As The Raven Dreams Podcast - ATRD Ep. 025 - Creepy Nightshift, Birthday and Paranormal Stories - 12 True Scary Stories

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

Hello and Welcome to the 25th episode of The ATRD Podcast! Today we have some intriguing and terrifying stories submitted by everyday people. In Today's Episode we will have stories about... ➤ Want your story featured? Go to https://www.astheravendreams.com/Submit ➤ Want to know where to follow me on the internet? Go to https://www.astheravendreams.com/the-nevermore for all my links! ➤ You can also get EARLY ACCESS By joining my Patreon! https://patreon.com/astheravendreams Today's Video contains stories by the following Authors... mlemsicles, NmlsFool, CB, TayLou33, True_Madness, CT, Strawb3rryVirginia3, AdrienL94, ElongatedKidneyBean , And any authors that wanted to remain anonymous. ➤ All stories within are used w/ Either direct permission from the author- or under some level of CC license (where noted) True Stories are not verified, and should all be considered 'supposedly true'.  And Remember; You are loved, you are important, and you are valid. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/astheravendreams/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/astheravendreams/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you have a story that you would like to hear featured on this podcast, please consider sending it my way. Just go to as-the-ravendreams.com and click the button to submit your story. And of course, thank you. I love my night shifts. I've always been a night person, and waking me up before noon is impossible. Therefore, I typically worked third shifts or overnights. Overnights were better, because I didn't lose part of my day and typically didn't deal with a lot of customers, so it was a win-win for me. I've done several different odd jobs, too, that others may not have wanted to, but I wasn't really bothered by much, so I was cool with it.

The bigger problem that I tended to have was the people. Part of the reason I worked these jobs was to avoid a lot of them, but the people I did come across were always so far out there and just kind of creepy, and I've got plenty to share. One of the earlier jobs that I did was working at the bookstore at the college that I attended. It was pretty cool because you could put part or all of the money you made towards your tuition, which helped cover some of the costs. I also loved it because I'm an avid reader, so I was in there reading all night with other students that were like me.

I all just wanted to be left alone. Perfect, right? However, it is a college town, and it's quite a popular one, so we would get the typical drunks roaming the streets out front. We could typically get them to leave with little confrontation, but sometimes others took authorities, but still nothing too crazy. Except for this one guy that came by,

that still freaks me out thinking about it. So, the bookstore also has a small cafe attached to it, and a lounge area kind of carved out on one side of the wall. It was like a cozy sunroom that you could sit in and read and study. Even when I was working, I would sit over there if no one else was. This one ordinary night, I was in the store putting back the rentals when I saw a guy walking by the window where the sunroom was at. There were a few streetlights and ones along the campus, so I could clearly see that someone was there. I just saw him in my peripheral as he passed by, but then I saw him going backwards by the window again.

And when I say going backwards, I mean it was not. like I was seeing him rewind. He was walking backwards, but his motions weren't natural. This, of course, got me to look over at him. He stopped at the window and was just staring, so I looked over at him to see if he would do or say something. Occasionally, people would just stop and look in for a bit and then move on, but this guy became fixated on something.

I tried turning around to follow his line of sight. But the only thing I could see in his direction was a motivational poster and a lamp. There was a desk with a stack of books, but I doubt that he could read them from that distance. So I turned back around to look at him, and he was still staring. I tapped on the window to possibly get his attention, but that did nothing. He didn't move. He didn't change his stare or even acknowledge me. I stared back at him waiting to see what would happen next,

and that's when I started noticing things that made me uncomfortable. This guy's face was drained of all color. He looked gray, and his face kind of looked like it was melting. I want to say it looked like it was drooping, but it wasn't like that. It kind of looked like it was just going to fall off. His eyes were the worst part. they looked cloudy and lifeless. He didn't look old either.

There are those people that just don't take care of themselves, and they end up looking a lot older than they actually are. That's kind of what I got from this guy. Maybe he was under the influence, though, and maybe that was why, but as mentioned, I've seen my share of addicts and drunks, and this just did not look like that. so as I continued to watch, he stood still, minus a slight sway, staring up in the corner. After some time, I decided to continue my work, thinking and hoping that he would eventually walk off,

but every few minutes, I would look over and he would still be there. I walked back behind the counter and sat there for the remainder of the shift, because he was still there. He stood there for two more hours just staring. I was pretty good friends with the campus security guard that was working that night, and he usually stopped by the store before we left, so I called him from the store phone asking him to walk me out, just because of this guy. I didn't know if he would do anything when we tried to leave,

so I wanted someone there with me. So when Brian got there, he immediately saw the guy and didn't feel comfortable about it either. He wanted to call someone about it, but I figured he wasn't really doing anything, so they probably wouldn't care too much about it anyways. He agreed, and I finished closing stuff and then locked up. Right before I closed the gate and turned the light off, I looked over and the guy was still there. Now, to leave, you had to walk to the left of the store where the entrance was.

There was a solid wall there for the store, and the other wall had glass displays of awards, and in between was the swinging doors to enter. As we left the building, I stepped forward hesitantly, expecting to see this guy, but he was just gone. There were no signs of him. I walked over by the window to see if there was anything there. but there was nothing. There was nothing on the ground, nothing on the glass, and the building was pretty long,

so he wouldn't have had time to get out of view, as it was a straight path down. Even if he was running, I feel like we would have been able to see him. I didn't even see a car nearby that could have picked him up. He literally just vanished, and after that night, I never saw him again, and neither did anyone else claim that they ever saw him.

Another job that I worked at was with the sterilization team. We went in late at night, typically overnight, and cleaned places like restaurants, grocery stores, and even some hotels. It was actually a friend of mine that worked there and got me to apply at the time. Again, it wasn't too bad. That one I never dealt with customers, so it was headphones in, in at all times and just cleaning. We typically didn't get anything too serious or gross,

but sometimes the hotel rooms were questionable. Again, people are creepy and disgusting, but surprisingly, this one isn't about a person. It still is very strange, though. There was one restaurant that we cleaned on a weekly basis. It was a local chain, and the owner was very strict about how he wanted the place cleaned and organized. Once we finished the cleaning,

we had to make sure that everything was put up in a specific manner. Otherwise, he would just complain. For example, the chairs had to be stacked in one spot specifically. The chairs were not to be put on the tables, even if they were completely cleaned or upside down. We had to use a specific cleaner because he thought the standard one we used was too abrasive. and it would take the coating off of the tables, that kind of stuff.

So it probably took us the longest because of the specifics we had to follow, but overall still not too big of a deal, though. So when a radio would come on randomly in the restaurant, I first just thought it was something the owner set up to come on and maybe just set it for the wrong time. It was 1.23 a.m. when it would go off, but it was never an alarm sound or a specific song or anything, but really just static. I could hear it over my headphones and it actually startled me the first time.

I went to find the source when I found one of those old antenna and dial radios that plugged in or took those giant batteries. It looked ancient and it stuck out with the very modern look of this place. However, it was back in the kitchen, so... Then I just assumed someone probably brought it in to have something to listen to. Maybe. Either way, I walked up to it and turned it off and then moved on with my night. Then the next week rolled around, and as we cleaned, 1.23 a.m. rolled around and it went off again.

I went back to it to turn it off, and that's when I realized. There was no way to set some kind of alarm on this dinosaur of a radio. It was literally just an on-off. switch, a tuner dial, and a switch to change from AM to FM. So, again, I just turned it off and moved on thinking, maybe it had some kind of shorts, and then I forgot about it. But then, it happened thrice, at the same time. Curious, and maybe a little annoyed, I inspected it a little more.

I noticed it was on FM, and the dialy. and the dial was actually on a station that I listened to frequently. It was some alternative rock station. Maybe it went down at some point for some reason. I don't know if radio stations ever have to reboot or do maintenance or something to that effect, but that was my initial thought. However, while I was looking at this thing more, I noticed it wasn't just static. It was faint, but I could hear people, or at least one,

person talking. I tried to listen closer to make out what they were saying, but it was so quiet that turning it up only made the static louder, so I really couldn't decipher anything. I wanted to mess with the dials some, but I'd been called for and knew that I needed to get back to work, so I just unplugged it and walked off. Thankfully, I guess, it happened again, but this week we actually had an extra person with us, so the cleaning was getting done quicker than normal. I decided to take my last break a little earlier so I could go mess around with that radio again.

And I walked in a little before 123, and I watched as it clicked on and the static started. That was the one that actually spooked me a bit. I felt like I was in some dumb, scary movie, and there was going to be a ghost behind me. But this time, however, I brought my old MP3 player that I had because you could listen to the radio on it, so I thought I would try going to the same station. And to my surprise, it was just actually playing music. There was no static, just a clear station. I even tried going to the numbers in between that one in the next station,

but I could not replicate it on my device. So I again held its to my ear and tried to listen to what I was hearing. This time, I could make out a few words and phrases. I got, listen, becoming, execution, right-of-way, being, or beings. Those are the ones that I can remember. The guy sounded angry, though. Maybe it was the way it was coming through, but he reminded me of my dad. giving a stern talking, but this guy sounded like he was slowly becoming more and more enraged.

And to add to it, I tried changing it to the AM stations, and it didn't change. I changed it back between the two, and the static was, well, static. And the talking didn't sound any clearer or any worse. The only thing that would change it or stop it was unplugging it. but this time I wanted to see how long it would go and if it would even turn itself off before we left so I went ahead and turned it down a bit and I waited as I did some of the last cleaning bits in the kitchen to my surprise and after delaying some it did turn off at 1.46 a.m. It was on for exactly 23 minutes.

Anyone know of any significance to that number? Anyways, we left for the night with nothing else weird happening. I was pretty invested, though, so I agreed to return to listen to the mystery radio for the fifth time. But beforehand, I did try to replicate the station again at home. I tried in my car, in my stereo, in my room, but no luck. I tried all the stations in between, and I even spent way too long on the AM ones. but found nothing matching that guy's voice. It actually did happen again, right on schedule,

but this time I told my friend, since they were on the same shift with me to come and check it out. I told them what had been happening, and they found it even more interesting, because they'd cleaned here before, and they said that that had never occurred. I told them it's been doing it every time that I've been here. The kicker to this was the following two weeks.

I didn't go there because I was sick one day, and I had called in on the other, and I was scheduled off. However, both of those days, my friend did work it, and they said that it never happened. Then I went back, and it happened again, like clockwork. So now I feel like I'm being used as a channel or conduit of some sort for something to reach out. It's a weird feeling. I never really thought about that kind of stuff before until that moment. I didn't stay at that job, though, because they started cleaning a little more risky things, like crime scenes,

and that I wasn't personally comfortable with, so I left. But I still listened to some of the creepy stories with my friends. I tried looking into the radio, the station, the time, and even paranormal occurrences to see if there was any correlation that could possibly connect it, But the most I found was that the owner had a kid that died at a young age, and the date of his death was January 23rd. It may just be a coincidence, but I thought it was weird.

And even if it was related, what significance does the angry guy with his words have? Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should look into? I don't want to give too much information out about the restaurants, or the company, especially since they do more legal services now, but I'm still very curious, if not a bit creeped out by this occurrence. Maybe it's just me, though. Maybe I attract strange and bizarre people and things. It has become an ongoing joke in my family that my birthdays are cursed.

Just about every year, something happens on my birthday. be it weird, disastrous, creepy, frustrating, there was just always something memorable there. I wasn't upset about it, though. Maybe as a kid, I probably took it differently, but now as an adult, I just grow to expect it. And I can't even get mad about it anymore. I wanted to share some of the weirder incidents that occurred, though. For this story, I have to explain my appearance, at least as a young child. My uncle always poked fun at me, calling me pretty boy.

I had super curly blonde hair. Trimming it was always difficult to do, partially because I had troubles holding still, and also because it was hard to make it even, I suppose. I also have bright green eyes. I still have the bright green eyes, and some people thought that I edited my pictures because of how they looked. I also had pale skin, but freckles everywhere. Both of my parents are gingers.

I don't know where the blonde hair came from, though. So when my parents took me to places like the doctors, or to get my haircut, or to even get family photos taken, they always made comments about how adorable I was and confused me for a girl. girl. That didn't stop them from saying I should be in pageants or that I would be great as a model. Just weird stuff like that. My parents just kind of took the comments in stride, thanked them, and moved on. As a young child, I didn't understand what they were talking about, but it did get annoying as I grew up, which is actually why I started shaving my head. Anyways, so for one of my birthday plays,

parties as a kid, and my parents took me to this local arcade place. It was kind of like Chucky Cheese, but without the animatronics and with more games. They had a few entertainers that were there on random days too. There was a balloon guy one time that made balloon animals and hats. There was another guy that did magic tricks and another that played a bunch of different musical instruments at the same time. So there were a couple of people like that there as well. All in all, the party itself was great up until the end.

My mom was talking to another parent, and I told them that I wanted more nuggets before we left, or something like that, and she told me to wait or ask my dad. I looked around as much as a kid would, and when I couldn't find him, I decided to just wander off to see if I could find him, some tokens on the ground or games to play.

While I was pretty much crawling on the ground, a woman crouched down next to me holding a token and asked me if I was looking for it. I smiled and took it from her, and then remembered looking around for my favorite game to play. It was this game where you were a bear and you had to basically use a steering wheel as a controller to go left and right to catch apples in your mouth. I had won a lot of tickets from it before, so I usually spent most of my tokens on it, expecting it to work again. As I walked over to it, this woman followed me and again crouched down to be at eye-level with me. She told me happy birthday, and I asked her how she knew, and she said because she was invited, as she was part of my family.

I asked who she was, since I didn't recognize her, and all that she said was that she was my aunt, my dad's sister. That was all the verification I really needed at the time, so I said hi and continued playing the game. After a few minutes, she asked me where my parents were, and I said that I couldn't find my dad, and my mom was talking to someone else. She then made comments about how pretty I was and that I could make a lot of people happy. Confused by this, I asked her what she meant, and she vaguely talked about other mommies and daddies that wanted a kid to make them happy too.

I remember at this point thinking, Cool, I don't know what I have to do with any of this, so I continued to play the game. She then asked if I would like to go with her to meet me, new moms and dads, and I said that I liked mine, but she said that I wouldn't have a choice anyways, because they're going to be having another kid, which meant that I wasn't making them happy anymore. This is where she got my attention. I was scared that I was in trouble, or that my parents didn't really love me anymore.

She told me that's why I needed to go with her now, so that way I could pick my new parents. Through tears and heartbreak, I agreed and took her hand as we walked out of the building. I heard screaming as we left, but didn't pay any attention to it at the time, until I clearly heard my dad's booming voice yell my name. I looked up to see him running towards us, and the woman yanked on my arm, nearly dragging me as she ran towards her van. She tried shuffling to open the door, but my dad had caught up to us. grabbing her by the wrist and pulling me back and telling me to go to my mom.

I shuffled back towards her as I saw her in the doorway crying, and she grabbed onto me tightly. My dad was then yelling at this woman asking who the hell she was, all while she was begging him to let her go. The cops showed up, and I was brought back inside with my mom as they talked to my dad. I told them what the lady had told me. and they explained that none of that was true. They said people don't have more kids because they don't want the ones they already had, but that it could be just because they wanted more kids to love, things like that.

My mom also told me that she started looking for me at some point in time that I was playing the game, since it was towards the front, and she was more in the back by the prize room. That was when she saw me walking out with a woman, and she could tell that I looked sad or scared. My dad was also talking to someone, but was closer to the front, so my mom yelled at him and pointed towards me. That was when my dad took off toward us. I don't know whatever happened to that lady, but let me tell you my surprise and fear when I learned about a week or two later that my parents were having another kid. They may have had to have calmed me down a bit on that one. Again, now it's a joke in the family when something happens,

that they're just going to trade me in, even now at 27. Another event that occurred was at my birthday party, at around age 14, I think. I handed out invitations to those that I wanted to go in between classes. If I didn't give them to everyone in the classroom, then the teacher wouldn't let us pass them out. out, to be fair. I was limited on the amount of people I could invite, which was fine, because there wasn't a huge list of people I really wanted to be there anyways. In fact, there was this one kid that I was semi-friends with.

We'll call him Chad. Chad was actually a new student, so no one really knew him there, but he quickly tried to fit in with different clicks to make friends. At least he tried, instead of just sitting there every day waiting to be invited to something. I can at least give him that. However, his personality, his jokes, and just some of his demeanor, it was just weird, and maybe a little above our age. Some of us had crushes and boyfriends or girlfriends, sure, but he was very sexual with his comments.

Like, way more colorful and in-depth than what you would expect a 13- or 14-year-old to know about or to say. Like, even for me and my friends being raunchy, it was uncomfortable. So I didn't really hang out with him outside of school. Therefore, I also didn't initially invite him to my party, and didn't really think twice about it either. What I didn't realize, though, was that my mom knew his mom from their family. the PTA meetings, and he, of course, was a completely different kid around my mom. She saw this kind and polite boy that was new to the community,

and that maybe that I just didn't know him enough and invited him to my party. Yay. My party was on a Saturday, and she decided not to bring this up until the Friday before. I explained to her that he was weird, but at that age, I think I was too embarrassed to repeat some of the things that he had said or done. So she just said that I should get to know him, and that this was the best way to do it. Not that I had a choice, but I reluctantly agreed. Enter the day of the party.

Everything was going great. My friends all showed up, and we were having a great time. My little sister was six or seven, so she was occupied with her own toys and games, and being watched by my grandmother for the most part. Then, Chad showed up. It was normal at first. He came over, said hi. He had brought a present and acted normal

throughout cake and ice cream and the games. Then, when we were all left to our own devices, I was just hanging out in our tree with my friends. We had a little ladder set up that we could climb the trunk and just sit up in the tree. Chad joined us and he made some weird comments about the few girls that were there

that I'm not willing to repeat. At the time, I did have a crush on one of them so I didn't like it and I basically told him to stop because it was messed up. That's when he made a similar comment about my little sister.

At that point, I could tell my friends were uncomfortable too so I remembered telling him that he was gross, that that was my little sister and that that was why no one liked him around. It was awkward for a moment, but Chad then jumped out of the tree, still smiling as he made a motion like he was shooting himself in the head, and then walked off into my house. My friends all had mixed reactions to it, but we just tried to move on.

After a while of us not seeing him come back out, I decided to go check on him to make sure he wasn't doing something weird when I started hearing my mom and grandma shouting back and forth about something. They sounded scared, so I went to find them to see them banging on the door to my sister's room, and my sister crying from the other side of it. When my mom noticed me standing there, she yelled at me to go get my dad, so I ran off to find him. and we both ran back to my sister's room where my grandma was now on the phone with 911 and my dad immediately started body slamming the door he finally broke it down and he was hit with a bunch of smoke something in the room had caught fire and the door was locked

and no one knew how it happened my grandma felt really bad for the longest time because she thought that she may have accidentally locked it when she left the room but it was one of those knobs that you have to push in and turn, so you couldn't really do it by accident. She also typically left the door open in case she woke up or something and could hear her coming out. After the police came and they all talked about it,

they determined that the fire was intentionally set after finding candle wax and a burnt stuffed animal. There was also something else that was part of the origin of the fire, but I don't remember it, Also, it was just by her toy chest and dresser, which is why there was so much smoke, but thankfully it didn't damage much other than her toys, some of her clothes and then part of the wall. Anyways, after all this, we had to end the party, and have people go home early, all while having to explain to the parents why this was happening. My mom was eyeballing all of my friends trying to figure out who could have done it. It was pretty terrifying as well as embarrassing, having your mom pretty much interrogate your friends and their parents.

After everyone was gone, then they talked to me about what had happened and told me because of how serious of a situation it was. We had to think about who all went in and out of the house, asked me if I thought or knew anyone that would try anything like that, and so forth. and that's when, going through the order of things, I had mentioned Chad going into the house, and I went in there after a while since he hadn't come out. After describing which one he was to my grandmother, she said that she saw him coming out of the hallway, but thought that he had just used the bathroom,

which was in the same hall as mine in my sister's room. That's when we realized that he was nowhere to be found after he left the house. his mom never even showed up to get him. He was just gone. Then, I had to tell them more about him and why I didn't really like him, which was awkward as hell. So, after my mom did her thing and tracked his house down, his mom got him to admit what he had done. He really tried to light my sister, her, hell, my whole house on fire, for the fun of it. I didn't see him in school after that, but...

we did get an apology letter in the mail from his mom, as well as a gift card to replace some of the things that were lost. After that, my mom stopped doubting me when I told her I didn't like someone in my class. So, yeah, that's a few of the crazy events for you. That's literally why I tell my wife to just treat my birthday like every other day. That way, we're less likely to spontaneously combust or something. I might share some more birthday horror stories with you if you ever want them. So, this happened on my 30th birthday. At that point in my life, I was still single and had nothing really significant going on in it.

In fact, I lived with my mom as she was a paraplegic due to a car accident, so if I wasn't working, I was taking care of her. My grandmother also lived there and helped out, but she also had mobility issues. I'm thankful to have both wonderful women in my life, but I still did want a day or night off occasionally to myself. So for my birthday, I just wanted to party, drink, and let loose a bit. Me and a couple of friends hit up a few local bars to start. We lived in a small town, so everyone knew everyone else.

This didn't really work for me, because that meant that the dating pool was low. too. So I suggested that we go a town or two over. New area, new bars, new people, right? We got to one and pretty much got kicked out of it due to some stupid drama already taking place, and my friend adding to it, but we finally found this little club that had a local band playing, so there was an entry cost. It wasn't much, and we all agreed that there would probably be more people there too, so we went for it. The band was all right. It was three people, a drummer, a bassist,

and then a singer that also played guitar and keyboard. They probably could have done without the keyboard, because it sounded off and didn't really co-with the songs. The singer also sounded like he'd already had his share of drinks and was slurring his words. If I had to describe it, it was like a weird mix of metal bands with an EDM sound, but just done really bad. But they were new to this, so props to them for putting themselves out there. After a few drinks, I was standing in the crowd towards the back,

dancing in place to the music, as it did seem to get better with alcohol, when a guy walked over and stood next to me. I glanced over and smiled as he nodded doing the same thing, and then said very loudly, these guys suck. It was kind of harsh, sure, but it made me laugh pretty hard. We started talking the best we could over the music. We talked about our favorite bands, the worst concerts that we'd been to, and just stupid stuff like that.

We then started doing stupid and old dances, like disco style, and we're getting stares from people, but we also had a few join in with us. We were having a blast. and even had the singer from the band come out and hang with us. We were all drinking and having a good time, and then my friends slowly left. Some of them had kids and had to work the next day, so I understood why. They offered to take me home since I'd been drinking, but I wasn't ready to go home yet, so I declined and said I would figure it out later.

When my friends were leaving and telling me happy birthday, others heard them, including my new guy friend, and that got me another round of drinks for free. We all did these shots and started dancing again. To be honest, this is kind of what I was wanting. I wanted to just get wasted and get stupid for the night, possibly hook up, and I think this guy was figuring that out too, by the way he was acting at this point. The dancing, the touching, all of it.

The only problem that I had was that I was not feeling good. I've been drunk before, but this was different. I felt dizzy and nauseous, and it was just like the room was spinning. I was trying to ignore it or move past it since this was my one night off. Shortly after, he asked me if I wanted to leave. I was pretty ready to go at that point, so thinking, Maybe afterwards I could get something to eat or take something and maybe start feeling better and then get home. It's not like I could drive myself anyways, so why not take the offer?

I walked back up to the bar because I wanted to get a bottle of soda. Something I often did after drinking, and as the lady was grabbing it, she asked me if I was okay. I kind of laughed because I thought that she was just joking, and I said, I was fine. She then motioned for me to lean in and said something like, Be careful. Don't be afraid to holler if you need help. Not knowing what she meant by this, I again just kind of laughed.

I thanked her and paid for my soda and walked away. I walked back towards the guy and started talking about leaving when my phone started ringing. I noticed it was my mom, so I told him I had to take it since I was. was technically her caregiver, and, of course, she's my mom. I walked to the restroom to answer it when my mom started freaking out. She said that my grandmother was having troubles breathing, and that she needed to go to the hospital. She called an ambulance to come get her, of course,

but she wouldn't be able to go without me taking her. I immediately started freaking out, and I told her I would get home as quickly as possible. and then hung up the phone. To my surprise, this guy was standing at the end of the hall to the restrooms waiting for me, smiling. Choking back tears, I told him I had to get home because my grandma had to go to the hospital. He first said he was sorry to hear about her, but then joked about it not being my responsibility, and kind of pulled me closer to him.

Not many people know or understand how I live, so I didn't take offense, and I explained him that I took care of them, so I had to go. Hell, I even offered to give him my number so he could continue this later. Instead, he got a little more pushy, saying that someone else could get her there and that they didn't need me to take her. I then insisted that that person was me. I looked after them, and then he started getting mad. He made a comment about how it was a piss-poor excuse to get out of going with him,

and that next time I shouldn't lead someone on like that if all they wanted were free drinks. Now, at this point, I'm still dizzy, drunk, flustered, and now I'm furious. I'm telling him that it wasn't an excuse and that he could go screw himself if he was that desperate. I started walking away from him and headed for the bar since it was closer to the back, as I was going to get an Uber being that I was drunk. And then the lady at the bar again asked me if I was all right. I kind of started laying it all on her as to what was going on, and she offered to take me home.

I said I didn't want to bother her or take her out of work, but she insisted. She then mentioned that she was actually partial owner of the bar, so she could leave if she needed to, as someone else would be able to look after the place. I again told her that I appreciated it, and if I couldn't get an Uber, then I would take her up on her offer. As I started setting it up,

that same guy walked up to me with a completely different demeanor. He apologized for his actions, and he said it was the alcohol, but offered to take me home since this was a serious situation. I accepted his apology and almost took him up on the offer, but since he'd been drinking too, and it affected his personality the way that it had, I thought it probably wouldn't be a good idea. I tried to phrase it that I didn't want to ruin his night and risk him driving somewhere that he didn't know, but then mentioned that we should try an actual date.

I did like him otherwise. He was attractive and funny, but maybe he was just a better person when not under the influence. This again seemed to enrage him, and he started going off on me about being a gold's digger, and that I was just mooching off of people. Dumb crap like that. My mom was now calling me back. I didn't know how to react to everything, so I just got sick on the floor. and on this guy.

Yeah. It was awful and embarrassing, but thankfully the lady ran around the other side of the bar and yelled at the guy to leave and started getting me to the restroom. After I got cleaned up, she insisted on taking me home at this point, and I agreed. My head was still all over the place, but I called my mom and told her that I was on my way, and she confirmed that they had picked up my grandma already and that she was stable. This all took place in her truck, and after I got off the phone, she started explaining her actions. She said she had seen that guy there before, and that she'd always had an off feeling about him with the way that he would just constantly buy girls' drinks, and sometimes he would end up leaving with them.

Some would decline his offer, and he would always act the same way. way. He got irrationally angry at the girl until one of them would leave or he was escorted out. However, this time when he picked up a round of shots, she clearly saw him

drop something in one of the glasses. She said she stopped and stared at him and all he did was wink at her and walk off. She watched as he handed me the drink and kept an eye on me from then on. That's why she asked how I was feeling.

She was worried that he had drugged me. I told her I had felt sick and dizzy, which I didn't normally get like that, but I thought it was just because of the shots, since it was different from what I usually did. We got to my house, and I hugged her, and I thanked her for looking out for me. She gave me her phone number and told me to call her if I needed help getting my car back home, but that it would be safe there until then. and I went inside. Just to add, my grandmother did turn out okay. I did get my car back with no issues, and even when the creepy guy found me on Facebook,

I blocked him and then never heard from him again. I don't know if he really did drug me, but either he did, and that explains why I felt the way that I did, or he at least got way too angry at the stupid things. whichever one it was, I no longer wanted anything to do with him. However, it wouldn't be the last time that I would hear about him. I went to that same bar several months later with a friend, and the owner actually recognized me.

She came over and told me some pretty shocking stuff. She had said that her bar, as well as a few others, had been investigated for reports of women being drugged, and it was traced back to those few local bars and clubs. She, of course, didn't have any physical proof, but she did explain to the investigators her concerns and suspects, and she actually helped with setting something up to catch this guy. They were successful, and he was not only arrested for that, but also IDed by someone who was drugged and then assaulted by him. Sure enough, I went and looked and found a news article about it later that night confirming it. It was surreal to me that I was most likely targeted for the same kind of scheme, but had managed to make it out of a bad situation.

So there's my story of me being stupid and probably selfish, too. Don't worry. I'm a lot more careful when I do go out now, and having my fiancé with me also helps out quite a bit. Way back in the early 2000s, I used to have the... nerdiest and probably most boring IT job one could ever have. I was contracted out to work as the overnight IT guy for a group of car dealerships in my downtown area. All of the dealerships were owned by the same people, and they were all a combination of the person's name and the type of car, so think something like Carlin's Chevrolet and

Carlin's Mercedes. Not hugely relevant, but it helps you to understand that this was basically a very lucrative business for the owner, and they had quite a bit of money. And that said, for whatever reason, the owner and head of technology for the dealership group was adamantly against using modern

technology for backing things up. And every single thing that the company did that was digital was put onto a magnetic tape drive. Most people born after the turn of the millennium probably won't even know what that is. And just for them, it's literally a cartridge-like device that plugs into the server rack, and the data is written to it like a disk. But it's magnetic, and it's actually a tape. I know that that was a poor attempt at explaining what they are,

but what it is isn't hugely relevant to the story. I just wanted to highlight that this place was incredibly retro with their technology. though tape drives are actually pretty prominent in IT nowadays. Being the overnight IT guy was, as I said, probably the most boring job in the world. The entire job was just me going to one of the dealerships, walking into the server closet, and running the backup system to run to the magnetic tapes. Because their back-end system was antiquated, and every backup was required to be a full, backup, I would start it at around 10 p.m., and everything would be done and verified by around

7 in the morning. Because they wanted the most value for their money, I would have to start the backup, and then would be expected to answer any support tickets that came in, or were pre-assigned for the dealership that I was at. This would oftentimes lead to me having to wander around the dark and empty dealership to find the system, a printer, or whatever wasn't working properly, and stay in that spot until the issue was fixed. This is when things would typically get creepy. We weren't supposed to disturb the dealership or turn on the main lights, all requests and requirements from the owner,

so we had to navigate the place by flashlight, and whatever backup lights happened to be on. Now, before I get into some of the creepiness that occurred during my work, I just want you all to visualize what every night was for me. My night started in a nice, bright, open server closet, and I would have to walk into a big, pitch-black and open building for the rest of the night. If you've ever seen the inside of a service department for a dealership, you know that it's basically like a big, empty warehouse. I had to walk around this with a flashlight to try and locate a single computer or a printer. I know I'm repeating things, but it was creepy as hell. It was like walking around an abandoned building level of creepy.

As stated, there were several incidents that made me regret ever coming to work, some unexplainable and some pretty well grounded in our reality. The first situation that I wanted to mention, happened one night when I had a help ticket for one of the technician's machines. I don't remember the reported issue, but it was something simple like, The Computer Won't Turn On. I grab what I need for the limited diagnostics that I could do on the computer in the dark,

and headed out onto the service floor, looking for which system I was supposed to be working on. I remember on this ticket, I was actually pretty thankful for the tech because he had the wherewithal to put a piece of paper over the screen that said, broken, which made it pretty obvious, which one I needed to fix. I went over to the computer and checked all the connections to make sure that they were fitted well, unplugged, re-plugged,

it tested the outlet. The outlet checked out fine, the cable worked on my diagnostics machines, so I determined that the issue was just the power supply for the computer, which then meant that I had to carry it out to the truck, and get a replacement set up. Not a huge deal, just tedious as I had to disconnect everything from the tower and then carry it outside. These things were pretty old, and they were designed to take a beating, so they were fairly heavy and bulky. So I was getting the system disconnected and moving things to pull it off of the stand,

when I heard what sounded like footsteps coming from the back end of the service floor. The area in the back was designated for the details team, basically the guys that got the cars that were for sale and cleaned them to look as shiny and appealing as they could. I shined my flashlight to the back for a moment to see if there was someone back there, but when I looked there wasn't anyone there. I shrugged it off and just assumed that I was hearing things, but then I heard the footsteps again.

I quickly lifted my lights to look, and I swear that I saw a vague outline of a person walking behind one of the walls that cut off the break room. Obviously, there wasn't supposed to be anyone here, so I was a bit concerned and confused. But ultimately my curiosity and thoughts of, I should really go see who that is got the best of me, and I walked away to go look.

When I got to the back, I didn't see any trace of anyone or anything that looked like it would indicate someone was there. And then I looked over and noticed that the break room light was on. So I again just assumed that they went to the break room. I pulled the door open and started in with, just so you know you scared the hell out of me,

but stopped mid-sentence when I realized that the room was empty. There was nobody there. No detail guys, no texts, no intruders. Just nobody. The room was completely and totally stintuitive. and honestly it was cold as hell. As someone that had a firm belief in all things paranormal, I noped out of there as quickly as I could.

I left the light on, shut the door, and just told myself that I would finish the work for the ticket, and spend the rest of that night in the server room. That wasn't quite the end of it, though. I took the old computer out to the truck and got them the replacement system, but I had to leave my diagnostic system, and other items on the text desk as I took it out. When I got back onto the floor with the new system and started back toward the desk,

my work system, and my tools were on the floor. Scattered. The diagnostic system looked like it had been thrown onto the concrete. And I mean thrown hard. The case on it was bent. The tools and wires were scattered around it, and it was pretty clear. damaged.

I just shook my head, called myself clumsy, and was unwilling to admit that whatever happened was the doing of something paranormal. I got that new system set up and ready in literal record time. Probably a record for the entire IT crew, honestly, and I ran my happy behind back to the server closet and just kind of sat there. The other story that I'm wanting to mention is... kind of similar, but ended in a completely different way. I was a bit more seasoned in my work for the dealerships.

At this point, I think I'd been working there for five or so years, and I'd experienced quite a bit of weird things, mostly paranormal or just weird, and that does include the support tickets. That said, this was probably one of the scariest thing that had happened while I was working there, mostly because it could have gone horribly. Like the previously described night,

I was running my backups and had a support ticket for one of the service computers down on the floor. It was a network issue, which was typically just a bad cable, so I really didn't think much of it. I grabbed my Ethernet cables and testing tools just in case and walked down to the darkness to fix the system. As I'm sitting there, replacing the cable, I heard what sounded like the door being hit or kicked, but I really wasn't 100% sure what it was. Like most nights, I decided to simply ignore it and say it was nothing important.

But unlike most nights, the banging was followed up by the glass on the door shattering. As soon as I heard that, I knew that someone was breaking the door. into the dealership, and I immediately jumped into fight or flight mode. At first I was thinking, I need to confront these people and scare them off. But then it occurred to me that I was a scrawny guy in his mid-30s, with nothing more than an Ethernet cable to defend myself. And I decided that that would have been a very dumb idea. I ran as quickly as I could to get behind one of the half-walls that blocked the main floor

from some of the machines. and I think I literally crawled underneath one of them. I just remember sitting there and thinking that if these guys found me, I was going to die, no doubt about it. The other part of this situation was me trying to figure out why they would break into a service department of a car dealership. Then I heard what sounded like more glass shattering. And then more.

Whoever this was, it seemed like they were going around to all of the customer cars that were in the bays and shattering the windows. After what felt like forever of them smashing windows, they stopped for a few moments, and then proceeded to start trashing the toolboxes and throwing things in all directions. I just stayed there where I was, under what I believe to be a rotor-turning machine, and tried my best not to breathe. After a little bit, it seemed like whoever it was had trashed the entire service floor, and I could hear them breathing heavily,

and then it sounded like they had just left. I think I stayed hidden for around 20 more minutes before I literally moved at all, and then took another five or so to just stand up and see what the hell had happened. The service floor was a disaster. I was right in my initial guess. Whoever this was had smashed every window on each car on the floor, and it looked like they had gone through every single toolbox, and just trashed everything.

As soon as I was certain that the person was gone, I made a mad dash up to the main floor and grabbed one of the phones to call my boss. I told him what had happened, and he told me to call the police. He said he would notify the dealer, ship's owner and then I did as he said, I called the cops. I waited for them outside of the door and explained the whole thing to them when they got there. Then I had to re-explain it because they were a bit confused on why I was there and what the hell had happened. My boss and the owner showed up at about the same time, and then I explained to them with the police there and showed them the service floor.

I think the cops were confused or suspicious of me, but the owner vouched for me, telling them that I was a contractor and had worked for them for a long time, and that if I said it happened the way it did, then that's how it happened. Thankfully, and much to my surprise, they actually had decent cameras in the service area that saw everything, and it actually did happen like I had said it did.

The guy broke the glass on the door, walked around and smashed as much as he could, and then he trashed the place, all without taking anything or looking like he had any direction other than destruction. I remember having to sit with the owner as he made a note of everything and everyone that he needed to contact in the morning.

And I recall him doing the math and saying that the amount of damage this guy had caused was insane. Apparently, this guy was actually a tech that had worked for the dealer, ship, but had been fired about a week or so prior to the incident. I was told that he was caught stealing from a customer's car and another tech by the exact same cameras that caught him smashing the windows.

Apparently, this was him getting revenge, or sticking it to the dealership for firing him. Obviously, he was arrested and charged once they could prove that it was him. The customer cars all got repaired for free, and the techs that still had their job. jobs all got new tools. So I guess that's a silver lining to what happened, right? So these are just two of the incidents, and probably the two that stick out the most in my mind for my time working there. I don't work there anymore, at least not out in the field. I'm more of a desk worker for the same company now, and manage a small team of field techs.

Thankfully, none of them have had to call me with anything anywhere near this exciting. and before you ask, yes, they still use magnetic tapes. The way that our house is set up, there's a staircase leading up to the master suite, and it's a 90-degree angle, no vents. One night, about two months ago, my boyfriend is standing at the end of the bed looking towards the door, which is in a little hallway,

so I couldn't see it from the bed. He was weirded out. Because there was a strong draft coming from under the door, but that's impossible, based on how the staircase is. Then I see him and my cats turn towards the door and react at the same time, looking shocked. And I hear the door creaking open and then slam shut. There was nobody there. Then there was the sound of loud stomping running up and down the stairs, up and down, up and down for a good five minutes.

There was nobody in the house. And every couple of nights for about a week or two, this running and banging up and down the stairs happened. It happened so much to the point where we almost got used to it and would try to drown it out. Then it stopped just as suddenly as it started. There were a few weird little occurrences, doors opening by themselves,

small noises, etc. But nothing crazy. Our back door has a storm door that has a dog door on it, and then there is the actual back door that is solid. The back door leads into a sunroom that is open to our backyard.

We leave the door open so the dogs can go in and out of the storm door, and then around seven-ish at night, we call everyone inside and close the door for the night. Information that's very important for this next encounter is that my Shizu, oatmeal, hates going outside and will only go if we are with him. If I put him outside by himself, he claws and barks at the door and squeezes himself between the storm door and the back door. About a month ago, after calling everyone in, I was watching a movie downstairs and my boyfriend was upstairs playing video games.

About an hour or so into the movie, I hear scratching at the back door. I think it must be one of our cats because it's hard to get them inside from the sunroom. I go to let them in, and it isn't a cat. It's my Shizu, oatmeal. I pick him up and love on him and tell him I'm sorry that we locked him out. He growls at me and runs off. Oatmeal's kind of rude, so I don't think anything of it. about 30 minutes later, my boyfriend comes downstairs,

and I tell him that he locked oatmeal outside when he called all the dogs in. He insists that oatmeal's been upstairs with him this whole time in his lap, making it hard to play games. We have a kind of half-joking but mostly serious argument because we both insisted on seeing oatmeal in two different places at once. I shrug it off and think my boyfriend just didn't want to admit that he locked oatmeal out. No biggie. About two weeks ago, I wake up for work and take oatmeal downstairs with me,

and I close the bedroom behind me, so Odie doesn't run back upstairs and bother my boyfriend while he's sleeping. I do this pretty much every day. I go to work, come home, and my boyfriend is telling me how Odie got in trouble the night before, after I fell asleep and said that he locked him downstairs as punishment. I'm laughing, because, again, my talk is rude, and I ask him when he decided to soften up and let Odie back into the bedroom.

And he very seriously insists that he didn't. I tell him that Odie was sleeping by my feet that morning, and then I took him downstairs with me. We have another argument both insisting that he was in two different places. About a week ago, we were watching TV. Odie is sleeping by my feet as always. It gets late, so we turn everything off and are just laying there watching videos in our phones until we get sleepy. I feel something climb up in between us and circle a few times before settling in against my back.

I can feel my boyfriend petting it. I thought it was a little weird because I could still feel Odie on my feet, and my cat usually lays on top of me. He insists on being on top of me, and he'll climb back up if I push him off. But I just assume it's my cat anyways, because why would it be anything else? About five minutes later,

I hear oatmeal's growl come from in between me and him, and my boyfriend hurries to turn on the light as something runs off the bed. Oatmeal is sleeping soundly by my feet, and my cat is sleeping in a chair across the room. My boyfriend throws himself out of the bed and starts searching the entire room in a panic, going through the bathroom cabinets, the dirty laundry, under the bed.

He literally had a gun and a flashlight and's hunting in the room panicked. He said that he was petting what he thought was oatmeal, but when he got to his head, it was completely hairless, and it growled and tried to bite him and then ran off. We were up for hours before finally falling asleep with the lights on. At this point, I'm convinced it's not a ghost problem,

but some sort of Skinwalker or doppelganger monster plaguing the house. Over the next few days, we heard some strange noises and little things, but nothing huge. We talked to some people and decided to try to cleanse the house. So we were going to the... the metaphysical store to get supplies. As we're getting ourselves together, I hear three knocks come from the top of the stairs.

I ask my boyfriend if he heard them, and then there is another three knocks. This time louder and more separated, more deliberate. Knock, knock, knock, knock. We leave the house. When we get back, we decided to leave this stuff in the car until we are prepared enough to do it, because we didn't want to make whatever this

thing is angry. But I did bring in a worry stone that I got. I used to have one from when I went to Ireland that I'd carry in my pocket, but I lost it. I put the worry stone in my nightstand, and we spent that evening downstairs. All the animals were downstairs with us, and the bedroom door was shut. A few hours later, I go upstairs to shower, and I notice something sitting in my cat's water fountain. And it's my worry stone. My stomach freaking dropped.

So then, the next night, we're at dinner with my boyfriend's mom, and she's telling me all about this weird stuff in the house that I didn't know about, including a mailbox. in the wall in the downstairs closet. She says she assumed they used it to hide money, which I think is odd, but I decided to entertain that possibility, until I actually went home and saw the mailbox. It's a tiny, bright red mailbox that cut a hole

and anchored it into the closet. The back space of the mailbox is gone, and opens into a crawl space between the wall in the back of the fireplace. There is a string in the mailbox that lowers into the cavity. Why would someone hide money there? It's so obvious. Even if they were, why the string?

Once you found the mailbox, you found the string. If the money falls out of the string, you have to cut the wall open to retrieve it. I made them cut a hole at the bottom of the wall, but we didn't find anything back there. Whatever they were lowering into the wall is long gone. That mailbox, though, gives me the hebi-jeebies, but I decided to leave it alone. The next day, I'm at work, and I'm telling my co-worker about the strange tiny mailbox, and a pair of my grooming shears is thrown onto the floor for my shearholder in front of both of us. We caught it on the security camera.

My co-worker was so freaked out that she had to have the manager go review the footage. I did close a drawer before the shears fell, but I've tried to recreate it and couldn't. They're soft-closed drawers. I tried physically shaking the station and even like body-slamming it, trying to make my shears fall, and I couldn't. At the exact same time this is happening, my boyfriend calls me from the home and tells me that everything is okay, but that something tried to catch the house on fire. He'd been burning his mom's old tax documents for her for the past few days. It was about ten years of paperwork, and it's hot here in Texas, so he split it up.

He'd been burning the last batch. He went upstairs to grab something, and came down, and something had closed the flu, and the house was filling with smoke. He had to extinguish the fire, which was reaching out of the fireplace, and evacuate the animals and air out the house. It's been like three days and it still smells a little smoky in here. Again, little occurrences happen of weird noises, doors opening and closing, hearing walking upstairs or on the stairs. Keep in mind, we've been sleeping with the lights on, and I refuse to be in the house alone.

Last night, around 2 a.m., we are both awake and decide to go downstairs and grab a snack. Also let the dogs out. My boyfriend is outside with the dogs, and I hear clear as day, loud, thumping footsteps in our room upstairs. I go outside, and then we both come back in, we're on the couch, and the light in our dining room is flickering, and I asked him if he noticed, and he tells me that it started flickering when I got home. He tells me that's how I knew that I was home, and he met me down at my car, earlier that day. He said it hadn't flickered all day until I got home.

And now that we were talking about it, the flickering got worse. On and off, on and off, on and off, we decide to turn the lights off and go back upstairs. Then, upstairs in our bathroom, the light bulb in our wax-melter bursts mysteriously. He goes downstairs to the laundry room, and our laundry room light, all of a sudden won't turn on, when it was just on less than 30 minutes ago. He comes back upstairs, we lock our bedroom door and try our best to go to bed. This morning, all the lights are working fine, until I'm out in my craft shed where the electricity starts going on and off, on and off randomly.

Everything all at once, like the breaker is being switched back and forth, and then it just stops. After a few days of flickering in strange noises and doors opening and closing, we clenched and salted the property. Here's hoping this is the end of it. It would be nice to be able to sleep with the lights off again. Back in the 90s, I worked a small local sporting goods store. It was decent-sized, but far from the ones like today. You know the ones. I worked there when I was younger because it was super late.

back and for the time I made decent money as a teenager. I was one of the stocking associates, so I would help open boxes, fill shelves, organize things like that. There were a lot of older folks that worked there too, so it was easier to have us younger kids doing the heavy lifting. While it was a job, I did still have fun with it, though, as I was pretty athletic. I loved baseball, and I played on my high school. school team as well as swimming, but I also liked hiking and hunting too. So when we got new supplies, it was almost like Christmas as I went through the items. I checked what they did, tried them out, if they weren't in packaging, of course.

The even better part about it all was that I worked the later shift, like 4 p.m. to midnight, because again, the older employees didn't want to work that late. Now, there aren't a lot of people buying golf clubs and camping gear at 10 or 11 o'clock at night, so most of us just fold around in the store with the supplies, or just red magazines from the front. My boss, Rick, at the time, was also really cool about it. He typically stayed in his office after 8 or 9 and would come out occasionally to ask us to do something, or just to check on us. but since he trusted us we were pretty much left to our own devices.

I liked checking out the camping equipment myself since I often went with my dad. We had a few full-sized tent set up on a wide metal shelf-like awning. One of them I wanted to save up for because I thought it would be really convenient for us. It was a little longer and had a separator in the center, so it made it look like it was two separate rooms. I think it was to be used more like a mudroom, or maybe to hold your belongings, so that they didn't take up so much space where you slept, but I thought it would work for us since I got mine from a thrift store, and it hardly zipped up.

That way, we could share one or just have an extra place for our stuff, and know that it was secure. We also sold guns and ammo at the time, so I was always telling my dad what we had and when we would get, new items. These were just some of the few things I did in our downtime, but don't worry, as it is all relevance to the story. So one of the other perks of working the late shift is doing inventory. The thing is, it was the 90s, so we did most of it by hand. This also went overnight, so most of us took turns on that shift. I didn't mind doing it, but if I had a choice, I had a choice, I had a

wouldn't have. Sometimes it was good, but other times were a struggle depending on what was going on the day before, or even who I worked with. You know the type, the ones that complain about everything, never stop talking, they have a million problems, call me whatever, but it can make a shift drag. So it was my turn to do inventory, and I was working with Ed, Casey, and Laura. We did it by department to make sure that we covered each part and did it correctly, with two of us in one department at a time. As we made our way around the store, we got to the camping equipment. The tents that were on display weren't part of the inventory count, so normally I wouldn't even have given them a second glance. But I saw a backpack sitting next to one of them. When I grabbed it,

it felt heavy. And I also didn't see any. tags on it like it was one of ours. So I just assumed that someone had left their bag there. I stopped to bring it to the front to show Rick, and with him standing there, he suggested that I opened it to see if there was any identification in it. There were no IDs or wallets in it, but plenty of small food items, like jerky, chips, candy bars, similar to the impulse items and some other random things like a pocket knife, toilet paper, and a towel.

We all thought that maybe whomever it was was planning on stealing stuff, but got spooked and just decided to ditch the bag. Some of the items could have been from our store, but we had no way of knowing for sure. So Rick took the bag, and we put it in his office as we continued on as normal. We noticed a few other items in the camping supplies, and other departments toward the back that seemed to have. out of place, too. One of the things we noticed was a step-ladder that employees used to get stuff off the top

shelves for customers or for stocking stuff in the back, and it was sitting in the middle of an aisle. Of course, that being a safety hazard, I asked on the walkie if anyone was using it or who left it out, and no one said that they had used it. I was annoyed at first because either someone was lying or someone from the dead. Day crew left it out, but I just took it to the back and moved on. After several long hours, we finally finished the inventory at around 4 in the morning. We were delayed a few times due to unrelated situations, and maybe a few of us slacking off, but we did get it done.

The store was going to be opening at 8 that morning, and I was scheduled to work later that evening, so I was pretty ready to leave. We did a final walkthrough to make sure all the lights were off and things were locked up. As I mentioned, this was back in the 90s, so our systems were pretty simple, lock and keys tile security. Hell, we only had cameras at the door and registers. Most of the security we had in the store was motion sensor lights. When we turned off the main lights, we had the two towards the sides that were always on, and the others kicked on only if there was motion.

So after turning off the lights, we all walked to the front to get ready to leave, and Rick pointed to the back mentioning that a light was on. I poked fun at one of the girls because they were supposed to turn it off, and they told me that they did. So I just walked back to the office to turn it off when I noticed it was actually off. Since that meant that motion set it off,

I went back and told Rick, and I remember we all stood there thinking out loud, what could have set it off? Did something fall off a shelf? Maybe the AC caused something to shift or move and caused it to flick on. But Rick was more than ready to go home and sleep in a bed instead of an office chair and just said not to worry about it. So we all started to head out. And we all got outside into our cars when I realized that I couldn't find my cute. keys. It was like I was meant to stay there until my next shift with how things were going. It was four in the morning after all. So I'm sure my mind wasn't all there, and I just forgot to grab them from my locker.

So I had to quickly flag down Rick before he left. Thankfully, I caught him and he handed me the keys to go in and get them. I ran up to the store, unlocked it and walked in, and began to run towards the back when I noticed again that the light in the camping gear had kicked on. I tried to ignore it as I went to get my keys, but when I came back, I heard something that sounded like falling. I couldn't not check it out at this point. I swiftly walked over to it and again saw the step-ladder sitting by the tent shelf,

knocked over on its side. Now, this time, I knew for a fact that I had put the ladder up, so I was confused and cautious about what to do next. As I stood there staring down the aisle, I started hearing what sounded like someone very quietly talking to themselves or whispering very softly. I couldn't make out any of the words, but I could definitely tell that it was there. I either had the choice of walking to the front and calling 911, leaving or attempting to confront whatever it was. I was young and naive, but I thought I could definitely handle whatever it was and decided to. proceed. I walked up to the step ladder, and I looked around to see the tent slightly moving.

Since you had to use the step ladder to get closer to it, I moved it to the side, and in the most threatening voice that I could muster, I yelled at the person to show themselves. After what felt like forever, whoever was in there stopped moving, slowly unzipped the tent, and tried to quickly jump out of it. I think they thought that they could make the jump, but quickly stumbled into the shelf in front of us knocking it over. He quickly ran off, and I took chase as he ran to the employee backroom. As I ran around the corner, I heard a familiar voice shout out for me, and I turned around to see Rick running towards me.

I tried to explain to him what had happened when he told me to go call 911 while he stood at the doors. There was only one exit in the back, and that was an emergency exit, but it was a little. It was locked when we were closed, so if he was going to get out, he would have to come back to where Rick was now standing. I went and called 911, and while I was on the phone with them, I could hear shouting. Once I finished, I set the phone down like the operator told me to, and I ran out to check on Rick to see him wrestling someone to the ground. So, to not turn this into a pay-per-view match, the cops showed up and restrained the guy as we gave our side of things. The guy looked normal for the most part.

He had decent looking clothes on. He had a buzz cut in a short beard, and he seemed pretty coherent. What we learned, though, was he looked clean because he had taken some of the hunting clothes that we sold. He was wearing a pair of camo pants and a fisherman's shirt. His clothes and some of his claimed belongings were in the tent, including a razor, some soap, and a few things of food. We also learned that the backpack was his, and he admitted that he had taken some items from the store. This man had been living in the tent for a few weeks now. He came in at some point during the day and knew where to stay hidden until we closed up.

However, he didn't realize that we were going to be there late doing the inventory, so we had to quickly scramble to get in the tent and forgot to grab his backpack. I've thought about it on occasions because the guy had to be there. had a knife in the backpack as well. If he'd had it, would he have attempted to use it on one of us? And something even more startling to me was, I had never seen this guy before.

We had regulars, and I regularly saw people come and go, but for two weeks, this guy was here daily and I never saw him. It was honestly kind of bizarre. It definitely made me more aware of my surrounding, but I always remember this, and I do play different scenarios in my head about what could have happened. This happened back when I was a little 13-year-old girl.

I was planning to go to a friend's house for her birthday party, and then four of us were going to be staying the night for a sleepover. I was getting to the point that I cared about my appearance, and I liked wearing makeup, so I packed a little bit. backpack with my cutest outfits and makeup. I was excited to have a makeover with some of my best friends. I got to the party, and there were already about a dozen or so people there. My best friend Lacey was ready and waiting for me to arrive, and the birthday girl, Heather,

greeted me and took the present from me. The theme for their birthday party was American Idol, if that tells you roughly the time frame, that this took place. There were other mutual friends there as well, and some that I didn't really know, and also my crush. We had cake, and Heather opened the presents, and then we played some games,

and she was kind enough to team me up with my crush as well. One of the gifts that she got was a karaoke machine, so once all the games were done, and we set that up and all took turns with our god-awful pre-teen singing, and trying to find songs with curse words in it since we would be allowed to say them. As the party started dying down and people left, we would then be left with just the four of us. Me, Heather, Lacey, and Tamara.

We helped clean up a bit, and then Heather's parents helped us get set up in her room. She had a bed big enough for two, and they put an air mattress in there for the other two. Her mom made us popcorn and laid out soda basically saying we could have the run of the house other than her bedroom but after 10 we had to stay quiet as her dad would have to work early the next morning She also had an older brother But he had taken their van for the night

So it was just going to be us We decided to watch a movie in the living room A scary movie of course And then agreed to take it back to her bedroom so we could talk more and listen to music. We got set up in there, and we started talking about whatever young girls talked about, boys, school, home life, rumors that we heard, things we wanted to try, and just stuff like that. Tamara had brought some teen magazines for us to read, and they had some different makeup and

hairstyles that we all wanted to try on each other. We started doing each other's hair and makeup and gossiping about some of the teachers, and other people we didn't like, and just ultimately we're having a lot of fun, when we heard a loud banging coming from outside. Heather lived in a neighborhood where the houses were all very similar and very close together. Their backyard was pretty much shared with her neighbor behind them, so when we heard the loud noise,

she could pretty much pinpoint where it came from. We also had the window open because it was cooler, so the sound was amplified as well. She mentioned her neighbors argued a lot, so they were probably just fighting at the time. We continued on with our night when we again started hearing another loud, banging sound. That's when Lacey turned the subject to them,

asking if she's ever been able to hear what the arguments were about, if they ever got physical, or if they ever had to call the cops before. Heather assured us that it was never that bad, but they did just get loud, so sometimes she listened to them. She couldn't always make out what they were saying, but sometimes they took it outside where she could. Lacey was wanting to listen to it at this point,

and she stopped mid-eye shadow application to go to the window. We just kind of teased her for being so nosy and tried to finish our makeup when Lacey said, your neighbor is kind of creepy. Heather tried to say something about them not being all that bad, but then Lacey cut her off saying that he was trying to get in through the window. That stopped all of us, and we went over to the window to see. Sure enough, there was a guy trying to open one of the windows from the outside.

He was pulling on the sides, and when nothing was happening, we saw him pull something out of his pocket. We still don't know if it was a knife or key or whatever, but we watched him slice the screen and then beat on the glass. I remember looking over at Heather to gauge her reaction, but she looked just as curious as us, but also a bit nervous. We continued to watch as the guy broke the window

and started reaching around and climbing inside. Then we saw a woman inside run to the window, and start screaming at the guy. Once he got all the way in, she started shoving him back, and he grabbed her by the face or throat, and they moved away from the window. We couldn't see them at this point, but we could still hear them screaming. Looking at Heather again and the fact that she looked scared, I asked her if we should tell someone as that did not look like a normal fight, and she agreed. Agreed. She ran to grab her home phone, and we continued to watch to see if they would come back to the window.

After a while, Heather came back and asked nervously if she should call 911, as she's never had to do that before. Neither had any of us, so we didn't know if we should or if we should wake up her parents. We didn't want to bother anybody or get in trouble for calling 911, but as we discussed it, Lacey said, he came back. So we all went back to the window and watched as the guy stopped at the window, looked down at something, and then walked over to the door next to the window and walked out of it. He seemed to stand there after he closed the door for several seconds, and then looked up at the sky and wiped his face.

As he turned away from the door, he looked around and, to my horror, he looked right at us. That felt like forever as we all just sat there and stared back at each other. Now, it was still dark and there was a light above the door, but his facial features, we couldn't really make them out. Unfortunately, I don't know if we could say the same for him. The awkward stare was finally broken when he looked around and quickly ran away from the door. However, instead of running towards the driveway to leave, he walked towards Heather's house. house. I think we all noticed it at the same time and immediately moved away from the window, but Heather quickly ran out of the room. We then followed her to the living room where she was

checking the front door to see if it was locked. As we all stood there trying to figure out what was going on, we started hearing the doorknop rattling. I think it was Tamara that led out a small yelp of sorts, and I was just frozen in fear. Lacey looked out the window, and confirmed that it was the guy, and I remember that I started crying. I thought we had just witnessed something that we shouldn't, and now we were next. I ran back to Heather's room,

planning to hide in the closet or under the bed, when I heard Heather yell and run into her parents' room, banging on their door. I was just standing in the bedroom at the time, so I heard them open the door and ask what was wrong. And Heather tried to explain as she pulled them to the living room. I followed behind them. Lacey was now frozen standing back towards the kitchen entryway, and Tamara was crying too. Heather's dad had a booming voice and said something like,

You have five seconds to get off my property before I blow you to pieces. As he was saying this, her mom made us all go back down the hallway where the bedrooms were, and we could hear him opening the door. I heard him yelling as he ran outside while her mom made us all stay back. At this point, I had grabbed the phone from her room and gave it to her mom, and she called the cops. They showed up, and we had to explain what we had seen, but apparently we weren't the only ones that called. Someone else had called the cops, too, so while they were talking to all of us, there were cops at the neighboring house, and the house next door where the scene had taken place.

It was a little hard to sleep after that. As it turns out, the guy actually was actually. was her old neighbor, or at least her neighbor's boyfriend, as he didn't actually live there anymore. He tried and successfully broke in, and she caught him doing it. He had apparently strangled her and stabbed her, but she managed to survive, probably because of everyone else that called the cops on him. It was really strange because it wasn't a bad neighborhood or anything like that. So it was unsettling for something like that to happen.

Tamara wasn't allowed over there at night anymore, but mine and Lacey's parents were still cool about it. Hell, I don't blame them. It's not like it was their fault either. But we definitely made jokes about it growing up, about how she had one hell of a birthday party. Thankfully, that guy went to jail for a long time, so I do hope he's forgotten our faces.

and that we never meet again. Both me and my boyfriend are very sure that we have a ghostly tenant living with us. What or whoever our ghostly friend is, there can be months between either of us encountering them, but they always come back. I'll tell a few stories off the top of my head. To start off, I've been sort of scared

of entrances or whatever apartment I have lived in ever since I moved out of my parents' home. The first apartment that I lived in was with my fiancé at the time. It had a long hallway, and I was terrified of it. I never knew why. That hallway was just scary. Fast forward several years, and me and my fiancé broke up, and I moved out to a little studio apartment. There, I was terrified of the immediate area by the front door once again.

I had to have the lights on that illuminate the front door at night. I never saw anything. I just couldn't sleep without the lights on. But I met my current boyfriend, and a few years later we moved to a single bedroom apartment together because we needed more room. That's where we live now. and this is where I've started seeing them. A couple years ago, late in the evening, I came out of the bathroom, once again, right by the front door,

and was scared immediately. I was sure that I felt a person or something there. There was nothing to be seen. But I swear that they were right there, and that they were spooked by me suddenly emerging from the bathroom, and they fled into the kitchen. I saw nothing, but the feeling was so strong that I had to speak out loud to them. I apologized to the seemingly empty space, saying that I didn't mean to spook them.

I said I'm just going to grab my keys and go out for a smoke, and then I would be back in a few minutes, drop off my keys, and go to bed. It felt really weird to be speaking to an empty space, but I swear that ghostly tenant was there, hiding for me, because they were spooked by me more than I was spooked by the whole situation. And I did thusly. I took my keys, went for a smoke, dropped off my keys, and then went to bed as I said I would.

Ever since, both me and my boyfriend have seen them once in a while, always near the front door. The very space that I have been scared of for you, years in every apartment that I have lived in. It's a shadow, the size of a tallish man. A few months after the smoking bathroom incident, my boyfriend and I noticed a particular thing. Our bathroom is very small, and my boyfriend is quite tall. He's always requested that we keep the doors of the little cabinet above the sink,

where the toothbrushes and such things are, closed. If the mirror doors of that thing are open, he could easily hit his head on the right door when he gets up from the toilet. Hence, I did thusly, always closing them. But they didn't stay closed. Both of us were kind of annoyed by that. I was wondering why he kept leaving the damn things open when he specifically requested me keep them closed. And he was wondering why I always forgot to close them. One day the topic came up, and we realized both of us kept constantly closing them,

but we only ever opened them to grab a toothbrush, and always closed them after ourselves. There's a magnet on them, so they don't just swing open by themselves. We realized that this has been going on for months. Once we realized that we both out loud asked the doors to be closed, and they've stayed closed ever since. Just a few days ago, I was sitting in the kitchen. I have my laptop set up on the kitchen table in the corner of the kitchen. It's in the corner with a wall to my left and a window behind me.

From this position, I have the small kitchen in front of me, and I can see the entryway of our apartment with my peripheral vision, as well as the bathroom door. To my right is the living room, which I can also see in my peripheral vision. The apartment is kind of like a loop, if you will. Fun for our kids, since you can run in a loop around the apartment. So there I was, watching a live stream around 11 p.m. Suddenly, I saw movement at the entryway, so I looked up,

thinking my boyfriend must have woken up and was coming to grab a glass of water or to check up on it. me. But no. What I saw was a shadow. It's early spring here, so it's dark but not pitch black anymore at this time of day. The shadow, about the size of the tallish man, was clearly darker than the surroundings, and making its way to the kitchen. I was spooked and just looked at it, or them, because I realized our ghostly tenant was back after being gone for months. Just a moment after I looked up from my laptop at the shadow, they stopped briefly and retreated back to the entryway as if they were going to come to the kitchen, but changed their mind because I saw

them. I thought nothing of it. I was just a bit spooked. About a minute later, I saw something to my right. It was them again, the shadow, trying to enter the kitchen from the living room side. I once again looked up for my screen to look at them, and again they retreated back and would not enter the kitchen. I was once again spooked, but said nothing. About 15 minutes passed, and I got up to get myself a snack from the kitchen cabinet,

and I was rummaging through the snacks to find something that I would like, Then I heard a metallic bang clear as day behind my back. It was like two pots being banged together. It was quite a loud sound. All the pots and pans are neatly stored where they belong, and there was nothing behind my back that could have suddenly made that sound. I have no explanation for that. Our dog also refused to sleep in his own bed,

in the living room, five meters from me. He insisted on sleeping in the kitchen corner, right behind my chair as I was watching the live stream. I would greatly appreciate if anyone has any idea as to what or who our ghostly tenant might be. Have they always been the reason that I've been uncomfortable of entryways? Have they always been there, but I've never seen them until in this apartment? If so, why would that be? Why do they seem to be so skittish? My understanding and feeling is that they're quite shy,

as if they want to be noticed, but wouldn't come to the kitchen if they were seen, but then still made that metallic sound short after. What could I do if I notice them trying to come to the same space with me? Should I out loud speak and invite them to sit with me, and make a cup of tea for them as a friendly gesture? Or should I just ignore them? When I was a young kid, my mother would take me and my younger brother,

and sometimes my older brother, to my grandparents' house. They lived around an hour away from us and near a beach. I used to love visiting them, and usually we would see them at every chance we got, school breaks and such, and we would spend a few nights there. The house was big, and usually we would stay in the guest room. There was also a loft where old toys and various unused items were stored. During the daytime, the house was relatively fine and not very creepy. Sure, I didn't like going upstairs on my own, but I was just a paranoid kid.

However, when it got dark out, I had a real problem about the house. Seeing as it was a holiday, my mother would let me and my brothers stay up late downstairs in the living room, and we would watch whatever was on TV. At this point, my grandparents were already in bed and to sleep upstairs. Now, the house was old, and previously owned, but we never learned much about who owned it before my grandparents. The house would creak as the pipes would settle, and you could hear when someone was upstairs as the floorboards would also creak. I always felt unsettled when night rolled around. In the living room there was massive glass doors that overlooked the garden and also the main road outside. When it got dark, it got pitch black.

I would never look outside the windows when it got dark in fear that I'd have. I would see something. I would beg for my mother to close the curtains, and when she would, I would feel relatively at ease. When either my younger brother or I had to use the bathroom, we would ask our mother to accompany us. There were two bathrooms in the house,

one downstairs and one upstairs. And since we were downstairs, we would use that one. To get to the bathroom, he had to walk along a hallway and turn left, to your right was the stairs leading upstairs and I would always remember distinctly that I would keep my head straight whilst walking to the bathroom to avoid looking up the stairs not to the landing it was usually pitch black because that's how my grandparents liked it

whilst they slept I always had an eerie sense that someone was watching or that something was lurking in the dark honestly it felt as though it was was a feminine presence. Mind you, I loved anything scary as a kid, and yes, my imagination was wild. But I've had definite paranormal and scary experiences before. I just knew when something was real and when it was just my imagination.

One night when laying in bed, which I shared with my younger brother and mother, I had someone come in downstairs. Sometimes my aunt, my mother's sister, who still lived at home, would work nights and come home during the night. I definitely heard someone come in and walk around downstairs, and it sounded as though they had heavy boots on. I thought nothing of it at the time and fell back asleep. In the morning, I told my mother about it, and after some discussing, we realized that my auntie that my auntie. hadn't been working the night shift that night. Not that creepy, just confusing.

Everything got checked, the doors, the windows, the locks. Everything was perfectly in place, and no one admitted to being downstairs that night. It was left unexplained, and I forgot about it. Now, the loft that I had mentioned was positioned above the house, so that it was mostly above the guest room that we would stay in. Sometimes, during the day, when I felt brave enough to lounge in the guest room, I would hear noises up there. Sometimes it was pigeons that had landed on the roof,

and the sound of them walking about traveled through the loft, and that's what I heard. But sometimes, I would hear different noises, and not the pipes resting or the house settling, it sounded like footsteps. Granted they were light footsteps, but I was definitely very sure of it. Now, all of these little things happened over years and years.

None of it concerned me too much, and my stays at the house remained relatively enjoyable. I started a conversation with my mother about it not too long ago, about how the house would sometimes feel unsettling, and that it definitely felt like we were being watched. My mother agreed, and she isn't someone to believe in spirits or anything of that sort, but she had told me that something about the guest bedroom

made her feel uneasy. She had also mentioned that she never liked to sleep with her back to the door. Even my aunt agreed. something always felt off about upstairs. And then I learned that while the guest room was being decorated and the wallpaper was stripped, there was writing on the wall. I'm not exactly sure what the writing said, but it wasn't measurements or markings that a decorator would leave.

It was messages. I'm pretty sure one of the pieces of writing was someone declaring their love for another person. I'm also not sure how old they could be, but my grandparents first moved into that house when I was a baby. I mean, only a few months old, and I'm now nearly 18. So, they could be anything from 20 years old. I'm also not sure how long the house had been for sale, or the period of time between its last owners and my grandparents. Probably just my paranoia, but also,

Maybe not. When I was about seven or eight years old, I noticed a lot of paranormal stuff happening at my mom's house. My parents were separated. One night when I was staying with my mom, we were having a fire in the backyard, and I brought up seeing shadow people. It was always on the stairs,

but I didn't tell her about the stairs part, just about seeing people. Anyway, it freaked my mom out, and she immediately started asking me what I was seeing and what else was going on. And I really didn't know how to describe it, and didn't really even think about ghosts back then. I didn't really give her a good explanation or description about anything that I experienced, and so she started to tell me about what she was experiencing and seeing.

She told me, and still tells me to this day, that she would always see a little, little boy, a bit older than me on those stairs. Not every day, but every time she did the dishes, he was there. Even on nights that I was at my dad's house, she could swear she would hear me coming up those stairs, and she would see the little boy soon after. So that was kind of my introduction to ghosts, and the thought of ghosts. And it really freaked me out.

So probably about three years go on with occasional stuff happening, and my mom and my stepdad break up. So once out of that house, I thought things would disappear, because nothing ever happened to me at my dad's house. But that same year that my mom moved out, my aunt who I was very close with had died. I had stayed with her for two weeks about three to four days before she died. And the day that I found out, I saw her walk next to my bed, but it seemed like she was on her knees walking. And it was really, really weird and really scary, because I saw that it was her and felt her there before I could even see her. That's what made me look. A couple of weeks go by, were in California for her funeral, and I was sleeping on her couch, and I felt her sit next to me.

It was right by my chest, and that's always how she tucked me in. After that, nothing happened with her. The next thing to happen was her brother, my uncle, drank himself to death, and he paid me and my dad a visit by moving wine glasses, knocking something off the counter, can't remember what it was, and running down the hallway and slamming a door, and this was all in the matter of minutes. Less than 8 to 10 minutes, all of this happened, back to back to back. And that was my dad's first ever paranormal experience. We both heard and saw everything happen, but he still tries to play it off like it was nothing.

But I know that it freaked him out by his eyes. I could see in my dad's eyes that he was freaked out and knew damn well who that was. Anyways. Well, things kind of cooled off for about a decade. A little less than a decade after that happened, nothing happened at all. And it was so nice, because growing up, I was so scared always. And then I got used to nothing happening and wasn't scared anymore. It was a miracle.

I thought I would be scared forever. I slept with a blanket over my head until I was 17 or 18. which then leads me to last December. My brother committed suicide. I was working in a small village in Alaska and was actually driving home when my mom called me and told me that he was no longer alive. I got home about midnight, maybe 11, I can't remember,

but my girlfriend knew what had happened because my mom called her, so she just hugged me. We talked for a while and she ended up going to bed once everything was said. I wanted to stay up. I just knew that I wasn't going to be able to sleep. And I cried for probably two hours after she went to bed. I just couldn't stop. And when I finally felt numb from all of the crying,

I saw him right next to me by my pantry. And all the ghosts I've ever seen, and they were never as clear as him. I saw him front and center. He looked opaque, rather than just a shadow. It's like I could see him, but also right through him. And a couple of nights later, I saw him again, in the same area, but he wasn't as clear.

He was more of a shadow that time, but I knew it was him again. I haven't seen him since and haven't experienced anything since, but it was so nice. So nice seeing him and not being scared. I felt so at ease, and I was thankful seeing all of my family members after they'd passed. My brother passing was hard, but seeing him made me appreciate everything that he was.

I love him so much, and I always will. Also, in that moment, it made me so happy realizing that I'm not afraid of ghost anymore. I lived so much of my life afraid of them and it's all over with. Thank God to maturing and changing ways. To end this long story off, I just want to say that me and my mom still have no idea who that little boy could have been, because I've only seen family after moving out of that house, and my mom growing up had only seen family too. So, as I've said before, I live in England. I lived in a small market town in Lincolnshire for many years.

I learned that there was an old Victorian asylum on the outskirts of town that was being partially torn down and made into flats, apartments, and houses. So I decided with my now ex-boyfriend to check it out on the daytime before we were no longer able to. We packed up our camcorder, EMF meter, and our phones in our phone's and our phone's walked the three miles to the asylum. The place is set back well away from the road, and you have to walk down a tree-lined path to get to it. I'm not going to lie, the view of the local countryside was beautiful. So we get there, and immediately see it's a building site, but something was strange.

It wasn't locked up. We could walk straight in, there was rubble everywhere, and in the rubble clipboards, Heart hats and other P.E. was strewn across it. It was like something had scared the crap out of them, and they had just down-tooled right where they were, and left in a massive hurry. Adding to this ominous picture was the sound of crows calling loudly. It's already creepy and oppressive in the daytime, and I was already on edge, but not from being caught trespassing, just from the feel of this place.

As I said in my other post, I am an empath, and just standing in the grounds was making me want to cry. All I could feel was sadness and desperation. I felt all this before I even set foot into one of the old dilapidated buildings. We finally draw up our courage and go into the first building. We walked up a set of stairs with an old cast-iron railing. The place had been partially torn down, and there were no individual rooms, just massive rooms in an old bathroom. The feeling of overwhelming sadness was getting stronger, and at times I wanted to cry.

We move on up the stairs, and on this level there's a small windowless room, from what I can only imagine, were padded cells at one point. Again, the sadness and desperation wells up inside me. We walk further into the building, and notice a very old lift that has the doors stuck open. We have the camcorder running, and the EMF meter is on. We're taking pictures on our phones, too. The EMF has stayed silence, and I'm not sure why.

Surely it should be going crazy. I'm feeling it, so why hadn't the EMF gone off? We exit the first building and make our way to the one next to it and enter. We're walking around, taking pictures on the ground floor before we head up the stairs. We walk into this massive room. I'm not sure if it's an old ward or day room or what. The windows were huge and the room was flooded with light. We were only just inside this room when I get to this overwhelming feeling of anger hit me from nowhere. I'm not talking, but I'm not talking, normal anger.

Whoever it was was absolutely furious. The hair on the back of my neck was standing on end. I turned to my ex and I tell him, we need to get out of this room, now. He turns to look at me and, as he does, the EMF and the camcorder turned themselves off. Our phones lose signal, and the camera on my phone is no longer working.

Let me tell you, I have never run through a room so fast in my life. Clearly, something did not want us there nosing around. As soon as we step out of that room, everything turns back on. Our phones have signal, and my camera app is working again. We carry on, looking around, but I'm much more subdued. I'm looking at the tiles and the wall and the corridors, wondering why anyone would choose to have a crap-brown color rather than green or blue, or even beige.

We look around the other buildings, and nothing else has happened. I'm still feeling the overwhelming sense of sadness, and I want to cry. And then we reached what was clearly a children's wing. They painted a picture of the ocean and sea creatures on one wall. This place was open until the mid-1980s. and that was enough for me I had to leave before I broke down completely we did manage to get some interesting pictures on my phone

but nothing on the camcorder that had to be one of the scariest haunted buildings I had ever been in but one question nearly ten years later still bugs me why did the digital blackout only happen in that big room why didn't it happen in any of the padded cells When I was seven, I used to live in the middle of nowhere, and I do mean nowhere. Our next door neighbor was a ten-minute drive.

The nearest town, if you can even call it that, or like a street with homes on it, was about 20, and the nearest form of city or town larger than that was about an hour and a half. The house itself was a typical farmhouse, and I was in the first place. bedroom with a view to the long driveway. While we stayed there, it always felt odd to me. Maybe because we were so far from anywhere, or maybe it was the vibe, but it was here that I had this experience. My first ever experience. And I'll never forget it.

On one night, I awoke to the sounds of quiet talking. It first sounded like that loud whisper when you're trying to be quiet. quiet, but have more volume than you need. At first, I thought it was my parents, since I was very close to where the kitchen was, but as I sat and listened and the whispering became louder, I noticed that these were not my parents, but rather two male voices. My first thought wasn't anything supernatural, but rather simply thieves. I just sat there listening to them as they got louder and loud.

louder. The two were just talking and one would ask simple questions like, what is this thing? Or, what is that thing holding that thing up? And the second would answer but be so beyond wrong, but yet have that tone of just simply answering a question. At this time, the voices sounded like they were right beside me, just talking away. And as I turned my eyes around, the curious one asked about an object in my room that I was looking at. and of course the second one would answer it, but get it super wrong. These voices that sounded like they were right beside me were somehow using my eyes to look. Needless to say, I'm a kid at this point, and I'm scared.

And what does a kid do when they're scared? And they go to their parents. I snuck into their room and went to sleep between them, but before that, the first asked, are you sure that kid's not aware of us? The second responded, of course not. That really freaked me out. That was my first ever experience with something that I just could not explain, and that was the only time I ever heard of the two.

I'm in my 30s now, and honestly I have a few thoughts on it, but I'm more curious if anyone else has ever had an experience like this before, of having heard two. phantom voices, with one asking questions, and the other just being an idiot. That was today's episode of the As the Raven Dreams podcast. Thank you so very much for listening, and I really hope you enjoyed these scary stories. If you want to support the channel further, please do consider checking out my YouTube channel. Just search As the Raven Dreams on YouTube and subscribing.

You can also join the channel or go to my Patreon for early access to all of my content. All of it's appreciated and never expected. But if it happens, thank you. Well, that said, friends, I will see you on the next episode of the As the Raven Dreams podcast. But of course, until then, sleep well.