evening. This was multiple times a week for a year. We didn't like to talk about him in the house, so any William discussions happened off the property as we were convinced that he was listening. One evening, we were watching a new episode of Lost, that should date the story appropriately, and the smoke monster character was on.

Starting point is 00:22:47 My roommate joked that William was our smoke monster. At that moment, every blind in the living room, four, covering two windows, was violently jerked up simultaneously. We all looked wide-eyed at him. He gathered himself together, and in little more than a whisper, said, I'm sorry, William, I didn't mean it. We lowered the blinds and went back to the program.

Starting point is 00:23:13 Things continued like this pretty regularly throughout the fall semester, and remained much the same until one night in the spring, maybe around March or April. In the middle of the night, we awoke to a loud crack from downstairs. When I say loud, I mean, don't give a damn breaking and entering loud. I grabbed a bat that I kept by the side of my bed, convinced that someone had broken through our front door. This college town was a little rough around the edges, as you might surmise. My roommates and I both sat up and looked at each other, and we listened.

Starting point is 00:23:50 Nothing. We saw our housemates down the hallway peering through a sliver of their door. I went into the hallway and banged the bats against the railing and said in the pravest voice I could muster. All right, you want to break into our freaking house? Come get it. We turned on the lights, bounded down the stairs as a posse, and found nothing. Front door was locked and tight, back door was locked and tight.

Starting point is 00:24:17 Everything looked good. I went to go turn off the downstairs switch to go back up to bed, and then I saw it. The basement door had a crack running up from the bottom of it to about two-thirds of the way, right in the center. It had been broken almost in two from the inside of the basement. The basement was a self-contained space. It didn't have any other entrances or exits. Whatever had broken the door had been in the basement. Needless to say, we all lost our minds and decided to sleep in one room together,

Starting point is 00:24:54 though none of us got much rest. While the footsteps and moving objects continued for the rest of the time, there wasn't anything quite as terrifying as that night. We finished out our lease, and all moved out to other homes. I had to return there in October of my senior year to pick up mail that hadn't been forwarded to my new address. A young woman came to the door, and I explained who I was. She kindly handed me a stack of mail that had come for me,

Starting point is 00:25:24 And I thanked her. As I turned to leave, I had a thought. I spun around before she closed the door and said, Hey, this might sound odd, but have you guys noticed anything strange about this house? She went white as a sheet. She asked me why I had asked that question, and I let her know that we had noticed some odd things when we lived there, and that it probably, you mean like the footsteps on the stairs at night?

Starting point is 00:25:53 she interrupted. Yep, like those, I said. Her two housemates came down and we stepped outside. I shared my tails and they shared theirs. I told them just to tell William to go back to bed and it would be okay. That was the last time I ever visited that house. I think of William often, though not fondly. About 20 years ago, my mom had a tumor removal operation.

Starting point is 00:26:30 I think it was called Acoustic Neuroma tumor surgery removal. It was about the size of an egg. It was affecting both her hearing and her balance. It was growing behind her right ear. The tumor roots were spreading and wrapping itself around her nerves, so the surgery was necessary and critical.

Starting point is 00:26:53 The incision started from the front of her right ear, and it went above and around all the way behind her ear, down past her collarbone. The doctor wanted to make sure all the tumor roots and tissues were scraped off. Thank God it was a benign tumor. She was released from the hospital after two nights.

Starting point is 00:27:15 I was to sleep with her on the king-sized bed that first night that she was home in case she had a fever or needed something post-operation. On that very first night, as I was sleeping and sharing the bed with her, I had a nightmare and could not wake up from it. I can still recall the nightmare vividly,

Starting point is 00:27:37 even though so many years have passed since. In the dream, myself and my mother were sitting in the back of an old black Volkswagen. We were on our way to the church. We're Catholics. When the car arrived and stopped in front of the church, a priest wearing a cassock, a long black garment worn by Roman Catholic, clergyman, courteously opened the door for us. As he extended his hand to help my mother out of the car, his eyes suddenly turned glaring red

Starting point is 00:28:10 like the devil's eyes. I was still in the car and was waiting for my turn to exit after my mother, but I hadn't exited yet. As soon as I saw his red, glaring devil's eyes, I knew what he wanted. I screamed and tried to pull my mother's arm back to the car, but, the priest was so strong. I frantically started to pray to our father and screamed my head off while struggling with him,

Starting point is 00:28:39 and I've never prayed so hard in my life like that night. After a long struggle, the priest lost his strong grips on my mother, and I was able to pull her back safely to the car. I finally was able to wake up from the dream after the priest let go of my mother's hand. And when I woke up, I opened my eyes and saw my arm extending out while holding her hand.

Starting point is 00:29:05 The following day, my mother told us that she had a high fever that night, and she thought she didn't make it through. I literally downloaded Reddit, so I can vent about this, because I could get fired if I talk about this. I'm a lifeguard at a water park in Las Vegas. We always brag about how, unlike our competition, we've had zero casualties at the current location. Stuff always happens like tubes will appear in the pool after we just took them all out and stacked them.

Starting point is 00:29:49 Chairs will move around after we just sorted them. Wet footsteps on concrete when no one was wet, etc. We joke that we don't get paid enough to fight demons. It was just a joke to us, but not to our supervisors or our supervisors or our people. managers. They always made excuses. It was always the wind, or, oh, I moved it, or they're my prints. They always got angry at us and said that someone could overhear us and complain. They even went as far as to threaten us with a defamation lawsuit if we talked about it on social media. Weird, right? If the park wasn't haunted, why would they care so much about us talking about it?

Starting point is 00:30:36 I never cared because I believed my supervisors and managers. Maybe they did move the chairs. Maybe they dipped their feet in the pool and walked away. That was until last month. It was 10 p.m. and we had just finished cleaning the park. I had to stay later because I was getting a ride from my supervisor, Ryan. We were the few people left in the park, so we were doing a final walkthrough just to make sure everything was clean.

Starting point is 00:31:06 We only had a flashlight and a few lightposts illuminating our path around the park. We were walking by some slides when I hear someone, a woman, say, Hello? I looked at Ryan who didn't seem to hear it. Then we heard her again. Hello? I freaked. And Ryan again didn't seem to hear it.

Starting point is 00:31:28 Did you not hear that? I said to Ryan. He shrugged and continued walking. I stopped and said I didn't want to do the walk. through with him. He rolled his eyes and said if I didn't, I'm refusing to work, which isn't a good thing to say to your supervisor. He told me I was probably just hearing things. I got a hold of myself and continued walking. We started getting to the back of the park where the light posts were dimmer, and it was much quieter since we were further from the running water in the slides.

Starting point is 00:32:00 Ryan and I started talking about school and college and what we were going to do when the season ends, when I heard it again. But it sounded closer this time. Hello? Anyone there? She sounded very confused and tired. I jumped and again Ryan did not care at all. I was so freaked out. I started feeling nauseous.

Starting point is 00:32:26 I wanted to go home, but Ryan was my right home, so... I had to stay. What happened next haunts me. After we heard the voice, we heard what sounded like someone climbing out of the lazy river soaking wet. No one else was there. If they were, they would have been in the office.

Starting point is 00:32:47 No one should be swimming. Ryan was angry. He thought a lifeguard snuck into the river. He turned around and started yelling. What the hell? Go home. This isn't fun. And he froze.

Starting point is 00:32:59 I said a quick prayer and turned around, and there was a lady, soaking wet, wearing a park shirt with our logo on it, but the logo looked very two thousands. I know what our shirts look like. I stand in the shop all the time to get some AC. I've never seen a shirt like that. She was hunched over, and her hair covered her face, and she spoke, Hello? Can you help me? Ryan grabbed my arm and we bolted to the office. Lifeguards weren't allowed inside the office ever. It's the whole thing, but he let me come inside. He pulled one of the managers into the supply room and shut the door. Another supervisor started asking me if I was okay.

Starting point is 00:33:48 I was breathing heavily and couldn't speak, but I nodded yes. Ryan and the manager came out of the room, and Ryan grabbed his stuff and said, Let's go. We got in his car and he said we needed to stop by the gas station first. When we pulled in, he told me to type my address into his phone while he pumped the gas. When he caught in the car, I broke the silence. What the hell was that that happened? He turned the car on and started driving.

Starting point is 00:34:19 I can't tell anyone. It's like a park secret, but I'll tell you. If you swear, you won't tell anyone. I swore. Back in 2002, before this location of the park was built, there was a park on the strip. It was the only water park in Vegas. We only had one casualty, and it was a lady who came in with her family. She got drunk and went into the lazy river where she sank to the bottom of the river,

Starting point is 00:34:48 and because there were so many tubes, the lifeguards didn't see her, and she drowned. That's why we have so many lifeguards for the river. and why our tubes are see-through. So, was that her? Yeah. Why is she here? I don't know. She's probably confused.

Starting point is 00:35:07 She's always asking for help. So you did hear her. Yeah, but everyone does when you're in the park late at night. It's a whole different story if you see her. So I asked, what happens if you see her? Nothing, but it's scary. The car ride was silent the rest of the way. I still work at the park, but Ryan talked to the managers

Starting point is 00:35:32 and convinced them to let me work only morning shifts. Ryan quit recently due to college. I only told two co-workers, but only because they've had experiences themselves. Thank you for letting me vent. Also, appreciate lifeguards and all the crap that they go through. Hello, friends. I'm an Italian boy that luckily found a stable job in this absolute, horrible period, talking about COVID and stuff.

Starting point is 00:36:10 Italy got hit pretty hard, and I thought it was impossible for me to find a job, but, hey, I guess that's good. I've been working in this company for a month now. I got my first paycheck. Yay. So basically, I work in a small office alone, and the other person that works in the room with me is basically one of the bosses of the company, and he rarely is in the office with me, since he has other stuff to do around the company.

Starting point is 00:36:39 The fact that I'm alone doesn't really bother me. I can play my music while I work and can be more, let's say, free on what I do. I still have my work to do, so I'm still busy. After one week on working in the company, I've started to notice strange things. Now, at this point, I want to point out the fact that I do believe in ghosts. I really do. but I'm not the type of person that if he hears a rumor, he jumps to the conclusion that it's a ghost. I investigate it, and I try to recreate that sound or give an explanation.

Starting point is 00:37:17 You can say that I'm a skeptical believer if you want to. Every now and then, when I look at my monitor and do my work, I can see shadows, or something, moving within the corner of my eyes. in the first time I simply thought that it was some reflection of the light coming through the window of the room, and I simply accepted that as the explanation. A week later, it was time to go home, and due to the new COVID regulations here, I must clean and sanitize the whole room. I was cleaning my desk, and it's in front of the door, and I had my back to the door.

Starting point is 00:37:57 While I was turning, I saw something standing next to the door. I really didn't mind it since I thought it was my boss coming in to tell me that I could leave the office and go home. I was going to reply while I was walking towards the trash can to throw away some papers, and noticed that there was actually no one in the room with me. That left me a bit shocked, actually, and I thought that it was pretty simple. My mind was tricking me a little bit. You know, pretty much all the day alone in the office without anyone. I guess that it's something that could have.

Starting point is 00:38:32 happen, so I simply shrugged it off and went home. The next day, when I walked in with my boss, we found our chairs around the office and nowhere near our desks. That was kind of strange, but I thought that maybe the cleaning lady cleaned to the floor and moved them. So I simply expressed my thoughts to my boss, and he said, the ladies come in on Friday. But that day was Wednesday. This actually gave me the chills.

Starting point is 00:39:02 Pretty much every day, a pen or pencil rolls down from a table, and I simply think that it's normal. Maybe they're a little bit inclined and the pencils and pens tend to fall off from the table. But today, something strange happened. I think that this never really happened to me nor my boss either because he was as shocked as I was. A little backstory. The company that I work for is a very laid-back company. Obviously, you have work to do, but it isn't really serious and 100% focused on your work-type job.

Starting point is 00:39:41 The walls are colorful, the people, cheerful, and my boss is super funny. I really like this place, because it gives you all the creativity that you need to work. Some of you might agree with me that the mood you are in and the place that you are working in influences your work and the way you work. I joke a lot with my boss, since he's pretty young, and we tend to laugh and make some jokes even while working when he's in the office with me. We had lunch together with a couple of other people, of the company, and me and my boss, and another woman that works there were walking back to our offices.

Starting point is 00:40:18 The woman wanted to ask something to my boss, so she was coming with us in our office. When he opened the door, A cold breeze blew in our face. My boss joked about the fact, asking me, did you leave the window I'd open by chance? We laughed a bit, but when we walked in, my blood actually froze. There were papers and drawings scattered on the floor of the office, pens and pencils, too. Everything was a total mess. The woman got scared and decided to walk away.

Starting point is 00:40:52 I totally understand her, honestly. The fact is that it was snowing outside, and there was no chance in hell that me and my boss would open that damn window. My boss and I started to clean up everything, and at a certain point, he received a call. He walked out of the office, leaving me to clean it up alone. While I was picking up some of the papers from the ground, something touched my shoulder. It kind of tapped on it like you do to a friend to make them turn. I turned and saw nothing behind me. So this is the most strange and kind of scary thing that has happened to me so far.

Starting point is 00:41:31 I'm not scared by this honestly. If there is a ghost there, it doesn't really look like it's evil or aggressive. It doesn't really scare me. When something happens, I usually look around and then get back to work. And when I'm working, I'm typically too focused to think about it. It does give me the chills every now and then, but I guess that's totally normal. I'm starting to keep track of the strange happenings during the day on a little note file on my computer, and I'll update it when something happens.

Starting point is 00:42:03 Maybe I'll even update it here on Reddit. My house has had a portal problem for as long as I can remember. We don't have a haunting per se, since we believe it's a vortex of some sort for spirits or entities to cross through, so they come and go. but most stay a while before leaving, if they ever do. There's a cemetery up the street that I frequent often, and we speculate a possible connection between the two. I decided to compile a select few stories from over the years

Starting point is 00:42:44 in case it may interest someone, because it sure as hell interest me. My chest was getting very tight, just typing this out. I'm aware that I over-explained things, but I think I would rather provide much, more information than needed than less. For background, my siblings, 27M and 24F, and I-18 female, were raised in the same house since birth.

Starting point is 00:43:12 My brother has since moved out, twice, while my sister and I remain at home with our parents. We're all pretty intuitive and sensitive when it comes to energies, particularly my sister and I. Ever since we were young, we individually decided that there is some sort of portal in our basement, which is now referred to exclusively as the hole. The hole resides in an unfinished part of the basement, which was used for storage for the first 22-ish years of my parents owning it.

Starting point is 00:43:47 It's an odd indent built into the wall that goes from floor to floorboard, just wide enough for a person to stand in behind where the wall would be if it were built straight. It's in the far corner of the room, the only one not visible from the door. When it was storage, the room connected at the opposite corner from the hole to our laundry room, like the corners of the room overlapped and formed a high doorway between. Now for the activity. When I was young, for as far back as I can remember, I was petrified to go into the room whenever my mom asked me to get her something,

Starting point is 00:44:28 or even to go into the laundry room without quickly switching on the light in the storage, before running from the door as fast as possible, which was still extremely nerve-wracking for little me. On the occasion that I didn't turn on the light, I could feel something watching me intently from the opposite corner. Twice, I saw what I think were glowing eyes and the light. the dark. Around the same time as the aforementioned was occurring, I was having repetitive nightmares for years, until I was probably about nine or ten, I believe. It was the exact same

Starting point is 00:45:08 up to a point. I was being hunted by a man with half a face through an abandoned hospital. The only difference every night was that when he would inevitably catch me, he would torture me to death in a new way, seemingly more sadistically every time than the last. I would wake up just as I began to feel what I'm pretty sure was my life fading away. It felt so real, so painful. I'd wake up with marks occasionally that corresponded to what had happened in the nightmare the night before. Take note that this was when I was five, possibly younger, to ten-ish. And my mother was careful. And my mother was careful to shelter me from violent media or concepts like that when I was young. So these ideas should not have been imaginable for me at the time.

Starting point is 00:45:59 When I finally worked up the courage to tell my mom about my nightmares, she prayed over me and blessed me with Holy Water, Catholic moms, man. And within a week, with her continuing to pray for it to stop, they suddenly disappeared. And I noticed the entity that was making me so petrified downstairs, was either gone or no longer showing itself. We came to the conclusion later that whatever it was had attached itself to me and was feeding off my fear of it through the influencing of my dreams.

Starting point is 00:46:33 She thinks it was a demon, but I'm not so sure of that. Small things happened over the years, but from the time I was around 10 to 13, it was nothing remarkable. When I was 13, my brother and his girlfriend moved in after she, she got pregnant, in order to be able to provide best for their child. We converted the storage room into an apartment for them. He finished off a small square of the laundry room to be my niece's room for the time, so the two rooms are no longer openly connected.

Starting point is 00:47:09 We had barely ever entered the room in years, but it still had a very heavy feeling after so much time. while moving stuff around, activity like things going missing and popping back up and electronics turning on and off began to start. Whoever was here at the time, they didn't like being disturbed very much. After my brother and near sister-in-law got settled in, it died back down, partially because they felt the hole was too ominous and covered it with particle board, that remains there to this day. but it stayed active enough to let us know that something was still there. It would turn on the flashlights that had dead batteries in them from the years before or require a hard push on a button and turn them off when you go to grab them. It would set off my niece's electronic toys in the middle of the night,

Starting point is 00:48:05 knock on walls, whisper, etc. We just learned to get used to it after a while of being in that room so often. This past summer, my brother's family moved in to their own place, and I moved in to the apartment to escape my traumatic old room upstairs, which is a whole different issue itself. Of course, as they began packing stuff up, the activity got more noticeable again, as well as when I was moving my stuff in. I've been here since about July, and I think I've experienced more activity in the room, in the past fortified. five months, then all of it in my life before combined. I began not only hearing them and seeing their influence on electronics more and more, but sometimes seeing figures and seeing them interact with non-electronic objects,

Starting point is 00:49:00 like opening and closing the doors in the basement when nobody's looking. In the beginning, the first I saw was when I rolled over at night and glanced toward the foot of the bed, towards the hole. And that was where I saw the silhouette of someone's shoulders up for a split second. It didn't make me feel scared, just unsettled me for a moment, as anyone would if they saw someone in their room at night. The entities listen when you talk about them in the house. We can tell.

Starting point is 00:49:33 So I talked to my sister about it the next day and said something along the lines of, It's kind of rude of me not to have my couch in the room yet, He could have sat in the corner of the bed if he wanted. Well, the next night, I came back from the bathroom and opened my door to the dim light of my wax melter, and I swear up and down that I saw the dark figure sitting on the corner of my bed before flipping on the light after a split second. Obviously, there was no figure when the light turned on, but there was an impression of a

Starting point is 00:50:06 butt on my bedsheets, as if someone had just been there. This confirmed they definitely listened to. to what we say in the house at least, but seem to be more responsive when not being talked to directly. So it's easiest to just talk about it with my sister to influence their behavior. Every once in a while,

Starting point is 00:50:28 I'll feel a new presence appear. One of the most noteworthy newcomers was a real dick to start. In the beginning of it, I would feel a massive feeling of dread that someone was standing right behind the door to my room, around six foot tall. After a few times of just standing, he switched to walking down the stairs that are right

Starting point is 00:50:51 by my room, but only the bottom six stairs, and then proceeded to stand at my door for minutes. This mostly happened at night, and when I told my family about it, my mom took me out of the house to tell me she heard it too and that I wasn't crazy. She thought it was me going downstairs, but she waited to hear my door open and close. She never did, because who she heard, wasn't me. I think the worst time he got me was the last time he tried to mess with me. It was around noon, and I was watching TV in my room while home alone, when I heard the sound of someone walking down the bottom half of the stairs.

Starting point is 00:51:34 He stood at my door a minute without making a sound, before slowly starting to jiggle my door handle. I thought I was going to have a panic attack because the only exit had an unknown entity on the other side of the door, and I sat frozen for at least 15 minutes, just watching the handle jiggle until it stopped when my dad got home. For some reason, the fact that it was in the middle of the day made it feel even more threatening.

Starting point is 00:52:02 I got really fed up at this point and started ranting loudly to my sister, how he's all talking isn't going to do anything, how he just wants to intimidate me and needs to learn his place in this household. I honestly expected a little backlash, but he only walked down the stairs one more time that night before stopping, and it hasn't happened since. Most recently, a couple of weeks ago,

Starting point is 00:52:28 my mom decided to try to pray away the portal for no reason. They had caused no harm or annoyances in a long time, and I honestly enjoyed their company. I've never wanted to banish any entities or their means of transportation if they haven't done anything harmful. Since she made that prayer, they've been very upset with my mom and more shy around me compared to before. The day or two after she prayed, I was near the top of the stairs making pizza rolls when my mom went downstairs to do laundry, singing on the way. When she was halfway down the stairs to my bedroom door that I had left open, it slammed closed.

Starting point is 00:53:12 The door swings open rather than closed, and it was done with force. They wanted to make sure that she knew they were upset with her. The next night she was taking a bath, when the towel hanging behind her head fell into the water. She said, in all the years of living here, that has never happened to her. But I didn't think much of it until she went to reach for the towel on the floor, and saw the hand towel across the room be pulled to the floor. To say the least, she wasn't pleased with being bothered during bath time. Since she decided to do this prayer,

Starting point is 00:53:47 I've noticed they will not be active while I'm in the room anymore. But practically as soon as I step foot out of it, there's tons of movement and sounds starting up. I'll come back, and my door will be open when I left it closed or vice versa. And sometimes, things are. will even be moved slightly before I return to my room. I'm not sure why they're feeling the need to be so much more active when there aren't direct witnesses at the moment. I don't get the feeling they're mad at me. They're just upset

Starting point is 00:54:18 that someone tried to close their portal, that's probably significant to them. I tried my best to coexist with them peacefully and be kind, and it kind of feels like she ruined that bond, which I know sounds insane, but it's a weird situation. I'm in and have learned to accept. I care for them, and their well-being, regardless of if they're physical person or not, and she offended my guests. The more recent activity changes made me really want to write out

Starting point is 00:54:49 the most memorable events surrounding the whole, so if you read the whole thing, thank you. I have no idea how to shorten this up for a TLDR, so if anyone else would like to try to sum it up shortly, be my guest. For a good bit of my childhood, we lived in Charleston, South Carolina. Our neighbor and house were not too old. The house was built in the mid-90s.

Starting point is 00:55:25 However, the neighborhood was built on the grounds of an old slave plantation. This, I believe, is what led to experiences by my sisters and I. I don't have one cohesive story, but more a list of things that we're we saw or heard or felt. I'll start with one story and maybe post more later. This is my first Reddit post, so really I'm testing the waters. Our dad was in the military, so he'd be gone on trips all the time. When he would get home, usually at night, we could hear him come up the steps, and he'd open our doors. He would check on us and then leave. One night, I heard, I heard, what sounded like his boots on the hardwood flooring, but my door didn't open. I didn't think

Starting point is 00:56:18 much of it, but the next morning I asked my mom when dad got home, and she assured me he wouldn't be home for three more days. So I figured I was hearing things. The weird thing is my two older sisters said they heard it too. This went on for a few nights randomly over a long period of time, but rarely whenever Dad was actually home. There was one night that I remember vividly. I heard the sound clear as day, boots walking up the steps and on the hardwood floor. Dad had been gone for a few weeks, so I rushed up to see him.

Starting point is 00:56:58 I opened my door, and there was nobody there. One of my sister's rooms was beside mine. She heard me in the footsteps and opened her door, thinking that Dad was home too. But she just found me standing there, confused. Our oldest sister, who was at the end of the hall, then came out because she woke up to the footsteps and then heard us whispering. We were now convinced we had a ghost in the house.

Starting point is 00:57:28 Our mom, whose bedroom was downstairs, woke up and yelled at us from the foyer because she thought we were stomping around upstairs. We told her what happened, and she said, it was just the floor popping then. Something not uncommon for hardwood flooring. We all went back to bed, but here's the kicker. Once we all closed our doors, the footsteps went back down the hall and down the steps. Again, it was clear as day.

Starting point is 00:57:59 I didn't sleep anymore that night. We never saw anything, but we always heard these phantom steps, up the stairs, down the hall and then back. From all three of us at night to individuals when we were home alone. It kind of became a joke in the house that we did have a ghost, and it was the ghost of someone from the plantation. Nothing ever seemed angry or evil, just off. Perhaps it was someone just checking on the kids.

Starting point is 00:58:42 So my grandma bought her house when I was about five years old. And I was told that before there was any house on that land, it used to be an Indian cemetery. Some background. When she bought the house, it was from an older widow. Her husband had passed away in the master bedroom, and it was said that after that happened, her jewelry started disappearing and she never found them. Okay, so fast forward to when I was about in fourth grade. I used to sleep in my grandma's room.

Starting point is 00:59:19 She worked in a cannery, so every morning she would wake me up, before she left, and I would stay up until it was time to get ready and head to school. That morning, I heard her leave, so I got up and then went to the bathroom. When I returned, I laid up in her bed. When I turned around to turn the TV on, I saw a black shadow in the form of a man. He came out of the bathroom that I was just in and ran all the way to underneath the bed. The closer he got to the bed, the smaller he got. I honestly thought it was maybe my brother or cousin trying to scare me.

Starting point is 01:00:00 I crawled over to the edge of the bed and proceeded to look under it. Why I did this? I honestly don't know, but I did. When I saw that there was no one there. is when I freaked out. I got up and ran out of the room, closing the door behind me. My uncle's door was the other bedroom next to Grams. He used to live there with his girlfriend.

Starting point is 01:00:26 I sat crying next to it and started knocking on it, trying to wake them up, but at the same time trying to make as little noise as possible. I had direct view to my grandma's room. Yes, it was closed, but I could see a shadow going side to see. side, as if someone was walking back and forth in front of the door. After a few minutes, my uncle and his girlfriend hear me, so they get up. I told them everything, so they walk with me back to the room and look underneath, and, of course, there was nothing. They stayed with me until I left for school.

Starting point is 01:01:04 After that, I never stayed or went into my grandma's room by myself ever again. Well, until years later. Some months after, my mom's stepdad, sister, and myself ended up moving to Mexico. I didn't return until I was 21. When I brought up this experience I had, my family informed me that I always used to wake up crying, saying that I saw things in the house. I honestly just remember this one instance, so maybe I blocked it all out. Anyways, I have more stories about the house that my grandma still lives.

Starting point is 01:01:42 and let me know if you would like to hear more. The story dates back to when I was a little kid. I lived in a very old house that was just outside of Detroit. To my knowledge, this house didn't have any haunted history with previous owners, so it's really weird when this happened to me. I was around five years old when this happened to me. What I'm about to say is 100% true. I have my doubts on if this was a dream or a nightmare.

Starting point is 01:02:21 but this felt so real that it couldn't have been one of those. It was around 3.30 in the morning. I was out like a light when suddenly I hear the voice of my dad. In a very calm tone, he told me, Hey, buddy, it's time to wake up for school. Me, being the kid I was, thought it was actually my dad saying that. So I got out of bed, got changed,

Starting point is 01:02:46 and started to head towards the hall next to my bedroom. Let me remind you of something. In my old bedroom, there are no windows for some odd reason, so I couldn't really tell if it was night or day. As I walk out into the hallway, it is pitch black and the only light I can see is the light coming from the full moon outside shining into the hallway. Me, being the stupid kid I was, decided to walk down the hallway and head into the living room. Now, just to give you the visual of the living room,

Starting point is 01:03:19 room, when you walk down the hallway from my room, the first thing you see is a big window right in front of you on the opposite side of the room. Then, to the right of the window, there is a lazy boy rocking chair in the corner. Then there is a couch right next to the chair. When I walk down the hallway into the living room, the room is fully lit up by the moon outside, and with this light I can see that my dad is sitting in the chair. I try to call out to him. Hey, dad? Dad, why did you wake me up? It's still nighttime. No response.

Starting point is 01:03:55 I tried calling out again. Dad, answer me. No response. I was getting really mad at this point, so I started heading back to my room. As I turned around to start heading back, I hear one of the most terrifying things I will ever hear in my life. It sounded like a beast was trying to yell at me to stop. As I hear this, I see.

Starting point is 01:04:19 stop, shaking in fear as I turn around to see what my dad wanted. As I turn, I see this tall black figure just hovering over me. I was solid like a stone statue, trying not to make any noise to get this creature's attention. Then, in my right ear, I hear a calming voice say, run. I bolted towards my room, locking the door right behind me and hiding underneath the bed sheets until it was morning. I told my parents about what happened that night, and they don't believe me. They just told me that it was a bad dream, and that I shouldn't be worrying so much about it.

Starting point is 01:05:01 It wasn't until the same morning I would find three long-cloth scratch marks going from the back of my neck to the lower part of my back. When I showed my parents, they finally believed that it wasn't just a bad dream. They called a priest to have him blessed the house, and nothing even ghostly related has ever happened in that house again. A few years later, we had to move out of the house due to the size of the house. We would end up with the house that had two stories. To this day, I have no idea what I saw or what I encountered that night. One thing's for sure.

Starting point is 01:05:38 I've believed in the paranormal since that night. I will apologize in advance for the length of this post. I've only told this story to a handful of people. It's something I think about regularly and have wanted to share for just under a decade. Every summer, my grandparents would go on a cruise. They had both worked incredibly hard their entire lives and in retirement would treat themselves to a couple holidays a year.

Starting point is 01:06:13 They had a lovely home that I spent every Saturday night at as a child. Every summer, when they went on their cruise, they would ask me to stay and look after the day. dog. I loved it. I was in my early 20s and still lived at home with my parents. This was a chance for a bit of independence and to have the house to myself. I'd done it for a few years up until this point, and instead of throwing parties with my friends, which I'd previously done, I was looking forward to spending some time with my girlfriend and chilling out. My grandparents filled the fridge with my favorite foods, always left me a bit of spending money, and my granddad. My grandfathers

Starting point is 01:06:53 and dad would always leave me a crate of beer in the garage. Awesome. The first night, me and my then-girlfriend didn't do anything special. We loved the freedom, and loved that we were going to get to spend a full two weeks together by ourselves. We watched a movie, and decided we were going to bed. While she was in the bathroom, all the power cut in the house. Nothing out of the ordinary. I went to the kitchen, found the switchboard, and boom, there was light.

Starting point is 01:07:23 We got in bed and put the telly on. I used to not be able to sleep without the TV on. I'll explain more later, and went to sleep. I remember waking up, and there was screaming coming from the TV. I looked at the dressing table clock and saw that the time was 333. Incredibly cliche, I know, but true. I immediately laughed it off and dozed back to sleep. The next day, we both went to work in both return,

Starting point is 01:07:53 turned to my grandparents' house early in the evening. We chilled out doing what young couples do, and decided it was time to go to bed. Before I went to bed, though, I would always let Bonnie out, my grandparents' beautiful dog, to go and do her business in the back garden. My grandparents' back door led into a conservatory, which then led on to the patio, which then led into the back garden. I unlocked the back door, turned on the lights to the conservatory and patio, and moved toward the conservatory door. Bonnie didn't move from the back door.

Starting point is 01:08:28 After a bit of convincing with rich tea biscuits, I managed to convince her to the conservatory. There was no way I wasn't letting her out and having to scrape up dog poop the following morning. I unlocked the conservatory door onto the patio, and before I had a chance to fully open the door, there was a large thud that came from the conservatory window on my right. I stood frozen for what I was.

Starting point is 01:08:53 felt like an hour. I calmly closed the door and stood in shock wondering what it could be. I wasn't scared at this point, just incredibly startled. I looked down at Bonnie, who was staring up at me, and decided it would be fine if she did her business in the house that night. I went to bed with my heart still pounding, but didn't mention it to my girlfriend. I awoke again, the next night, with someone on the television screaming at 333. The next day was my day off from work. My girlfriend was working, though. I had the house to myself.

Starting point is 01:09:30 I had nothing special planned. I was just going to chill out and play some PlayStation. I'd pretty much shrugged off the thud ordeal in the conservatory from the night before. Bonnie hadn't left any presents for me, but she did run the fastest I've ever seen her run out the back garden when I opened the doors that morning. I couldn't stop thinking about being woken up at 3.30, for two consecutive nights.

Starting point is 01:09:56 I wondered what the consequences of it happening three times might be. I laughed it off and tried to enjoy the rest of my day off. It was mid-afternoon when I received a phone call for my girlfriend telling me that her car had broken down while at work. This was a huge bummer, because we lived over 70 miles apart, and I knew that I wasn't going to be able to see her for a while until it was fixed. She apologized that she wouldn't be able to stay with me while I was dog sitting, but I told her not to be daft and that we'd see each other again soon.

Starting point is 01:10:31 That afternoon, I went for a shower. I was just lathering myself up when I heard the phone ring. I let it ring, knowing that if it was important, it would go to the answering machine, and I could ring them back. The ringing stopped, and then immediately began once again. I thought that it must be important, So I ran out of the shower, Suds in awe, to grab the phone. When I answered, no one was there.

Starting point is 01:10:58 Just silence. No dial tone. Someone was on the line, but not talking. I must have said hello a dozen times before the line cut dead. And the second it did, the doorbell rang. Now I was in a precarious position. I'd ran out of the shower full-blown naked to answer the door, and not taking a towel with me.

Starting point is 01:11:23 The phone had answered was in the kitchen, and the front door was at the end of the hallway on my right. I sheepishly stuck my head around the corner towards the front door to see who it was. There was no one there. Only a couple seconds had passed by, but whoever had rang the doorbell had already gone. I wasn't scared or concerned as it was broad daylight.

Starting point is 01:11:47 I got back in the shower, and within a minute, the phone and the doorbell were ringing at the same time. I immediately got out of the shower, wrapped myself up in a towel, and headed for the door. No one was there. The phone had stopped ringing the second I left the shower. I carried on with the rest of my day and night,

Starting point is 01:12:08 and didn't wake up at all, much to my relief. The next day, I was in the living room watching television. I was sat in my granddad's electric reclining chair, It was a comfy beast. It was placed in the far left corner of the living room, with the TV to the far right. On the left of the chair was the window looking out towards the street. The window was huge.

Starting point is 01:12:33 It was actually three separate windows with the beautiful pattern running through all three. While I was watching television, the doorbell rang. This was quite strange as my grandparents lived in the corner of a cul-de-sac, and if anyone had driven or walked to the door, I would have seen them. I didn't think much of it, as I must have been engrossed in whatever rubbish I'd been watching.

Starting point is 01:12:57 Bonnie was up on all fours in the hallway staring at the door. I thought, maybe it was my auntie, making sure that I'd not burned the house down. When I got to the door, no one was there. Again.

Starting point is 01:13:11 Now, I was becoming a little bit more distressed, and being by myself was making it worse, and I thought that maybe it was burglar scoping the place out to see if anyone was home. That night, just before bed, I went to let Bonnie out. I opened the back door, turned on the lights to the conservatory and patio, and opened the conservatory door. To my horror, on the patio was a mangled bird. It had no head, and the left side of its body had been torn off by something.

Starting point is 01:13:45 What shocked me the most was that it was still walking about. I didn't know what to do, so I rang my girlfriend. I was explaining to her what I had seen, and when I looked on the patio, the bird was gone. I went outside to check to see if I could find it, but it had buggered off like it was never even there. I decided that Bonnie could do her business in the house again if she must. At this point, it was all becoming a little too much for me.

Starting point is 01:14:15 I spoke to my auntie and asked if my cousin and his girlfriend wanted to dog sit instead. I explained that my girlfriend couldn't stay anymore anyways, and that they'd probably appreciate the time alone. They, obviously, jumped at the chance. Cowardous. I know. The night, I went home and thought it would all be over now. I was wrong. Dead, wrong.

Starting point is 01:14:40 A few days after I'd gotten back into my comfort zone and was just sat watching TV in my bedroom, when out of nowhere there were two loud strums on my acoustic guitar. I sat there in disbelief for a moment, but then decided that I'd had enough. I asked whoever did it to do it again. The hairs on my arm rose with anticipation and fear. I asked multiple times, but nothing. I decided that it was probably best I went downstairs where my sister and mom were,

Starting point is 01:15:13 As I went downstairs, I heard the guitar fall over. I couldn't bring myself to tell them what had happened for fear of them thinking I was nuts. Another few days had gone by, and at this point, I was exhausted. Even though nothing serious had happened and I not seen anything, I felt like I was going crazy. I decided that it's probably best that I had an early night. I put the television on for background noise and faced the wall. Within seconds, I heard my television shut off, followed by heavy breathing.

Starting point is 01:15:47 I laid there with my eyes shut, terrified, as I heard the breathing get closer. It was deliberate and calculated. Each step it got closer, the louder the breathing got. I was frozen in fright. As it approached the bed, I could feel it breathing on the back of my head. Every hair on my body stood up as I could feel whatever it was lurking over my body. A few agonizing silent seconds passed, followed by a gigantic roar in my ear. I jumped to my feet from a laid-down position, something that I don't think I'll ever be able to do again.

Starting point is 01:16:25 I stood there, breathless and pouring in sweat. I was absolutely terrified. I looked at my clock and saw that it was 2.15 in the morning, and I'd gone to sleep around 9-ish. What felt like seconds had actually been hours. Scared to go back to sleep, I tiptoed downstairs not to wake anyone. But to my surprise, all the lights were on. I walked into the living room, and my mom was awake having a cigarette. I asked what she was doing up so late,

Starting point is 01:16:57 and she explained to me that she'd just had a horrible dream, in which me, my sister, her and my stepdad, all awoke in the middle of the night, because things were floating around the house. We'd all gained telekinetic powers and could control, control anything within the house. I laughed along as she explained the ludicrous dream until she got to the end. At the end of the dream, we were all downstairs dumbfounded as to what was going on around us, and then we all heard a terrifying roar come from upstairs. We crept up as a family

Starting point is 01:17:30 up the stairs, following the sound from above. As we got to the top, it was apparent that the sounds were coming from my room. We went in together and all gasped. as we saw a demonic hand open the hatch to the attic. That's when she woke up and the dream ended. I didn't share my dream. Later that morning, I became so tired that I couldn't resist sleep any longer and went back to bed, looking at the hatch that leads to the attic. I dreamt that something was trying to pull me out of my bed,

Starting point is 01:18:05 and when I woke the next morning, my right foot was covered in scratches. The events had really began to take a toll on my mental well-being. I didn't sleep and I didn't want to be left alone. I dreaded coming home from work, but over another few days, without incident, I was starting to feel a bit better and less like I was nuts. I was at home with my mom playing some PlayStation in my room when my mom asked if I wanted anything from the shop. I told her I was fine and didn't think anything of it when she was.

Starting point is 01:18:39 left. The second she left, and there was a loud bang that came from her room. At this point, I'd had enough. Just like when my guitar had played, I encouraged it to do it again. This time, it immediately responded with two large bangs. I rose up from my chair and walked onto the landing where all the bedrooms met. I stood there staring intently into my mother's bedroom, and it was pitch black. I asked it to do it again, but this time, I was a little bit of the room. But this there was nothing. I walked into her room and turned on her lights to see books

Starting point is 01:19:15 laid out across the floor. Obviously the cause of the noises I'd heard, and I stood in the middle of the room and dared them to do it again. A madman talking to himself in his parents' bedroom. Nothing. I'd had my fill of whatever had been happening

Starting point is 01:19:31 to me and decided that enough was enough. I told them exactly what I thought of them, using every expletive that I could think of, some manic crazed lunatic screaming at the abyss and telling them to screw off. A few minutes later, my mom came back from the shop. I went downstairs and explained everything that I'd gone through over the last couple of weeks. She patiently listened to me, and it felt great to get this nightmarish burden off my chest.

Starting point is 01:20:01 When I finished, she told me that her, my stepdad, and sister have always feared my bedroom, and that it's always made them uneasy to enter when I'm not there. She also told me a story where, while I was at my grandparents, her and my stepdad had had an argument, so my dad had decided to sleep in my bed, but he hurriedly ran back to their room as something had pushed him while he was trying to sleep. She also told me that the reason I slept with the TV on is when I was a child, my actual dad had passed away,

Starting point is 01:20:34 and my granddad told me that my dad was. would come visit me while I was sleeping. Instead of this being comforting, though, it terrified me so I could never sleep in the dark. Since that day, I've never had any more experiences. I still regularly visit my grandparents at their home, as they're still going strong in their 80s, and I checked back in just as much with the Parentos.

Starting point is 01:20:59 My room is exactly the same as when I left it. No one dares enter it when I'm not there. I was surprised that when I moved, moved out years ago, my sister never took it, because her bedroom was tiny, but the unnerving presence toward it was too much for her. I know this was long, really long, and I truly appreciate you for reading it. I've wanted to tell people this story for years, but was worried what people might think. Has anyone else ever had a one-off experience like this? Was it all just a series of strange events strung together, or was it something more menacing?

Starting point is 01:21:38 I lived it, and I have no bloody idea. Anyways, thanks again, and take care. This was a story told by my uncle, who was a realtor. In his line of work, he often comes across houses like this that people have died in, and some linger around. This one, though, had a lasting impression on him because of what, why it was the way it was. Initially, he told me about the house, since we both had a sixth sense.

Starting point is 01:22:19 He said there was this haunted house that he was in charge of, and asked if I wanted to come see it. Of course, I was like, why not? It stoked my interest. But also, I made sure we weren't going in it. I'm very superstitious and have been attacked before, so I take care of it. so I take care not to intrude with the other side, even though I do get interested. I don't want to cross lines, and I didn't want anything to attach to me. When he showed me the house, and I saw it, I understood why the grandma felt the way she did.

Starting point is 01:22:58 If you have a sixth sense, you'll understand when you see certain locations or places with bad history. You feel an off feeling, a darkness even in light, anger, sadness even, negativity and just an overall sense of dread. This was what I felt from staring at the house, and then after that, he sent me this. The other day, I was scheduled to show two beautiful Elk Grove homes. One of them looked very familiar. I wasn't sure if it was the exact home I was thinking of. Unfortunately, on this day, my left ankle had been giving me a lot of trouble. You could say that I was more concentrated on the sharp pain that runs up my spine with each painstaking step,

Starting point is 01:23:51 than paying attention to the homes. Although I was suffering from this pain, I just pressed on with the job, showing these two homes. The first home was a home I told you that it looked very familiar but I wasn't sure if it was the right house as it turned out it was the home I thought about it was one of my friends' homes

Starting point is 01:24:14 who have let it go to foreclosure a few months earlier because of my ankle pain I didn't venture far into this giant beast I only stayed in the living room with the client's grandma we just stood there staring at each other while the rest of the client's family explored the entire house. The home shows very well, but there were lots of visible repairs needed in order to make it livable.

Starting point is 01:24:41 There were loose and hanging wires throughout the house, and floors that looked like they were damaged from floods. Although the walls looked new, the home had a dark, creepy, and depressing feeling to it. It was not your normal giant. whereas you walked in and just have this exhilarant vibe of happiness and warmth. The grandma turned and looked at me. With an expressionless and stern face, she said,

Starting point is 01:25:11 This home needs a lot of repairs. That was all she said. My client's family couldn't agree more. It wasn't until the next home that the grandma finally opened up to me. The grandma slowly said in a low tone, I like this home more than the first one. That first home gives me the creeps. I couldn't agree more.

Starting point is 01:25:35 But to lay this creepy feeling to rest, I tried to justify the reason to the grandma why it felt creepy. I told her it must have just been because that first home was bigger than the second one. Although I did get a creepy feeling about the first house, I probably chose to ignore that feeling. My hair, for once, didn't stand up, nor did I have this feeling that there was someone lurking around like usual.

Starting point is 01:26:01 This time, it was more of, when can I get home to rest my foot? Maybe this was the reason why my sixth sense didn't kick in full force. I was more worried about the sharp shooting pain for my ankle than paying attention to my surroundings. However, just letting you know, I didn't lose my sixth sense, not just yet. Like I said, I did get this creepy,

Starting point is 01:26:27 dark, depressing feeling about the house, but my mind was elsewhere. Later on, in the evening, I text my friend and told her that I showed her old home to my clients. She asked me how the showing went. I told her that grandma said the house was creepy. The next text scared the wits out of me. She said, yes, the home is creepy. My late husband passed away inside the house. I knew her husband was sick, but I didn't think he died inside the home. She had never mentioned it to me.

Starting point is 01:27:04 She called me and then told me the whole scary story. She said that after he died, she continued to hear him call her name around one in the morning, telling her he was hungry. She thought it was her imagination at first. Maybe once or twice hearing her late husband call her name may be coincidental, but calling her name every night around 1 a.m., started to give her the creeps. Before her late husband passed away, he was bedridden.

Starting point is 01:27:34 He couldn't walk, but could only crawl. After he passed away, she sometimes would see a glimpse of him crawling around the house. Late at night, when she was in her room, she could feel and hear him crawling throughout the house, up the stairwells, and into the hallway. Since there was a huge gap at the bottom of the bedroom door, she could feel him lay his head down to the floor and peek at her. Now, those of you who have had such experiences know the person being haunted will experience a telepathic connection with the spirits.

Starting point is 01:28:10 This person will see exactly what the spirit is looking at. While she was in her room, in the back of her head, she could feel someone staring at her from underneath the door. Every move she made, she could see herself from a third person's view. She couldn't shake this feeling off. She got so freaked out that she placed towels under every door every night. She told me she didn't want to tell her son, because it could really creep him out. This was the real reason why she decided to let her home go in to foreclosure.

Starting point is 01:28:47 Paying for the home wasn't a problem. She could afford it, but she couldn't stand that house. any longer. She said she's never been so scared in her life. One of the cons of buying a foreclosed property is that the bank is exempt from disclosing deaths on the property. This is left up to the buyer to do their own due diligence about finding the history of the home.

Starting point is 01:29:12 Although foreclosed houses may be sold for under market value, sometimes it's better buying a home from a seller. sellers are required to disclose deaths on the property within three years. However, it is unfortunate. Unexplained phenomena or hauntings are not part of the disclosure package. This is where you may have to rely on your sixth sense. So, buyers, beware. Okay.

Starting point is 01:29:55 So I wrote this a long time ago, before I even considered joining Rambor. and the events of this story start 28-ish years ago. It's long-winded, and the first part of an anthology that I wrote, but it's a good read, and true, as far as I can remember it. Some of it may have been hallucinations or a child's imagination, but outside the scope of this story. I've never been prone to visual or auditory hallucinations, even after falling ten-ish feet into solid cement.

Starting point is 01:30:29 Think whatever you want. I stand by this as being 100% true, and the first half of a series in the most terrifying encounters I've ever had. So, this one. This is the beginning of the most terrifying paranormal thing that has ever happened to me. Technically, this should be titled The Doll, since it spans several years and several locations, and the central theme is a ventriloquist dummy I got as a child,

Starting point is 01:30:59 child. But it all begins in the basement. I lived in a house up in the very northern tip of Idaho, around about 1992 to 1993. The house is still there today, still in exactly the same shape outside, but I hope for the sake of the current owners that they remodeled and repaired the basement. And that basement wasn't huge. It had a large main room, basically a wide hallway, that had two doors leading to two small bedrooms. There was an uncarpeted cement floor and a little nook under the stairs opposite the two rooms that we used for storage.

Starting point is 01:31:40 In the spring, during the melt, the groundwater would leak into the basement due to faulty sump pumps. Because of that, the whole place would smell of mildew and mold. I'm fairly certain I spent a small chunk of my life living with some sort of mold in my bedroom, probably not healthy, and it could have accounted for the weird things that have happened in that dingy basement. I would believe that if the events that span this tale hadn't taken me into my adult life and several states away. It all started with a puppet, a snail puppets named Snaily. When I was about six, my family gave him to me.

Starting point is 01:32:24 He was a glorified sock puppet, with a long tube neck for my arm, and a shell on the back. I was very good at making it talk for me and giving it expression. I even figured out how to make him retreat into the shell when he was upset. I really enjoyed it and planned on making a life out of it, so much so that on my seventh birthday my grandparents gave me a Muppet. He was a gray furry fellow with a big felt mouth and a stick attached to one arm. His leg ended in Velcro-covered feet that could

Starting point is 01:32:58 wrap around me and seemed like he was sitting on my hip. I fell in love. He was an extension of me. Always on my hip, always cracking jokes. I loved that little fuzzball and started looking up ventriloquism at my library.

Starting point is 01:33:15 My grandfather caught wind of my interests and decided he would help me by getting me a ventriloquism dummy. It was a cheap replica of of Charlie McCarthy, the famous dummy that all Hollywood dummies are based on. That doll was awesome to the seven-year-old budding ventriloquist inside me. I didn't care that he only had a cheap pullstring to make him talk,

Starting point is 01:33:40 and that his velvet hat fell off his head every time I moved him. I loved him. When my family split, he ended up going with my father, and I lived with my mom in Utah. Eventually, we bounced from place to place, splitting our time between my mother and father in different states. Thus, in the final half of fifth grade, I moved back to Idaho, into my father's new home, and into a hellish nightmare that was that basement. When I moved back in, I got a lot of toys my father had been storing, including Charlie.

Starting point is 01:34:17 and by that time I was nearly 11, and I had forgotten about my love for ventriloquism. But seeing Charlie again reignited that flame. And I was at it again, until a couple months later when I got my first computer. Suddenly, learning Doss Basic and playing Wolfenstein 3D became my new obsession. I cast Charlie into my moldy closet and moved on to more adult things. Eventually, he was put away by my father. for safekeeping. From the moment I moved into that house, the basement was my greatest fear.

Starting point is 01:34:55 When I found out my dad was sticking me in the dingy unfinished basement bedroom with no carpet and mold on the walls, I pitched a fit. Not because it was gross, but because I was terrified of that whole space. The stairs leading up to the house were opened-faced. I could see into the small storage space under the stairs. and it always felt like something was back there waiting to grab my legs. I used to book it up the stairs at top speed and hopes to avoid that fate. The only light in the main room was a single bulb, hanging at the end of a long wire.

Starting point is 01:35:33 It wasn't designed to be like that. The wire should have been in the ceiling, and the bulb was hanging from the mount that should have been attached to the ceiling. My father mounted it twice during my stay in that house. both times it was down and swinging within a week. There was a wood-burning stove in the middle of the main room. It needed to be fed every couple hours during the winter to keep the house warm. Of course, as someone who's terrified of the basement,

Starting point is 01:36:02 the job of feeding the fire fell on my scrawny little shoulders. So, it was one day in the middle of winter. I was in the basement, feeding the fire. Since I had moved in there, I had experienced weird things. Bumps in the night, stuff falling off a shelf while no one was near, the normal.

Starting point is 01:36:24 However, this was the first time I had lived there that something truly terrifying happened to me. As I was struggling to open the door to the stove, I heard a deep, guttural growl from below the stairs to my right. I froze, hoping it was my dog hunting mice and slowly, without looking at the stairs, loaded the fire with a couple logs. I closed the door to the stove and slowly turned to look at the stairs.

Starting point is 01:36:55 When behind me I heard a voice clear as day, whispered in a harsh, deep, male tone, I lost my shit. I screamed and ran up the stairs. I think I only touched three steps of the 13 leading up to the main house. I ran to the back of the house, a new addition, and by new, I mean, 40 years old, and huddled under the blankets crying. I never wanted to go back into the basement, but eventually I had to go back to my room.

Starting point is 01:37:26 From that point, all, every bump, every scrape, every little sound, had me on edge while I was down there. Time passed. Eventually, I put the voice into the back of my mind, convincing myself that I had imagined it. I always had a rational mind, one that I used to explain away all the strange things that happened to me. Finally, as things tend to do, it was pushed into the back of my mind, and I lived with just a general fear of the basement again. Until one day, again, while feeding the fire, I got a sense of dread in my chest. Something I couldn't put my finger on, but it got my pulse racing.

Starting point is 01:38:13 I began to nop it up the stairs, when the one thing I had always feared happened. Something grabbed my leg from under the stairs. I freaked and went lightheaded. I couldn't figure out what was happening. I couldn't decide if this was real life or a dream. I know I jumped backwards. I was nearly at the top of the stairs, and I didn't land on a single step on the way down. The way my body twisted as I pulled away from something holding me had me land,

Starting point is 01:38:43 square on my back on solid concrete. I felt the wind rush from my lungs, and then I passed out. I don't know if it was from the impact or fear. I just know I lost consciousness. I don't know how long I was out. I do know when I came to my head hurt more than it ever had in my life. I was dizzy and not fully aware of my surroundings, and I crawled up the stairs and into the main part of the house.

Starting point is 01:39:10 I lay down on the couch and fell asleep. My dad got home a few hours later and woke me up. I told him what happened. He looked me over for any serious injury before telling me it must have been a dream. I was tired and lethargic for a few days after that, but eventually I felt normal, and I ended up deciding that it had to be a dream. Stuff like that doesn't happen in real life. Thinking back on this now, I may have suffered a head injury and should have gone to the hospital.

Starting point is 01:39:43 but my dad was very much the walk-it-off type. My brother knew of my fears. He would torment me as much as possible, jumping out at me or sending me to get things from the basement just because he knew I was afraid. The worst thing he did to me, though, was move stuff around my room at night. My room didn't have a door,

Starting point is 01:40:07 so it was easy to sneak in and move stuff around. He would put my toy chest in front of the doorway, or turn my desk upside down and put my chair on it. Never anything subtle about it. I didn't want to fuel his behavior, so I never got upset about it. I just moved things back. My mom always told me he would grow tired of his pranks

Starting point is 01:40:30 if he didn't think they were working. Old school don't feed the trolls moment. Eventually it stopped, or so I thought. One night, my brother's prankster, spirit came out in full force. I woke up to a loud knock on my closet wall. I looked over and in the light of the nightlight, I could see my dummy Charlie sitting on top of my toy chest, facing me.

Starting point is 01:40:55 I laughed, a little nervous laugh. Charlie had been put away in a garbage bag with all the other stuffed animals I didn't use any longer. The bag was stored in a shed in the backyard. I was proud of my brother for the effort. this had more subtlety in class than his other pranks. I fell back asleep. A while later, I was awoken to another knock,

Starting point is 01:41:20 and I sat up hoping to catch my brother doing something else. This time, Charlie was on the floor sitting upright, facing my bed. I rolled my eyes and sighed. I respected the conviction, but I was too tired to deal with it anymore, so I fell back to sleep. One last time I was woken, up, this final time the doll was on my chest. I flipped and ran into my brother's room yelling at him to stop messing with me.

Starting point is 01:41:50 The only problem was that his room was empty, and it slowly dawned on me that he hadn't been home all day and was planning on spending the night at his friend's Nick's house. I had been alone in the basement all night. It was quite some time later that I discovered he had never moved. moved anything in my room. In fact, by all accounts, my brother did everything he could to not go in my room because it gave him the creeps. I felt like I was going insane.

Starting point is 01:42:24 I couldn't fathom how the doll ended up on my chest or how it got inside in the first place. I ran upstairs crying uncontrollably. My dad's door was locked, so I climbed onto the couch and fell asleep with my face buried in fear. The next day, I woke up on the couch and it felt like a dream. Still, I was done with the basement. I started sleeping on the pull-out couch after that. I don't remember the story I told my dad, something about the mold bugging me,

Starting point is 01:42:57 but I never slept in that room again. Luck was on my side, and the basement started to flood heavily the next few months. And my dad eventually moved me into the room upstairs with my sister. I thought my troubles were over, but that was just the beginning of the nightmare that spanned almost 10 years of my life. My experience with this entity took place roughly two years ago. The memories still shake me up to this day, if that's any indication of how terrifying these experiences were. I can't allow myself to think about it for too long out of fear that, well, I don't know, actually.

Starting point is 01:43:51 It's not like thinking about this thing will conjure it. I'm fairly certain it's tethered to the place in which I encountered it. At the time, I was in my senior year of high school and living in an apartment on the school campus. You might be scratching your head, so hang with me while I explain the context. This wasn't your traditional high school, to avoid giving away too many personal details. we'll call it a private school, because not just anyone is able to enroll. Another relevant detail,

Starting point is 01:44:29 several deaths have occurred on the property where this school is located. Decades ago, three people were killed in a type of natural disaster that my state is known for. I now speculate that there were either more deaths from this event that no one talks about, or there was another tragic event in the school's history that I'm just not aware of.

Starting point is 01:44:54 The campus included dormitories for students from other parts of the state, as well as a small section dedicated to four aparted suites. Juniors and seniors got an opportunity to move into these suites for six to eight weeks. Basically, the only requirements were that, one, you weren't flunking your classes, Two, you were capable of carrying out tasks like shopping for groceries while staying on a budget, cleaning your apartment as needed, cooking your own meals, just the ordinary living on your own stuff. I should mention that students who didn't live on campus but met the above criteria were included in the apartment rotations. I was one of these students. Of course, I accepted when I was offered a spot.

Starting point is 01:45:46 I was thrilled to have gotten into the last rotation of the year because my group got two more weeks in the apartments than most. However, the excitement turned out to be short-lived. I moved in in mid-March of 2019. My family wanted to accompany me to get a look at the place to make sure that I got settled in. I'd already seen the apartments, so I let them wander around while I lugged my bags into the bedroom and commenced unpacking.

Starting point is 01:46:21 We then set our goodbyes. They left, and I abandoned my unpacking and invited myself to my best friend's apartment to see what she was up to. We'll call her A. Her apartment faced mine from across the hall, the other two being positioned the same way, but towards the front end of the hall leading to one of the main dorms. Not only was I eager to see A, but I remember something felt off.

Starting point is 01:46:52 Like the air was too dense. This apartment was notorious for being haunted. One girl in my class later told me that when she stayed there, she felt like something was gradually draining the energy from her. She was so exhausted that she became very antisocial, although she wasn't a social butterfly to begin with. She would fall asleep early in the evening, even if she wasn't tired, and slept through her morning alarms on a regular basis.

Starting point is 01:47:26 Another classmate said that items would get moved around when there was no one in the apartment, but her. I tried to push these thoughts from my mind until whatever was here, if anything, gave me a reason to be concerned. I also didn't want to make a scene inquiring if I could switch sweets with someone. In retrospect, I really wish that I had. But we'll get to that soon enough. The first week passed, pretty uneventfully. I had a lot going on at the time. I was taking a few college courses in addition to my high school workload,

Starting point is 01:48:06 in a steady relationship, etc., etc., etc. needless to say, I was too occupied to consciously look for paranormal activity. I just felt that heaviness in the air, usually in the back of the apartment where my bedroom and the bathroom were. After the first week, the source of this energy must have grown restless and decided it was time to make some, ahem, I'm here and the rumors about this place are true statements. I started seeing weird movements around my apartment, sometimes while friends were over, but usually while I was alone. I would see a foggy shadow with no definite shape,

Starting point is 01:48:52 darting across open doorways that vanished as soon as it caught my eye. I would ask whomever was over, did you see that? And they'd say they didn't and ask what I was talking about. and after explaining it the first time, we laughed it off on subsequent occasions. This carried on for another week or two. I was honestly starting to believe I was sharing my apartment with the mischievous ghost with no ill intent.

Starting point is 01:49:22 But, hey, life would be boring without plot twists, right? Just as my worry began to ebb, things took a dark turn. I remember one evening I had just finished cleaning up the kitchen after dinner and was laying on my bed on the phone with my boyfriend. I'll explain the layout of the bedroom because that's where most of the disturbing stuff went down. When you walk in, the closet takes up most of the wall to the left. I always left it open because it's old, and the sliding wardrobe-like doors had a tendency to stick. The head of the bed is against the right wall, so that when you lay down,

Starting point is 01:50:04 you're looking toward the open closet. There's a dresser across from the door, a nightstand on one side of the bed, and a desk on the other. Anyways, I was on the phone with my boyfriend, and I saw the blurry shadow darting around again. This particular time was unsettling because it was moving around the opening of the closet

Starting point is 01:50:27 right in front of me, and didn't poof out of sight like the other times. The energy emanating from it was hard to read, too. I couldn't tell if it was trying to be threatening or playful. My boyfriend sensed that I was uneasy. I told him I was currently watching the thing practically dancing around in front of me, and it wasn't going anywhere. I quickly left the room.

Starting point is 01:50:57 Hell, I probably left the apartment. I don't remember. Something just told. me that I needed to get out. My sweetmate was nowhere to be seen for the rest of the night, but I could still feel its presence when I returned. From that point on, I didn't feel like I was alone in my room. I mean, there had been a weird energy change all along,

Starting point is 01:51:23 similar to how you can feel the air change when a storm is moving in. Now, it was like a person was in the room with me 24-7. When night came, I would find excuses to avoid the bedroom for as long as possible. I'd go hang out with friends or invite them over so I wouldn't be alone if the ghost tried anything on me. I would loiter in the kitchen, making tea and sit on the couch passing time, until I got up the nerve to go to bed. I pleaded with my boyfriend to stay on the phone with me until I was tired enough to fall asleep shortly after we hung up. Maybe I was overreacting, but this ghost no longer felt harmless, like I had initially thought. My intuition has always been strong, and I couldn't have ignored it if I wanted to in this situation.

Starting point is 01:52:19 This place set off serious warning bells inside of me. Unfortunately, my paranoia was justified when things escalated yet again. I had just hung up with my boyfriend who was waiting for sleep to set in. I was laying on my stomach, head turned to face the bedroom door, when, insert crash noise here. My entire body jolted. My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest, and I dove under the covers like a child and tried to catch my breath. My first thought should have been, what the hell was that? but I somehow knew, with a paralyzing clarity, what had just happened without even having to see it.

Starting point is 01:53:08 This ghost slash spirit was a young, blind boy. The darkness had disoriented him, causing him to stumble into my desk. I can't explain how or why I knew this. The characteristics of this ghost being blind, male, and quite young, probably between nine and 13 years, old, just materialized in my mind with utter certainty. I know it sounds crazy. Not only did the fact that I could pinpoint information about this entity freak me out, it also confused me.

Starting point is 01:53:44 Is it even possible for a spirit to be blind? I guess we don't know what will happen to us when we die, but lots of people believe were restored to perfect health in the afterlife, or just cease to exist. so the whole thing, it didn't sit well with me. And no, there was no one else in the apartment with me. Nor could anyone have gotten in, because I always locked the doors at night, and I was the only one with a key.

Starting point is 01:54:16 I was shaking really badly, but I managed to fish my phone out of the blanket and called my boyfriend, not wanting to be alone and knowing that he would still be awake. Again, I was so shaken that I don't remember much, besides getting out of the damn bedroom and turning on all of the lights as I walked through the apartment. The next day, I told A and another friend, or referred to her as T, about the ghost boy. They didn't know whether or not to believe me, but they could tell how distressed I was nonetheless. I was more anxious than usual to go to bed after that. I started seeing it in the morning, too. It's translucent shadow flickering at the threshold of the closet.

Starting point is 01:55:06 I got the feeling that it was watching or listening to me, and it taunted me with that stupid disappearing act. There, one second, con the next. Luckily for me, it was April by this time, and a band trip was approaching. The trip involved traveling out of state, meaning I would be able to escape the suffocating paranoia that I was sadly growing accustomed to for about four days.

Starting point is 01:55:36 I was still anxious to fall asleep the first night of the trip, but when I realized it hadn't followed me, I slept soundly for the first time in weeks. In case you're wondering, we went to Silver Dollar City that year and you can bet your ass, I went on every roller coaster in the park, but I digress. Fast forward to the last day of the trip. Dread, flooded, threw me on the long drive home.

Starting point is 01:56:05 I think I still had about three weeks left in the apartment. I was exhausted when I unlocked my door and dragged myself, and my overstuffed suitcase inside. But upon being hit with a wave of paranoia, I started a load of laundry and escaped over-stuffed suitcase. over to T's place. When I walked in, she and A were watching a show and digging into some jerky and outlandish flavors that she'd bought on the trip.

Starting point is 01:56:33 She offered me some, but I declined. I have a TMJ disorder, a jaw condition, and I'm careful not to strain my jaw chewing tough foods like this. This is good to know for later. Skipping to some time in the middle of that week, I was in bed and the room was dead quiet. I'm just lying there, teetering on the first phase of sleep, but still mostly coherent. And I hear a menacing click right next to my ear. My whole body went cold.

Starting point is 01:57:07 My mind was screaming at me to leave the room, cover my head anything but just lay there like a statue. But I couldn't move. The belligerence behind the action was so freaking intense that I was frozen in fear. It literally sounded like someone had come up beside the bed, leaned over me, and snapped their teeth next to my ear. Now, I know that when you're on the verge of sleep, you can have involuntary movements like a jerk of the arm or leg, but I was alert enough that I would have felt my teeth clamped together, and I've never heard of that kind of involuntary movement happening. I've tried to replicate the sound myself under the same circumstances, but to no avail.

Starting point is 01:57:57 I mentioned earlier that I have a jaw disorder. Because of this, I sleep with appliances, aka mouth guards, on my top and bottom teeth, and it would have been impossible for me to make this sound. I lay there, terrified, and barely breathing for what felt like several minutes, but in reality was probably 30 seconds or less. As my brain finally began to process what was going on, I lost it. I felt an overwhelming sense that I was in peril,

Starting point is 01:58:31 and I went into a full-blown panic attack. Shaking, gasping for breath, feeling a mix of cold and numb all over. I grabbed things that were in close proximity, my phone, my pillow, a blanket, and I tore out of the room, slamming the door behind me. Beyond frantic, I stumbled out of that nightmarish apartment and into A's place. She thankfully kept her door unlocked at night, which was safe because the campus was secure,

Starting point is 01:59:03 and she has some medical things that having easy access to the apartment would come in handy for should she have some kind of an emergency. I collapsed in her living room, trying to be. not to freak out too loudly so I wouldn't wake her up. I ended up falling asleep on her couch. It was too small for me to stretch out all the way, but I didn't care. It wasn't the last time that I'd run to her either. I heard the teeth gnashing around five more times.

Starting point is 01:59:35 That's not something you can just get used to. A and her apartment became my safe haven. Sometimes she was awake when I plowed into her living room. For those who aren't from the south, with their Central Plains, part of the U.S., where people say that, it means hauling ass, hurriedly carrying out an action. Other times, she would find me crashed out on her couch in the morning. To this day, I am so grateful that I had my best friend merely feet away

Starting point is 02:00:04 throughout this whole ordeal. I honestly did not expect anything of this nature based on what classmates had told me. This entity was clever. It tricked me into believing it was harmless when that couldn't be further from the truth. Had I stayed there much longer, I fear it would have hurt me physically. I have a few theories as to why the entity became so malicious. Maybe it was angry with itself for crashing into my desk and giving away its identity. Maybe it was trying to use echolocation.

Starting point is 02:00:39 Maybe it wanted to trick me into a false sense of security, then scare the hell out of me for fun. I really didn't think it was a prankster for a while, but the teeth-nashing thing in the overall energy as of late, it felt pretty sinister to me. And I don't even know why it was so active around me in particular. Even if it meant no harm, which I highly doubt, I didn't find it the least bit amusing. And I'm glad I will never have a reason to step foot in that apartment ever again.

Starting point is 02:01:13 so I babysit this little boy. He is very sweet and polite. I've babysat him for a year at this point, and I absolutely love the kid. So I noticed after his sixth birthday party that he started to talk to someone. Me being naturally curious, I go and ask him,

Starting point is 02:01:44 Who you're talking to, bud? And he replies with, Patrick. After he said that, He looked up and away, and then said, Okay, and ran off. Keep in mind, I don't really believe in ghosts and such, so I assumed him being young the Patrick the Starfish

Starting point is 02:02:06 or something like that was his imaginary friend. And I also assumed that his parents knew about it, and I really thought nothing of it. Well, a couple months go by, and at this time the talking went from small. chit-chat to full-on conversations. One night, in particular, I go over to babysit him at his house because we were selling ours. So, let me tell you how this house is set up.

Starting point is 02:02:37 When you walk into the door, there's this big step-down living room with super-high-vaulted ceilings, like 20 feet tall. And if you look to the right, there's a hallway where all the bedrooms are, and it looks right into the boy's room. And to the right of that, there is a dining room, and then a wall and a massive kitchen, and straight ahead is one big sliding door with a pool outside. Then if you go into the kitchen and look left right before entering, there's a laundry room with a ladder that goes into a secret room,

Starting point is 02:03:13 and there's a skinny door that goes into a stairway, into a loft, that looks over the living rooms. So, anyways, I go over and he comes up and gives me a hug, and then goes outside to play with his friends before it gets dark. His parents leave. I go into the kitchen's breakfast nook to do some homework that I had for my marketing class. I pull all my stuff out and plug in my MacBook to let it charge for a little bit, and I put everything down on the table, all nice and neat. and then I went outside so I could go help him clean up, get his toys and, you know, the drill.

Starting point is 02:03:55 And we walked inside, I go into the kitchen to get some water, because we were hot, and I look at the table. All of my papers and stuff were on the floor, and my MacBook was open. I had left it closed. Of course, this bothers me. I freak out a little bit, but I tried to hide it so that I didn't scare the kid. but then he said that he wanted a bath.

Starting point is 02:04:20 So I filled up the tub, you know, put some bubbles in, and left his iPad in there so he could watch cartoons or something. Don't judge. I don't like being in there. I'm a 16-year-old male, and I don't want to be in there with a little boy. That's just weird and uncomfortable. Well, I come back around 20 minutes later because he wanted to get out. I brought him a towel, and then when I was he was a towel,

Starting point is 02:04:45 then when I was at the door I heard him giggling. I peeked in, and the iPad was off, and he was just staring at the chrome faucets. So after he got out, I asked him what he was laughing at, and he said, Patrick was telling me a story, and I asked, about what? He said, about Grandma. His grandma had died ten years before he was born. So I laughed and smiled and told him to get dressed. I'd go over to the tub and pull a drain, but after I do that, I looked in the screen of the iPad,

Starting point is 02:05:27 and in the reflection, I looked at the mirror in the iPad's screen, there was a black figure. I quickly looked behind me and nothing was there, so I just thought that I was imagining, or it was just a figment of my imagination, and I thought nothing. of it. After that, I went back to the breakfast nook and started on my homework. I booted up my computer and started my homework like normal, and then when the boy, which we'll just call him Tim from now on, walked in, he said he was hungry. I told him I would order pizza for him in a little bit. Well, he didn't like that and started pouting. I told him that if he didn't shape up, he would get nothing at all. So, he backtalked me.

Starting point is 02:06:15 and I went over, got down to his level, and gave him a stern lecture. But in the middle of me doing so, my computer died, even though it was on the charger. And it just so happened that I'd saved none of my work that I had spent weeks on that assignment. Yes, I'm still salty about that. I go over panicking, and it wouldn't boot up. I turn around to a little voice that said, Patrick didn't like that in my head. I was all like, oh, hell no.

Starting point is 02:06:52 But I just simply told Tim, well, tell Patrick that he's very rude and hurtful. Tim tells me, he said you deserve it. I wanted to say something back, but I was not about to argue with whatever this thing was via a six-year-old. so I just sucked it up and ordered the pizza. And while the pizza was on its way, I let him pick out the movie. A little thing on me, I refuse to sit on other people's sofas. I just think it's rude. I don't know why I just do.

Starting point is 02:07:30 And I'm watching him go through the movies from the kitchen table, and he turns to his side and starts whispering something. I asked him who he was whispering to, and... I got a swift, nothing, and he stops in this one movie. I don't know what it was, and looks back and then looks directly to my right, then up a little and whispers, Okay. At that moment, what I thought was the AC blowing on me wasn't on anymore.

Starting point is 02:08:02 Later that evening, I checked the thermostat, and it was scheduled, and at that time it was off. He asked me if we could watch it. All I remember is that it was rated R. I asked why, and he said, Patrick likes this movie. And I just said maybe later. As I said that, the ceiling fan in the living room,

Starting point is 02:08:26 the light turned on by itself, and my computer booted back up at the same time. So, me being the pretty laid-back person I am, said, well, um, yes, as long as you don't tell your parents. So, at this point, I'm really curious as to who Patrick is. And I asked, Hey, bud. Who's Patrick?

Starting point is 02:08:51 I get the response. Mommy's old friend. So now I'm freaked the hell out. So I ask, does Patrick like me? And Tim says, No, not yet. He doesn't know what to think about you yet. After that,

Starting point is 02:09:11 The night was pretty chill until bedtime. I did the usual routine, you know, water, brush teeth, pajamas, and then bed. I went in to check on him with an hour still on the clock until his parents got home, because you're not going to catch me slipping. When I peeked through the door, I saw him staring at the closed blinds and whispering. And all I asked him is, is everything okay? He turned around and said, all good.

Starting point is 02:09:43 As he said that, I felt a huge gust of wind hit me like a back of bricks. I stumbled back and closed the door. I packed my stuff up and just put my headphones in and waited in the dining room for his parents. I was scared. When his parents came in the door,

Starting point is 02:10:01 I immediately pulled the mother aside. FYI, his dad intimidates me. And I asked her, do you know about Patrick? She asked, Patrick? I responded with a yes, and what she said, I will never forget. Is Tim talking to Patrick? I haven't talked to him since I was nine.

Starting point is 02:10:26 My mom said that she made him for me. I didn't know what that meant back then, but as I grew up, I found out my mom was a Satanist. Never since then, I haven't babysat at his house from then on. Now I go to pick him up. But the last time I babysat him right before the pandemic, I hadn't heard about Patrick.

Starting point is 02:10:50 So I asked what happened to him, and Tim said, He likes you now, and he said to me that he'll look after you. Right then and there, I crapped myself. I just couldn't. Since that day, weird stuff has happened around me, especially at home.

Starting point is 02:11:11 Sometimes I'll find my keys on the floor in a different room. Or my dog will just bark at nothing. At school or in the car, it just feels weird. It's different. Like someone is watching me or staring. I don't know what to do. Please, if this thing could potentially harm me, please tell me and tell me how I can get rid of it.

Starting point is 02:11:38 Update. Shortly after posting this, I was in an accident. I was driving back from Tim's after dropping him off, and later on that night, as I was driving home, my car was teaboned. But right before that, I saw something in my rear-view mirror. It was a black figure.

Starting point is 02:11:59 I don't know if this was the doing of Patrick, or if he was trying to warn me, I'm just thankful I'm alive and got to go home to see my family. The guy who hit me was drunk and ran a red light. My Mustang was totaled in the accident and everyone was okay. I just have a couple airbag burns and some cuts and bruises and sore muscles. If you're wondering about my car, it was a 2017 Ford Mustang and it was totaled. But I'm most likely getting a new one with the insurance money.

Starting point is 02:12:32 but for now I'm driving an 06 ram, Bighorn. I used to do overnight IT work for a handful of hospitals in a small town in the Midwest that, if I mentioned it, you would have no idea where it was. That said, I'm just going to say that it was in Nebraska, and leave it at that. It was contract work, and it was outsourced to a third-party company. I was just out of my two-year-old. two-year degrees, so I took the first job that I got offered.

Starting point is 02:13:17 As previously stated, that first job happened to be a contract to hire a position doing the third shift help desk for a group of hospitals. Basically, I would be expected to be at one of the sites and answer support tickets for this main site, as well as the satellite offices if they came in, which they rarely did. For the most part, I would just spend all of my hours at the main hospital and sit in the IT room from midnight to 8 in the morning, doing very little. There would be the occasional printer that I would have to reset or fix for the overnight nurses, but really, it was a simple job.

Starting point is 02:14:04 Now, I shouldn't have to tell you this, but hospitals are typically haunted. and I don't mean like, oh, that's spooky haunted, no, I mean straight up haunted by the spirits of the people that died in those rooms and cannot pass on. Honestly, I could probably sit here and type a short novel of all the events that happened, but I think it's best to go with the ones that seriously spooked me. There was one night where I got a ticket for one of the aforementioned printers, which, honestly, were more hassle than they were worth.

Starting point is 02:14:44 I got called down to help one of the station nurses connect her system to the main printer because it kept on giving her an error. I got down there, she tells me what exactly the printer is doing and asks me how long it'll take. I tell her that it'll just be a few moments, and she informs me that she needs to go use the restroom. I tell her that would be fine and that I should have it done by the time she gets back.

Starting point is 02:15:14 She walks away, and I get to work. After a few moments, I get that weird feeling that someone is staring at me. You know the feeling, that spine chill. I shrug it off and keep trying to get the drivers installed for the printer, when I hear someone faintly say, excuse me I look up and I see an elderly patient standing

Starting point is 02:15:41 in the doorway to their room and staring at me which honestly wasn't that big of a deal I was sitting at the nurse station and I was the only person there I looked up and as politely as I could

Starting point is 02:15:58 said my apologies I'm just here to help with the computer the nurse on duty just went to the rest of and we'll be right back. I'll let her know that you need help as soon as she gets back. I say this. She smiles at me with her wrinkly, beaming smile,

Starting point is 02:16:16 and I think everything is copacetic between us. I sit back down and start back into getting the hunk of junk back to a functional state. After a few moments of me working with it, I get it to connect, and it starts spinning up as the spooler pulls the jobs. I patted myself on the back for another successful night and leaned back in the chair. I glanced back up to where the elderly lady was

Starting point is 02:16:44 and saw that she had closed her door. As soon as I noticed this, the nurse on duty comes back. I stand up and I let her know that everything is working again and that it looked like it wasn't going to cause her any more trouble. I then motioned toward the room where the patient was and informed her that the lovely lady needed some assistance. When I said this, her face literally went pale, and she asked me which room.

Starting point is 02:17:15 I pointed to the room with the door closed and told her that one. She then asked me to describe the old woman. I laughed and told her that she had glasses, short white hair, looked to be in her 80s. As soon as I tell her this, she then shows me what it was that she was printing. It was paperwork that she needed to fill out for a recently deceased patient. The picture of the patient was the woman that was standing in the doorway.

Starting point is 02:17:45 She then tells me that this patient had passed away earlier that evening and that they had just cleared her room. Obviously, I thought she was pulling one over on me with the patient and playfully told her to knock it off. She stared at me with a deadpan stare And then walked over to the room Opened the door and motioned for me to look inside I reluctantly did

Starting point is 02:18:11 And sure enough It was empty The room was sanitized Everything was clean And the board was completely blank Honestly That kind of just ruined my night I grabbed my laptop and went back to the IT closet

Starting point is 02:18:27 I didn't really want to to deal with people after that one. Beyond that, and probably one of the other nights that scared the hell out of me, there was one evening where I was in the closet with one of my new coworkers that I was training. This was about a year later, after I had been hired on full time, and I was actually training this person to be under me. I had already explained how things worked, and he was just sitting there going through the HR video training. I was probably on Facebook, just waiting for a ticket to come in, so we had something to do.

Starting point is 02:19:06 We were literally just sitting there in the quiet hum of the servers, when out of nowhere, the lights in the server room shut off. My mind immediately went into worst-case IT scenario. I thought the server room had lost power, which would have been bad. The server room losing power means that the servers may shut off, and we have to manually check them all to make sure they turn back on with the emergency power, and that there are no errors. I look around and see that the server rack still has green lights on it,

Starting point is 02:19:41 which meant that they were all good to go. I told the new guy to wait there, and I got up to go and see if the rest of the hospital had possibly lost power. When I got to the door, the light switch was off, like someone had legitimately turned it off. I shrugged it off. and flipped the switch back to on. The newbie asks me if everything is okay,

Starting point is 02:20:04 and as soon as I start telling him that it was nothing, the lights seriously flipped back off. I slowly turn around, turn them back on, and start to walk backwards toward the desk. And I seriously watched the light switch slowly move from the on position to the off position. It was like a really weak person

Starting point is 02:20:28 was slowly pushing it down with one finger, just nudging it slightly until it was off. That was enough for me. I told the new guy that we were taking a lunch. He laughed and asked what was going on, and I told him that, at that exact moment, we were going to leave the server room and go down to the cafeteria to take a lunch. I had no idea what the hell kind of spirit was having fun with us that night, but I was not going to agitate it any further. And I just decided to let it have its way.

Starting point is 02:21:05 We went down and we had lunch, then went back up to the server room. When we got there, the lights were back on, and they didn't turn themselves off after that. And while that may not be creepy to some people, it seriously freaked me out, mostly because I was well aware of how haunted that hospital really was.

Starting point is 02:21:39 Around 1986, a toddler-sized talking doll, whose name I'm still too superstitious to repeat, hit the market. She had blonde, curly ringlets, and large blue eyes that moved around when she talked. The sounds she made came from a cassette player that was built into her back, and her rubber mouth would open,

Starting point is 02:22:05 and close along with the audio. The first time I saw one of these dolls in person was at a friend's house. For the next year, I would persistently beg my parents for that doll, and when I was eight, they surprised me with one for my birthday. Between 1988 and 1989, the doll and I got along well. I started to outgrow the cute. and babyish cassettes that came with her, so sometimes I would put random tapes in her back.

Starting point is 02:22:44 Even music. I would laugh hysterically as her mouth and eyes moved along with everything from classical music to my dad's boring financial tutorials narrated by a droning male voice. That man's voice emanating from the doll's mouth was totally creepy, but even more,

Starting point is 02:23:05 hilarious. I inevitably got bored of this, but for at least a year, and I had some good times with her. It was toward the end of my fourth grade school year in 1989, and one night I was getting ready for bed, as I always did. This night was marked by a gradual uneasiness, which started out as barely noticeable, but by the time I was in bed, I began to worry that I may never get to sleep. It was odd, because there was nothing in particular I was anticipating or that was bothering me. No class trips, tests, or anything that might trigger a sleepless night. I wondered if I was coming down with something. I was feeling ever so slightly unwell.

Starting point is 02:24:00 and the sensations in my body were causing me a great deal of anxiety. I lay with discomfort for at least two hours, wanting to toss and turn, but felt too emotionally paralyzed to move. For some reason, I wanted to face the wall. In fact, I was afraid to face the open space of my room. A sense of dread emerged. I remembered what my mom told me about not being able to sleep. She recommended that I didn't force myself to close my eyes, so I left them open.

Starting point is 02:24:43 Periodically, my eyelids would close, but then my awareness of them closing would wake me up. Another hour went by, and I was used to hearing the occasional whirring of cars. but after laying awake for so long, the traffic noise gradually ceased. The quietness of the room was distracting. Judging by the lack of street noise, I'm guessing that it was three or even four in the morning. Then, I heard something impossibly bizarre and barely audible. My baby brother's crib was across the room by,

Starting point is 02:25:25 the window. He was not yet talking, no more than a couple of words, and certainly wasn't counting. But I heard him not just counting, but doing it backwards from ten. Every number was spoken in an exaggeratedly drawn-out sing-song voice that started from a lower tone and eventually made its way to a higher one. I peaked over my shoulder to look at the crib, but it looked like my brother was asleep. Ten, nine,

Starting point is 02:26:04 eight, seven. I pulled the covers tightly around my body and tried to convince myself that I didn't hear what I just heard. After all, the volume of that tiny voice was extremely low. Perhaps the baby was babbling in his sleep, and my brain tried to make sense of it.

Starting point is 02:26:28 Could I have dozed off? Well, that's the thing. I had been awake the entire night. Five, four, etc. Then, a faint clicking sound came from the corner beside my brother's crib. There was a small wooden chair in that corner. Each of its legs had a meadow. a wheel which clicked in such a way when the chair was being moved, it was unmistakable.

Starting point is 02:26:58 The chair was moving on its own. I didn't dare turn to look because I was depending on that last ounce of denial that I could muster. The worst thing about this chair, other than its sudden independent movement, was that it was the permanent residence of the doll when it was not in use. I knew that she was sitting on the chair before I got into bed. Then, it felt as though all the air was sucked out of the room, and I could only hear the clicking of the chair's wheels as they inched closer to my bed. I started to call out for my parents, but I was unable to yell loudly enough.

Starting point is 02:27:42 The fear was so intense that I could barely move. But eventually, I had... decided that I should just make a run for the door. The problem was, in order to get out of the room, I would have to risk looking at the doll. Finally, I was able to move a little, and that's when I made the mistake of turning my head too far around, and saw the doll in her chair inches away from my bed. What's worse is that her face was contorted in such a way that, As an adult, I can compare to Regan from the Exorcist.

Starting point is 02:28:25 But as a nine-year-old, I had no concept of it. The doll's eyes were also looking upward, but slightly to one corner, creating an absolutely horrifying image that I will never forget. That's when I let out a powerful shriek. I did so reflexively, and it was almost like I was listening to someone else screaming. When my parents came running in, the doll was back in her corner, and I was never believed. I slept in my parents' bed that night, and they were angry at me. I dreamed that I was in a car driving in circles around some suburban neighborhood I have never seen before.

Starting point is 02:29:11 Living alone with the aftermath of this experience was traumatic in and of itself. The following week, I was so paranoid. about seeing inanimate objects doing things they weren't supposed to, that I jumped to conclusions about certain things. For instance, the shampoo and conditioner that was in the shower one evening felt significantly heavier than they did earlier in the day. And I was afraid that the substances somehow materialized at will. My mom insisted that water probably got in the bottles, but it didn't.

Starting point is 02:29:49 I turned the bottles over and no excess water came out. Perhaps it was my paranoia, but I'm not rolling anything out. Not after what I experienced. It took several months to feel somewhat normal again, and to this day, I am still affected by this incident. I'm sorry if I suck at writing. I'm new to sharing ghost stories, and I don't think I'm a good writer, but shadows.

Starting point is 02:30:29 Ever since I was little, I believed in the paranormal, and every once in a while I would have an encounter. My house isn't new, about 50 years old to be exact, and I've lived here almost my entire life, and to our knowledge, no one has died here. I think one of the occurrences I kept on having when I was little was waking up in the middle of the night, and running into my mom's room and eventually going to sleep. sleep in her bed. I've never had sleep paralysis, and I can move every time. But when I looked towards the doorway, on the frame would be a tall, thin figure. When I looked away and back, it would get closer and then retreat. I've tried to debunk this in the daytime, and it wasn't

Starting point is 02:31:23 there. I thought maybe it was just the darkness, but I don't know how it looked so human-like. I think it could be debunked. My parents just don't really like hearing about the scary stuff. It freaks them out, and especially because this took place in their room multiple times. I think they just don't want to hear it. And then dolls. At 13, I was a very paranoid person.

Starting point is 02:31:53 And one night I woke up around two, I want to say, still delirious, I could hear a woman's voice talking to me. She had a soothing presence and was calming me back to sleep. She whispered, Are you there, or are you awake? I drowsily responded with yes.

Starting point is 02:32:15 Then I felt a wave of warmth and soft comfort wash over me, and slept soundly the rest of the night with no nightmares. Nothing scary, just peace. It was kind of odd, but also kind of nice to hear. It's funny how my brain didn't register that it was a spirit. Usually I get crazy scared and excited for this stuff. A month before the incident, I went to Goodwill and got a Victorian-looking doll,

Starting point is 02:32:45 which I bought on an impulse, hoping it had a spirit. My friends dubbed her the name Pink Lady, hence her very pink long dress. Everything was all right, but at night I always felt like she was looking directly at me, no matter where I stood in the room. I could feel a sense of her hatred for me. She hated the music I would put on, and she would definitely make me feel it with paranoia, etc. But one day, funnily enough, this old jazz 40s, or at least 50s, song turns on, and I no longer felt watched. She stopped looking at me, and I could finally look at her and hold her without being creeped out.

Starting point is 02:33:34 She even seemed like a friend. She got upset when I was crying and hated to see people hurt me. Recently, she's not been so active. Maybe because I'm not scared anymore, or if she dislikes when she's in my room. She's always expressed to me that she loved sitting on my dresser. During the summer, I got a pendulum, and when I used it to talk to, hopefully, the other spirits, because of the many occurrences, first the pink lady came on and then someone else. Whenever I would use it after that day, the second person would always come in and pretend to be her. She was always so excited to talk to me, but this person was dull and felt sad.

Starting point is 02:34:22 I've tried to get their name or at least gender. I asked, are you a man? No. Are you a girl? No. I've tried to go through the entire alphabet to at least get a first name, but they won't answer. Does your name start with A? No.

Starting point is 02:34:43 Skip to E. Does your name start with an E? No answer. I asked where they like to reside. Are you mainly in my room? No. What about the bathroom? No answer, but seemingly a slight yes. My friend has spirits in his house, and there's an evil presence that blocks everyone else from talking on his spirit box.

Starting point is 02:35:07 Maybe this is the same scenario. Maybe there's someone bad in the house blocking her from speaking. I'm not sure. I'll take any advice. The OP made a second post for an update. I decided to use the pendulum after a few months. It was tricky to see what they said, but from what I got, here's the conversation. Am I talking to the pink lady?

Starting point is 02:35:34 No. Can I talk to her? No. Are you a man? Yes. Are you new? No. Have you been here a long time?

Starting point is 02:35:47 No. Did you follow me? Then there was a slight movement to yes. Did you follow me from a friend's house? Yes. Are you an adult? Huge swing towards no. Are you a kid like me?

Starting point is 02:36:05 No. Are you an elder? No. Are you even human? No answer, but a slight, no. Are you evil? No. Are you good?

Starting point is 02:36:18 No. Then I started to ask where he liked to reside. Do you like being in my sister's room? Are you mainly there? No. My parents' offices? No. My room?

Starting point is 02:36:31 No. The kitchen? Slight yes. The family room? Our kitchen is in the same room as the family room. Yes. Can you move on? Yes.

Starting point is 02:36:44 But do you want to move on? No. Did you follow me from a year ago? Slight, yes. Of course, I thanked him for his time and said goodbye. Recently, I've been feeling very, extremely sad at nighttime, and I think that could be him. I'm guessing, since a lot of bad spirits feed off of negativity,

Starting point is 02:37:11 maybe he's giving that to me. I've never felt this way at night before, and it started after I talked to him for the first time. I'm not sure if he's a liar trying to trick me to make me scared, and I get the feeling he is a trickster because of the awful dreams I get each night. Weird, vivid, scary dreams. I'm a bit scared that there's an entity attached to me. I recently got incense, and I burn it a lot from my deities,

Starting point is 02:37:43 and those are the nights that I don't get sad. I'm a Wiccan-pagan, and I think I might need to make some sort of protection spell. I'm very unsure of what to do next. Sage might help, along with smudging my house. This is all for the update. Thank you to everyone who's been reading. I don't know how this timeline adds up since the last time he said he wasn't a man or a woman. And when I got the letter J this time,

Starting point is 02:38:16 it went still, and every other letter was a strong no. Last time he hinted at E, two spirits maybe, or a trickster. I would like to know. I grew up as a mixed-raced, mixed-culture child. My mother being a black female and my father a Native American. Traditionally, natives are very in-tuned with the spiritual world. My mom, not so much. mostly holding that good old Christian belief system, and often referring to my dad's spiritualism as his crazy native beliefs.

Starting point is 02:39:06 However, I have always been connected to ghostly entities and kept quiet for the most part, not wanting my mother to refer to me the same way. I often called the entities my guardians when I was a child, because whenever I did something stupid or unsafe, they, or some of them, would protect me. So I literally grew up not fearing the supernatural. Now, so you can understand why I was so comfortable as a child, I'll elaborate a little on my interactions.

Starting point is 02:39:43 I was a latchkey kid, so after school, I would walk home, lock myself into the house, and then went about my day, beating myself doing homework and watching TV. It wasn't uncommon for an elderly woman's spirit to sit down on the couch with me until my nana, grandmother, got home from work. It wasn't until my teen years that I realized that the elderly woman was my great-grandmother, who had passed six years before my birth. Throughout my lifetime, I have interacted with many spirits, most stuck in a loop,

Starting point is 02:40:22 a couple I could interact with and one that still terrifies me to this day. I had just finished my senior year of high school and had applied to a local community college. I was one of those students who balanced between poor enough to file for financial aid, but wealthy enough that I didn't get much, not enough to pay for all of my classes and books. So I started house-sitting, our family and friends' animals to pay for their rent. rest. My mother's previous boss was one of those people. She loved traveling and would often do so two or three times a year for at least a month. She was retired at the time. She lived in a rural area with one neighbor close enough to contact just in case of an emergency. I had been to the

Starting point is 02:41:13 house twice before when I was a child, and both times I was unsettled. My mother's boss, let's call her Amy, was a teenager during World War II, and was placed in danger because of her parents' open objection of Hitler, so they flew to America. She's a photographer in her spare time. She adores Mexico, and at the time was looking to move there. With that said, she had hundreds of masks hanging on her walls, all throughout the house, accompanied with photos she took of cemeteries and gravestones.

Starting point is 02:41:50 For a couple of years, I experienced small things. Voices, dragging noises, periodically things would have been moved. Nothing too terrifying, but when I started dating an old friend, I had him staying with me just to have immediate backup if something were to happen. When this happened, I was 21. My boyfriend had expressed some discomfort in being in the house, especially at night, to which I told. told him about the multiple spirits I had encountered there.

Starting point is 02:42:24 I mentioned that none of them have been hostile, and as long as we left them alone, they would leave us alone, with the exception of the screaming man. He liked to stand outside of the window and scream at around three in the morning, and I would simply ask him to be quiet. We were playing games on the second week of our stay when my SO had to use the bathroom. I opted to change into my jammies while he went off into the darkness,

Starting point is 02:42:54 when he screamed very loudly. Now, my significant other isn't easily scared, but he high-tailed it back to the living area. He said that the dark entity that often stood beside the homeowner's bedroom door, which happened to also be next to the hall that leads into the house from the cars, had turned to look at him. It paused before getting bigger, and started running towards him.

Starting point is 02:43:23 Very strange behavior for the being, but I had assumed that we had upset it. So I apologized for bothering it. From then on, my S.O. and I went to the bathroom together during the night. Fast forwarding to the last week, things had gotten a bit more tense. Each entity started getting more and more agitated, until it seemed like our nights were filled with activity. and our space seemed to shrink until it was the single bedroom. I kept my keys on the coffee table in the living room,

Starting point is 02:43:59 my computer for school in the family room, and a few toiletries. Those objects would appear back in the bedroom, as if someone carelessly tossed them in. Spirits I had no problems with started running away or charging at me. Eventually, I took my S.O. home to see if things slowed down. down. They didn't. By the time my two-month house sitting job was done, I was exhausted and cranky. I left the house at 10 at night, being that the family would be back around at 4 in the morning, and during that long drive on the dirt road, a childlike figure slowly walked across. I paused,

Starting point is 02:44:42 seeing the same dark shadow that guarded the entrance to the home, and I watched as it ran across the road, taking that child figure away. After a second, I continued on my way home, not wanting to slow, to stop, or leave the vehicle to investigate. Four days afterwards, I was chilling at my house finishing up my finals. My grandmother, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and dog were in the bedroom behind me. My grandfather was at his aunt's funeral in Bermuda, and my mom was in California for business. I say this because, I need you to understand, I was essentially alone and the only one awake.

Starting point is 02:45:25 The sound of someone dropping and dragging a large box echoed from down the hall. My grandparents have an in-sweet bedroom. They had their own living room space where I was doing my homework, a bathroom, closet and bedroom, that hid behind a door, one that was closed. I paused in my essay suddenly feeling a familiar. familiar unease that I associated at Amy's house. The dragging sounds never left, what I assumed, was my kitchen, and I by no means went to investigate.

Starting point is 02:46:00 But I had never had a spirit to follow me home, and that night I didn't sleep, because that spirit did not wish me well. When I did come out in the morning, I found my house-sitting bag torn open, with all my house-sitting gear tossed about. It's safe to say that I never house-sat for Amy again, and I hadn't experienced anything outside of the norm of what goes on at my house since. But there have been points that I can feel the hairs in my arm raise, like I was being watched when I'm sitting at other houses.

Starting point is 02:46:47 Okay, so this story's been creeping me out for a long time, and I think about it a lot. when I was about four years old, I had an encounter with what I, to this day, I have no idea if it was a ghost or something else. To give you guys an idea, my room was large with two doors on the left wall, one leading to the bathroom, that door being closest to the wall in the back, and one to a closet, that door being basically right next to the entrance. I was, for some reason, playing next to the bathroom door, and I remember that I knew for a fact that the bathroom door was locked. I remember that I was having fun until I saw it. The bathroom door opened slowly, as if someone was trying to peek through. That's where my memory's different.

Starting point is 02:47:44 In one version of it, I remember seeing a woman walk out, a gorgeous woman that seemed to be in her early 20s. She had brown hair and her outfits engraved in my memory. She was wearing a dress, like the dresses you imagine princesses or queens would wear. The dress was blue, but it faded to red and orange, ending in yellow. She walked up to me, and then kneeled next to me. I remember talking to her for a while and basically becoming friends with her.

Starting point is 02:48:17 Keep in mind, I have just one sibling and he was 12 at the time. In the other version, a young boy that looked to be about eight walked out, same brown hair as the woman, a t-shirt whose colors were very similar to the woman's dress, except for the order. It was mostly red, fading to orange and yellow and then a bit of blue. He had white pants as well. In both versions of this memory, they talked to, to me and became my friends.

Starting point is 02:48:49 I talked to them for a long time, years, in fact, and I can even say that we had become close friends. My memory of everything that happened with them is the same. If I was, say, playing tag with the boy in one memory, I was playing tag with the woman in the alternate version of it. I remember a few arguments that I had with them, and in those memories they left for a week or so. But the memories with the woman were different.

Starting point is 02:49:21 In those memories, she didn't leave because she was angry. She left because something important came up and she told me so. But the boy left the same days the woman did because he was angry, like a petty child.

Starting point is 02:49:36 Another thing I find strange to this day, one day, I asked them what their names were and I got two different answers. The woman said, I go by many names, Lily. In fact, the most common one I've been called is Caitlin, but you can call me whatever you want.

Starting point is 02:49:55 On the other hand, the boy simply said, I don't have a name. In both versions, I wound up giving them a name, Ponfleto. I'm Mexican, by the way. I don't know why I gave them that name. For one, it's a masculine word, and two, it's not even a name.

Starting point is 02:50:16 My friends from school knew they existed, but I can't remember if they knew about the woman or the boy. I only remember telling them. We always joked that I had an invisible friend and even grew to want to know more about them, so I told them what I knew about Panfleto. After I told my friends, Ponfleto left. They disappeared, both of them. But the memories I have of it are different. in the memory where the woman left

Starting point is 02:50:48 we were talking and sitting down on the floor when she stood up this is where the memory gets weird when she stood up she looked at me with a gentle smile on her face and said goodbye and that we would never see each other again she looked up at the sun

Starting point is 02:51:07 and I kid you not she sprouted wings she flew away and that was the last time I saw her The boy, on the other hand, just disappeared, poofed out of existence. I have another story, but it's about the imaginary friend I had after Panflato disappeared. But I only wanted to share this story. I may share the other one, but only if enough people want me to. I swear in my life this isn't fake.

Starting point is 02:51:39 It's a story of a memory that creeps me out to this day, not knowing exactly what they were is what creeps me out the most. I may have even been calling a strange ghost a friend for two years. The O.P. left in a comment. The other story has been asked for, so here it is. About the same time, after Ponflato disappeared, a very similar event to the way that I met them happened. This time, my memory's not split, simply a bit fuzzy.

Starting point is 02:52:12 I don't remember the exact details since his story didn't creep me out, but I'll try my best. Similarly to how I met Panfleto, these two people just appeared into my life one day, literally. Another detail about my room, it had a balcony, and the only way to get there was through the glass door that was always locked. One day, I was playing alone, pretty much in the same spot I was when I met Panfleto. when two girls, just about the boy Ponflato's age, pretty much walked through the glass doors. I, to this day, still see them. They follow me around everywhere. Now, they look about 15, but they're still the same.

Starting point is 02:52:58 One of them, who introduced herself as Layla, had purple hair and eyes. The other, Kari, had green hair and eyes. I guess little me was a bit of a bit of. bit sad about Ponflato disappearing, because I just openly accepted the fact that two possibly ghost girls walked through my balcony doors and became friends with them pretty fast. Now, I in all honesty don't know if Layla and Carrie count as ghosts, or another type of paranormal being, but they follow me everywhere. They talk to me, and sometimes I think they may have something to do with Panfleto.

Starting point is 02:53:39 For one, just like Ponflato, they disappear whenever we have an argument. But they always say it's because something came up. They don't think I've seen this, but they, just like the woman, have flown away sometimes. They're strange, and sometimes I've heard them mentioned things that happened when Panfleto was still around, not to mention that they mention her. This story feels like less of a ghost story, more of a, possibly messengers of the previous beings story. I'm occasionally inclined to believe that Ponflato wasn't even a ghost, but a god, kind of like

Starting point is 02:54:21 the Greek gods. Either that or I read too many fantasy books. But this is because some events that I didn't mention could practically only be explained with that. But anyways, that was the other story. Before I start this, I just want to note that, even though I strongly believe in the supernatural, I still look for a logical explanation before I write it off as ghosts. And these two events are short and far apart, but I think I can write about them together. Around 2018, I was seeing a girl who lived two hours north from where I lived.

Starting point is 02:55:16 Now, I only visited her house a few times. times, but I remember it vividly. She lived with her mother in a very rural town up north, and you'd have to drive some more to a small log cabin that they lived in. It was the middle of winter, and the whole place looked like a fairy tale. Log cabin in the woods, big snowflakes falling, and everything visible because of the snow. She told me about how her house was haunted, and that in the night, she was a little bit of would hear footsteps in the living room above her.

Starting point is 02:55:53 I should mention, she had her bedroom in the basement. They couldn't be her mother's, because she would often be away for work, but not only were their footsteps, but also knocking, replying to what she had asked. She even told me of instances where her router would get unplugged in the middle of the night, as well as hearing footsteps and knocking. Not only that, they told me how once they were taking a hike through the forest, when they stumbled upon 11 mounts of dirt not far from their house,

Starting point is 02:56:28 as if some thing, or some one, was buried there. They did say that it could possibly be horses, since they had farms in the area. So, fast forward to the night of my stay, Around 11 p.m., a bit after her mother had went to bed, we began to hear footsteps right above our heads. I couldn't believe it, but being the scaredy cat that I am, I was telling myself it was just the pipes or vents. Around 12, we went to bed, and surprisingly, I fell asleep fast and sound. Per reference, the way the room was positioned, there was a little bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a two-meter hallway leading from the stairs to the rest of the basement.

Starting point is 02:57:18 Right at the end of the hallway, beside the wall, was the bed. We were sleeping with our heads at the end of the bed closest to the hallway, so you could see down it. Around three or four in the morning, I woke up. I was confused as to why I woke up, I guess just in between dreams, or I felt something. I turned my head to where the basement was. stairs were, and looking right back at me, was a black figure. I froze.

Starting point is 02:57:50 I knew that what I saw was real, because I knew for a fact I was awake at that point, but I was told whatever it was, it never went into the basement. So I remembered being calm about it, just staring it down. It was a black silhouette of a man, looking around the corner, so... I only saw the upper body. As we looked at each other for a good minute, it slowly pulled back around the corner. Shaking up a little bit,

Starting point is 02:58:25 I closed my eyes, almost instantly passing out. That morning, I told my partner what had happened, and she shrugged it off as a normal occurrence. I don't believe it was the last time that I saw it, though. Later on, I was eating in the kitchen,

Starting point is 02:58:42 when out of my, peripheral, I kept seeing a black silhouette of a man in the corner of the kitchen. But every time I looked at the corner, nothing was there. I thought I was just paranoid in seeing things. I should also have mentioned that they have two domovoys attached to her. For those who don't know, Domavoy is a spirit from Russian folklore, who lives in your house and protects it from fires and keeps it clean,

Starting point is 02:59:13 while also sometimes taking small things to mess around. She told me a story from years back, where she left for work for a few days, and her husband at the time stayed at the house. About a day or two later, he called her yelling and freaked out about two creatures not leaving him alone there and following him around the house.

Starting point is 02:59:38 They appeared as these hideous creatures and were even shoving him. She told me her mother or grandmother, I can't remember now, was from a line of witches, so they could be linked to why those things were occurring. I know it sounds crazy and all over the place, but it happened, and I'm recalling it to the best of my ability. Fast forward to 2020, I'm seeing a different person and I live in a different town, but there was one more event that will forever be in my mind. mind. We were in the house in the attic. It's a living space along with storing some boxes.

Starting point is 03:00:20 I was asking a bit about the history of the house and previous owners, for they mentioned before the house had a troubling history. It was night, and the lights were dim, so I thought something spooky would be fun since I'm a horror junkie. They told me how three or four people had died in this house, and that someone had hung themselves in that same attic. At that moment, I felt uneasy and a chill. I started looking around the room, scared to see a ghost. I looked at a corner, three, maybe four meters away from where we were sitting, and there was a silhouette of a woman in a dress, pressed up against a corner.

Starting point is 03:01:07 I couldn't see much detail, but she had long black, hair and a white dress. I'm not sure how, but I'm certain that it had two angry eyes looking at me. I thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me, but my partner jumped up yelling my name. We shined a light into the corner, but, as cliche as it is, nothing was there. I don't remember why we stayed there longer, but I remember feeling the air get heavy and it being difficult to breathe, and like two icy hands were touching my shoulders and neck. We rushed downstairs, and my partner grabbed some sage.

Starting point is 03:01:52 After using the sage on the attic, it felt normal again, but we never spoke of this or the history of that house ever again. There were no more occurrences with me, but I don't think it means never in my life. I'm sitting in the attic right now. in writing this. My cat is beside me, and I was told that they ward off bad spirits. So those are my two encounters,

Starting point is 03:02:19 which I did my best to recount and retell. Maybe you can tell me what it is that I experienced slash encountered. This story takes place over several years and happened while I was in late high school slash early community college. My two best friends lived directly across the street from one another. Mike had been there most of his life, and Rob and his parents moved in directly across the street.

Starting point is 03:03:05 We used their street as a headquarters slash chill spot and would spend most of our days together. It was always us three, and then random friends that would come and go as well. Since Rob's house was bigger, the three of us, along with anyone else that joined, would all gather primarily in his house as it had a large, finished basement. And it was easier to just be teenagers down there. Rob also used his computer room for band practice. Weird things started to happen that we couldn't explain. entire groups of people were experiencing this, so I know we weren't crazy. It bothered some of us, but for the most part, we were just curious about it.

Starting point is 03:04:01 Being teenagers, we all just instantly classified it as demons, of course. Off the top of my head, here are some isolated events. One, heavy footsteps upstairs in the middle of the night. We went upstairs, grabbed kitchen knives, walked the whole house, even upstairs where both of his parents were dead asleep, and didn't see anything. Upon further inspection, we noticed a sand-dollar decoration that Rob's mom had set on the living-room coffee table,

Starting point is 03:04:43 was smashed to pieces, just sitting on the coffee table, as if it was struck by a hammer. We also inspected the old grandfather clock, and noticed the pendulum was not swinging. It usually does. The clock was also icy cold to the touch. Two, following a party, all of us crashed in the basement. I want to say that there were at least five people there. We kept hearing this weird, eight-bit music coming from an unidentifiable source. No matter where we were looking, the sound seemed to be coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once. None of us were able to identify what the tune or melody was.

Starting point is 03:05:38 one of our friends got so upset that he went home. 3. Another night, Mike saw a shadow figure go into the laundry room. It was a room connected to the basement. And when he turned the light on and went in there, of course, there was nothing there. All of us were accounted for, so it wasn't anyone pulling a prank. 4. I wasn't there for. this one, but Rob and Mike were hanging out alone at Rob's house and claimed that they had to lock themselves in one of the bedroom upstairs, as they felt something chasing slash stalking them. They heard footsteps rushing up the stairs and then to the door.

Starting point is 03:06:28 Five, assorted random events. Things being misplaced, strange sounds at night. These would happen periodically over the years. One night, Rob claims the demon showed itself to him in the basement when he was there alone. It didn't seem threatening. It was a man wearing a denim jacket, standing in the hallway, propped up against the wall with his arms crossed. It then dissipated. Rob said he didn't feel threatened or scared. and that he felt rather comfortable with this ghost.

Starting point is 03:07:11 There was nothing malicious about it. Since we didn't have a name for it, we decided to name the ghost Denny, because of his denim jacket. We now had a name for it, and would refer to this ghost as Denny for the remainder of the time. Whenever we would see Rob at school or around town, we'd ask him if he's seen or heard from Denny.

Starting point is 03:07:38 Denny. I don't actually remember if we saw the apparition again, but small things would happen here or there. We'd all just chalk it up to Denny and move on with our days. We officially stopped being afraid of it, strangely. One day, I was hanging out with Mike and his mom across the street at Mike's. Rob wasn't home, so it was just us. Mike's mom had been a local bartender in the area for decades, and we were just sharing some Denny stories with her. I'm pretty sure a Denny event happened the day prior, so we were just giving her a recap of what we'd experienced.

Starting point is 03:08:24 Keep in mind, we had not mentioned the name Denny to her as she didn't have any context, so we just referred to it as the ghost when speaking to her. She goes on to tell us that she knew the man that lived there before Rob and his family moved in. He was the local at the bar she worked at, and he had apparently died of brain cancer some time ago. When we asked her what his name was, she said, Yeah, his name was Dennis, but we all called him Denny.

Starting point is 03:09:01 I felt like I had just been struck by lightning. Rob claims the activity had stopped completely since then. Had we given the spirit peace by acknowledging him and befriending him? Did he finally go to the other side because we learned his backstory? How was it possible that he told us his name without ever actually telling us his name? I have so many questions. Well, that's my ghost story. told as well as I could remember it.

Starting point is 03:09:46 This may be long, and it isn't the first strange thing I ever saw, nor the first or only paranormal thing I've ever witnessed. However, it is one of the most memorable. I copied this from a previous post I made long ago on Ask Reddit, but I've been browsing and decided to post this here as well. For some backstory, you'll need it. I grew up in a small California desert, tourist town called Joshua Tree, home of the Joshua Tree National Park. Those of us that are older

Starting point is 03:10:20 call it the monument, as it was that before national parkdom. I was in my early 20s at the time of this, which was approximately 15 to 16 years ago, and was the only one with a car and a license. Growing up in a small desert town leaves you with limited options for fun, and we would make use of the park. occasionally, maybe once a week or so, a group of us would pile up into a station wagon with beer, smokes, and a mixtape, and drive through the park late at night. An empty road, so dark and quiet, other than the loud group of guys in a red mercury driving fast from one entrance to another,

Starting point is 03:11:03 hours would go by each time as we drove the long, desolate road, and stopped at various rocks that we liked to climb. I can't overstate how desolate it was, how alone. No other cars, no lights, except the occasional lonely unmanned roadwork sign when warranted. Hell, that was exactly what we thought it was. This trip started like every other, except maybe more of us than usual. We were crammed in that car, windows down, as I chain smoked and drove a good 20 miles per hour over the speed limit. Gravel was spitting up as we had a good time.

Starting point is 03:11:43 Shortly into the trip, I saw a light, a blue light, possibly, and it was miles and miles ahead. That's the thing about dark, light is free to shine for miles. I remember saying something about having to slow down at some point. It must be some road construction left by itself up ahead. It had to be a sign, because the lights hadn't moved. We continued for a few miles to one of our favorite stops and got out. We climbed for a while, maybe 45 minutes or so, drank a little, joked, the norm. Then we piled back in and continued.

Starting point is 03:12:23 Let me be clear, this light never moved, and we had already been about an hour into our adventure. Why would the sign have a blue light? As we approached the light, I started to slow, and slowed more. more and more as we approached the source. It wasn't a sign, it wasn't a car, and it was not a UFO. Standing on the side of the road, facing towards us, unmoving, for over an hour at this point, was a man. A pale, white man, white beard, dirty old minor clothing, with an old mining helmet and a pickax.

Starting point is 03:13:03 It was period appropriate for a time long before the park was anything other than desert, with some lonely minds. His light was giving off an unnatural and bright blue light. His face was blank, but he stared at us, directly at all of us. We sped up, and as we drove by faster, his head turned to keep pace with us as we left. His light was visible, unmoving once again, facing us the entire trip out. Once again, it never flickered or moved. He wasn't translucent, but the saying as white as a ghost applied to everything about him other than his clothes, pickaxe, and light.

Starting point is 03:13:45 I remember looking at the clock shortly after passing him. It was damn near exactly 1 a.m. when we passed. We never saw a car, hell, a horse, any way for this old sickly pale miner to get into the park, nor any reason for him to be there. Any means of transportation would have been visible if nearby. Worst of all, we estimated that this minor had to have been standing there facing us for at least an hour and a half, never moving. The eeriest part, by far, was how still he had been that whole time, waiting, perhaps, to see us. Not once did that light flicker as if he looked down for a moment or turned his head.

Starting point is 03:14:31 he just stood there staring down a road at a car full of dumbasses. Even when we parked, headlights off and climbing some rocks while balancing a beer in hand, he stared from miles away into the darkness in our direction. We would have been no more than mere darkness to any human that far away without our headlights. We never saw him again. However, a few years ago, I decided to check to see if anyone, else had experienced the same thing. I found one other story of a couple that saw him near where we did, standing there and

Starting point is 03:15:09 staring late at night. I found another story of people camping in the dark away from the standard camps, and saw the silhouette of what could have been a minor walk closely by. As a man, I wish that we would have stopped. Even if it would have been the most horrifying thing ever, I wish we would have stopped because honestly, I believe there was a ghost of a dead minor out in that park, and I would know for sure today. Plenty of unexplained things have happened in my life, but the visage of that minor still

Starting point is 03:15:42 sits fresh to this day. If anyone ever wants to test their luck, both on seeing the minor and seeing what he may be doing, take a trip through Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California, late at night slash early in the morning. You will probably be alone on that road without cell reception, so be smarter than us and don't take the risks that we did.

Starting point is 03:16:05 Make sure to slow down as you approach the turn for Key's view, which is where we saw him, and where the other story of him was. Just look for that blue, ghostly light during your trip. On the 29th of December, my mom actually wanted me to stay a night

Starting point is 03:16:32 in a hostel, with three of my mom. mom's cousins, and four of my own. I didn't think much about it, to be honest. And we were the first ones that opened the door and explored the place. There was a long hallway and a lot of rooms. I think it was nine rooms total, and a small living room in front of the bedroom doors. And if you went straight ahead and then went to the right and then left,

Starting point is 03:16:59 a small hallway would be there and you would see the washing machine and boards for ironing on the far. end. Then, to your left, there would be an opened door that leads you to a massive kitchen and tables. One long white table on the left side of the kitchen stuck onto the wall, and the main brown table in the middle of the kitchen. I had to switch on the lights to everything, too, so the hallways felt scary and eerie when you stared at it in the dark for too long, even though I didn't think the place was haunted. Walking further to the washing machine, I glanced to my left and saw two small bathrooms

Starting point is 03:17:39 and noticed that the floor was wet. And behind the wall of the washing machine was another one that was closed. I didn't actually bother to open it and went back to the living room with the lights still on. Walking back, my mom was talking loudly to herself, thinking that I was with her. moving to a room and asking me if this was the right room for us both to stay in for a night.

Starting point is 03:18:07 I yelled, Sure, yeah, and ran to my mom, feeling that something was behind me, or I was just imagining things, since I do really love horror movies and stories. Time goes by and my cousins came with their mothers. I played with my baby cousin and walked around and went to the bathroom again because he led me there.

Starting point is 03:18:28 feeling quite scared, I pulled him back and switched my attention to him, but suddenly I heard a human growl in one of the bathrooms. I didn't even glance at what was behind me and dragged my baby cousin out of there, afraid. It was quite creepy when I heard that, but nonetheless, I forgot about it after a few minutes and enjoyed my time there, and then loud running footsteps were always heard because of my cousin, and chasing after the baby, and I got used to it after the amount of running. It sounded like people were upstairs running, too, but it didn't last long.

Starting point is 03:19:09 I convinced my mom to make me have a room for myself, and I did. It was room D. There was a small circle on the front door that said the letters. I slept in a single bed while a mirror to my left was on the corner, when I'm laying on the bed. There was a small white chair beside it. I never thought about paranormal things happening to me, so I slept peacefully in the warm bed. Then, I suddenly woke up in a jolt and heard someone running down the hallway, running past my room into the far right end,

Starting point is 03:19:44 which I got confused, but I only thought that it was my kid cousin or the baby that was running swiftly. So I slept again. I was pissed off and I woke up to my aunt's chatting in the living room, Walking out, my mom asked me to take a shower, and so I did. I grabbed the clothes and towel, and I went to the bathroom behind the washing machine and took a shower. Though, when I was on the toilet bowl, I heard a whisper outside calling my name, and I faced the wooden door, and then it whispered my name again.

Starting point is 03:20:19 It sounded like my female cousin who I thought was showering on the other side, so I just ignored it. I kept my mouth shut after that, but I asked my female cousin privately about her calling my name while I was showering. But she said she didn't say anything. A little terrified, I just laughed it off while she talked about her experience in the late night as well. She said that when she went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, she heard our baby cousin crying, but she shrugged it off. And my aunt, who told her, said that the baby was sleeping,

Starting point is 03:20:55 the whole time, and it got her freaked out. Punching me and hating me for making up ghost stories about the hallway, and I only laughed and ate breakfast with her before noon. Apparently, the hostel was actually haunted, but my uncle didn't say a word to prevent my aunts from being scared and terrified for a night, and then left quickly because he was not scared. They even shouted at me and told me to not say a word of what I heard in the bathroom before going out of that place.

Starting point is 03:21:26 In the running footsteps, I heard, I noticed a few bizarre things about them. My kid cousin slash baby cousin's room were on the left side of the hallway, but the footsteps ran to the right. Since normal walking footsteps can be clearly heard from inside my room, I never heard any walking back to their room,

Starting point is 03:21:47 never hearing any footsteps that went to the left. And this happened in the middle of the night, too. maybe three to six in the morning. Why would they both be awake and running around the hallway in the middle of the night was my question. Though, there's no real answer to that. I'm still trying to make myself believe it was just a nightmare. I wish that it was just a nightmare. I mentioned playing the Ouija board three times.

Starting point is 03:22:28 I wish I never did play with it. Even now, I don't know what the hell I was thinking, or if I was even thinking at all. I think I was bored, or whatever, maybe desperate to talk with a loved one. They were played with at night. The first time I played, I only broke one rule. I was playing alone. I was playing on the floor of my small room, and nothing happened, so I ended the game proper. by saying goodbye.

Starting point is 03:23:03 The second time, I still played alone. The pointer moved around, but really slow and in no direction at all, just a circle. I didn't think much of this. Maybe it needed time to reply. It never landed on a letter or a number.

Starting point is 03:23:22 It moved from a circle to trying to go off the board, and I ended the game just like last time. The third time, I asked what its name was, and it spelled out, Zozo. I tried keeping calm and ended the game. I heard of Zozo. I knew I messed up horribly when I tried going to sleep about two in the morning, and something scratched at my foot.

Starting point is 03:23:52 Instantly, I couldn't move. I felt like I was being held down. My door was cracked open, but nothing was there. Something was definitely there. No human could get under my bed without shuffling around trash. Yes, I'm not exactly the neatest, but something has to be under my bed because I fear a human or thing crawling on all fours coming out. So I went with putting trash there. When I looked at the cracked open door, and I started overthinking every possibility that could happen, except for a horrendous murder, in this weird second-person view, I vividly see the most twisted murder that I can't bring myself to repeat.

Starting point is 03:24:47 I'll just say decapitation and a deep slash over the throat in the, in the, most violent way possible. There was a shadow thing crouching down besides my parents' bed. In my head, a second person, whatever it was, I'm banging on my neighbor's door, crying, screaming, shaking really hard, but I'm still in my bed staring at the cracked open door and quietly crying. Then, in that weird view, I'm seeing everything again until the morning.

Starting point is 03:25:27 That hasn't happened again, but I threw the board out and just believed it was a loop dream, until I saw the same shadow thing walking casually from the hallway to the kitchen about a week ago. I'm not the only person seeing that thing. Our three cats see it too. One minute they'll be playing and having fun, then they suddenly stop and start, stare at whatever got their attention. The next thing, they dig their claws into the rug as they run after whatever they saw. They end up in my room that I stupidly played that game in.

Starting point is 03:26:08 I'm a night owl, and I'm always tense at home. My muscles often hurt because of how I would tense them so often. My work was supposed to be a little bit of normalcy. it did work for a while, until the encounters with them happened. We're going to be a little understaffed for a while. Some may not get a 30-minute break. It's sort of falling apart. Since all that happened, my door has stayed shut.

Starting point is 03:26:40 That board's at the dump now, and honestly, I'm being stared at a bit more often from the hall. The shadow that peaks around the corners seems to be more curious. That's different than the shadow that I saw in my parents' room. The shadow in my parents' room was bigger, potentially taller than the curious one. It sticks around a little longer, and I can get a bit more of a look at it than a glimpse. I hope I never experienced whatever that was. A nightmare, whatever that view shift was about. I'm never playing that board again.

Starting point is 03:27:20 maybe it was a nightmare and I didn't know I fell asleep. Maybe I was half asleep. I was trying to sleep, but I had just laid in bed not feeling tired yet. I don't mind not being believed or being criticized. School did that more often than teaching. But this is killing me because I was awake when this happened. I've been a nurse at our local hospital for the last eight years. years. If you're here long enough, you will come across a few ghost stories, maybe even

Starting point is 03:28:06 experience one yourself. I definitely had my share since being there. I can name a few that were especially memorable. I will start by saying that it doesn't help that the hospital used to be an orphanage many, many years ago as well. So the main one we hear about is the children of death. We call them this, because when a patient sees one of these kids, they end up passing away soon after. A couple of examples was

Starting point is 03:28:39 one gentleman that another nurse walked in on as he was talking to someone, but there was no one in the room. The nurse asked who he was talking to, and he said the young girl that had just left. He said that she had brought in a car, and he pointed at it. The nurse said she looked at the card,

Starting point is 03:29:01 and it looked like a young child's drawing of a person surrounded by flowers, and people crying. We had no idea where it came from, as he hadn't had any visitors that day. We even checked the logs, and his son came to see him the day prior, but no one that day,

Starting point is 03:29:19 and his son didn't have any kids. A few days later, the man passed away in his sleep. He was there due to a heart attack, but he seemed to be improving. Another instance was an old lady that was there after breaking her hip. She said she was a medium, so she was always entertaining us nurses on duty. She gave us all readings and told us some interesting stories of past readings that she had done. Every once in a while, she might ask to pass condolences on to someone there that recently lost someone.

Starting point is 03:29:57 be it another patient, or even our head nurse once. Her father had died suddenly, and we, the nurses, didn't really talk much about it, but this lady had brought it up. I thought she must have heard someone mention it. However, there was one instance where we received a nurse call to her room, and upon entering, she asked that we check on the woman across the hall. She claimed that she saw her walk out of the room holding the hand of a little girl.

Starting point is 03:30:29 This was in the geriatric ward, so the patients didn't have a heart monitor attached, and she was bedridden, because she was very frail and couldn't get up on her own. We dashed over to her room to see that she had passed. We were shocked, because while we were expecting that she would pass soon, we had no idea when,

Starting point is 03:30:52 nor did we know how this other patient would have known. She couldn't have left her. her room and there were no kids on this floor. So, of course, we had to go back and ask her about it. She said the lady looked spry and happy, and believed that the little girl was helping her move on to the afterlife. We thought at first maybe it was one of the children other patients have seen, but she said she was wearing modern clothing, a pink flowery dress with a huge flower in her hair.

Starting point is 03:31:25 We thought it was a crazy situation, but. but we let it go. Later on, after the older woman's daughter came in to get her mother's belongings, the medium was being wheeled back to a room by another nurse when she stopped this daughter to speak to her. After giving her condolences for her mother's passing, she brought up that she saw her as she passed over and began asking her, the daughter, about her own daughter.

Starting point is 03:31:54 She started crying, and she was shocked that she was shocked that she was. she had brought it up. Apparently, her daughter died after being hit by a car while riding her bike a few years prior. She said she was buried in her favorite pink, floral dress with a matching flower clip. She also said that her daughter and her mom became very close as she was her first grandkid, and when they lost her, it broke her heart. I thought, maybe she recognized this woman from the news or something, but how could she have known what she was wearing when she was buried? I don't believe much in mediums, but the fact that this little girl this woman appeared to be

Starting point is 03:32:38 walking out of the room with matched her granddaughter, and made me just a little less skeptical. Okay, so my first apartment in Chicago, I had two roommates. myself and one worked during the day, and our third was an IT man that could work remotely, so he was home mostly. One day we're hanging out in the living room, just viving. Casually, he says to me very calmly, sometimes, when you guys are gone and I'm here, I can see shadows moving in and out of your bedrooms.

Starting point is 03:33:28 Fast forward, a year goes by and an apartment opens in the front of the building. For reference, the building is old and owned by my third roommate's grandparents. However, his granddad passed, leaving only his grandmother as the owner. So, I'm able to secure the front apartment. This is where things really begin to take a turn. Very small occurrences at first. The ceiling fan would turn on by itself. Objects would be moved or rearranged.

Starting point is 03:34:05 An example would be that I would leave my shoes in the hallway, go to sleep, and wake up the next day to find only one shoe in the hall, and the other one in another room facing an odd direction. And yes, I'm alone in this unit. Other occurrences had food removed from the fridge to the countertop, like it was about to be prepared, but I hadn't taken anything out. It didn't get scary until I was given a used, gently, mattress that had been stowed in the basement by a previous occupant.

Starting point is 03:34:45 It was completely wrapped and barely used. The first or second night, after moving it into my unit, I awoke one night due to the sensation that I was being watched. I could look out in the hallway from the bed, and there was nothing but darkness, except the distinct body chill of sensing a presence. However, this seemed very malevolent, heavy. I remember just crawling under my covers and freezing in fear until I must have eventually fallen back asleep. I woke up the next day, nothing unusual.

Starting point is 03:35:28 That night, I was getting ready for my shift for work. I had closed my apartment door and had stepped in to the vestibule. No sooner as I had shut and locked the deadbolt, three loud wraps against the door coming from inside my apartment. I jumped back so quick and hurried out of my building to work. After my shift, two in the morning or so, I had told a co-worker of mine about the event and asked them to accompany me home just to check things out.

Starting point is 03:36:05 Once I had returned to my apartment and opened the door, all lights off except for the ceiling fan of the living room, running full blast, even though it was off when I had left. Nothing strange happened after that until my friend moved in to the living room of the apartment. One morning we both found. found the door to the apartment completely stuck.

Starting point is 03:36:30 It would not budge. We could not open it no matter how hard we tried. She had to go and exit out of the fire escape. I was off that day and didn't have to be anywhere, so I stayed in. I let my super know. Then, during the middle of the afternoon, I'm just playing on my PC when seemingly out of nowhere, where I hear the door just come ajar.

Starting point is 03:36:59 I inspect, and, yeah, it was open, as if it had never even been stuck. My super didn't even touch it, ended up never having to even come check it out. So, time continues. I move back into my old unit with one of my former roommates. Our IT guy moved since I had last been in that unit. We get a new dude, who seems cool, never met our previous roommate. In between jobs, so he's at home while the two of us are working. You can see where this may be going.

Starting point is 03:37:37 Anyways, we're just hanging out and concerned. He says to me, I don't want to scare you, but when you're at work, I can hear and see shadows moving around in your room. So, I think something attached itself to me as small things still occur from time to time, even though I'm not in that building anymore. I've been reading a lot of encounters here lately, and felt that I should contribute with the next one on the timeline.

Starting point is 03:38:22 Thanks to everyone who reads this, and those who are sharing their own experiences. My last post was about my first paranormal encounter. and my first post was about seeing a face in the window. The story picks up in a different duplex, but in the same tiny town that I saw that face in the window. Literally just a couple doors down the same block. The two duplexes were side by side. I saw the face when I lived in the left unit of the duplex on the left, and then moved to the right-hand unit of the duplex on the right.

Starting point is 03:39:02 Right. Easiest move I've ever done. So, I moved into this new duplex as my sister was moving for work, and I couldn't afford the rent on my own. Two of my co-workers lived there, and their rooms were upstairs, and my room was downstairs in the partially unfinished basement. At first, everything was normal, and I got settled in. My room was big enough that I had my bed in the corner and had enough room for a two-seater couch and my TV and Xbox. And my one roommate had his gaming PC set up in the open, unfinished portion of the basement. I began getting an uneasy feeling at night in my room, though. I would often feel like I was being watched and would think that I could hear the odd noise or banged,

Starting point is 03:39:59 through my headset while I was playing games or watching a movie. There was never anything there, though, when I looked, and I did have roommates in bedrooms above me, so it was easily explainable. One night, that all changed, though, as I headed to bed. I'd been feeling like I was being watched all evening. As I switched off the light and crawled into bed, all was normal.

Starting point is 03:40:29 After a few minutes in bed, I felt really anxious. I could feel someone in my room. You could just sense them. A quick glance in the dark didn't show me anything, so I grabbed my phone for light. Nothing there. My mind is playing tricks on me, I'm sure, so I turn off my phone light and try to get comfortable again.

Starting point is 03:40:56 As my eyes adjust to the dark, suddenly the shape of a tall man with the hat is barely visible in the corner of my room. A slightly deeper shadow than the shadows around my room. I grab my phone light again, but once again, nothing is there in the light. I hid the light under the blankets and the shadow figure returns in the dark, just seemingly appearing from the shadow in the corner next to my door. My light switch was actually outside my room, a weird quirk, but it was an unfinished basement, and my room wasn't actually intended to be a bedroom.

Starting point is 03:41:41 I didn't know what to do, but being too freaked out to sleep at that point, I decided to use my phone light to get me to my TV for more light, and then turn my bedroom light on, one step at a time. I ended up watching a show to calm me down, and eventually fell asleep on my couch with the TV and lights on that night. I began seeing the Shadow Man fairly often after that. Even in the semi-dark with my TV on, he never stepped out of that corner, just always seemed to be standing there, watching me. And so, I got used to his presence. His presence was unnerving at first, but I realized he didn't give off a threatening vibe like the face I had seen watching me through my window a few months before moving.

Starting point is 03:42:40 He was just there. In my research that I did after the activity escalated, it sounds like most experiences with these shadow figures are like that. They are watchers. somehow a neutral entity. The activity did progress, but I believe it was due to other spirits and entities. But that's a story for my next post, so if you have any questions, please ask. Hi, everyone. I just wanted to share my encounter with unexplainable things that had happened with me,

Starting point is 03:43:28 my family with regard to seeing an apparition, and a collective experience of living in this particular house back in the 2000s. My family and I moved countries when I was young, and the first house we moved to in that country was about 40 years old and owned by a young guy. I cannot tell you where, but it's one of the common wealth countries. The reason for not disclosing the location is because I want to remain somewhat anonymous, but I know that people who I've told the story to may know who I am. It was a rented property, and nothing out of the ordinary,

Starting point is 03:44:08 other than multiple neighborhood cats roaming around the dying garden with a very much dead lawn. When we moved in, we were fine for a few weeks, and then it started. I had a really good relationship with my family until we moved in to that house. everyone started to pick fights with each other, and when we were living there, nothing ever was going right. Everyone was on edge, the vibe was off. I sometimes saw pearly dusts floating above me at night while laying down in bed.

Starting point is 03:44:45 I reasoned that it was cars passing by, producing that reflection on the walls or something, but it was still there, even after the cars, passed by in the street. I didn't think much of it at the time, and as a kid, I just thought we moved into a dusty old house. Then, the house would randomly get cold, and when it did, it would never get warm, despite the three portable heaters in the same room. And, scarily enough, they were all functioning fine, and where it would get cold in the house would vary every time.

Starting point is 03:45:26 At the time, we thought that maybe the construction of the house was old, and maybe we had thin walls, or the heaters were all defective. Then, one day, I saw it. Before I get into details, I want you to imagine this corridor, right in the middle of the house, surrounded by bedrooms and bathrooms. Basically, this corridor had no natural. light and it was very, very dark if all the bedroom doors were closed. Going back to the encounter, I was in the bathroom washing my hands, and as I opened the

Starting point is 03:46:06 bathroom door to exit, I see this fog that resembles a human arm, moving back and forth as if it was walking, and then disappearing at the end of the corridor, a full arm stretching from shoulder to the tip of fingers, moving as though attached to an invisible body, resembling a brisk walk in that dark corridor. It couldn't have been some lights coming from outside the windows because it was in the corridor that didn't have any natural lights available. Plus, it was daytime. Only after this encounter, I felt the shiver down my back.

Starting point is 03:46:48 A genuine shiver that you get when you see something that you cannot. logically process. I didn't share these encounters with my family back then, because I didn't want to scare anyone, and I was in doubt with the experience. When we found a new place and moved out of that house, I finally felt ready to share the experience with my family. Jokingly, I said that the house was haunted. I only got to know then that everyone had the same experience, seeing something.

Starting point is 03:47:21 something in the air, nightmares, ghastly arms, cold spots? My mom would have nightmares of this black shadow trying to enter the house, while she would hold them back out. My sibling, who also saw the arm, told me that while the arm was moving away, exactly the same as I've described above, he swears that the temperature in that corridor must have dropped in that moment, as he could see his own breath. I feel like this whole thing could be explained due to stress of moving to a new country, but I don't know. I'm just thankful we were only renting it temporarily, and that we were able to leave.

Starting point is 03:48:13 So, this story is from back whenever I lived in Derriter, Louisiana. I was around 12 when this was happening. So apparently the house we lived in was beforehand occupied by an older gentle, and his family. It never really knew much about it, but I heard a rumor from neighbors around saying that an older man died in the house we were living in. It was a beautiful big house,

Starting point is 03:48:42 four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a huge living room and dining room. It also had an office room that we later used to turn into a bedroom. But the way the neighborhood was set up, it was a big square. only one way into the neighborhood, and our house was on one of the corners of the big square. We didn't have any streetlights around our house, and it was kind of sloped down into a ditch, so when it rained really hard, it would usually flood the whole backyard and everything around it.

Starting point is 03:49:19 The rest of the neighborhood was more elevated and had streetlights. Our house was the only house that had no lights around it. It was honestly creepy at night when we were pulling in to our driveways. But anyways, ever since we moved into that house, I always had this weird feeling like someone or something was watching me. It never really did too much damage, as I thought that maybe it was just me being young and scared. But boy, was I wrong.

Starting point is 03:49:52 Many weird things happened in that house that were unexplainable. But one of the first things happened. things that started happening was, I would see a dark shadow-looking figure run past our garage door. We would usually leave the left garage door open and the right closed. And when the left was open, you could see right through our door that leads into the garage because it had a glass window. But I would randomly see this figure run past really fast. And I thought maybe it was just my eyes, because I would catch it in the corner of my eye, but slowly and surely all of my siblings started to see it.

Starting point is 03:50:34 Siblings were aged 2, 6, 8, 8, 16, and 17 at the time, and I was 12. We never really mentioned it because it never really bothered any of us like that, I guess. But then it started to get more frequent, and it made me curious and wonder if, It was really a ghost or spirit. So I decided to ask my brother if they'd seen it, and they said yeah. They thought they'd seen something run past a few times. And as we were talking in the kitchen, my mom and stepped out at the time would come out of their room and hear us talking about it.

Starting point is 03:51:16 They too said that they had seen the figure as well. And at that moment, that we were all standing by the garage door, We see it run past. My stepdad swung open the door and ran out. Everyone followed right behind him. It took no more than two to three seconds to get outside. Our backyard was massive, and there was absolutely nowhere that a person could have run to hide from us without us seeing them.

Starting point is 03:51:46 There were woods at the end of our backyard, but it was at least 100 meters or more. We were all standing outside, looking like, like we were crazy people. And from there on out, we knew that it had to be something paranormal. A little after that, weird things started to happen, and it got a little more interesting. Nothing that was absolutely crazy enough to drive us off and run us away from the house, but creepy enough to look back on it and say to myself that I've definitely seen some ghostly stuff.

Starting point is 03:52:31 This started back in 2010, with my first of my first of my first. mother and my sister. They started telling me they started hearing strange voices. They claimed that it sounded like someone turned on the TV to a staticy station and turned the volume down to a low setting. Almost to where you know it's on, but it's not there, sort of thing. Strangely, they said they heard it in the kitchen, and at times in the bathroom, too. This continued for years. I believed them. I mean, who wouldn't?

Starting point is 03:53:11 It's your mom and your sister, but I was skeptical. Flash forward a few years to when I come home from the military, permanently, after a handful of weeks, I start to get that static-y, distant TV sounds too, as they did. I hear it in the same places as they claim to have heard it. They've lovingly called him a radio guy, apparently. They've sort of made friends with him. This goes on for a while. Just

Starting point is 03:53:47 hearing that odd sound as if someone is trying to speak, but all we get is the static. This continues on for a few more weeks, and we start to smell things now, too. We assume it's the radio guy. What do we start to smell? Well, we start to smell cigar smoke, coffee being brewed and breakfast, like a full eggs, bacon, and toast kind of breakfast,

Starting point is 03:54:19 although no one is cooking or brewing coffee or smokes cigars. Now, oddly enough, the house they lived in were one of the classic cookie cutter houses built during the Depression into the start of World War II. Low-income, low-rent housing kind of areas. So it very well could be a fellow that lived there during that time that loved him some breakfast, loved a hot pot of Joe, and enjoyed a stogie on occasion. So, I mean, why not? We learned to live with this radio guy.

Starting point is 03:55:00 not really making out any voices for years until my sister and I get the idea to use our smartphones as EVP devices. Once we got that vibe of radio guy, we would whip out our phones an attempt to talk to him. Nothing, except for one lone time we got... Hello. Family. We were stoked as hell that we even got that from him, but then we thought... What family? Was he talking about us? Our family?

Starting point is 03:55:36 Or his own? We were sure if he was intelligent or a residual being, so we were back to square one. Just sort of lived with Radio Guy for the better part of a decade. An odd occurrences that happened, though, was, one night I was sleeping on the couch in the living room. I woke up for some reason, sit up, and in the hallway was this red mist. I notice it.

Starting point is 03:56:09 I ask what it is and it drifts into my nephew's room. His room is the very first door in the hallway, so I get up and investigate. Nothing. No red mist, no weird vibes, no more radio guy after this night. All that was there? was my young nephew, sawing logs. I'm still befuddled as to why Radio Guide just left that night. Not one of us have had an experience since.

Starting point is 03:56:42 But what was the red mist? Where did it go? And what do you all think of this? This is a family and completely true story. When my sister was 18, she decided to be independent and randomly left, for Texas. She's prone to this kind of decision. When she was 21, she moved back home, married and with a two-year-old, or something like that. Nothing weird so far. When she returned,

Starting point is 03:57:25 I was just leaving for college to another city, and I met her new family briefly. She, her husband, and her child stayed with my parents while they figured things out. A month went by and suddenly her husband, 20 plus years old, died from a heart attack. It seems like he had some genetic undiagnosed heart disease and just dropped dead. My sister was obviously devastated and basically relayed the care of her child to my mom and she again left to another city, but visited frequently. One day while speaking to my mom, I heard my nephew say, There's the man. I asked my mom about this, and she said that my nephew was always talking about this man in the house

Starting point is 03:58:19 that no one else could see. Even when they left the house, the child would say goodbye to this man, as babies do with numerous bye-bye sirs. My mother told me that they sometimes saw a shadow, but nothing bad had happened, so they didn't pay any mind to it. This went on for years. The child was always talking and interacting with this man, who nobody else saw. Meanwhile, my sister was really depressed and never talked about her husband.

Starting point is 03:58:56 No one really did. We didn't know the guy and everything was so quick that we didn't interact with him. We didn't have any pictures of him or anything. thing, and nobody aside from her had any attachment to him. Also, this was like 2006. Cell phones had cameras, but not a lot of memory, so we really didn't have any pictures of him. I'm stressing this so you can see that my nephew had no way of knowing his dad. Sure, he saw him until he was two, but now he was six when suddenly his father's brother

Starting point is 03:59:33 decided to send an email with a third. photo of my sister's late husband, a photo that was saved and forgotten in the computer. The family computer had this screensaver that was a gallery of all the photos saved in the system, and that's where my nephew saw it, and instantly shouted, that's the man. I remember it clearly because by that time, we all knew the man. Nobody saw him, but if something happened in the house, or there was a weird shadow, we said, oh, it's the man, and we all said by to him when we left, and hello when we arrived. It was already part of the family. So we went to the computer and showed the kid all of the pictures

Starting point is 04:00:20 there, and when the photo of his dad appeared, he was like, that's the man that visits me at night. We were freaked out. He was elated. For a week, he asked again and again to see the picture. and my mother decided, against my sister's wishes, to tell him that was his father. Since then, he would talk about the man less and less until he stopped talking about him completely. Now, as a teenager, my nephew doesn't remember anything. Around the time my nephew found the photo, my sister remarried and took him with her. I think he was just looking after his child, and when he had a stable life, life, he left, but who knows.

Starting point is 04:01:19 I've lived in my apartment for almost a year, and I've had several experiences so far, with one being a freaking constant annoyance. The very first day, I was standing in my kitchen, putting a few things in the cabinet, I see a hand slide around the corner of the wall towards me out of the corner of my eye. I was about ten inches from the corner, and when I looked over, it was gone. I told it that I'm not doing this, and to leave me alone. Randomly, my dog will look at the ceiling above me when I'm sitting on the couch, tilt his head, and whine until he jumps and runs away,

Starting point is 04:02:06 or barks all crazy until I make him stop. The tapestry behind my couch will move. randomly. I debunked it as not being the vent because of how far away it is in the direction it blows. I put it on that wall specifically, so I wouldn't have to stick it down at the bottom. The shadow people are back, and normally telling them to go away will get me a few days or weeks of peace. They don't leave anymore. I'm losing sleep these days because I end up waking up in the middle of the night, and multiple times a night, to one standing by my bedroom door, or by the bathroom.

Starting point is 04:02:55 I was leaving the apartment once to walk my dog, and I turned around to close the door and lock it. My bedroom is a straight shot from the door, and what I saw still brings tears to my eyes when I think about it. It was in the bedroom doorway, crouched down on all fours. It was dark, like a brown or tan, but it had this darkness to it even though I had the blinds open

Starting point is 04:03:25 to let the sun shine in. It didn't look at me. It just started crawling toward me fast. I panicked and slammed the door closed when it got about halfway to the door. Luckily, I have not. seen it again. But I also refuse to look inside when I close the door. I just trust that I've turned my lights off. Now, for the annoyance, I know that it's screwing with me. This is why I'm

Starting point is 04:03:56 posting because I'm just irritated. Something is in my closet. The door shakes constantly, and my dog and I have both heard scratching on the door, coming from the in-scent. I have checked for holes, for mice, and there's nothing. I've sent the dog in because he's good at finding mice in their nests. He doesn't alert either. The closet light gets turned on. I can sometimes hear the switch, which is on the outside in my bedroom, click on, when I'm in the living room or the bathroom.

Starting point is 04:04:35 I'll come into the bedroom and, sure enough, the light is on. I got mad tonight. I thought maybe I was just seeing things or things were just happening. I grabbed a shirt out of my closet, closed the door, and turned off the light. I looked at that damn switch as I turned the light off. I go for a smoke and come back to pee, and the goddamn light is on. I yelled. I cussed.

Starting point is 04:05:04 I told it to stop that because it doesn't pay the damn light bill, and it was just seriously annoying the hell out of me. Honestly, I'm not even scared. I feel disrespected. I'm the only one paying the bills, and whatever the hell decides the light needs to be on. And no, hell no. Even as I'm typing this in the bathroom,

Starting point is 04:05:28 I think I just heard the light switch turn on again. Damn it. When I, 27 female, was about four, My parents and I went to my grandmother's house, my mom's mom, which was haunted. There was a room upstairs that would always be ice cold. Like, in the middle of summer, there would be no air conditioners or fans in the entire house. And that room would be freezing. Anyways, we get there, and my uncles, who were six and three, say, let's go outside and play.

Starting point is 04:06:15 So I took my shoes off, but before I run out, my mom tells me to put my shoes back on. And being a kid, I didn't listen. So we ran to the swing set, and I jumped on the slide while my uncles ran to a corner of the yard. I was about to slide down, went out of the corner of my eye. I saw a tall shadow next to me. Then I felt large hands. hands on my arm that pushed me off. I landed with my head near the end of the slide, and my feet were near the ladder.

Starting point is 04:06:54 I was still disoriented when I sat up, but when I stood, I noticed that I had a patch of dead grass stuck to my foot. I shook my foot as hard as I could, and the grass would not come off. I bent down and wiped it off. There was a gash across the top of my right foot. I told my parents, went to the hospital, and got around eight stitches. My uncle found a huge chunk of broken glass right next to the slide. Everyone thought the slide leg maybe just buckled.

Starting point is 04:07:31 I was not a small child, but if the leg had just buckled, then I would have gone over the edge with my head near the ladder, rather than my feet. A couple of months ago, I was talking to my grandma about what happened, Then she laughed and said, oh, then it was probably Uncle Charlie. Like, what? Well, can you guess which room Uncle Charlie died in? If you guessed the ice cold room, well, you're a winner. Then, a couple of months after that,

Starting point is 04:08:04 I was going upstairs and had my legs knocked out from under me and slid down the stairs on my belly, scraping my front side. Also, I do see. that he was teaching me to listen to my parents, and the irony is not lost. The scar from that day has crept up to my ankle from the middle of my foot. As an edit, I asked my grandma if he was related, and she walked away. So I'm not really sure if he was actually a family member, or if he was just the previous owner and they called him uncle.

Starting point is 04:08:51 Back in 2009-ish, while I was in the military, my homie was back home in Ohio, and one day he was telling me this story, where the past few nights he sees me walking down the street. Day one, he attempts to holler at me through the window. Apparently, I ignore him and disappear into the shadows. Day two, same thing, he sees me. This time he tosses something at me, hits me, and then sees me,

Starting point is 04:09:25 stop, bend down, grab what he threw, and again disappears into the shadow. Day three, in the morning, what he threw at me is back in his room. It was a plushy bone. He initially thinks nothing of it until he realizes that's what he threw, so he starts to freak out a little. Now is where it gets a little more odd. Day three, in the evening, he hears a voice down in his living room. He assumes it's his mom watching TV up until the point that he sees his mom in her bedroom fast asleep. So he goes downstairs, and halfway down the talking stops, and there's a knock at the door. He's frightened and runs up to his room and coweres like a little child, I'm assuming.

Starting point is 04:10:21 He continues his story with the dream he had a little child, he had a little bit of a little bit of, of me meat grinding his cats into little patties and offering him a burger made of his cats. Day four, he gets a voicemail. It's not from my number, but of my voice, saying, What, you didn't want the bone back? Why didn't you eat the burger I gave you? He immediately calls me and tells me to stop playing with him, that this isn't funny. I assure him that I'm still down in Virginia.

Starting point is 04:10:52 I suggest he calls my mom just to be sure. Later that night, I am apparently in his room, just looming over his bed watching him, and I give a very impish smirk, and then my jaw detaches and I lunge at him. He tells me that he ran into his mother's bed with her and told her all of this. Now, they were a bit more religious at the time, so they called their pastor to bless the house and ask what it could be. He says it could be his, my, doppelganger, or a negative entity taking the shape of someone he trusts.

Starting point is 04:11:34 Fast forward to today, literally, we're hanging out and this story comes up, and he adds that after the blessing of the house, an occurrence happened, but only once after, and it was his cat's dead body lying on his front door. Apparently, it looked misshapen and distorted, as if manipulated by man. After hearing the story initially, and again, today my skin still craws at the thought that there may be another me out there that's a sick freak.

Starting point is 04:12:20 The following is a short, yet detailed retelling of my first and so far only, experience with a shadow person. I've always had beliefs in ghosts, spirits, and the paranormal, etc. My family has ingrained that into my core beliefs, and from half of what I've experienced, I don't doubt its validity. I have started to write horror, one of the genres I'm highly interested in, just not the ghost horror stuff because screw messing with that kind of stuff. Anyways, here's my story.

Starting point is 04:12:57 It was about four years ago now, so I was working after everyone in the building and left. It was around 7 or 8 p.m. when it occurred. I was doing the most tedious part of my job at the end of the day. It was taking longer than I anticipated, but I was there for the long haul. While working, I was listening to a new podcast to replace the silence around the building. To give you a premise, my office had one solitary window and two doorways accessing the rooms attached to it.

Starting point is 04:13:34 My office is the only one holding any light in the building, while the rest is covered in darkness. This all happened during a heavy rainstorm as well. I only had about half an hour of work left when I took a look at the doorway closest to me. I was about two meters away, when through the windowed door, I saw the silhouette of a man. The silhouette was much darker than the darkness of the adjoining room behind it. Lights from my office were pouring out and could have illuminated the silhouette, letting me see their eyes, hair, skin, yet all of it remained dark. What the light did show me was the detail of a face, yet,

Starting point is 04:14:20 All of the details were completely dark. It looked 3D, yet the light could not expose any other details, like a mannequin, yet pitch black doesn't do justice for what I saw. It was leaning right against the glass, causing a mist to form on the glass right beneath its nostrils, as if they were breathing against the window. The sweaty indentation of a forehead against the glass also, formed. It just

Starting point is 04:14:52 stared at me. I was terrified as hell, and I didn't know what to do. As far as I knew, there was no one left in the building except for me. If it was a co-worker, they would have turned on the lights to see, yet off the lights remained.

Starting point is 04:15:12 It didn't feel normal. It felt very off. I finished my work quickly and left work minutes later. On my way out, I noticed nothing else strange, nothing out of place, no one hiding, no one stalking me. Just an uneasy feeling of being watched. The following day, I took a look at the detail at the glass of my office door. That face impression was still there.

Starting point is 04:15:43 I even wiped away the condensation still lingering. I asked my coworkers, and they all told me. that the building had a history of ghosts being seen and other paranormal things happening. It doesn't really get any creepier than that there. After work the following day, I looked it up and found out that what I witnessed was a shadow person. I still find it so fascinating and horrifying. I do admit, I may want to see something like that again, but I don't want to do something to trigger that to happen.

Starting point is 04:16:21 That was the scariest thing I've ever experienced. So far, at least. In July of 2017, I bought an old World War I makeshift trench knife from a vendor at the Pasadena flea market. It looked as though

Starting point is 04:16:48 someone had just ripped off a chairleg and stuck a metal spike in it. The night I brought it home, I started having nightmares. They were constant. Each nightmare would be different, but one thing they all had in common was that there was always a tall, slim, black figure in them. A few months later, I had my house saged,

Starting point is 04:17:13 and the activity subsided for a few months. Around March of 2018, the activity started again, with nightmares and constantly having the feeling of being watched. While our house has always been haunted, what with the original owner being very attached to the house, and also late relatives visiting every now and then, this was the only entity that seemed malicious. My sister was also affected by this in the same way that I was having nightmares. She said that she would have a dream of a creature crawling around in her ceiling and then pouncing on her. In April of 2018, my family went on a camping trip and took the dogs with them, and I was all alone, due to not being able to get the time off.

Starting point is 04:18:06 And the activity was rampant. I would hear footsteps pacing and running around upstairs, stuff being dragged around, but when I would look upstairs, no one was there, and there wasn't anything out of place. On the final night of my family being gone, I was in my room and went out to use the bathroom at around two in the morning. I looked down the hallway at my parents' room, and standing outside of their room was that same black figure that I had been seeing in my dreams. It was about seven foot tall, and it was the blackest black that I've ever seen. My parents' room was pitch black, and it still stood out. The hallway smelled of rotten eggs. It was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.

Starting point is 04:19:01 When my parents came back, I told my mom what happened, and I broke down crying. She told me the next morning that she went to the bathroom at one point that night, and felt something charged her. We saged the house the next day, and, destroyed the knife so that it couldn't be used for its original purpose. We have a small workshop in our garage that's right below my room upstairs. We put the knife in the vice grip and started bending the blade. As we were doing so, we could hear loud noises as if someone was slamming the walls and stomping on the floor.

Starting point is 04:19:41 We destroyed the knife and buried it in a box, blessed with holy water far away. A few days later, my sister told me that when she went in my room, she could feel a dark energy in my room, like it wanted her to leave. Seeing that figure still reigns as the most terrifying moment of my life. This story won't be told by me, but by a family member of mine. It was a regular Saturday night, and I was in my bed watching YouTube videos. I owned three cats, Lily, Woodsy, and Rose. Rose and Lily were the only ones who came in my room,

Starting point is 04:20:34 so I left the door closed, but not fully, so they can come in or out. My bed was on one of the corners of the room, and at the end was my tall dresser, and the door. Whenever a cat came in or out of my room, I could hear the vents off in the living room. And also keep in mind, that the dresser was so tall, I couldn't see the door besides the top of it.

Starting point is 04:21:01 So if a cat came in, they would have to walk out behind the dresser for me to see them. As I was watching YouTube, I could hear the vents off in the living room. I look up, and sure enough, I saw the door opened. I glanced down to see a cat, but no cat. I was confused, but thought,

Starting point is 04:21:24 maybe they changed their mind. Minutes passed, but the door never closed. This almost always never happens, but I shrugged it off. Then, breathing. Deep, dark breathing was coming from the door. I ignored it, but then it hit me. Cats, don't make breathing sounds. Someone was in my door in breathing.

Starting point is 04:21:51 I turned my phone off and slowly pressed emergency button and start to dial 911. Big mistake. As I pressed the buttons and it makes the dial sound, whoever was at my door heard as well and they went quiet. My fingers trembled and as were my feet, as they were close to the door. It was me and this person only separated by a dresser.

Starting point is 04:22:16 And then, tick, tick, tick. It was tapping my dresser, as if whatever it was was taunting me. And shortly after, the nails were sliding to the end so I could see them. The nails were so dark and gray, and the hand looked like it belonged to some starved elder. But I took a closer look, and the hand was white. It was so unnatural, and at this point, I thought I was having sleep paralysis,

Starting point is 04:22:48 but I could move, so check that off the list. clink, clink, clink, clink, clink. I knew what that was. Whatever they were doing was making it clear that they had a knife. It was time to show them what I had in mind. As adrenaline kicked in, I kicked the dresser, quickly looked to my left and saw a hammer that I had used to fix the window.

Starting point is 04:23:12 I grabbed that and bashed the uncanny nail. Whoever it belonged to let out a scream. That scream? Oh, God. It still echoes through my head till this day. I don't know how to describe it. It was high-pitched with a low evil to it, but no human is capable of doing that.

Starting point is 04:23:33 I took no time to shut my door as it ran away. The cops obviously didn't care at all, and they took their sweet time getting there, and came up with nothing but some broken nails in a busted doorknob. I had no idea the doorknob was busted. I would have heard it at the least, but I was too mad at the police. to even think about it.

Starting point is 04:23:54 This event, it left me paranoid for months, but I'm fine now, just a bit shaky. Thank God I moved out of that place. This is my very first post ever. As soon as I saw this subreddit, I knew I would have to share my experience. Sorry if my grammar and spelling is a mess, but I'm shaking, and it's hard to talk about still. This happened when I was around 16-ish. I'm 20 now. Me and a friend of mine thought it would be a good idea to play with a Ouija board, at night,

Starting point is 04:24:40 in the middle of a park near my house. We asked it the normal teenage questions, like, Is there anyone there, what's your name, etc. When it was happening, we never got precise answers, so we just thought it was all fake. I got fed up and said, something like, if this is actually real, touch me or make a noise. That was when we heard something, but we blew it off automatically.

Starting point is 04:25:10 He drove me back home after that and just left the board in his car. We never really talked about it again, because nothing really happened. It wasn't until a couple days later, when I was alone in his car waiting for him, that I started hearing whispering and tapping noises coming from his trunk where the board was. I looked into the rearview mirror where I caught a glimpse of a boy.

Starting point is 04:25:36 It started to freak me out so much that I actually left the car and waited for him outside. When he came back, I asked him if he'd been hearing weird things or seeing things and he just said no, so I just thought I was going crazy. for another couple of days

Starting point is 04:25:55 It was all fine and dandy Didn't hear anything, didn't see anything It wasn't until a week later that I saw him again It was the middle of the night And I got out of bed to use the bathroom When I opened my door Right in front of it sat a small boy with bloody stubs for legs Wearing old-fashioned clothing

Starting point is 04:26:16 He didn't have a face But he did have giant black eyes That looked like holes I blinked once and he was gone. I just went to the bathroom and went back to sleep. That was the moment that everything changed. At night I started to hear something crawling and dragging itself on the floor of my room. I started hearing things all the time.

Starting point is 04:26:41 It would say things like stay with me and would constantly call my name. It would close and open doors for me. I had this feeling like something was always. watching me and was always right behind me. I saw him once again after all of this started. I was going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and I have a bad habit of always looking in the mirror as soon as I get into the bathroom. That is when I saw him floating behind me in the mirror, just staring at me with his missing legs and black eyes. I turned around as fast as I could, but he disappeared. That's when I asked him what his name.

Starting point is 04:27:22 was, and right next to my ear I felt a breath, and heard the name Eddie. In a way, it made me feel better and calmer now that I knew his name. Things continued to happen more often than they used to, but he started to be more helpful in a way, like opening a door when I asked and closing them when I asked. I honestly didn't want him to leave. I felt comfort knowing he was around. Weird, I know. It wasn't until the incident happened that I started feeling unsafe. Eddie never followed me out of my house, or at least I never noticed him out of my house until one day. I was at my then-boyfriend's house while he was at work, and his family was away. I was sitting on the couch in the living room when I felt the whole house shake.

Starting point is 04:28:14 I don't live in an area where earthquakes ever happened, so I knew it wasn't that. cabinets in the kitchen started opening and slamming shut. Anything that was on the counter flew off. Doors started slamming shut? It wasn't until I screamed for him to stop, that he stopped. After that, Eddie became super productive and possessive of me. He used to make me six, so I couldn't leave the house. Used to drain the battery within my phone and car.

Starting point is 04:28:45 He seemed to do everything within his power to stop me from leaving. I finally told my mom what was happening and we got a priest in to bless me and the house and we saged the house as well. I haven't seen them since. Now, I always have holy water on me, but I'm still not afraid of spirits. This was still one of the most traumatic experiences I ever had, and I can't tell the story without feeling uncomfortable amounts of pressure on my neck, so I hope you enjoy it. I do have many more stories of ghosts within my house, and my sister has some stories as well.

Starting point is 04:29:24 Let me know if you'd like to hear any of them. So, this actually happened to a co-worker of mine, but it's by far the creepiest thing that I've ever been semi-involved in in my entire life. And I've been waiting for the perfect moment slash time to share it. This was a few years ago now, but I work in a hospital. and there are privacy laws, so I just wanted to give it some time to be safe. So I had this coworker. We'll call him Jack for the sake of this story, who I trained and worked with quite a lot.

Starting point is 04:30:10 One day, I came to work. I think it actually may have been around the holidays, and he told me that he'd had a phone call that really creeped him out. We work in a call center, transferring patient and employee calls. calls. He said, a patient had called in the early hours of the morning, wanting to speak to the nurse in charge. As his protocol, Jack took the patient's name, doctor's name, and phone number. He then told the patient, the nurse would call him back ASAP. The patient asked her to hurry, sounding in great distress, according to Jack, and insisted he was having cardiac arrest.

Starting point is 04:30:53 We aren't allowed to give medical advice of any kind, but we are allowed to encourage patients in distress to call 911 or to go to the ER. So Jack did so, but the guy insisted on waiting for the nurse. Jack put the guy on hold, not wanting to make him wait, and he called the nurse. While waiting for her to call back, the line dropped. When the nurse did call back, Jack, gave her the info and moved on with his night. The nurse shortly called back to ask Jack to repeat the phone number.

Starting point is 04:31:31 He did, and she said it must be wrong, as she was getting one of those, that number isn't assigned to anyone messages when she tried to call. She decided to look up the patient's file to confirm the number herself. Only problem is, the patient died over 20 years ago. The phone number, by the phone number, by the number, the way, was correct, and Jack had checked it with the caller display while on the call, so it was definitely the number the patient called from, despite the number being out of service,

Starting point is 04:32:05 and the patient being dead for over 20 years. To this day, we still don't know what happened, or how that was even possible. I was about eight years old when I first had this experience, at least an experience that I can remember. It was the weekend, so I was staying up pretty late for my age. My mom had gone to work while my dad was asleep in his room with my baby sister and a newborn brother. I lived in a two-story house. I was downstairs watching TV. I remember laying on the couch with my head on the armrest watching gargoyles,

Starting point is 04:32:55 even though I wasn't a Disney kid at all. I leaned more towards Cartoon Network and Nick. And I felt the couch shake. Living close to California and being in the aftershock before, I looked back towards the dining room chandelier to see if it was swaying. There was nothing, no movement. I was fairly spooked. I got up and went into the next room to get my dog,

Starting point is 04:33:21 and he absolutely did not want to go into the TV room where I was. I even tried to drag him, as well as give him a treat, but he wasn't having any of it. I summoned some courage and went back to watching TV. A few minutes had passed, and I had felt the couch shake again, but more violently. I turned my head to see if the chandelier was swaying, but nothing, again. While I was moving my vision back towards the TV, there was a shadow, and was at least seven foot tall standing in front of me, blocking the view,

Starting point is 04:33:57 and at this point I felt hands around my neck. I was being choked, but there was nothing in front of me. The shadow was still standing in front of the TV. I tried to get up, but I was pushed back down, and my head hit the armrest. I was kicking and screaming, but nothing was happening, and I started to feel as if I couldn't breathe. I started to get really scared that I was going to die in that moment. I tried once more, and I was able to get up.

Starting point is 04:34:28 I felt the fingers being pulled off my neck. And I made a run for the stairs. I turned around once again for a quick peek, but there was nothing in that room. I still visit that house on occasion, and I've always had bad vibes there. Sometimes I see a shadow on the corner of my eye on the stairs, looking down at me.

As The Raven Dreams Podcast - 4+ Hours of Paranormal Stories | Stories about Hauntings, Ghosts and Shadow people

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