As The Raven Dreams Podcast - ATRD Ep. 052 - Creepy Stalker & Paranormal Stories - 19 True Scary Stories

Episode Date: November 6, 2022

Hello and Welcome to the 52nd 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 terrifying encounters with strangers, as well as some creepy Paranormal Stories! ➤ 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... Substantial_Cut_8426, unchartedfour, fugue_lost, kailyn7, MissSnap, The_Timeless_YAT, wernerverklempt, Courtney, Clean_Actuary_4547, Rootool, Sparkle356, OkPaleontologist1755, and several authors that requested anonymity.  ➤ 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

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My dad's house was built in 1929. Because of this, it has many walls and rooms and dark hallways. and an intensely creepy stairwell to the basement. The basement itself mostly gets good daylight from outside, as there is a window in each room, though. To start, all my life growing up, I had heard from my siblings at the house was haunted, and my dad liked to tease that in the storage rooms connected to the stairwell, there was an old woman that lived in them.

The stairwell to the basement has pale blue, cold concrete stairs, and a sharp corner that takes you from natural light to darkness as you make your way down. In between the levels of the house, there are two storage rooms directly across from each other, with narrow short doors that are connected by the stairs. They're pitch black, and the doors don't close. The wood beams of the house and the rock is completely exposed, and the floor is uneven. My oldest brother had once brought a Ouija board into the house, and as soon as he did, the kitchen cabinets started opening and slamming on their own. I've heard once you accept a Ouija board from someone, you have to give it away to someone else, if you want the spirits to leave.

I'm not sure whatever happened to the Ouija board, but I know that all my life I never felt alone in that house. I never heard anything at first, just always felt like I was being watched. I would also see strange reflections move across the turned-off TV screens when I was home alone. When I got married, my dad offered up the basement apartment to me and my husband. It had just been remodeled, and it was perfect for us just starting out. Before the remodel, my dad had used it for his fish tanks, storage, and just being by himself. My husband and I's first night in the basement, things felt very off.

A heavy atmosphere filled the basement, and it was not a friendly presence. It was angry or malicious. I asked my husband if he could bless the house, and he did so. Immediately after the prayer, the atmosphere was lifted. But I still felt this very sure. strange energy. Like whatever it was was still trying to come in. Like if we opened the door, it would be back.

Fast forward, four to five months, and I am pregnant. I often forgot to take my prenatal until late, so we would be in bed with all the lights off when I'd go back into the kitchen to take it. On this particular night, I was in the kitchen, which was adjacent to the tiny living room with a window front door to a tight stairwell, I could see into the stairwell where I stood.

There was a completely dark silhouette standing in the stairwell, looking right into my front door. At that moment, I felt that evil suffocating presence. It felt like it wanted to hurt me and my unborn baby. I reached down to my phone, which had been on the table, and shined my flashlight at the door. I didn't see anything. I wondered if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me,

so I turned off my flashlight and focused my eyes on the door again to see if it would still look like someone was standing there. The silhouette was gone. I returned to bed too scared to speak. Shortly after this incident, I was still pregnant, I was waiting for my husband to get home. The evening light cut through my windows in its familiar orange-yellow hue. I was in my bedroom right next to the door, and the bedroom window was right by the stairwell.

You could always hear when someone was coming downstairs, and with the intense light shining up against the closed blinds, you would see their legs walking down into the stairwell to the front door. As I sat waiting, doing my makeup in front of the floor mirror, I'm not just some weirder who sits on the floor waiting doing nothing. I saw the familiar shadow of someone coming downstairs and heard heavy footsteps. I thought it was my husband. I peeked my head out of the bedroom door,

which allowed me to see the windowed front door about 10 feet away. Nobody was there in the stairwell. I jumped to my feet and ran to the door and swung it open, convinced that my husband had ducked down beneath the glass to prank me. Nobody was there. I went outside and started looking around desperately, running up the stairs to verify that nobody was pranking me. Nobody would have had enough time to climb the six-foot wall of the stairwell

without me seeing and get out of my view. From when I saw the steps coming down, and when I was at the top of the stairs, it was about 30 seconds. My husband pulled into the driveway to see me standing at the top of the stairs, confused. I even asked him if he had seen someone running away from the house, and he said no. After those two incidents, I asked my husband to bless the stairwell down to the house, and I never saw anything there again. The last incident is in the stairwell of the house. I would often hear strange knocks on the walls that seemed to follow me as I went upstairs to do the laundry. I chocked

up to a lifetime of being creeped out by those stairs, and that the plaster walls and concrete stairs were creating noise from my noise. One day, I was in the kitchen cooking dinner, and my brother was over. We had a very nosy stepmother, and she would knock on the door from the basement that connected to the inside stairwell, and then just come in. Because of her, I put a bell on the door that would jingle from even a gentle knock. So I heard a knock and then the bell. My brother and I paused our talking since we both heard it.

I yelled come in twice, but nobody came in. So I went to the door and opened it, and nobody was there. I asked my husband to bless that stairwell too after that. It was the only thing that seemed to stop the activity. I don't live there anymore, but my brother lives in that basement now. and I like to tell him my experiences and give him the creeps. This happened years ago in the 80s, back when I was 19. I live in a small town in the south,

and it was common to have bonfires in the woods on the weekends in the fall. My friend and I, both female, went to a spot where a few others were hanging out in an open area in the woods. There was a fire, and we were all standing around, drinking wine coolers and beer, just talking and hanging out. The main subject being a friend of ours who went missing a few days earlier. He was the kind of guy that everyone knew, but I wasn't close friends with him. My friend is talking to someone and a guy comes over to me and starts making small talk.

He seemed a little weird, and I only knew him as the guy who dated a girl that I went to great school with. I couldn't quite understand why, but I felt a... chill in an eerie feeling while he was talking. So much so that I walked away in the middle of his conversation, and I grabbed my friend and told her that we needed to leave now. She seemed a bit confused, but could tell by my tone that something was wrong. When we got to the car, I told her that I couldn't explain it, but I just felt really uneasy.

So we left, and didn't think much else about it. A couple of days later, the guy's body was found in a shallow grave in the woods, and it was soon discovered that he was murdered over a dispute about a girl by none other than the weird guy making small talk with me at the fire. I still get creeped out thinking about how casually he was just out in the woods, hanging out, knowing that he had murdered a guy, and that everyone was discussing the missing friend in front of him. A twist of the story was that a few years later, he actually escaped prison and was on the run for about a week. I worked at a movie store at the time, and one day a woman came in to rent a VCR and movies. She was on some kind of drugs and very obviously high. She was all over the place, and her eyes were wide and she was talking non-stop. She proceeded to tell me that she was staying at a cabin at the lake with B, the escape, the escape,

I acted normal and began filling out the info for her to rent the things, and I told her I had to get something from the back. I actually called the law, and I told them what she said. They ended up following her and catching the guy again. Lots of creepy encounters growing up in the 80s. I loved growing up then, but definitely had a lot of close calls and weird encounters when I was younger. My family owns a boutique in a very big city here in the south. Our boutique is located in a very wealthy neighborhood, but that doesn't say much. If you go not even a mile north, south, west, or east, you'll enter the rough areas of the city.

With that being said, we have a lot of homeless, drug addicts, and sketchy people in general come into our store. When these people come in, we are also nice, respectful and treat them just like we would are normal customers. We try not to judge by their appearance. However, we do not tolerate the begging, stealing, or soliciting. So we've all had our share of weird encounters at our store. However, I think my most recent encounter was the creepiest. Last week, getting ready to close, I was tidying up the store when a woman came in.

I greeted her as normal, and everything seemed like it was smooth sailing. She was looking around and engaging in conversation about some of our pieces, and when all of the sudden things changed quickly. The vibe and the feeling of the room just felt eerie, so I moved behind the counter to just create a barrier. She began by grabbing one of our candles that has the saying, I love you to the moon and back across the front. I think this is what originally triggered her. She began talking about her family and how she would read the book,

I love you to the moon and back to her triplets, that she didn't even know that she had. She then started telling me about her life being married to Ryan Gosling and how she recently killed him because he kept poisoning her and hiding her three sets of triplets and daughter from her. At this point, I was just listening. I didn't want to upset her any more than she already was.

When she finished, she began walking the store again, telling me how she just got out of jail for stabbing someone. And at this point, she gets about four feet from my counter and tilts her head, looks me in the eyes, and says, I really feel like chopping you up right now. We were the only two in the store at the time, and I was in shock. I had no idea what was about to happen. Up until then, she was just rambling, and this was the first instance of her showing aggression.

Luckily, seconds after that statement, another customer, one of our regulars, came in, and the woman who had just told me she wanted to chop me up, grabbed her stuff and walked out the door. My regular could feel the tension as I rushed behind her and locked us in the store. So, lady, who wants to chop me up, let's not meet ever again. This happened about 12 years ago, but I remember it vividly. I was waiting at the Orlando airport for my mom to fly in for vacation to see me, my daughter, she was a year at the time, and my then-fiance. Her plane had been delayed due to weather, and it was getting later and later.

Finally, the airport was almost empty, and it was almost midnight. I needed to use the restroom and told my fiancé to hang on to my daughter's stroller as he was falling asleep. I wasn't tired. I was excited to see my mom, and I had drank a few coffees. So I went into the women's room, and every single. stall door was open. I chose a random one and used it. All the while, it was completely silent in there.

I left the stall and was washing my hands. The bathroom had that mirror that went all the way across the wall, and I saw nothing. While washing my hands, I got a really weird feeling. I'd been looking down at my hands the whole time, and when I looked up, there was a scary looking woman standing right behind me, almost touching me, leaning towards me. We made eye contact in the mirror, and she said, Jesus loves you? Do you know that? In an extremely freaky way.

I was freaked out and just nodded while still staring at her in the mirror. She then walked away, and I couldn't see if she left the bathroom or not due to the design of the exit. I was shaking over the exchange because of the tone that she used. It was almost like saying Jesus saved me from her doing something awful to me. I never heard her come in, and I'm a pretty paranoid person, so I pay attention to listening for people and things. Plus, those bathrooms echo so much I should have heard the footsteps. I also never saw her hands, so I don't know if she had a weapon. I timidly left the bathroom, and my fiancé was standing near the bathroom door holding my daughter.

I asked him if he saw that lady, and he had no idea what I was talking about. I looked around the area, and it was empty, just us there. So, lady with the crazy, dark gray hair that was wild around your face, dark-eyed, an oversight sweater, your face haunts me. If you were just trying to screw with me, well, it worked. I'm still creeped out to this day. Look, Air Canada,

did a sold world. Super, an offer for the assort. Station thermal, volcano. You've seen the price for the Japan? Hmm, eparg and sushi. Wow, the solds are good for Mayork also. We could go to the plage and do they'd like a while of the sea-done. Or, it'd say a long march on the border of the sea-sill.

Hmm, I adore the canoly. So, this sold is dinsury limited. Reserved to air canada.com or at your agent of voyage. The conditions apply. So this just happened this past weekend. I'm the corporate administrator and had gone to an all-day business meeting with some co-workers on Friday. I wasn't expecting it to be all day. It was supposed to wrap up at one, but, as you know,

people have to continually ask questions and chit-chat, so it lasted until full. 4.30. So, after the hour-long drive back to work, we carpooled, I was beat, and I went home. I decided I would come in on Saturday to catch up on some stuff. I'm salary, so it wouldn't really matter about overtime. I work on the top and second floor of a three-floor building. We have offices, conference rooms, a fitness center, and a training room, so we occupy the majority of the building. First floor doesn't have much but one business. In order to access the building, you have to have a key card that is programmed to the building,

and then our interior suites are programmed separately to our keycards. So, Saturday, I went in around 9 a.m. and was working for a bit. I decided to start working on a project I was due to start the following week, as I had the time and no distractions. but at this time it was around noon. I had skipped breakfast, so I thought I would go grab lunch, bring it back to my office, and eat as I worked. I usually take the stairs to just get a little more exercise,

rather than the elevator, and as I entered the stairwell, a weird feeling came over me. Kind of like apprehension. I was suddenly spooked being in the building alone. even though you can't access it from the outside unless you have the correct permissions on your keycard for weekend access. I control the system, so I know the key cards out there with that access. I decided I was just being silly and walked down the stairs,

and upon exiting, I rounded the corner to see a strange man just sitting on the floor. I literally jumped while in mid-stride. I then blurted out, Oh, you scared me. He sat there expressionless and said, I'm sorry, sweetie. And I asked if he was with the cleaning crew after seeing a mop bucket. He nodded, and I was like, oh, okay.

My heart felt like it was going about 150 miles per hour. I then had to continue on my way and nearly had to step over him. His expression, though, was what made this the creepiest. He was void of all emotions and had dead eyes. He was with the cleaning crew, but I think he was just there with them. I never saw him do anything, and I checked on them viewing some of the cameras. He just seemed to follow them around. I kind of think that he was on something, but I can't be sure.

In a rural downtown known in its locale as the gateway to the lakes region, change has long been accepted inevitably. My wife's cousin, Adam, rest his soul, and his friends were renting one of the last homes remaining on the main street. The house was an old colonial with a pole barn, one cart garage attached to the rear. I had spent some party time in the pole barn, noting the obviousness that the only remaining items from some previous owners

was a wall-hung photo of a toddler boy and a couple of toddler toys. They were able to rent for a short time before the house was sold for commercial property. It would soon be time to leave. One peculiar afternoon, after arriving to pick up Adam, I waited in the pole barn for him to be ready. It contained a punching bag, where I could get my blood flowing a bit. Only a few punches were landed, before I noticed the child's photo and frame broke immensely at the base of the bare frame wall. where it once hung. Intrigued, I walked over to get a closer look, and then back to the bag thinking nothing of it,

as the hair on the back of my neck peaked, and my heart rate rose on high alert. In my mind, I wavered between thinking myself fearful and that I was not alone in the pole barn. Trying to ease myself back into the bag, I could not focus and immediately walked out. While walking swiftly back to the main house, I thought, felt a poke on the back of my hand. Shocked, I lifted my hand to the sight of a blood drop escaping from the web between my thumb and index finger. My head swirled with riled reason and reality. The back of my hand. How did I do that?

Did I do that? In the main house, I met Adam and asked what happened to the photo, and he explained that he and his friends got freaked out by it one night, and proceeded to smash it to relieve their hands. anxiety. I was somewhat amused, but more disturbed by their choice. When we left, I left concerned for my lack of bravery and the little boy whose home would soon be torn down. It was less than a couple of weeks later, in a dream state, that I was unexpectedly and drastically pulled into what my wife called a wormhole. It was a quick movement through a tunnel. It was windy,

it was loud, and I was now staring into the pole barn from above. I didn't see the boy, but I knew he was there. I suppose my instincts kicked in, and the only thing I could think to do was tell the boy that he needed to leave. It felt like I was yelling above the noise, and I made every word or gesture that I could think of that would make the message clear. It was not long before I was pulled back out of the pole barn,

feeling strangely like I had accomplished my purpose. So I don't know if what happened was real, and I never experimented with lucid dreaming, but I like to think that I helped the spirit of that boy move on. Hi there. I need some advice on a situation. Basically, I feel watched even though I'm all alone. This is a feeling I've had for many years now.

I'll explain what happened. When I was younger, maybe 13 or 14, I made a homemade Ouija board and played with it at our past apartment that we used to live in. I was home alone at the time, and I said things that I shouldn't have said. I said out loud that I invite any spirits, entities, or demons to come forward. Looking back, I don't think I even ever said goodbye. I sat there and the shot glass that I used never moved. I got up and threw it out.

It was around this exact time that the feeling of being watched came over me. We moved and the feeling followed me. That's when things began to happen. My stuff would disappear then reappear. There would be cold spots and breezes, lights flickering, strange dreams, a lot of unexplainable occurrences would happen. Once our breadloaf and a few kitchen utensils got thrown, no one else was in the kitchen.

Ever since I messed with the Ouija board, this feeling of being watched has never left me. At some point, the strange occurrences stopped, but the feeling didn't. There were a few times where my mom mentioned seeing shadow-like figures in our apartment. She said she saw something go towards our room one night. I share a room with both of my brothers. She made sure to pray afterwards.

My younger brother not that long ago came running into our room, saying that he had seen a dark shadow out in our hallway, even though no one else was upstairs. I've never seen anything myself except for in my dreams. Now, these are just dreams and could mean nothing, but I just thought that I would add them in. In the first dream, something that I couldn't see came up to me. It felt freezing cold.

It leaned in and kissed me. In the second dream, I saw myself sleeping right next to me was a black figure watching me as I slept. And in the last dream, I saw a black floating mist. This thing came up to me and told me how much it loved me. I said the same thing to it. Its voice was deep, too. I woke up confused, and as of now, the feeling still lingers. And I don't know what to make of it.

I grew up getting used to the feeling, though, and recently it's gotten stronger. At the point, I don't know what to do. I just want closure as to what's going on. Do I perhaps have an attachment? or am I just insane? So I'm going to explain the layout of my house. Two floors. The second one is only rooms.

There's three rooms. When you go upstairs at the ending, there's room C. The second door by the right is room B and room A is on the left. If you sleep in room A, you can see the stairs in the door of room C. One day, my mom saw a man figure that looked at her and then went down. She wasn't able to say anything at the moment, but then she thought it was a boy that my sister or I sneaked in. She goes to our rooms. I was in room B and my sister in room C, but we were both sleeping. Later one day, I was alone in the house. We had a dog and he started barking at room C. I go in there and see nothing. This was in daylight.

Then, by this time, because this thing didn't have a pattern, my brother moved into room C, which was empty since my sister had moved out. He moved there with his wife and baby for a few months. One day they were chatting in the living room downstairs and listening to the monitor of the baby, just sound, no image, and one of the toys turned on. It was the kind of toy that you move, and then the lights and the sounds turn on. so they go upstairs and see that the baby is still sleeping, and the toy's not even near the baby. Also, I need to clarify that a lot of people, I have two brothers and one's sister,

have been living there for a few weeks or months with their partners and kids. It's not a big house, but we do have a lot of space. Up to this point, I hadn't really seen the thing. Then, one day I was in the TV room. If you sit there, you can see the beginning of the stairs and part of the kitchen. The house is very open, with everything connected with no doors. So the first floor is a big thing with a few separations. So I was there watching TV, and then I see someone coming down the stairs and going into the kitchen.

I waited to see the lights of the kitchen turn on or see someone crossing the kitchen, but no one was there. and that was the first time that I saw it with my own eyes. At this time, I had this boyfriend coming over. He was helping me cook something, and I was in the TV room choosing something to watch, and he says, Hey, I saw you, and I was like, I'm not in the kitchen, so I go there and I asked what he was talking about.

He explained to me that he saw someone walking behind him exactly in the path that I saw all this thing, walking. It's the same path every time. End of the stairs, walks down, and then into the kitchen. Later, a cousin of my sister-in-law was visiting the city, so she came over. She refused to sleep in the house, because she stated that there was something there. These stories all took place from 2005 to 2015. But again, in 2020 to 21, when COVID was in.

in the strongest phase, my dad got sick, and by this time at the house, only my parents, myself, and my daughter lived there. Since he was really sick and attached to oxygen, my mom and he slept in the TV room. One night, both of them saw this thing, this figure walking that same path that I saw before. This ghost, spirit, thing has never hurt us, but it doesn't seem to have a pattern. It does look like the hatman, and I would say that it's shadow-like. I, male, 39, matched with Priya, female, 38, on Bumble some months ago. We got along very well, went on drives, boutiques, coffee outlets like Third Wave got a lot of patronage from us as well. Usual late 30s couple.

No kids. And significant disposable income thanks to tech jobs in Bangaluru. We both lived relatively far away from each other. We would stay at each other's places whenever we could. I was married before and I am a cat parent. This stray adopted me and my ex-wife some years ago. and since my ex moved to Europe after the divorce, I've been taking care of it since two years.

Apu, the cat, is a sweet, cuttily, brown bundle. In 2019, just before the pandemic, my ex and I had been to the U.S. to visit her younger sister, a seller on Etsy, and they had listed cat callers for sale, which came with a bell. We'd bought a dozen or so of those callers and brought it back with us. The cat collar with the tinkling bells on Apu was hilarious. He hated it for a bit, but then he got used to it.

Over the past two months, the bell on the cat collar started disappearing. I didn't think much of it. Those collars were bought in 2019. I thought they were wearing off sooner, and since I had about a dozen of them, I would always change the collar on Apu. Soon enough, the bell would go missing. Last month, I decided to stay over at Priya's place in Whitefield.

She lives by herself in one of those gated villas. I don't worry much about Apu. He does his business in the litter box and knows how to work the cat food dispenser. One thing about Priya, she cannot stand smoking. And I had started for reasons of my own. But I hadn't disclosed that I do smoke sometimes. So, yeah. I was staying at her villa,

and it starts raining heavily every day. We don't have much to do, so stuck indoors, we finish a bottle of Omrout single malt whiskey. The neighboring villas are all flooded, they're pumping water out, and we realize it's only a matter of time before Priya's villa too will be flooded. We wanted to secure the doors as much as we could

to stop water from entering. I asked Priya if she has any old clothes or blankets that we can use to barricade. A futile attempt, but we're drunk and we want to do something. She hands me an old hideous green blanket, along with some old beige curtains and t-shirts. We plug the doors the best that we can. We're tipsy and tired, we collapse on the couch.

I vaguely remember saying something half funny about the hideous green blanket. That was my mother's favorite blanket. After she passed, I would always have it with me whenever I went to sleep. but then I remember having it on me when I had a miscarriage. I felt my mother's presence, she said, and you know what, she hated cats. So my date doesn't have her mother, who hated cats when alive, she believes in the afterlife and she's had a miscarriage.

Yet she's held on to that hideous green blanket for God knows how long. The things I realized one rainy drunken night that I had never known for months. perils of modern-day dating, I get this sudden urge to smoke. I excuse myself, lock myself in the bathroom, and open the windows. Once finished, I throw the cigarette butt into the toilet and flush, and that's when I hear oddly familiar sounds. I lift the lid off of the flush tank, and floor of Apu's cat-collar trinkets are sitting there.

I quietly walk out of the back door, the streets are flooded, no cabs. I book a hotel room on the air. a go-to app and stay for the night. I then blocked Priya's number. I've deleted Bumble and Apu's cozyed up next to me purring away with no care in the world as I type this. And it's raining again. This one has always been a fun one to tell. My husband doesn't believe in the paranormal and thinks it is a bunch of nonsense.

At this point, we were still early on in our relationship, and living together. for a couple of years. He had bought an old 1929 house in a suburb near the big city that we grew up close to. I would often see the shadows move out of the corner of my eyes and began having a sense that our energy was not the only thing there. Nothing too concerning. We had a 120-pound American black lab, so it could easily be her moving throughout the house. Or, we can explain it away. that maybe the neighbors backed in and the lights just hit the window just right.

One day, I tell my guy that I saw a small black shadow walk into the laundry room. I was not taken seriously. There has to be some reasonable explanation. I mentioned it because it wasn't out of the corner of my eye experience this time. The laundry room is in the finished basement. The only windows are glass, block windows with a vent, and they're etched slash foggy. They are four by three blocks, I think, whatever the standard basement window sizes.

This part of the basement window faces into our backyard. There are no lights coming in from traffic. The houses were built in an old apple orchard so the backyards were long, about half an acre. And there's about a full acre between our house and the house that ours is backed up to. We had an eight-foot wooded fence along the property line. No outside light sources. A few weeks later, we're getting ready to go to the store together. I was finishing some laundry, and he is in the basement finishing up something on the computer that was down there, to the left of the laundry room door.

He asks me to put the dog in her crate while he finishes up. He'll just be a minute longer. The crate is in the basement, but behind, to the right of where my guy is sitting. The laundry room door is open. All the lights are off now except for the hall light on top of the stairs and the PC. I'm now standing at the end of the stairs facing my guy and he is looking at the computer. The black shadowed dog walks into the laundry room. My guy says,

I thought you put the dog into her crate. I said, no, I thought you were going to. He calls the dog. I'm looking at our dog in her crows. crate. Now he's losing his patience since there are things in the laundry room that he doesn't want her to eat or get into. He says, can you please get the dog? I say what dog? Then he says, fine, I'll do it. At this point, I ask him to turn around and look into the crate. He looks at the crate, looks back at the computer. Yeah, you saw it, didn't you? You saw the black shadow go

into the laundry room too. This was the only time he ever admitted that. He said, he was the only time he ever admitted that he saw something in that house. Now, I don't know much about shadow beings, never really looked into it. We were in this house for eight years, and we had our first kid here. And there was never really anything malicious or scary. This happened while I was living with my mom and stepdad. I was staying home from school because I wasn't feeling well. I was laying on the couch, which was against the window and the wall,

and my mom was on the other couch and we were watching some chick flick. I can't remember the name, though. Anyways, we were laying down and suddenly it sounded like the front door had opened and shut. This door was not frequently used as most of my friends and family went to the back door. And then I heard whispering that said, Shhh, Mom and Courtney are sleeping. And I jumped up to look at Mom and she said, Are your brother's home?

I said, I think they are, trying to be sneaky, so I jumped up right quick and ran to the back living room where the front door was. No one was there. But I heard footsteps run up and then turn the corner and go down the hallway, so I ran upstairs. My brother, Cody's bedroom door, had shut, so I ran in there and I didn't see anything. But I started feeling weird or scared, so... I just stood there for a minute and said, Dude, if you're in here, you better come out. We know you're home.

That's when his closet doors started shuffling, like he was trying to hide deeper within it. I stood waiting for a moment before starting to walk towards them, and then suddenly his dresser that sat against the window pushed out from one corner. It was an old wooden one, and it was really heavy, so it would normally take a bit of effort to move it. and since it was against a window, there was nothing behind it that would make it move.

I ran back downstairs so fast and stayed there. Then, when both of my brothers came home, Cody went to his room and then came out and asked, Why did you move my dresser? When I told him what happened, he didn't believe me at first. But then he started noticing his closet doors shuffling randomly, and that's when he started sleeping, downstairs in the back living room.

Another time, before that one, my sister and I had been sharing a room, but she had recently moved into the bedroom across the hall. I still had a bunk bed at the time, but I filled the top bunk with all of my stuffed animals. Well, it had been storming this night with thunder and lightning. I remember hearing my windows rattling, and it woke me up. I then started hearing noises in the living room, when a flashed. of lightning struck really close, and the giant pink care bear that I had started talking, saying, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.

So I got scared and climbed on to the top bunk and covered myself with the blankets, holding the care bear. The noise that I was hearing sounded like footsteps coming to the bedroom door, and I thought that I heard my stepdad talking, so I uncovered my head, and instead I saw a an old lady sitting in front of the door. She was sitting in a rocking chair, and it looked like she was knitting or crocheting.

She had stopped and set it in her lap and then started to look up at me when my stepdad turned the corner. I started to cry and asked if he had seen her. He didn't, and he just thought that I had a bad dream, but I swear that it was real.

I remember what her outfit looked like and everything. The hat man, hunted me. Some backstory. I was five to eight years old, and I grew up in a chaotic household with a drunk father. The first set of dreams, the first set of dreams didn't have the hat man in them, but they were certainly related. I don't remember too much of these dreams, but it consisted of a little girl with pitch black eyes, who tried to gain my trust and did and led me to this house. I believe she was leading me to him.

The house was creepy and caused me to yell no in my sleep. Then, the Hatman Dreams. These dreams came directly after the first set. I remember these like this was yesterday. The setting was an old ranch on a dirt road. I never went in the ranch. I only stayed on the dirt road. The ranch, however, was always dark, built of rusticry.

wood. The ranch was to the right of me, and everything else around me was nothing but dirt. The first time I saw him, he stood far away with a top hat, a trench coat, and a shadow for a face. I stood in the dirt road, motionless and scared from my life. He then immediately got really close and tried to get me into his portal on the ground. The portal was a circle and was maybe as big as the width of a car. I refused, and that's when he started to hurt me. He scratched me, and I would wake up with scratches in real life. He choked me in, I could feel the sensation of being choked in real life.

He would come back night after night and try to get me into this portal. Inside this portal was pure darkness, nothing to see, just black. The setting never changed throughout the dreams. It was always just a ranch on a dirt road. After nights of terror and waking up in pain with scratches and being choked, I decided that tonight I wouldn't be scared of him, and hopefully he would go away. That night was the worst of all the nights. He threw everything at me, scratches, choking, and he inflicted pain in my body.

He then dragged me into his portal, and I was only hanging on with two hands, with my feet dangling into the portal. In that moment, I knew that I could not be scared of him. So, I just hung there not screaming or fighting back, and I realized I wasn't scared anymore, and he disappeared. Then, when I woke up immediately after the dream, that I decided that I wasn't going to be scared of him, I looked in my doorway.

As a kid, I always shut the door before I slept. but this time it was cracked. I looked and I saw him. But he looked different this time. He had a brownish face, and you couldn't really make out a nose or mouth. His eyes were silver or white, and he just stared at me for about a minute.

He then left, and I haven't seen him since. Thank you for reading, and please, let me know your thoughts. About two nights ago, ago, I was with my girlfriend and her sister in their backyard smoking some in my car. We smoke often, so a few was just really nothing. Around 8 p.m., her sister went inside. We live in New York, the Bronx, to be exact. So the sun had been setting around 7 p.m., and it was completely dark by 8 p.m.

So now it was just me and my girl chilling. I'm rolling up and we're talking. getting rowdy and then laughing, but it's nothing out of the ordinary. In her backyard, there's parking for about four cars, but they were all out. And I was parked closest to her neighbor's fence on the right, facing the road, so I could see all the way down the driveway and directly behind me is a mesh fence that you can clearly see through. Through that fence is a church. Over on my right is her neighbor's yard, where there's a garden that you can see.

I'm saying all of this to let you know that I had a great view of her entire yard from the front to the back and the sides that I could have seen anyone or anything coming easily. Well, while we're talking, out of nowhere, we both hear a whistle. About two seconds, long, loud, and clear. It immediately freaked us both out so much that she ended up from the passenger seat onto my lap. but I was able to keep my composure and calm her down and get her to get back into her seat. This took about three minutes. We were talking about it, trying to find a logical explanation for what had just happened. While we were doing this and basically calling anything paranormal not real

and dismissing it as a cat or a squirrel or even my car, it happened again. Directly in my girlfriend's ear, loud and clear. I even heard it coming from her ear area. It was as if it was ensuring us that it could whistle out of nowhere and that it disagreed. My radio was off, the AC was on low as it was a little chilly, and the windows were closed tight, but it was as if the whistle was right next to her in the car. We stayed for another 20 minutes and decided that she was too uncomfortable to stay there. She says weird things always happen in her house.

I never really take it seriously, and I let her know that I don't believe in stuff like that. This time, though, I experienced it, and I looked and tried to think of everything to explain it, but I can't. Which brings me here. Does anyone know what this could mean or be? I'm more scientific than religious, so I just want an explanation, but I just want an explanation, but this is a tough one. My girlfriend, her sister and brother, did put me on to something

that they have experienced growing up in their house, and I found it really interesting. One, when they were little, they used to play hide and seek, and my girlfriend, who's now 22, would go hide in her sister's closet. Sometimes when she would go in there, she would see a pale little girl hiding with her,

but she didn't get any bad violence, vibes, so she never bothered with her. I question this, like, I question everything, and she said she was probably just too young to think much of it. Two, when they were kids, my girlfriend's brother said he once saw a little girl running down their hallway, but just thought it was one of his sister's friends. But then, he couldn't find her at the end of the hall, and he asked his sisters. They both confirmed they didn't have anyone over.

3. About a month ago, around 11 p.m., my girlfriend was sitting in her living room and heard someone in the kitchen taking out stuff to make tea. But when she went to go see who it was, the stuff was just left on the stove as if someone left in a hurry. In the morning, she asked everyone, and guess what, nobody was making tea. Four, a few years ago, her mom's brother committed suicide, and they didn't find her. find out until a few months after, because of some family issues. They were very close to him, but his wife had some personal issues. I don't know the full details. At one point, he used to live there with them, and when my girl's parents got divorced,

he took care of them like he was their own. And five, before they bought the house when she was two, a doctor lived there, and the doctor had a daughter that was fine at one point, and after an accident she became paralyzed. You can see this throughout with the door frames being bigger to accommodate a wheelchair and a ramp outside. That girl actually ended up dying in the house some years after her injury. Biennue at board of Via Rai. Embarked and profite. Embarked and celebrate.

Rigolet. Publié. Savouring. Admire. And profite. This is an experience that happened to me a few years ago at college. I still have no explanation for what I saw. I have insomnia.

I've had it for years, and the best thing for me I found is to just go out and walk for an hour or so. I've never had any fear of going out late, as I am a rather large man. And this was pretty easy at my college because of the layout. as a rather large loop with plenty of open spaces and paths was always well lit. In the center of the circle, there was a large patch of forest that is unlit. Because of this, I had never walked the forest at night. But this night, for no particular reason, I decided to change my path and go through the forest. I've gone through this path enough times at day,

and it's clearly marked floor trails with wooden bridges at points, and metal plates on the trees, all to designate the clear path. The only light that I have on me is my cell phone, which is just the worst type of flashlight, as it's very bright but only reaches out maybe ten or twelve feet. As I'm heading on to the path, not more than a few minutes into my walk, I'm crossing the first bridge, and just as I'm nearing the other side of it, I hear a snap behind me. I turned around expecting an animal, a fox or raccoon perhaps.

There were a fair number of them around the campus that I've seen at night before. What I saw was at the other side of the bridge between two trees. There was a figure standing at human height, but rather formless. The tree to its right had a metal reflector dish marking it, but it was still too far for my flashlight to really catch. The hairs on the back of my neck raised, but I was determined to just face my fear and identify whatever was on the edge of my light. So I took a step forward, just one, and I froze as my blood went ice cold, and everything in my body told me to run. I just couldn't bring myself to take another step towards the figure, so I decided I would leave as calmly as I could,

and slowly turned around and confidently walked away, continued. continuing down the path at a steady pace. I wasn't even close to being halfway through the forest from here, but I did a good job of staying calm. I hadn't seen or heard anything until I was nearing the end. At this final turn in the forest path, I can clearly see the street lamp at the other end. Now, admittedly, this last part of the path is rather swampy, the ground very quickly turning to mud. I kept my pace steady, not running, not slowing down, and in the corner of my eye I saw it again. That white, formless figure, but this time it was approaching me.

I panicked but didn't run. I just kept my confident stride and determined to not let fear get the best of me. Twenty feet from the edge of the forest, I slip and twist my ankle falling face first into the mud. The adrenaline in the moment carried me through. though, and I managed to just force myself back up and kept walking. As soon as I broke the tree line and made it to the sidewalk, I felt free, calm, and safe. I fell asleep shortly after getting home, but had awful nightmares. The next day I was feeling all right and decided to go back and confirm what I saw under the sun.

My girlfriend and I made our way down the path into the first bridge. Now, I had many markers to note where I saw the figure the first time. The bridge, the two trees, the metal marker on the one. I knew I had found the exact spot, but there was nothing between the trees. It was an empty space, and it was empty and clear for a good distance in both directions. The second place that I saw the figure was an open clearing. The only thing of note was a fallen tree, but nothing near the high. height of what I saw. I never walked alone in that forest, but kept up my night walks around the

campus without incident. I had been in the forest at night with others multiple times after this, and I never noticed another figure. It's been a few years now, and I still don't know how to explain what I saw. This true scary workplace story occurred in the autumn of 2012 in Glasgow, Scotland. The light was fading as it was the evening, and Glasgow gets very cold this time of year, so there was a bitter chill in the air. At around 6 p.m., my two friends, Neelam and Ayesha, who were both in the early 20s at the time, worked as beauticians in a beauty salon in the west end area of the city, and they were just closing up for the evening, when a group of three fairly large men wearing ski masks aggressively pushed the door open and barged into the salon front.

They were carrying blue plastic shopping bags that were bulging. The men then also closed the large front shutters down and had Neelam and Ayesha trapped in the store. Both of my friends were a bit stunned, and they didn't know what to say or do. The men began screaming and asking, where the female owner of the salon was, to which they both shakily replied that they didn't know,

which was true as the owner was hardly ever there in person. The men had very thick Glaswegian accents, and it seemed as though they were white, however the girls were not certain about this. Although both of the girls were scared, they thought the men seemed fairly amateurish and thought that they would just leave after realizing the owner was not there.

Things took a much more sinister turn, however, when suddenly the three men pulled out hammers and silver duct tape. The men then marched Nila Maneisha to the back area of the salon, where they bound their hands and feet and wrapped their mouths up with the duct tape. They were then forced to sit down in chairs with wheels on them. The thugs then debated what to do next. wait on the off chance the owner would come in or leave. The girls were obviously petrified at this point,

and were hoping that they would just leave. Nielam was especially scared as she actually had a cold at the time and was struggling with the tape that was now sealing her mouth. Her glasses also slid off of her face as she was struggling, so she was now struggling to see. She tried to ask the men if they could take the tape off of her mouth because of her cold, but she was only able to mumble, as her mouth was taped very tightly. One of the men yelled at her to shut up.

She tried her best not to cry, as that would have made things even worse. Ayesha was still very shocked by everything, but was mainly concerned for Nelam, who was just praying the thugs would go away. She also tried to speak, but to no avail. Thankfully, after a few minutes of looking at the girl, and around the salon. They decided to just exit the salon's front door, but not before smashing the cash register and some mirrors with their hammers.

They also threw some of the salon's equipment across the store. Surprisingly, the men didn't actually steal anything from the store. They then left the salon, and left Nelam and Ayesha taped up and gagged out back. The girls struggled for quite a while to free themselves from the tape, But Ayesha moved her chair towards some hairdressing equipment, and eventually managed to use a pair of scissors to free her hands and feet, and then removed the duct taped from her in Neelam's mouths.

As soon as Neelam was freed, they called the police. The police finally arrived and gave the girls some blankets, and took them in to ask questions. The whole incident only realistically lasted for about 20 minutes, although it felt much longer. Thankfully, the girls were not hurt, however they were both very shaken up for a long time after this, and the men were never caught as far as they are aware.

Both Nelam and Ayesha attended Identify lineups, however they could never say if any of the men they saw were any of the thugs, because the trio had ski masks on. Both Nelam and Ayesha are of South Asian Pakistani ancestry, And Ayesha did think one of the men did say something in Urdu at one point, but was not 100% sure. Both of my friends quit the salon immediately following this and got jobs elsewhere, and both are doing extremely well now, and they've put this awful incident behind them. They never did find out what those men wanted with the owner, and they are grateful that she wasn't there, as things could have been much worse. They, of course, had their suspicions about the owner after this horrible incident,

but they were both just thankful to be okay and away from that salon forever. To start, I would like to clarify that I am not insane. I feel like that is too often the explanation that is given with things like this. I am a stressed out person, and due to that, I've had many visits to many a therapist. I am undiagnosed with any major disorders. I'm also not religious and consider myself to be a skeptic to most spiritual ideas. Okay, with that out of the way, I would like to share some experiences of mine and get some people's opinions. A few years ago, I traveled to New Orleans to study and experience Louisiana voodoo.

I'm not a voodooist, despite being invited by actual prud. practitioners. Again, I am a skeptic, and voodoo is included in my skepticism. However, as a researcher of the occult and other various forms of spirituality, I find voodoo to be one of the more interesting topics of my research. While in New Orleans, I naturally decided to pay a visit to Marie LeVao, the Voodoo Queen's Tomb. The cemetery has a pretty strict rule of not leaving anything as an offering to any grave or tomb within the walls of the graveyard, but I decided in this instance rules meant nothing. I left her a bobby pin, since she was a hairdresser in life. Clearly, I didn't have a very original idea, as there were what looked like

hundreds of other bobby pins there already. Literally a block away while walking to a restaurant, I found a little charm on the ground. It was a small metal thing with an engraving of a vow and a little hole to put a string through. I'd seen similar charms in the various trinket shops around the city, but this one appeared to be hand-made, as in not mass-produced. The engraving was rough, and the actual charm was not pretty. It definitely didn't look like something that would be for sale. I took it and went on my way. But ever since then, years later,

I've had increasingly strange and unexplainable things happened to me. Almost all of my experiences are related to seeing the future, or very specific coincidences. I will list a few, but I honestly cannot remember all of them. I've had sudden visions of places that I don't recognize, only to see them in real life days or weeks later. One very memorable moment was when I had a dream of what looked like a speakeasy, only to play poker at a person's house that matched the dream exactly,

and I ended up winning some money. No, I'm not an avid gambler, nor do I have any sorts of addictive tendencies. I once closed my eyes to take a short-rested work, and the word racetrack was clearly written on loose-leaf paper in a strange vision. Later that day, I had to go to a local racetrack for work-related activities. I had a strange image of red and white blocks with unintelligible text in the blocks. The words were jumbled and almost looked like a different language. The best I can compare it to is when you ask an AI to write something,

and it comes back with that weird half-reel-half-reel-half-reel-half-reel- fake text. It reminded me of the way my bank account looked. So, I checked my account, and I learned that someone had hacked into my account and stolen hundreds of dollars from me by buying gift cards from Walmart. This is the sole reason I caught it when I did,

and I caught it only an hour after it happened, which led to me getting all of my money back in less than 24 hours. The bank had said that if I had waited a little longer, it would have been much more difficult for me to receive my money. These are just three examples. Sure, they could be coincidences,

and completely nothing related to LaValle, but I'd be lying if I said that years of this hadn't begun to sway me in the direction of irrationality. Is Marie LaValle looking over me? Is she guiding me in exchange for a worthless bobby pin? Did she just see something in me that she liked? I have fully but privately embraced this idea for the sole purpose that it appears to be working. I've constructed a modest altar, for lack of a better word, to Marie.

It includes some flowers, bobby pins, the charm that I found, and I keep some spare coins in a small cup there. I like to think that it makes those coins lucky, should I ever need to use them. I have told a few close friends about this, and, surprisingly, They totally buy it without much question. My purpose with this post, though, is mostly to get it off of my chest, as I can't just start telling everyone, and I find it to be harder and harder to just not talk about it. When I was a kid, I took a sports class every Saturday in the morning for about an hour,

around 20 minutes from where I lived. One Friday after school, Mom takes me to do some grocery shopping, and we stop for coffee in a big chain place with a lengthy line. While waiting, Mom gets to talking with a man in front of us. He's probably mid-40s, grayish hair, seemingly friendly enough. Mom tells him the things moms do when they're talking about their kids, my name, what year I was in school, and stuff like that. We get our coffee, part ways, and think nothing of it.

People have mundane conversations, about their kids all the time. It's a universal experience. That was until the next day. We get to the neighborhood my classes in kind of early, so we stop at this local artisan place. This sort of place with clocks in the wall, with international time zones of major cities,

an overpriced avocado on toast that you'll never get. We sat in because the rest of the stuff was cheap. It wasn't the best area. I suppose that someone was trying to gentrify the place. We're sitting, eating our breakfast when mom's eyes catch the man from yesterday. He's buying a coffee, small world, and all that. She tries to awkwardly get his attention so everyone can uncomfortably laugh at the circumstances. It's not that strange where I come from to do this.

You're not expected to have a full-on conversation, but there's usually recognition in their eyes. or at least a strained smile. A sort of, funny, isn't it? Gesture of acknowledgement. The dude makes direct eye contact with mom, stares coldly, unblinking for a few seconds, and then blanks us completely.

It sets Mom on edge. That was strange. She tells me to finish my breakfast faster and we need to go. We get out on the street and decide, just in case, to take another route to me. my class that day. We take some obscure turns, the feeling of being watched itching at the back of our necks. When we look back after a while, there he is, staring again from across the street. That's what finally convinced me that mom wasn't just being paranoid, nor overprotective.

This was starting to get freaky for both of us. We reached my class unscathed, but my mom tells me she's going into another cafe, across from the youth center to see if the guy turned up again and seemed to be casing me. He walks past 15 minutes later, just about the amount of time a parent might stop watching and head home. What's the saying? Once is an event, twice as a coincidence, and three times as a pattern. Mom picks me up, she grabs my hand.

I was a little too old for that. and we start trying to casually high-tail it to our car. The neon signs in our head were flashing that something was off. If we were being followed, why? Did the man want me, my mom, both of us? Did he know our license plate? Did he know where we lived? Was there more of him?

A thousand questions rattled through my brain as we walked like the drug users around the area. Heads down, hands fidgety. eyes blown, darting everywhere. In the end, we didn't think that we could trust that we weren't being tracked somehow. So we called my dad to trail us back home. We never saw the guy again. There wasn't any suspicious cars behind us. He didn't turn up at our house.

But the whole experience was incredibly unsettling. Like we were being hunted somehow. That night, I hadn't. my first nightmare in years. A man had jumped me at my house. He had a knife to my neck, his fist pressing down on my clavicle. When I woke up, there was a dull pain where his hand had been. There wasn't anything behind his eyes.

No madness or anger or fear. It was just the blank stare from that afternoon. I don't get nightmares. I never have. I don't scare easily, but that dream rattled me. I'm aware it was probably a stress nightmare caused by my brain trying to process that day. Sometimes I wonder if it was an omen of how things could have gone. We were fine.

He didn't even get within ten feet of us, but I don't think that feeling of being seen as prey, like we were about to be the victims of one of those disturbing documentaries you see on the crime drama channels. People there one minute gone the next. will ever sit quite right with me. A while back, I moved into a new apartment, about 20 miles from my previous home, because the company I was renting through was starting to hit a point where I couldn't work with them.

I would mention something that needed to be fixed. They would ignore me, and then they would try to send the maintenance guy on days where I worked without notice, and it was just a huge mess. It ended with me saying screw it, finding a much smaller apartment, and breaking my lease just to get away from their BS. Yes, I know this isn't the best way to do things, but I was fed up after living there for four years, and it wasn't showing any signs of getting better, so I was done. Moving into my new apartment was pretty simple.

The complex staff seemed nice enough. I got into an apartment on the mid-level, and my boyfriend was able to help me move most of the heavy stuff. Once we got all the boxes into the apartment and got the furniture set up like it should be, I was pretty happy with how it all turned out. It was quite a bit smaller than my previous place, but it was also cheaper, and sometimes downsizing is necessary. I decided that I could spend a few years here, and if I didn't like it after that, I could go ahead and just find another place.

Plus, by then, if my boyfriend and I were still together, I was kind of assuming we would be looking into our own place at that point. The first few days at my new apartment were great. I was enjoying setting everything up. I was enjoying the new location, and even though I hadn't gotten the internet set up yet, I was spending my evenings replaying all my old games on my PS4 that I had forgotten about. One game in particular had been holding on to my attention for several nights, and that was Bloodbourne.

I've never really been into the Souls games, but I love the atmosphere in Bloodbourne, and it was one of four games that I had on disc, so it was the obvious choice. This may not sound important, but it actually is. is, because I had the disc in the console while I was playing it, as is necessary. The reason that's important is because one night when I got home from work, I sat on my couch and went to play it. But when I turned on my console, the first game on the list was The Last of Us. Now, I like The Last of Us, but I haven't played it for a long time, so I was a bit confused. I wasn't really sure what to make of it, to be honest, so I just switched out the disc and went on with my night.

I mentioned it to my boyfriend the next morning when we were on the phone, and he made a joke about how I was probably going to play it at some point. It put the disc in and just forgot. That, or maybe I was sleepwalking playing the PlayStation or something. I laughed and said that it had to be one of those because how else could it have happened. Again, it was weird, but I just moved on and accepted that I put the disc in and forgot. That same night, when I got home from work, I noticed that my front door was slightly open. The doors to these apartments don't fully shut if you let them go, but it will shut most of the way. but the latch won't catch.

It's a weird design on the door, but I think they were made this way on purpose to stop people's doors from accidentally slamming. I went to open it, but I kind of freaked out at the possibility of someone having broken into my apartment. So I panicked and called my boyfriend asking if he could come over.

I told him that my door was open and that I thought someone may be in the apartment and said that I didn't want to go in alone. He agreed, left work early, and came over. He opened the door and we both slowly walked through the apartment, just cautiously checking each room. Nothing seemed to really be out of place. Nothing was missing, and all the lights were off like I would have left them.

After spending most of an hour checking things and being comforted by my boyfriend, and I apologized for having him leave work early. He told me that it wasn't a big deal, that he explained what happened to his manager and that they wanted to be sure I was safe more than anything. After he left, I honestly spent most of that night crying and thinking I was going crazy. It was only the two events, but something just seemed off.

I wasn't the type to do things and forget them. I wasn't the type to not lock my time. door, and I wasn't the type to be all panicky like this. I had no idea why I was freaking out so bad, and I think that was the worst part of all of it. The next couple of days, I made notes of everything I did. I would text myself when I played a game on my console to make sure it didn't change. I would take a short video of myself locking the front door when I left for work. I would document if I moved something to a new place.

I was feeling a bit crazy with how obsessive I was over all this, but I was doing this for peace of mind. Then everything finally came to light on what was going on. I had had a day at work where I was told to go home early because we'd had a number of clients cancel on us, and I wasn't needed. It wasn't something that happened a lot, but it did sometimes happen.

No clients meant no work and no money coming in. So it was just easier for them to give us half the day off than pay us for sitting around doing nothing for like five hours. So I headed home and when I got to my door, I noticed that it was cracked open again. As soon as I saw it, I stopped. I stepped off to the side, pulled out my phone and checked. sure enough, there was a video in my camera roll that I had taken that morning, no more than four hours prior to that moment, of me locking the door and making sure that it was locked.

This time, I decided that I was going to call the office of the apartment and have them send one of their maintenance workers down. At first they were a bit hesitant, but I asked them to just please send one of the maintenance staff over to check the apartment. the locks, because I was concerned for my safety. This seemed to work, and within a few minutes one of the guys came down to my building. I met him at the front door and told him that I was a bit worried, because this was the second time this had happened. I told him that I'd had a situation a few days prior, where my disc had changed in my PlayStation.

I told him about the door being open, and I showed him that I was taking him. a video every single morning of me locking the door when I left. He looked at me like I was a bit crazy, but after explaining things a bit more, he just kind of went with what I was saying. We went back to my door and we both slowly entered, and at that point, my worst fears were actually confirmed. Right there, sitting on my couch, playing The Last of Us, was some random name. naked guy that I had never met.

Obviously, there was a bit of a mutual freakout in this situation where I screamed, he screamed, and I pulled the door shut telling the maintenance guy that I had no idea who he was. He laughed a bit, but then it kind of clicked that I was serious, that this guy had broken into my apartment and was sitting naked on my couch. He told me to go outside and call the police right away, and that he would hold the door shut to make sure this guy didn't go anywhere. I did what he said, and while I was telling the cops where I was, I could hear this guy banging and screaming on the door yelling about letting him out.

Thankfully, the maintenance guy was a big dude, and the person in my apartment wasn't going anywhere. The cops showed up and obviously arrested this man. Thankfully, he was clothed by this point. As they pulled him out, I confirmed with them that I had no idea who he was, but it was at this point that the maintenance person said he knew. He took me down to the office where we had a chat with the property management, which was all part of the police report in the end.

To wrap this up and explain what the hell actually happened, this guy was a former tenant. In fact, he was the tenant that lived in my apartment before I'm, moved in. When they had vacated, the apartment was empty for about two months before I moved in, and all the repairs and such were done in that time frame. There was, however, one small item that somehow slipped through the cracks, and that was replacing the door locks. This was something that they intended to do and were supposed to do, but never got around to. So, When I moved in, the lock was the same as when he lived there,

which was pretty much just inviting him to come back and break in. Apparently, he hadn't actually wanted to leave. He and his girlfriend lived there and they broke up, so when he left, he had nowhere to go. He decided to come and check out his old place because, of course, he still had a key. And wouldn't you know it? It all worked out. I was at work during the days, so he had a place he could take a nap at, play games, be comfortable in,

and as long as he left before a certain time and made the place look the same as when he got there, there wouldn't be any issues. He had slipped up a few times, which I had noticed, and I caught him off guard when I came home early. As to why he was naked, I have no idea. I guess he just really wanted to be comfortable. Obviously, I worked out something with the property, as this was a huge deal, and a major violation of my safety. We changed the locks that day, and they verified that the only people that had the keys were myself and maintenance. They were also very apologetic about the whole thing, and I think I was pretty forgiving, considering this mistake could have had an incredibly disgusting,

outcome, if he had been more malicious. This was less than a year ago at this point, and my lease came up for renewal, and, I think, to their surprise, I did resign it. Changing the locks out was enough to guarantee that this guy couldn't come back, well, that and the charges that he caught. Thankfully, I haven't had a problem since this whole event, though I am a lot more paranoid about locking my doors now. About 30 years ago, I spent several years working in movie theaters in Worcester, Massachusetts.

My favorite was the huge old building that had been chopped up into four separate cinemas. It had been a beautiful theater back when it was built in 1926 as the Polly Place. Although it had been semi-destroyed during modernization in the late 50s, There were still many original features of the building that remained. As a manager, I had been issued a big keychain that gave me access to the entirety of the building, and I spent countless hours exploring nearly every part of that building, except the curtain loft, which would have required climbing an iron ladder for about 80 feet. Nope.

The building had attics and basements and crawl spaces. there was an area in the front of the building on the second floor that had two or three abandoned businesses that had been walled off. There was a music store and a ballet studio and maybe an office. There was also a bathroom. Everything looked like it was from the 1940s or 50s, a faded wallpaper with ballerina motif, appealing mirror on the wall. In another section of the building was the old manager's office. with high ceilings and crown molding, and a beautiful stained glass window that I believe dated back to 1912,

and it had previously been part of an adjacent theater. There was still an old safe in the office. I found a newspaper article in the public library from 1942 or 44 that actually detailed an armed robbery when two men had tied up the managers in the office and robbed the safe. One of those men was, later executed in the electric chair for an unrelated crime. We used the old manager's office to store giant 30-gallon bags of popcorn.

There was a sort of crawl space under the box office that was accessible by lifting a hinge plywood panel and climbing over a four-foot wall. On the other side were the remains of a couple of basement rooms, with broken concrete and bricks strewn about. In one of those rooms, I found it. old flared Coca-Cola glass in perfect condition. I kept it for years. I also found a deck of cards in a handmade leather pouch,

with a snap closure fashioned out of a buffalo nickel. There were also old dressing rooms with makeup mirrors and light bulbs. The paint was peeling off the walls and potato chips sized flakes. As you can surmise, the building was purported to be haunted. The head manager claimed to have had ghost-assized. experiences, and I'll start there, I guess. When the building was remodeled in the late 1950s, the men's room in the basement was converted into the manager's office.

One night, while closing up, the manager, my boss, made his way up the stairs to the main lobby. As he emerged, something caught his eye. Way up by the ornate 30-foot ceiling, he saw an apparition floating there. It disappeared into the ceiling. Terrified, he ran back down the stairs and hid in the office until daylight. Another time, he was working, again, late. There were several arcade machines in the area of the lobby,

and they were normally powered off when the last shows were in. As he climbed the stairs, he heard all of the machines making their electronic bleeps and bloops. He was annoyed that the usher. had failed to turn off the machines before punching out, and then realized he would have to go turn them off himself. As soon as he opened the door, the noises stopped dead. Looking across the lobby from where he emerged, the machines were all dark.

They were, indeed, powered off. A projectionist claimed that he looked out of the booth window one night into the big theater upstairs while shutting things down, and he saw a face looking in at him. I take those stories with a grain of salt. I was always skeptical of those based on the sources, but here's my experience. I was obsessed with the history of the building,

and I would research newspaper archives for articles about it. There were rumors that a stage hand had died there in an accident during the time that it had been of vaudeville theater, but I was never able to confirm that. I had talked about the building to my mother, and she in turn happened to discuss it with the woman that she worked with. That woman claimed to be a psychic or clairvoyant, or maybe just that she would get feelings about things.

She told my mother that she had been to that theater, and that she felt that someone had indeed been killed there, and that his name began with the letter M. My reaction was, huh, okay, sure, she sounds. It sounds nutty. Sometime later, I was the sole manager on duty on a slow night midweek. I was alone in the office in the basement. The seven o'clock shows were in, and I was doing paperwork.

The intercom buzzed. It was the box office cashier calling to tell me that I had a phone call. I asked who it was, and she said that she didn't know. I hung up the intercom and pushed the button for the main incoming line where the call was holding. The earpiece erupted with loud, close, squealing, and static. I use the word

close, because it was so loud and distant that I assumed that it was something wrong with the phone PBX in our building, rather than the line itself or the caller's phone. It's just the impression that I had. Hello, I said. Nothing, just more squealing and static. Hello, I repeated.

Hello? A man's voice. Calm, flat, distinct, and then nothing further. Who is this? I was a bit perplexed. All of the noise on the line and the caller seemingly reluctant to speak. This is Mike. Calm, quiet, not shouting over the noise of the line, quite audible and clear, and then nothing but the awful squealing and static. I waited a few seconds for the call. to continue, after all, he had called me. Presumably there was a reason. Nothing. Mike, who?

I said, feeling a little impatient. Mike is a common name, and there were two mics employed there at the time. One of them had a fairly high-pitched voice that sounded nothing like the caller. It didn't really sound like the other mic either. Then the line abruptly went dead. Silent. The squealing and hissing stop. I waited. No one called back.

I called Sandy the box office cashier and asked her if they had asked for me personally, or just to speak to the manager. She said that the caller had asked for me by name. Suddenly, I remembered my mother's friend, a man's name beginning with the letter M, like Mike. It never happened again, and the phone never made those noises. No one ever confessed to the prank, and I never figured out who it was. Hey there, friends. That was today's episode of the As the Raven Dreams podcast, and I really hope that you all enjoyed this collection of scary stories.

If you did, please do consider checking out my YouTube channel where I do these same stories, but a little bit earlier than I do them here on the podcast form, and also in slightly different collections. If you really enjoy the podcast, please do consider giving it a rating of any sort if the platform you're listening on has ratings. Any honest rating is appreciated by me, be it five star, one star, however you want to do it.

Just know that rating the podcast helps tremendously. And if you would like to support further, I do have a Patreon and channel memberships if you'd like to do things on the YouTube side, where for as little as a dollar a month they get early access to my content. Never ever expected, but always appreciated. That said, friends, I hope that I do see you on the next episode of this podcast. And of course, until then, sleep well.

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