As The Raven Dreams Podcast - ATRD Ep. 098 - Paranormal, Crazy Exs, National Park Stories, and Other True Scary Stories - 20 True Scary Stories

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

Welcome to the chilling 98th episode of The ATRD Podcast! Today, we will step into the shadowy corners of reality, where everyday life takes an eerie twist & ordinary people experience the extraordinary. Today we will be diving into stories about Crazy Ex Lovers, Some terrifying Paranormal stories, Scary National Park stories and other true scary stories from you! So, turn down the lights, tune in, and let the haunting tales of everyday people take you down that dark and creepy road. Remember, these aren't just stories... these are true experiences that remind us that our world can truly be scarier than fiction. Have a Story To Submit? ➤ https://www.astheravendreams.com Or Post to the Subreddit ➤ https://reddit.com/r/TheRavensDream Support the channel for Early Access AND more! Patreon ➤ https://patreon.com/AsTheRavenDreams Join ➤ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkW0ihdMHfBUjQrMKjRto6g/join Or Check out the Merch Store! ➤ https://teechip.com/stores/astheravendreams Thank you to all of the authors that have stories in today's Video... Marcus D., Keith M, Alexander “Belmont” Thompson, BruceInaUte, Patrick M, Spicy Punk Rocker, Peter, Marc Gillihan, MissTazyD, GlassTree424, Martin, Sarasota Rebel, Marie, Twitch.tv/kasetopher, Pamela Weir, Maddi, Em, John CL, Erik Daniels and authors that requested anonymity. 'As The Raven Dreams' is a community where we explore the darker parts of human existence through true and harrowing stories. From sinister encounters with strangers and stalkers, to terrifying experiences that defy explanation and unsettling mysteries that linger in the shadows, I am here to tell you the most haunting narratives ever whispered. Much Love, and Sleep Well... ----- #TrueScaryStories #AsTheRavenDreams #RedditStories ➤ Stories include a content warning for language and sensitive/disturbing content. Viewer discretion is always advised. ➤ ALL Audio of this Podcast are copyright of AS THE RAVEN DREAMS / RAVEN ADAMS and may not be duplicated, in any format, without explicit permission ➤ If you like any of the following stories, consider subscribing! - Dark Web horror stories, creepy lets not meet stories, stalker stories, Glitch In The Matrix Stories, Unexplained Horror stories, Paranormal stories, cryptid encounter stories, Crazy ex lover stories, creepy neighbor stories, quantum immortality, true scary stories from reddit, or any other True horror Stories! ➤ 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 you would like to hear featured on this podcast, please go to ashtheravendreams.com and click the button to submit your story. Also, if the platform you're listening on has the option to rate this podcast, please consider doing so. And thank you. Right before the craziness that was 2020, my girlfriend and I went on a road trip around Indiana with plans on sightseeing in a state park and a few other local attractions. Bridget and I had been on long trips together, and it's become one of our favorite things to do, to be able to just go across the state, or even the country, to see places that we've never been before. We plan on visiting at least all the states once, and we're about a third of the way there so far. Anyways, this would be our first time actually spending time in Indiana, instead of just a third of the way there so far.

instead of just passing through. After looking at our options, we opted to check out the Rocky Hollow Falls Canyon in Turkey Run State Park. We went in October, and while I haven't seen it in the summer, that place was meant for autumn, and I would still recommend it despite our experience. Entering the canyons,

it looked like something straight out of something like the Hobbit. The small trail along the creek was therapeutic to walk while listening to the water flow. The mossy rocks looked straight out of a painting. It was quite a serene and peaceful day. We found a small secluded spot lined with boulders and decided to stop there for a break and eat. While sitting and chatting, I started hearing what sounded like someone walking above us. There were different levels at different areas at the park, so... It was normal to hear or see people walking along the rocks above you, or below you, towards the creek.

So it was one of those moments that I made a note of, but that was it. Our conversations slowed down so we could finish our lunch, which gave me a chance to focus on the sounds around us again. This time I could hear the sound of footsteps approaching us. When I didn't see someone in front of us, I turned around to see who was coming, but, again, I didn't see anyone. This time it didn't sound like it was coming from the trail above us. But I checked anyway, and there was no one there either. Bridget was looking around too and looked at me like,

where's that coming from? I shrugged, thinking that I just wasn't seeing them or something explainable. We were just about finished when I scanned the area and finally saw something that looked out of place. There was a large boulder, probably 15 or 20 feet from us, and I could clearly see someone with short hair peeking out from behind it, staring at us. I thought it was weird because, with the size of the boulder, they had to be crouching or maybe on their knees to be hidden behind it. I pointed him out to Bridget, too, and she definitely thought it was weird as well. We tried to ignore it, but as we both glanced over and saw them still staring at us, Bridgett said that she was feeling weirded out by it.

So we decided to finish the last of our sandwiches as we walked. We got past that area, and beyond a small waterfall of sorts, and again paused to take more photos. While Bridget was trying to get closer to the water, I was looking around at the area again because, I was starting to get the feeling like we were being watched. I usually ignore those feelings, as I was used to us being stared at. But due to the person behind the boulder earlier, I felt the need to find who exactly was watching us. And, as expected, I saw what looked like the same short-haired person that I had seen earlier, now trying to hide behind a tree.

I pointed them out to Bridget again, and her expression quickly changed. She was worried that they may be following us since we had been secluded for some time, and I shared the sentiment. If they were following us, maybe they were going to try and rob us, or who knows what. We both agreed to again move on, and maybe get back around some other people so that we weren't alone. We made our way to the upper part of the rocks, and since we hadn't seen the person in a while, we stopped again to take in the sight. This time I started digging through my backpack looking for something when Bridgett nudged me. When I looked at her, she nodded to yet another boulder where our same stalker was hiding.

At this point, I was pretty fed up. I still didn't know their intentions, but so far they've just been giving us the creeps. and I didn't want our trip ruined. While I was enjoying it too, I know that these meant a lot to Bridget. Bridget was actually a foster kid, and within the homes that she lived in, they never went on any kind of trips or vacations. So any time that we do anything out of our norm, she gets extremely excited about it and wants to do all that she can.

I mean, who could blame her. so this time since the person wasn't taking any action I decided that I would hopefully scaring them off and to let them know that they chose the wrong targets I instead grabbed the hunting knife that I had in my bag and told Bridget to stay where she was she was hesitant to let me go at first but I assured her that I would be fine I started to slowly approach the boulder

the person still looking over it, now watching the approach. When I was about four feet in front of the boulder, I loudly, and as intimidatingly as I could, said, What the hell are you doing, bro? And they quickly dropped behind the boulder. I slowly made my way around it and was shocked by what I saw. First, I thought the guy just had really short hair, like a buzz cut, But no.

This guy was completely bald. However, they had so many cuts and scratches across their head that were covered in scabs that, from a distance, it truly looked like hair. That's how many cuts and scrapes he had. It looked pretty painful and unsettling as it is. But to add to it, this guy appeared gaunt, with skin that looked blueish, gloathing, grey and leathery. I thought that he just looked lighter from a distance because of lighting or something, but no. He was absolutely sickly looking, and the color was completely unnatural.

He was crouched, and when I reached the boulder, I was on his left. The way that he was crouched, I could clearly see his spine and even his hips. I was also able to see this so well because he was completely naked. So, taking this all in, I paused where I was. This was not what I was expecting to see, but before I could process much more, the guy quickly snapped his head to the left to look at me, and let out a wholly unhuman hiss. It made me jump back a few steps, and I guess that he took that as an opportunity because he immediately pounced on me, knocking me to the ground.

With him now on top of me, I could see his bloodshot eyes and the dark sunken sockets around them. His cheekbones were also very visible and sunken in. He looked terrifying and severely sick and malnourished. Bridget was now screaming and I was just trying to get him off of me, but I was also still holding the knife. I went in to swing my right arm, my right hand being the knife. the one holding the knife, but this guy's reflexes weren't sane. He locked onto my arm and he bit into the arm, causing me to drop the knife. I shouted a few expletives, and Bridget managed to throw a rock at us.

This must have startled him as he jumped, hissing at Bridget. As she continued shouting and screaming to get off of me, he actually listened and took off, on all fours. He ran so quickly that it almost seemed natural for him. Once he was finally out of view, Bridget ran over to me as I got up and immediately checked my arm. He'd bitten hard enough to draw blood. Of course, now I'm worried about what that guy might have had and possibly spread to me. I immediately poured water and sanitizer onto it, and we quickly tried to make our way to someone who could help.

We ended up at a shortcut back to the entrance and found someone of authority to let them know what had happened. The guy that took my information had a suspicious look the entire time that we explained it to him. At first I thought he probably just didn't believe me. However, he said that this actually wasn't the first time they've had a report of a naked man roaming around the area, but they had yet to actually find him. I don't know if it made me feel better or worse that we weren't alone in what we saw. After providing him with any information that we had, we left,

making a beeline to the nearest hospital to get checked out. Thankfully, all the tests came back negative, and even after more tests at home, I was fine. I got a few shots just in case, but the fear that I may have been infected with something was pretty damn too. terrifying. The rest of the trip was fine, with no other weird people watching or attacking us, but it's something that I'm never going to forget.

Nine out of ten, though, I would absolutely return to the canyons. Hopefully, the other visits will be more chill and fully clothed. I first met Hannah online. I think it was on Facebook through a mutual friend that we shared. She commented something on one of my friend's posts, and I responded to her with a joke about something, and she then sent me a friend request, and that was kind of it. For a while, at least. At the time, I was seeing someone, she was seeing someone, so there was no intention beyond we share a mutual friend and have the same sense of humor. A few years later, I'd get together for that same friend, and wouldn't you know,

know it, we were both single and we hid it off. She was a dream come true for me. Beautiful, smart, funny. She had a laugh that lit up the room, and I fell for her pretty much right away. Before I knew it, we'd been dating for about six months. It honestly felt like that. We met at the party, and then we were together for half a year. Everything seemed perfect with her until then.

when she sprung something on me way out of left field. Out of nowhere, she told me that she had a kid, which is something that should not have been a surprise, right? Those six months that we were together, she never mentioned having a daughter. There were no pictures of her with her daughter on her Facebook. In the time we'd been together, her daughter had literally never been mentioned at all. So, when she came out and said, I have court for custody of my daughter this week.

I was kind of like, I'm sorry, you have court for what of who? Worse yet, she kind of played it off like, oh, my daughter, Courtney, you've met her, I've mentioned her, etc. Apparently this whole time Courtney had been living with her ex, Ryan, her father, and I genuinely didn't even know this kid existed. Of course, I wanted to be supportive. I wanted to be there for this woman that I was pretty sure I was in love with.

But I was taken aback that she was able to hide something like this for so long. I mean, it's not normal to hide a kid from your boyfriend, right? But she was adamant that she had told me about her, to the point that it actually became an argument, one that got pretty heated and pretty loud. After a while, I relented and basically agreed that I probably just forgot, just to try to calm her down. After that, I asked her about the situation, what was going on with the custody battle and all of that. She started telling me about how abusive Ryan was, how he was controlling, and that he had even gotten physically abusive with her at least once.

I asked her how he ended up with custody of her in the first place, and she broke down crying, just completely sobbing about how nothing in her life is fair. I let it go, but I do want to mention that it wasn't lost on me that she avoided the question. Then came the day of court that she had mentioned, and she asked me to be there as a character witness, which, honestly, I wasn't even, even sure was a thing for custody battles, but I agreed.

I suited up and I went with her to the hearing. I just kind of sat there awkwardly and at one point I was brought up during a conversation. She motioned towards me and I had to tell them who I was and what I did for a living, and that was all they asked me. I was basically told that I could remain seated on the bench, and if they had any questions they would call on me. They didn't, and I just continued to awkwardly sit there watching this whole thing play out. That was until one word came out of Ryan's mouth, one that was echoed by the judge, abuse.

It was brought up that the reason he had full custody of Courtney was because of Hanna's abuse of tendencies, abusive tendencies that were, apparently, well documented by the legal system. I don't want to get into all of it, but I think the overall theme of the whole conversation was that she had been abusive to Ryan for a long time, and the relationship fell apart when it was found out that she had been abusive to Courtney, too. This was shocking to me. I hadn't seen that side of her at all.

By the end of the day, it was pretty clear that she wasn't going to get custody of Courtney, at least not full of Courtney, custody like she had wanted, and it was unclear as to whether or not she would even get partial custody. The whole drive home, she was quiet, just staring out the window and crying. I asked if she wanted to come over to my place to talk things out, and she nodded. So we went back to my place, which was a decision that I genuinely regret. We got in, and I sat down on the couch, thinking this.

was just going to be her venting, which I would have totally understood. But she immediately started going off on me. She was screaming that this was my fault, that I was the reason she didn't get her daughter back. I was taken aback, asking her how the hell it was my fault. And she yelled back that I didn't tell the judge that she was a good person, that I should have told them that she had changed and that she was no longer, the person she used to be. I retorted with,

They didn't ask me to say anything. I would have told them all that if they had asked, Hannah. And then she hit me. She smacked me across the face and yelled that I should have stood up and argued for her like a man when they were talking about how abusive she was. The irony in the fact that she had physically assaulted me while yelling about how she wasn't abusive, was palpable. I had to hold my breath for a moment because I was about to explode.

I simply stood up and pointed towards the door telling her that she needed to leave. She told me that I would regret it, that she was going to make my life a living hell if I left her. I reiterated that I just wanted her to leave and that she needed to get help, that I could no longer be involved in her life. and then she said something that haunts me to this day. Whatever I do, it's going to be your fault for pushing me over the edge. And she left.

Now, this was clearly a threat, but I didn't know what she meant by it. And there was only so much that I could do because they were only words at that moment. In fact, they were only words for about two days. until I got a knock on my front door, and when I opened it, I was met with three police officers asking very aggressively if Hannah was in my apartment. I was confused and honestly a bit scared, and I told them that I hadn't seen her and even gave them permission to come in to verify. Not something I would normally do, but this seemed incredibly serious.

While two of the officers started looking around the apartment and clearing the rooms, the third one asked me to have a seat because he had some questions for me. I asked him what was going on, and he asked me when the last time I had seen Hannah was. I told him that it had been a couple of days. He pressed me harder, asking me for a specific time, things that were said, etc. I told him everything about the office. argument, how she was upset about the custody case, and I told him that she had left after she got physical with me, and that was it. He asked me if he could see my phone to make sure that she

hadn't called or messaged. I showed him that the last call was from her that morning that she had court, and that she hadn't texted me since before that. And I told him that I hadn't had any contact with her since then. I then, again, asked what the hell was going on. The other two officers came back into the living room, and that's when they started explaining things to me. Apparently, I was the last person to see Hannah before she went over to Ryan's house. They gathered from him that she was distraught and asked if she could come in, and he told

them that she had said something about me assaulting her, and for some reason he fell for it and let her in. At some point, she had taken a blunt object and knocked him clean out, and then kidnapped their daughter, and she'd been on the run ever since. They wanted to make sure that I had nothing to do with it. I told them that I was not a part of that, that we had broken up that day because of the argument, and I told them that I had not touched her at all, mentioning that she had hit me, and that's when I told her to get out. They seemed to believe me, and told me that if I had heard anything from her, I needed to call them immediately.

I agreed, and I told them that I would, and after they left, I was lost. How had this woman that I thought I was in love with managed to turn so quickly to someone that would go as far as kidnapping a child? How would I never see the signs of who she really was? Was I really that disillusioned? Or was she that good at hiding it? This is pretty much where the story ends for me. After the police asked me the questions, I was no longer involved.

The next day, Hannah was caught. She was pretty obviously being looked for, and she stayed in town. In fact, she actually went to her mother's house and was hiding out there. She told her mom that she had won custody of Courtney, but her mom did not believe her. And the police did show up to ask her questions. When they did, Hannah was there, and she was taken into custody. and that was that. She's doing time now for her acts,

and I can safely say that she will probably never see her daughter again. Is that sad? Absolutely. Courtney doesn't deserve to grow up without her mother, but at the same time, Hannah doesn't really deserve to be in her life for what she had done. I can end this by saying that I know for a fact that Courtney is actually doing well. I became pretty good friends with Ryan after all this.

We ran into each other at a game stop one day of all places, and were able to finally laugh about the craziness. We've hung out, played cod quite a bit, and I can say that Courtney, who just turned nine, is a very happy and intelligent young lady, with a very bright future. for 15 minutes. We'd say that's the

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responsibility So we're on board of Viaray. Embarked and profite. Embarked and relaxe. Cirotay. Bookine. Oh, that also. And profite. Viaray, the voice that we love. Hi, Raven. I've only been listening to your videos for about a week, but I wanted to tell you some of my strangest stories. I have quite a few, so you can pick your favorites. also my timeline may be skewed as these happened in my childhood.

Number one, my family was pretty poor, so much so that we had to live in a tent for one summer. I only remember that it wasn't too far from my grandparents, but we were deep in the woods down a dirt road. It was a very late night, returning from a day elsewhere. As we were driving down a long dirt road, I was staring. out the van window and up into the trees. As we drove to our tent, I noticed glaring red eyes lined up in the trees all the way down the road. Curious, I leaned to the other side to see if it was the same,

and though the trees were farther from the road, the eyes were on the other side also. As a child, I used to call them the red-eyed monkeys, but still today I couldn't tell you what they really wanted. were. We don't live anywhere near where there would be monkeys of any kind. Number two, at some point in my childhood, we lived on an old farmhouse with my aunt and cousins. This house was known for a lot of activity. There was a late night that I had woken up from my parent's bed, two noises in the kitchen just down the stairs from our room. I thought it was my

grandma and aunt as they had usually gotten up really early in the morning, so I went to investigate. As I went down the stairs, I noticed the two of the chairs had been pulled out, but no one was in them, which was unusual. So I thought maybe they moved to the living room where I couldn't see them. I continued my way down the stairs until a few steps from the bottom, when something I couldn't see grabbed my wrist and pulled me the rest of the way. As soon as my feet hit the kitchen floor, it let go and ran back to my parents. There are many more stories of this house, but this was mine. All of these next ones will be encounters with my aunt who had passed.

Number three, I had a favorite aunt, but who doesn't? She was the youngest of my dad's siblings and we did everything together. When I was eight, she died in a car accident drunk driving. My grandma had her body cremated, and her ashes were put in a large pink metal urn. A Christmas after she passed, my other aunt, who worked at a ski resort, rented cottages for the family to stay in for a short time, like a mini vacation. In one of these cottages, my grandma put my aunt's urn in the fireplace and took a photo. of the Christmas tree with it in the background. Sometime later, she was using the family computer at home

to make Christmas cards using that photo. The only ones at the house were her, myself, and one of my cousins. My cousin and I were fairly young, maybe ten or so. We didn't really know much about using a computer, let alone the word program. My grandma had taken a small break to use the bathroom, and my cousin and I never left the couch. We were too into our cartoon show. When she'd come back to finish and print the cards,

she asked us if we had touched the computer at all. Of course, we hadn't. We never moved from our spot. She might have been skeptical at first because she called us over to look at the screen. On the computer was her Christmas card with the original photo of the tree and the urn, but on top was a sort of ghost image of my aunt who had passed with almost angel wings behind her, barely visible.

And a small chat bubble was also now in the photo that read, I love and miss you all. My cousin and I swore to our grandma that we never touched the computer while she was gone. She's always been a believer in the supernatural or paranormal. When she decided that we were telling the children, truth, she started crying, hoping and believing that it was my aunt coming back to say goodbye. Number four, I'll make this my last one. There are many more that I could tell you, but this is already long. This was a few years ago when I was still living with my parents, maybe 2018 or 19.

There was a night that I just had a feeling to start talking to my aunt. who had died whenever I was eight. I don't know what gave me this feeling, but I did it. I told her about my day, my year, just trying to catch her up on things. I didn't talk for very long, as I was pretty tired, so when I decided to be done, I said, good night, Aunt Emmy, I love you, and turned over to try and sleep. As I was laying there, just listening to nothing, I heard. heard a slight scraping sound behind me.

It was small and short, but I know that I heard it. I laid there thinking about it, but I had to get up to find out what it was, as I had a cat in my room also. I wanted to make sure that my cat hadn't pulled down any of my knick-knacks from my bookshelf, so I got up and turned the light on to investigate. For context, I collected small toy horses based on my favorite. computer game when I was a kid. So I had a few

on this shelf. But I also had a ton of other small figures, stones, and other things covering the space in front of my books on every shelf. As I look at the bookshelf to figure out what's out of place, I noticed that one of my horses, an

all-white one, was now on the opposite side of the shelf that I'd had it on. I know for a fact that I had put it on the other end for balance, since I had a black one opposite of it. This white horse was now somehow next to the black horse, facing my bed where I was laying, even though the shelf between the two horses was covered in so many other things. It was not physically possible to slide the horse from one side to the other without shoving everything else onto the floor.

I still think about this, and I still think about this. and I still have no explanation for it. I hope that you like these stories, and maybe one will be told in your video. They all will. I haven't had any paranormal events happen since the last story, but I do have a few creepy sleep paralysis stories. And thank you for reading.

I never personally thought that rekindling an old high school flame could lead to such a nightmare. But here I am. am at the end of a situation that I wish had literally never happened. If anyone can invent a time machine to help me go back a couple months, please let Raven know so he can send me your address. I'll pay you, I promise. Sorry, I cope with humor.

Anyways, I was on Facebook a couple of months ago, and it suggested a face that I hadn't seen in about 10 years. A guy named Alex. Alex was my boyfriend in freshman and sophomore years in high school. But we were both kids and had no idea what the hell we were doing, and so we ended up walking away from the relationship, both heartbroken and thinking that it was the end of the world. It wasn't. We both moved on and grew up.

I added him on Facebook and he immediately accepted, saying that he was just thinking about me. I mentioned that Facebook recommended him, so they must be reading his mind, and we just had a really nice conversation reminiscing and talking about life since then. We were both kind of in the same places in our lives. Single, not really looking, no kids, focusing on our careers, etc. We even met up for coffee twice just to talk about nothing in particular, and it was kind of nice having him back in my first.

friendship circle, because Alex always was a cool dude, and he and I were pretty good friends both before and after our two-year relationship. Overall, it was nice, and I was happy to have him around again. But then came Alex's most recent fling, Shawna. I randomly got a friend request from her on Facebook, and when I clicked through her profile, I noticed that she had pictures of her and Alex with hearts all over them. I was a bit confused because Alex was pretty open about the fact that he was single, so I asked him about her.

He mentioned that she was an ex of his from about a year prior, and that they hadn't spoken much since then. I thought that was even weirder since she had pictures like they were a recent thing, but shrugged it off and moved on. I decided why not accept it. Maybe I could get a few secrets about Alex and tease him about them, jokingly, of course. That was a mistake.

She immediately started commenting on all of my posts, liking all of my pictures, even the ones from years ago. It was a bit flattering at first, but then it caught really. weird. She then sent me a message about Alex, specifically about our relationship in high school. I told her that we were just kids, and we thought that it was a serious thing, but that we realized that there was a lot more to life than our silly little relationship.

Then she came back asking how far we went, which was an incredibly invasive question. I told her that I really didn't feel comfortable talking about it, and she started asking specifics. Like, had I specifically done this to him, and had he specifically done that to me? I was a bit sickened by this, again, really personal stuff that was not appropriate to talk about to someone that you just met on Facebook. I told her that I was done with the conversation, and that if she kept it going, I was going to block her. To which she sent me a picture, a picture that included her and Alex in a very compromising way. I'm not going to detail it, and I immediately blocked her after that. I made it a point to tell Alex what she had done and said, and he apologized profusely.

He said that it was really messed up, and that he had no idea why she would do that. He mentioned that they broke up amicably, that she wanted kids, and he didn't. And it caused a rift that could not be fixed between them, and they really just hadn't spoken since. He also mentioned that he would message her asking her what the hell was wrong with her. I thought that that would be the end of it. But it wasn't, of course. About a week later, I was sitting at a coffee house having a drink with my bestie, and out of nowhere this woman walks up to us and sits in the chair next to me at the table.

I kind of looked at her like, what the hell is this woman's problem? And then it clicked who it was. It was Shawna. But she did look a bit different. Shorter hair, differently colored, but the same face. I could feel myself go pale as she stared at me with this messed up smile and just said Hi Emily

I could tell that my friend was just as uncomfortable as I was and I just said Oh hi Shana She laughed Saying that she was scared that I wouldn't recognize her without Alex on top of her And then said that we needed to talk I told her I told her that we really didn't need to talk and that she should just leave me alone,

but she literally laughed and waved me off. She started in telling me that I needed to back off from Alex, because they were soulmates, and that they were going to be together for the rest of their lives, and that there was nothing I could do about it. I literally responded with, Okay? And she laughed again.

No, it's not, okay, Emily. You are in my way. Alex left me because of you. He thinks he's still in love with you and he's not. He's in love with me. And we're going to have a beautiful family. She moved her arm and grabbed my hand that was sitting on the table as she stared at me. If you get in my way, I'm going to kill you.

Then she turned to my friend who was sitting at the table and said, I'll kill you too since you're a witness. We both just sat there silently staring at her, probably shocked at how brazen she was about this. She then sort of nodded and said, Okay, I think we understand each other. I'm going to head out for now. Bye.

In a seriously chipper tone, she got up and just walked out of the coffee shop like it was nothing. I'm not going to lie. I was terrified of this woman. She was clearly insane and she was clearly obsessed with Alex. And she somehow knew where to find me on a random Saturday morning. I have no idea how she found me. I had no idea what she was capable of.

I messaged Alex right then and there and told him that she was crazy. I told him that she had just shown up and threatened me and my friend. and then mentioned that we should probably keep our distance for everyone's safety. He again apologized, saying that he didn't know why she was doing this, that there was no way he was going to get back with her, and that he had no idea why she thought he had feelings for me. He did agree, saying that we should probably not talk for a while, until he could clear it up with her,

and that he was going to look into getting a restraining order. And that was pretty much it, to be honest. It's only been a couple of months since that happened. And I'm honestly still horrified that Shauna's going to show up at my door with a gun, because Alex turned her down. I haven't heard from her, and I haven't seen her, but every time I get a Facebook notification, I tense up. This woman was obsessed with this idea of a life that she was never going to get.

and I was apparently preventing her from achieving that life by simply existing, I guess. In the end, I took a very important lesson from this. Sometimes, it's best to just leave the past where it belongs. Behind you, I used to be a park ranger for the lovely Shenandoah National Park out in Virginia, back in the late 80s. it was a much simpler time for sure, a bit more difficult for communications. Nobody was carrying a mini-computer in their front pockets yet, that's for sure. That simplicity of the past, however, was able to harbor some deep and dark secrets,

sometimes more so than how things are now. Obviously, Shenandoah is not Yellowstone. It's probably not even known by most people out there. and it's nowhere near as vast as the Rockies, but there is still plenty of wilderness out there to lose yourself in, sometimes more literally than you would ever wish for. It was starting to turn to fall, and the leaves were beginning to shift over to those patchworks of reds, oranges, and yellows,

but there was still that hint of green, and there were still a few days left of that, in-between weather, where it can get fairly warm, in the days, but also pretty cool at night. As such, we were not dealing with a lot of campers, or tourists that wanted to get out into the park. But there were still a few stragglers that wanted to squeeze in that super late vacation before the school year got into full swing.

That's actually how this all started. I'd done my rounds on the grounds, and everything seemed pretty normal. there really wasn't a whole lot to report. Then, late that Saturday afternoon, I got a call over the radio. One of the families needed assistance locating someone. At first the details were sketchy, but I quickly learned that it was a family

with a mom, dad, nine-year-old son, and a 13-year-old daughter, and the 13-year-old daughter, Ellie, was missing. When I got that detail, I started to feel a bit ill. I have a pretty strong resolve, but a 13-year-old girl missing in the woods is not something that you want to hear,

because the worst-case scenarios will always play in your mind first. I drove up and talked to the family about what was going on. I was informed that Ellie and her brother were bickering a lot, typical sibling stuff, and she told her mom that she was going to take a walk, because she didn't want to spend any more time around her brother. Her mom agreed and told her to stay close, but she had not come back since then.

It had been about three hours, and her parents were starting to get frantic. The sun was already setting, and time was not on our side. I radioed back to the station, and we got a search team put together pronto. Search and rescue at Shenandoah was pretty tight, knit. We knew what we were doing, but something about that evening was feeling off. Not like we were scared that we wouldn't find her, but more like the air had a bit extra chill to it. Or I was a bit more sensitive to the cool breeze. Thankfully, if anything, it was just going to be light jacket weather, and the odds of Ellie succumbing to the elements was rather low. There was obviously, there was obviously. There was obviously,

obviously other things to worry about, mostly wildlife, but I was keeping those thoughts out of my head, hoping that this 13-year-old girl had just gotten a bit lost, and that we would find her rather quickly. We searched the rest of that afternoon for several hours, into the night. We were searching, calling out for Ellie, looking for any sign of this girl. Our search unit was split into four groups, each with two people and were covering decent ground. While it had been a few hours since anyone had seen her, we didn't feel like a 13-year-old girl would cover that much distance. And being young, she was likely to get tired and stop at some point. We got several hours into the search and the darkness started to hit me with that

sense of dread that comes with being out in those woods late at night. Even as it got late into the night, my partner, Pat, and I were not willing to slow down. I was ready to go through the entire night trying to find this girl. We did pause for a moment to take a quick break and get some water, eat the food that we brought with us and to recoup some energy, but then we would be right back out there. As we paused and ate, we were both silent, just thinking and listening to the night's sound and seeing if,

if we could hear Ellie at all. I did hear something, but it wasn't Ellie. It was, however, unsettling. As I sat there and ate my granola bar, I started hearing what sounded like a soft humming. I paused my chewing and just listened for a moment. The humming sounded calming, like a child's lullaby.

I glanced over at Pats, and his eyes were on me, and wide. Like, you hear that, too? We quickly packed up and started heading toward where we thought it was coming from, continuing to call out for Ellie, but keeping quiet for the most part, to see if we could decipher exactly where it was. As we kept on, we ended up coming out to a clearing in the trees that was brightly lit by the moonlight. The humming stopped the minutes that we hit the clearing,

but the silence that replaced it was almost stifling. The air got colder, and I swear I could see our breaths in the moonlight. We didn't hear anything. There was nothing to cause us to be alarmed, but something was incredibly off. I swear this small area was so still and silent that I could feel the earth rotating underneath my feet. Pat made a comment about radioing back to the team to see if there had been any progress on the other side. I grabbed the radio and asked for a status update from the other teams, but nothing came back. It was completely silent.

No matter how many times I hit the buttons saying, This is Blue Team, can we get an update? There was never a response. I asked Pat if we should head back to meet with the rest of the crew. and figure out what we should do to expand the search, and he immediately agreed. I think that he was freaking out about the feeling that this part of the woods was giving off. I was too.

I was just better about hiding it. We started making our way back, and about 20 minutes back towards the campground, a voice came over the radio saying, Blue Team, please respond. I grabbed the radio immediately and responded. telling them that we were here, and that we hadn't had any luck and were heading back towards the camp. The voice on the other end sounded a bit confused, asking us where we were.

I told them our approximate location out from the camp, and they then asked why we hadn't been responding. I was confused now, saying that we had been trying to get a hold of everyone else, and that they weren't responding. and then the voice mentioned that they'd been trying to reach us for an hour to no success, that Ellie had been located, and that they were preparing to send a team out to find us. When we got back to the camp, I talked to the other teams about what had happened. They told us that, about an hour prior to us getting back a hold of them, Ellie had been located about three miles in the opposite direction.

She was shaken, but... otherwise okay. She was asked what had happened, and she mentioned that she was out for a walk in the woods, and that she had actually gone the direction that me and Pat went. She decided to go back to the camp, but for whatever reason, she could not seem to find her way back.

She had a compass, and she'd been walking in a straight line in the woods. But when she turned around to go back, it seemed like the compass was pointing in the wrong, direction, and she walked for a long time until she realized that she was super lost. What's strange is that Pat and I went straight north. If she had gone that same direction and somehow turned around but over walked, she should have been straight south, but she was found three miles to the northwest, which made literally no sense. Even stranger, she mentioned that she

heard the humming in the woods too, and that that was what made her scared, so that's when she turned around. She didn't mention ever getting to the clearing, though, just the humming. Obviously, we were glad that she was found, confused by the humming and the fact that they couldn't reach us for quite a while, and a bit chilled over what we'd experienced out there. But I guess that that was all in a night's work. Just a random fun fact to note, as this story is pretty much over. Pat and I actually went back out to that area about two weeks later,

when there weren't any campers out, and we walked in the same direction that we had, for about the same amount of time, and we could not, for the life of us, find that clearing again. We were certain that we should have entered it at some point, but it was just not there. It was super weird, and I have no idea what that forest is hiding or what was going on that night. But it was apparently temporary.

Obviously, this was going on 40 years ago, so I no longer work there. I'm retired, but this was one of the weirdest nights that I'd experienced. I do have a few more stories that I could share with you at some point, and I might when I get the time. time. But hopefully this one is sufficiently scary for you and your listeners. I have experienced numerous examples of the paranormal and or high strangeness throughout the years, but the events during the early hours of December 12, 2021 represented a new watershed for me. I had gone to bed around midnight, and, as far as I'm aware, slept soundly for around three hours. Then, I awoke, feeling slightly groggy for the first few seconds, then quickly becoming

fully conscious of my surroundings. I was laid on my right-hand side, which meant that I was looking towards the middle of the bedroom. I live in a late Victorian house in the UK, built in 1890. Though long since boarded up, there is still the original fireplace in my bedroom, and the original mantelpiece is also still there above the boarded-up fireplace. The mantelpiece therefore still serves as a four-and-a-half-foot-long, by six-inch-wide shelf on which to sit several ornaments. The end of the mantelpiece is about three feet away from the right-hand edge of my bed, so I laid there that night, in real terms, between four to five feet away from me. I was astonished by what I saw.

there was what appeared to be a 10 to 12 year old girl stood there facing the mantelpiece and she was close to the end of the mantelpiece that was nearest me she was apparently fascinated by one of the ornaments in front of her staring intently with her hands held up as high as her face she was wiggling her fingers tentively as if tempted to touch the ornament but not sure whether or not she should.

But her weird, exceptionally long, bony fingers were just one minor feature compared to the other details that I registered, as I watched her in silence for about 20 seconds. She was around four feet tall. She literally glowed like moonlight. She was sort of semi-transparent. I could discern some very faint pale pink and blue lines beneath her. her skin, which I guessed were veins.

She wore a short, plain sleeveless dress, which appeared to be the same translucent moonlight gray color as her exposed limbs. She was skeletal thin. Her hair was darker than her body, mid-length, but very thin and stringy. I could clearly see her scalp showing and glowing through. She made no sound and there was no smell. I felt no threat whilst watching her. It was obvious that she was far more interested in the ornament than she was interested in me.

But then the mood changed. I did not become scared. It was more like a growing resentment that this ghost was not welcome. She should not be there. She was invading my private place, seeming to me more like a trespasser than a scary apparition. So I finally reacted. I shouted at her, an almost comical roar and lunged toward her.

My outstretched hand not quite reaching her, maybe still around a foot shy. Her head swiveled around with an owl-like motion, and she looked at me full on. That was when she stopped looking like a 10-to-12-year-old girl and started looking more like an it. There were features on her face that were now visible to me that had not been apparent at all during the 20 seconds or so that I had watched her inside profile. Her eyes were jet black, and very large in relation to the size of her face.

She only had half a nose, the left-hand side. The right-hand side of her nose was missing. It appeared to have rotted away so that you could see the bare bone and cartilage. and the rot extended down through the top lip so that you could also see the top of two of her teeth through the gaping hole. Her closed mouth below the hole was very thin-lipped, no more than a two-inch-long slit. She stared at me for two, maybe three seconds, with no facial expression as such, but something about her eyes still somehow indicating surprise.

Then she disappeared in the blink of an eye. No slow fade, no floating away through the wall, just there one second and then gone the next. So there I lay for another few minutes. As I previously alluded to, I've seen plenty of weird stuff over the years, so I wasn't feeling scared or panicky. I was simply wondering who or what the hell it was that I had just observed. Where had she come from? Why had she appeared now? Why was she, or it, apparently, transfixed by an ornament?

Was it actually the first time that she had visited my bedroom? Or did she visit frequently? And this was just the first time I had awoken in time to observe her. I kept rerunning the event over and over in my mind. And then several more thoughts occurred to me. Why was she so visible one second and then gone the next? Was it because she was so fascinated, so absorbed with the ornament that she was distracted to the extent of lowering her guard? Had she effectively forgotten to render herself invisible because she thought it was sound asleep and oblivious to her presence?

And what could be so bloody fascinating about an ornament? So that's when I got out of bed. I noted the time display in my alarm clock. It was 3.45 a.m. Put on the light and stood in front of the mantelpiece right where I estimated she had been standing. Which ornament had been the center of her attention. I firmly believe that it was my small, hand-carved wooden elephant. Technically a family heirloom.

It was originally owned. by my grandparents, quaint, yes, even cute, but nothing really special. Then, I registered what else I was seeing. I started this account by stating that the events of the early morning of the 12th of December 2021 represented a watershed for me

despite my numerous other paranormal experiences throughout my life. Why? Because for all the accounts that I could relate to you, Until then, I had never been presented with any tangible proof. No physical evidence to back up those accounts. They could all be easily dismissed later as dreams or hallucinations, or attention-seeking lies or schizophrenia,

and or all of the other lazy explanations usually put forward by people who are not there to experience any particular event for themselves, and often seemed to take comfort, sometimes even pleasure, in dismissing an honest account rather than keeping an open mind and allowing it to potentially challenge their own view of reality. But this time, it was different. There in the dust on the mantelpiece, next to the wooden elephant,

was a doll-sized part handprint. It measured around half the width of my hand, although the fingers seemed freakishly long and spindly in relation to the width of the print. Then, I remembered another small detail that I had not fully registered, whilst were playing the event through my mind earlier. When I had shouted at her and her head spun around, one of her upraised hands was simultaneously dropped down towards the mantelpiece. The part handprint left in the dust was the result. The girl had been somehow physically present, not just an apparition. So I later took photos of the part handprint, and yes, I still have those photos in my possession.

And, just for good measure, I have another photo of a subsequent handprint she left in the early hours of December 25th, 2022. Am I under any naive impression that some photos would be sufficient to convince all? and sundry that my account is genuine after all? Absolutely not. But the very fact that I have those photos created an important distinction, for me, at least. Hence, my reference to a watershed. So, have I now given a complete account of events in the early hours of the 12th of December 2021?

Well, no. Actually, far from it. more was still to follow that morning, and to some extent, is still occurring up to this day. It appears that, quote, Little Miss Skeletor, as I've come to call my visitor these days, is somewhat attached to me, or at least likes to pay a visit now and then. If you are interested to hear more, then, sure, I'm willing to share. I'm also open to any constructive ideas about who were what. what my visitor may actually be.

At this juncture, my favorite theory is that she can only visit at certain times, usually between 3 a.m. to 4 a.m., and arrives and leaves, via some type of portal that exist in my house, a portal that is closed or blocked most of the time. My reason for formulating my portal theory are actually based on other paranormal, slash high strangeness events that I experienced long before 2021. In any event, I hope that you found my account interesting, and for some who have strange experiences of their own, perhaps even helpful. After all, my rationale is that if there is no sense of real evil or danger during a paranormal

event, then there is no need to become scared to the point of threatening your mental and or physical health. For instance, if Little Miss Skeletor actually wanted to harm me, it would not be that difficult whilst I slept. If she can leave a partial handprint, then in theory she could press down a pillow over my sleeping head, or get up to heaven knows what other mischief to my detriment. But she doesn't harm me.

So, I do not get all scared and or worked up about her. her visits. I'm more inclined to think that she is actually just curious, and, or even just bored most of the time. It's just a shame that she doesn't share more secrets about wherever it is that she's from. Now, wouldn't that be interesting? Hey there, to start off, I've had some weird, odd, and unexplainable events happened to me. But the one that I'm writing about is probably the weirdest one. So it was my best friend's birthday party, and we were waiting for all of our friends to arrive. She suggested that we go into her room while we wait.

Just a note, it was me, her, and her step-sister, who was the same age. We headed up to her room and sat on her bed talking about stuff going on in school and stuff like that until we heard a subtle knock from inside her closet Her sister got up immediately and whipped open the door She stood there staring into the closet I asked my friend what was going on and she said watch and look I looked on the closet and a few seconds later two pairs of jeans fell from the shelf.

They both laughed. I sat on the bed in shock, trying to comprehend what I had just witnessed. Her dad came upstairs and yelled at them to stop throwing stuff on the floor, and they both said okay. When he left and closed the door, both of them told me that that happens often,

and they haven't told their parents about it yet. My friend told me that they lived in a house built in the 1800s. It looked that old as well, and there was bound to be at least a few lost souls or evil entities of sorts. I soon realized that this was true later. When everyone arrived, we all took turns playing on an Oculus. They all left except my friend's step-sister and my other friend from school. I was playing until I felt something hard pushed me over. I fell hard, hitting my head on a wood box.

Thank goodness I didn't get any injuries. I yelled up both of them asking why they threw a mattress or something at me, and they said they didn't. When I took the oculus off, they were sitting on the bed, on the other side of the room. So I just assumed that my body just gave out. The thing that scared me most was when we were eating cupcakes. Don't get me wrong, it was scary. We got the cupcakes and all, and we sat down.

The cupcake flew out of my hand and landed icing first on the dirt. This was outside. I picked it up, and the two dots were compressed into the cupcake itself. This wasn't even the scariest part. I showed my friend who had the birthday party, and they said that was weird, because she had a cat and a dog that died in this. same place that we were eating, and it was on the date of the birthday party. And lastly, the thing that made shivers run down my spine.

We all went inside after playing, and we went inside to watch the new Little Mermaid movie. There was a corner in the living room, and a couch sat in front of the corner with a little space or hideout, as my friend called it. when Ariel was singing part of your world, a loud whisper came from that corner and was mimicking the song and everyone heard it. The parents didn't hear it, though, which everybody thought was weird. Everyone was trying to convince the parents, and the parents did say this, though, that someone had died in that house on November 15th of 1989. the exact year and month and only two days before the original Little Mermaid was released. I have been a fan for about two years now, and I finally mustered up the gall to submit my stories.

I'm from South Africa, and we have every bit the weird and wonderful and outright scary happening here, but that's a story for another time. I apologize for being wordy and this being long. I experience what you would call lucid dreams. I've been having these types of dreams ever since I can remember, although I only began to take notice of them once I became an adult. My sister seems to think there's some type of clairvoyance that's been passed down from our mother, but heck if I know.

In November or December of 2021, I was gravely ill and on strong medications plus bed rest. During one of my fevers, I had one of my dreams. I'll premise this by saying that my house is very nearby to the area where everything takes place, and that in my dreams, all of them, home is familiar, but the setting is different. An example, my house will look different, but the interior is the same. Anyway, in the dream, I'm in the town square when water begins to rise and people begin to flee. In an attempt to flee, we get into vehicles with each other. Mind you, we're all strangers here.

And we're crossing the bridge to get to safety, and, at this point, the water is so high that the bridge is beginning to bob. We managed to get across just in time, and while driving up to higher ground, the end of the bridge were small businesses and residential areas, so the higher ground. The banks burst, and the brown swirling waters of the river spew over, flooding the road and into people's yards and businesses. As fate would have it, the water came to a stand just one block away from my house. Talk about Lucky. I began dreaming this every time I had a fever until the first week of January 2022.

I was freaked out about it, and my partner told me to call home to see if everyone was okay, since I live in a different province from them. I told my sister about my dream, and she said maybe it wasn't indication that I'd be crying soon. Our mom was fighting cancer, so we thought she would pass. and that the breaking of the river bank was us breaking down, but that wasn't the case here. Lo and behold, the very next week, my hometown was receiving heavy downpours, and rising river levels to the point that it burst the banks, and flooded the neighborhoods, falling just short, and, you've guessed it,

one block away from my house. My partner sat in awe of the news, saying that I saw the future. He was reading an article which stated that total strangers pulled together in vehicles to escape the floods in town, and that the bridge swayed as the rapid waters overtook the bridge. I, on the other hand, was freaking out because I began to wonder if I dreamt of death, would it come true? I have since had a few other dreams come true, but nothing quite like this. I have been an avid hiker and camper for most of my adult life. I'm into all the outdoorsy stuff, but for the life of me,

there is one thing that I experienced back in the late 90s that I cannot shake out of my mind. This was back whenever I was in my mid-20s, so, I was pretty mentally and physically fit. No hallucinations and nothing that would have caused me to imagine things. I've tried to rationalize all of this, and for some reason, I just can't seem to get through it in my head. I believe that this would have been in 1999, specifically because I recall that there was a lot of build-up and talks about Y2K,

and people were saying the satellites were going to fall. out of the skies, and that the government was going to take over the banking system or something stupid. I don't remember it all, and I didn't really care because I knew that it was all a joke, and that none of that would happen. Unfortunately, my friend group at the time was a bit weird, and they were all panicking and prepping and whatnot. I decided that I wanted to get away for a while, so I figured, why not get away?

from everything, and every one, and do whatever I wanted out in nature. When I wanted to get away, I used to spend a lot of time hiking in a specific national park that was up in Maine, because

I loved all of the secluded and complex trails that existed. There were some pretty gorgeous views off of the cliffs and the large bodies of water, so I knew that if I just spent a couple of days out there, I would feel much better.

The first day was just as beautiful as I had expected. I started early, so I got to wake up to the sun coming up over the cliffs. I got to watch the dew slowly raise off the ground, and feel that cool but humid wind blow across my skin. I'm not going to lie, those memories are serene. I did my hikes. I absorbed the energy that the National Park. emitted, yes, I'm that kind of person.

On the second day, I wanted to push myself a bit more, and had decided that I was going to take a specific trail, the Sargent Mountain Loop. It's not really a popular trail, or at least wasn't. I have no idea if it is now. So, I got all of my stuff together, filled up my bottles and headed out early in the morning. The start of the trail was exactly as,

I had anticipated, mostly wooded areas that opened up to rocky formations, streams crossing here and there. It honestly was a nature trail at its best. But about 30-ish minutes into the hike, things started to get weird. The first thing I noticed was the trail markers. I've done enough trail hikes to recognize a trail marker, and to know that they're usually small things like paint on trees. but some of the markers were really strange, almost like runic symbols.

I don't know Jack about runes or whatever, but I know that they usually have weird lines that go in all directions, or whatever. And that's what these were. They weren't just normal markings. They were drawn symbols. I thought that maybe it was just someone messing around or a vandal or something like that, so I pressed on and just pretended that they weren't there. But then the atmosphere felt like it changed.

The air got thick, almost like walking through molasses. Each step started to become a chore, probably what it would feel like if I went to go do the trail nowadays. But back then, I was a fit young man and I knew that I could do the hike. yet for some reason I was feeling like I was struggling to even take a single step on top of that

I was starting to feel like I was getting hit with anxiety and was hyper-focusing on the silence that was surrounding me at this point I decided that I needed to take a pause and catch my breath that something wasn't right that silence honestly felt rather unnatural and as I took notice

I started feeling this weird sensation of being watched. The hair on my arms started to bump up, and I was feeling the chills on the back of my neck. It wasn't just being watched. It was like I was being watched from every direction. Like no matter where I turned, it felt like there were eyes behind me. The rational part of my brain kept trying to tell me that it was just nerves. But that primal part that has survival and survival,

as its only goal, was saying that there was something dangerous going on. I immediately got up and decided that I needed to go ahead and wrap this hike up. I started to walk as fast as I could physically push myself back the way I came down the clearly marked path, until there was no path. I was walking, and as I kept down the trail, I hit what was basically a dead end, which made no sense. There was no trail continuing in front of me. It was just trees.

No markings, no clearings, and no diverging path. It was as if someone had been playing a Sims game and had just erased the path right there. Admittedly, I started panicking at this point. My heart rate skyrocketed and I felt the sweat starting to beat up on my forehead, in spite of the cool air. And all the while, that sense of being watched was feeling like it was getting worse. I tried to retrace my steps back the way I had come from, the way that still had the trail, but every turn I took seemed like it was just part of this really strange and broken trail maze. Each one made me feel more disoriented than the last.

This is where things hit their worst. As I was breathing heavily, panicking, feeling like the world, was spinning around me, I swear I started to hear voices. It was like multiple people talking in unison, and it seemed to be coming from wherever I was being watched from. If I had to give it a better description, it was like a siren's call. It was beckoning me towards the trees, deeper into those woods. I knew that I needed to get the hell away from this spot, but I was, I was beckoning me towards the trees, deeper into those woods.

but I had no idea where I was. It had no idea where it was coming from, and I felt like I was getting sick. I just picked a direction and took off, assuming that I was going the right way. After a few minutes of running at a full sprint, I collapsed. I remember running,

I remember my legs feeling numb, and my face feeling like it was vibrating, and my vision pinpointing. I had this thought that I was going to pass out, and then the ground came up to meet my face, and I was out. I woke up probably only a few moments later, and to my surprise, I was just off to the side of the trail that I had been looking for. The markers were back to normal, and they were all clearly visible.

I pushed myself up and looked around thinking, how the hell did I get back here? But there I was. I sat there for a few moments, taking a few drinks of water and catching my breath, and when I thought I was okay, I headed back to where the trail started. There was literally nothing wrong

with the entire hike back to the beginning. This was a terrifying experience for me, one that got me to never go back to those trails. I talked with a friend of mine that was also an avid hiker, one that knew those trails as well, and they had no idea what had happened, saying that the trails are fairly obvious and marked, and that none of them come to a straight-up dead end like that. He mentioned that it could have been dehydration or exhaustion,

or possibly an anxiety attack, and I just agreed with him, mostly because I didn't want to talk further about it. Whatever it was, it was not any of those. It was something else. There was something in the woods that day that had malicious intent, and I don't know how I escaped it, but I did. I dread to even consider what could have happened if I hadn't. I met Karen at a summer barbecue that was hosted by a mutual friend of ours.

She was a bit of a wallflower at the party. She didn't seem to want to bring too much attention to herself, but I thought that she was cute, and after a couple of drinks, I figured, why not go and introduce myself to this rather cute and shy gal? I think she was surprised when I walked up to her and just introduced myself. But we hit it off pretty quick. She made a joke about something that I apparently thought was hilarious

and my slightly buzzed stupor. I laughed way too loud and caused a bunch of people to look over at us, which made her blush a bit, which made me think that she was the cutest thing ever. My point is that we were pretty much bound to get together, and I think that we both saw it. So we started dating, and for a while things were heavenly.

We would go on long drives, have picnic dates in the park, and we even spent a weekend on my couch watching some TV show that she loved. But as the weeks turned into a couple of months, I did start to notice some unsettling traits in Karen. She had a bit of a temper. I don't mean the, I'm not in a good mood, please don't talk to me, kind of temper. I mean the, if I'm in a bad mood and you do anything wrong,

there's going to be a new hole in the wall kind of temper. She would get explosively angry over the most trivial things. Like if I forgot to buy milk at the store, or if I had spoken to a female co-worker for too long. I tried to be understanding. I thought maybe she was going through something and she just wasn't ready to talk about it or something like that. But I'm also an adult.

and I'm not going to be controlled or chastised for things that really don't matter in the end. We ended up having a pretty massive fight, one where we both said words that we probably shouldn't have, and it was at that point that we decided to break it off. We clearly were not as compatible as we thought. She packed up the few things that she'd been keeping at my place, and she left. The apartment honestly felt eerily quiet without her, and something about that silence actually had me feeling pretty depressed.

I spent most of the evening lost in thought, replaying parts of our relationship in my head, and doing what I should not be doing, drowning my sorrows in alcohol. Yes, I know it's wrong to pour your emotions into a glass and then drink them until you don't feel them anymore, but it's what I did. I eventually passed out on the couch, the TV still playing in the background. I woke up rather slowly and groggy the next morning.

My head was hurting, and I was hesitant to open my eyes. I could tell that it was light out because the sunlight was peeking through my eyelids, telling me that it was probably around six or so in the morning. morning. When I finally did open my eyes, thinking that I needed to get up and go to the bathroom and start my day, I was surprised by what I saw. Karen was sitting right there in the armchair across the coffee table, holding a rather large kitchen knife in her lap. My heart stopped. For a moment, I thought that I still had to be dreaming, that this was just some weird drunken nightmare playing out in my head, but the look in her eyes told me that this was all too real.

I managed to choke out the words to ask her what the hell she was doing there, and she just stared at me with this blank and emotionless stare. She was completely devoid of all emotions as she sat, and watched me struggle to comprehend the situation, her hand still gripping the knife's handle. I... I just want you to know that I've been here all night. And... I really consider doing it.

She dropped this sentence like she was just trying to tell me something in passing. Like, it didn't mean anything more than the words that she said. Those words were suffocating, and I cannot overstate the fear that I felt in that moment. She stood up from the... chair, placed the knife on the coffee table with a clattering noise that honestly made me jump, straightened her sundress out, and then walked straight out the front door. I sat there on the couch feeling paralyzed and really unsure of what to do.

Should I call the cops? And tell them what? That my ex-girlfriend broke into my apartment while I was drunk, sat in my armchair to watch me sleep and contemplate. I don't think it's illegal to think about murdering someone. And she still had a key, a detail that I hadn't thought about when she left, so I'm not even sure she did anything illegal. She scared the hell out of me, that much is for certain. Instead, I did what I could do. I asked the office to change the lock on my apartment, informing them that,

I had an ex-girlfriend that had a key. I had to pay for it, of course, but it was a small price to pay for my safety. I also sent a message to her sister, letting her know that she needed to get help, informing her of our fight and what she had done that morning. I'm pretty sure that she blocked me after that, but, oh well, at least someone knew just in case. It's been about a year since this happened, and, I haven't heard from nor seen Karen, but

that memory definitely lingers. I absolutely cannot sleep on the couch anymore. I sleep in my bedroom every single night or any time that I want to take a nap. And

I lock both the front door and the bedroom door whenever I do. This is, without a doubt, the closest I have ever come to dying. And I'm pretty sure that if she had just been pushed, just a little more, she would have done it.

Hi, Raven, it's me again. This event happened this past Wednesday, when my hubby and I took a walk to our local gas station in the evening for water refills and some ice cream as the spring heat unleashed its wrath upon us. I'll premise this by saying that it is not unusual for me in particular to notice strange movements in the sky, as that's my favorite thing to do. Most of the time, it's what we assume to be satellites, the Starlink type. And if we're lucky, a few shooting stars.

Where I'm based in South Africa, we don't really see shooting stars often, unfortunately. On to the occurrence. We had walked barely 30 meters out the gate when I see a bright flashing red light. At first I thought it was a reception tower, but my brain was like, no, girl, that's not it. And I turned to my hubby pointing to it. He looks up and nonchalantly says, It's just an airplane love, and carries on as if it's just a normal thing.

To be fair, it is a normal thing to see airplanes in the night sky, so maybe I was just freaked out. Who knows? Anyways, at this point, I'm not having the airplane explanation and stop abruptly in the middle of the road to prove him otherwise. Because for some strange reason that I can't shake,

I point up again and we stare at the sky for a good few minutes. I reiterate that it is not moving at all, and this is not normal. It continues to flash bright red, and we walk on slowly with me not moving my eyes, until it suddenly just blips out of existence, like it was never there. Strangely, I felt relieved, and while I sit here in type, I cannot tell you why. Hubby goes on to say that it must have just been a satellite,

and while I guess that could be a possibility, that feeling of uneasiness says otherwise to me. Has anyone experienced anything similar? Or am I just kooky? Because this lives in my head, rent-free. So I was riding with my wife and my sister's husband. I was in the back of the car due to the fact that I had to sit sideways to fit into the car. I was sitting facing the side window.

and I saw this Mustang Mach 1. For those of you that don't know, it's a muscle car from the 70s that is considered one of the best Mustangs. This Mustang was in the process of being restored, I guess. It had a flat paint job, and the body looked a little rough. However, the engine was sounding nice. So I shot this guy a thumbs up as my brother was also big and into muscle cars.

I knew the amount of work that went into getting an old car to sound like that. He smiled at me and gave me a thumbs up back, and then revved his engine. This is where it gets bad. Trigger warning, as this involves injuries and death after this point. After he revved his engine, it seemed like something went wrong. The car leaped forward, and he looked surprised. That was all I could see at that time because he was past us and moving fast down the road. The car lurched to the side towards the curb and impacted hard.

I watched a burst of dust and debris fly from under the car. I think his rear tire blew. This caused him to rebound and fly across the lanes of traffic into oncoming. He then hit a minivan head on, And the both just stopped. My brother-in-law stopped his car. My wife and I jumped out to see if we could help. My wife had some medical training, and I have had some first-aid training through work.

She went to check on the minivan, and I went to check on the Mustang. My brother-in-law was getting out flares to warn other drivers. This part still gets to me because I feel partly responsive. When I got to the Mustang, the driver was partially arched over the bench seat. The Mustang's bench seat didn't have a headrest like modern cars, so just below his shoulders was over the seat. I know this may sound cliche, but I saw the light go out of his eyes. I knew that he was dead.

I had just watched him die. I still went up to check his pulse, but there was nothing. I can't help but blame myself, partly for the thumbs up. Maybe if I hadn't done that, he wouldn't have revved his engine, and then this whole thing wouldn't have happened. The driver and the passenger and the other vehicle were okay. One had a broken wrist, and I don't remember if the other had anything, but minor injuries. I do have to say that the paramedics got there fast. By the time I checked the Mustang driver's pulse and stepped back,

the aid car had already arrived. The paramedic confirmed my assessments and then moved on to the minivan. Thank you, Raven. I was listening to your road trip stories and was reminded of this. Keep up the great work. Hello, Raven. Longtime listener, first-time submitter. I'm also a content creator on YouTube, so I'll be leaving my real name out of this story.

Trolls. You know how it goes. What I'm about to tell you, I swear is 100% true and actually happened. Keep in mind, I'm very skeptical by nature. And when I listen to some glitch in the Matrix or paranormal stories, I can't help but think how much is embellished or straight up fabricated. So, for the listener like me hearing this, I am telling you on my life that these two unexplainable events really happened to me and are not embellished. Some quick preface. I am a Christian, and 100% believe in things such as the spiritual world, and even the esoteric and the astral. The Bible even talks about the spirit world

and to stay away from things like magic, esoteric, and the like. What makes my unexplainable situations so odd to me is that there is usually a light, positive or dark, or evil connotation with supernatural experiences. In my two cases, however, it was neither. It didn't feel evil, it didn't feel good. Just neutral, I guess. But extremely odd and bizarre.

Anywho, enough backstory. Here are the experiences. True experience, number one. When I was very young, say about four or five years old, it was the early 90s, and our entire family would have a tradition of watching America's funniest home videos with Bob Sagitt. A lot of 90s kids will remember this. We also lived with my grandparents at the time, so it was my mom, stepdad, and both grandparents all together, that would almost nightly watch and enjoy the silly video compilations.

Well, this is where I get goosebumps. One night, as we watched this show, there was the usual grainy video submission. The video submission shows an infant in a booster seat, maybe about two or barely three years old, and his family is singing the happy birthday song to him with his birthday cake on their small dining table. I'm watching this on TV, and while they sing happy birthday, I start to see a very slow, rising, transparent, brown alien-looking figure emerge up from the cake. It raised up to about mid-chest height and was scrawny and weak-looking.

To put it into perspective, the size of this boy's cake was about the same height of how much this brown, see-through alien creature raised from it was. It had pitch-black enlarged eyes, but not the stereotypical bug-looking alien eyes. These were almost like human-sized eyesed, just pitch black and a bit larger than normal.

And it had a smile that was pitch black as well. No teeth. It almost looked cartoony, and I also remember its neck being really stretched. So I'm only four or five years old seeing this. No one else in my family watching reacted to this clearly supernatural thing being shown. It was as if I was the only only one. only one that could see this happening.

They were just chuckling at whatever was funny in the video. If I saw this as an adult, I would probably faint or run out of the room, but being a young kid, I see this, and I wasn't scared at all. Just more confused and trying to make sense of why this was supposed to be funny. I also understood enough in my world at that age that what I saw was not something, that was normal to see.

I never brought this up to them when I saw it, though. I just kept it to myself. And check this out. I swear that this is not a joke. Some moments of time pass. I can't remember exactly, maybe a few months. And we watch a rerun of this episode. And they show the same video submission.

I see the exact same thing again, but this second time, I recognize the submission and I'm looking to see if it happens again. And sure enough, it did. Same reaction, though. I wasn't scared or even felt anything evil from it. Just more confused on what it was and that no one else in my family saw what I was seeing. I still kept it to myself.

I'm really not sure why. So, fast forward decades later, I remember this happening to me as a child. So I try my best to search on YouTube, and anywhere on the internet for that matter, the same video submission that I saw as a kid from those early 90s episodes. And I can't find it anywhere. I looked for a long time. I cannot find that video submission anywhere. I have a very good long-term memory, and I'm certain I was not dreaming when this happened.

It was just very odd. True experience number two. This next unexplainable experience happened during my teenage years. So I think I was maybe about 12 years old. I was, and still am to this day, a big gamer. So young teenage me was staying up very late one night, playing a PlayStation 1 platformer game called Skull Monkeys. Very underrated game, by the way.

I wholeheartedly agree, and I love that game. I was 12 with no job or income and somewhat of a lower-class family, so it was rare that I would be able to have games bought for me. Because of this, this was a game that my parents would let me rent from blockbust, several times. So, this one particular night, I was playing it, and I did my best to beat it, as I know that I would have to return the game back soon. I stay up to about 3 a.m., and I play a graveyard level with ghost figures everywhere in the foreground and background. Interesting level type that I was playing considering what happens after.

I couldn't stay up another minute, so I called it. it a night and turn the game off. And then I head to my bunk bed to sleep. So I crawl to my top bunk, my little brother sleeping below, out like a rock. And I'm laying there, ruminating on the game and humming the graveyard level's

background music in my head. Then I hear clear as day in the corner of my room, a bizarre, almost otherworldly sound, which can only be described as, as a digital xylophone. I can't mouth the sound that had played over typed words, but it was basically a brief series of single notes played up in a major scale, then played back down in the same scale.

This wasn't from any toy or object in my room. I knew my room then very well. The sound was just something unexplainable. And again, no feeling of evil or good, just an unexplainable glitch or whatever you want to call it. However, safe to say, though, this one freaked me out. I hid under my covers with my heart sinking down to what felt like my feet. I've probably never been more scared.

My younger brother was fast asleep and obviously didn't hear anything of what I heard. It was terrible. I had no choice to stay in my top bunk under the covers, and I was running on fear and adrenaline hoping that whatever the hell made that bizarre noise wasn't anything malicious. I also didn't know if this would happen again, or had no idea what in the world made those series of digital notes. But that was it. The noise never returned, and I eventually was able to fall asleep. Just like this one, I never told my family what I heard.

Thanks for letting me share these true experiences that I had. And thank you for reminding me that skull monkeys exist. Hi, how are you, Raven? I wanted to say that you have a cool channel. Your Australian accent needs work, but I'm happy that you're sharing some Aussie stories with people. Thanks. I live next to one of the national parks in New South Wales. Living this close to nature means you get to...

deal with the wildlife and some of the weird local characters. Bush fires, floods, that sort of thing, too. And idiots who think they can just head off into the bush without bringing supplies who rarely manage to stumble in. You also get the things that people don't really talk about. I haven't heard any Aboriginal legends about the land around here. However, they are supposed to be some sacred sites, and they're pretty secretive about it.

Given everything, I understand that. Anyways, I was out on the veranda having a beer in the late Arvo. It was dusk, the sun was still up, and I'm pretty sure that it was in the summer. Before you ask, no, the beer wasn't a fosters. No one in Australia drinks that. I think it was a VB or a Tuhis. I thought I saw someone standing at the edge of the end of the same. of the tree line, they weren't moving.

As I said, sometimes bushwalkers would go into the bush and get lost. Normally they would hurry toward any building they saw to try to get to safety. I waved at them, expecting them to either wave back or screw off. It just stood there staring at me. I thought it was one of my mates being a cheeky prick and started to walk over there, with my beer in hand. I didn't see anyone over there, though. I called out a couple of times to be sure.

I hadn't really had that much to drink, so it wasn't back. I walked back to the veranda and my blue cattle dog named Red was barking. His job is to bark if people come close, or if there is a snake nearby or something. I asked him what was wrong, and he kept at it. Eventually, I just told him to shut up. I'd had some things to do, so I wasn't watching the tree line like before, and I nearly missed it. When I looked again, I saw this time that the shadow figure was back, and this time it was joined by three others. They didn't really move.

They watched me, and since it was darker now, I didn't feel safe going over there alone. I went in the house and looked up any reports of people being around or who were lost. There was nothing. I didn't want to be inside. Red kept going to the doors and windows and barking. I don't believe in ghosts or any of that spooky BS. I kept the outside lights on all night. Whenever I looked out the window, there was no one there.

I freaking hated it. I couldn't sleep in my bed that night, so I stayed in front of the telly to distract myself. There were some crappy ads. sometime during the early morning that woke me up. I got up to get a cuppa and realized that it was dawn. The sky was pink, and it already looked like it was going to be a killer storm rolling in. I couldn't help but check the tree line, and I saw them again. I called a mate to come stay with me.

I didn't want to be seen as a little wimp, so I didn't tell him why I wanted him to come. He drove out, and we sat with our VBs on the veranda, watching the storm. He was telling me about some Sheila that he was seeing, and I finally told him what happened. He took a mouthful and told me that I must have annoyed the spirits somehow, and that they were telling me to behave myself. I don't know what I could have done. I thought at first he was pulling my leg, but he didn't laugh or joke. He stayed the night on the couch since he was freaking plastered, and it wouldn't be safe for him to drive through the storm.

I woke up with a massive hangover and went to grab a cup of coffee when I saw that there was a bloody sheepheads on the veranda. What the hell? I screamed for my mate to come and look. I don't have any sheep where I am, but one of my neighbors did, and I would guess that they were his. It almost looked like the heads had been torn off. I don't want to get into trouble with my neighbor or the cops, so we buried them and pretended not to know why it happened. The shadow people in the bush didn't appear anymore after that.

I don't know if that made them happy, or if that was their way of warning me. It's messed up. I don't know what I did to make them angry with me to begin with. I've had experiences with paranormal encounters my whole life, and people never believed me until I met my dad after ten years of not knowing him. I'm 15 years old.

I had spent this summer with my dad, and one night he handed me a bell that had belonged to his mom that had died three years prior. He asked me what I felt when holding the bell, and it felt cold. Like not normal cold, but cold, cold, like freezing. And he told me that it belonged to his mom that died a while back.

He told me that she had always wanted to meet me and my older sister, but what I didn't know is that I had met her before. Her spirit had come to me at my grandparents' house about a year ago. She looked at me and said, You have my nose. And she smiled. I told my dad about it, and he was shocked and asked what she looked like. I told him reddish-brown hair and green-blue eyes, and that she was about 5-1, my height.

He just stood there staring at me. He let me keep the bell after he realized it was meant for me, and when I was 11, I had a friend named Bella Grace, who would sit in my closet and bring me clean-cut sandwiches. It turns out she was an entity or spirit, and has been following me throughout my life to this day. I can also feel people's emotions, in a way. I can feel when people are upset, and my dad also knows about that too because he'd come home from work, and when he walked in, I started crying because I got a big wave of anxiety and anger from him.

He hugged me and asked why I was crying, and I asked him, What did she say? It was bad, wasn't it? I was talking about his girlfriend that is complicated. And he said, How did you know about that? And then I told him everything. I know most people question me, but that's okay.

I still sense and see things around me, and I just choose not to say anything to people. Hi there, Raven. This is a long story. but it is true. I'm not sure what it was that my friend, who passed away not that long ago, and I had seen that night.

Anyway, here we go. I'm from Adelaide, Australia. This was going back either to 1989 or 1990. My friend Tony and I were just teenagers about that time. It was nighttime, around nine or so. and close to around Easter. I met Tony in our local football oval, just to hang around and chat like we usually do.

We sat on a bench near the goalpost and just were talking about what teenagers talk about. About 20 minutes had passed since we sat down, and I realized that Tony went absolutely quiet for some reason. I only realized this while I was looking at the ground and asked him something, and he didn't respond. I looked up and turned to face him, and I saw his mouth wide open, and his eyes bulging out of the sockets. I said, hey, Tony, what's wrong? Then I quickly looked towards the direction that he was fixed at, and saw nothing.

But then I basically went cheek to cheek and slowly turned my sights to where he was looking, and that's when I saw what had made him quiet. across the oval on the opposite side where the goalposts are, I saw what I thought at first was a tree trunk on fire. I said to Tony, some idiot set that tree on fire. But the longer I looked, the clearer it got. There was no tree on fire, because there was no tree where this pillar of fire stood.

Then, while both of us were looking at this thing, staring. The two of us got up in unison and started walking towards this thing. While walking, I blinked my eyes, rubbed them, and even turned away and then looked again. But that thing was still there. I pinched myself hard to make sure that I was not hallucinating. Also at that time, I noticed that there were no cars on the main road that was alongside the oval, and no wind.

No noises of anything really, just the sound of our feet walking on the grass. We walked to the middle of the oval, basically where the cricket pitch is and stopped. We were staring at a nine-foot-tall, human-shaped entity on fire. Now this fire was not orange like you see when you're lighting up a lighter, but this was a very red-looking flame. Tony turned and bolted, running back to where we first saw this thing, but I went even closer, maybe eight more meters, and then stopped. Then I looked at this thing's feet, and then slowly started to look up.

I saw the shape of its legs, waist, torso, head, and hair. Now where this thing stood, it looked like the wind was making its long hair fly up about to its end. It also had this almost dull white aura around him. I have to mention that when we were walking towards it, it was almost like we were being controlled. I had no fear, but when I saw the aura around this entity, a small knot of fear in my gut got bigger and bigger until all of my body screamed to get the hell out of there.

That's when I turned around and ran for my life. I remember just seeing tone, Tony clumsily jump the chain-link fence, about waist height. The poor dude's legs were not working well. In that exact time, I saw another friend of ours, Brian, who was walking along the footpath. Brian was 18 at that time, who Tony then ran towards and wrapped his arms around the waist of our friend, and was crying with snot coming out of his nose and trying to speak. but he wasn't making sense.

Our friend Brian said, What the hell? Get off of me. What are you doing? And tried to push Tony off of him. And that's when I jumped over the fence and said to Brian, Dude, did you see anything or do you see anything at the Oval at goalpost? And with an angry tone, he said no.

With that, Tony let go of Brian and ran back home. and I did the same. It wasn't until the next morning that I called Tony and asked him if he could tell me what was it that he'd seen that last night. When he told me that he saw a tall human on fire, that's when I said, yeah, I saw the same. It took maybe two years after that. Whenever I used to cross that Oval to go home,

I refused to look at the direction of where that fireman stood. Now, I'd like to know, was this a fire elemental or some evil entity that we saw that night? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. And thank you for taking the time to read this, Raven. I also want to say that I love listening to your narrations of stories that you tell. They are fantastic. Well, thank you. This happened around 1988.

I was still living in my hometown in Virginia and had just graduated college in 1986. I had a small group of friends that frequented the local dance club on the weekends, and we had decided to hang out at the apartment of a girl in our friend group that lived in the same apartment community as me. The girls all decided to participate in a Ouija board session and lit candles to set the mood. my boyfriend at the time also attended this impromptu late-night girl party, along with his longtime friend who was of German descent.

But they ridiculed us and decided to sit on the couch and not participate. We took turns asking questions, and determined that any question was to be private that no one else would know the answer to. I thought about my question, and decided to ask of a particular gift that my grandmother had given me, In my mind, the answer was a white nightgown. Someone else had asked a question, and the board spelled out something that seemed to be in another language. My boyfriend's friend knew exactly what it was saying, because he said it was answering in German.

I don't remember exactly what the answer was, but it was true for someone and freaked us all out. When my turn came around, I asked my question. and immediately the board spelled out, J-O-J-O. All the girls looked at me and asked what that meant, and at first I had no idea. But then, it suddenly occurred to me what it meant. My own mother had been given a toy as a child from her parents,

my grandparents, that was like a jack in the box. But it was very old, like from the 1940s. and it had a string that if you unwound it from a button on the front of the box, a clown popped out of the box. The label on said box said Jojo. At that moment, I decided I was done with this thing and decided to just go home. We ended the session and everyone left. My boyfriend was with me and walked me home to my apartment.

To this day, I believe that some nefarious speech, it was there with us, and I vowed to never touch that thing again. My mother passed away just a few years ago, but I still have the Jojo toy packed away in my closet as a memento from my mother. This happened a few years ago when I was 17. I was a senior in high school at this time. I was not on drugs, medication, or alcohol leading up to or during this experience. I went to bed late that night.

Only my dreams started, and I was on the ceiling looking at my sleeping body below. I saw a dark figure on the side of my bed. It was blacker than the pitch-black room, and seemed to be very hairy or furry. I don't know how to quite describe the appearance. Most of it was just a dark blob, but I know that it was hairy because it kept. kept reaching over and touching my face. I felt it tickling my face, and my sleeping body would instinctively reach out and touch the spot that it had touched,

and I could feel it. I could feel the tickling sensation, and I could feel my own hand brushing my face off. I did that for an unknown amount of time, just reached out, messed with me, retreated and repeated it for presumably out, But eventually, it looked up at me. I could see its eyes and its mouth somehow.

I don't recall there ever being a light that showed its face, but I could see that it was looking at me on the ceiling and it was smiling. It then focused back on my unconscious body and sprung on to the bed, its arms swinging wildly as it attacked me. I was dragged down from the ceiling back. to my unconscious body and woke up. I was shaking all over, how I think a seizure would feel, as if I was vibrating. Of course, whenever I woke up, the entity was gone.

It is important to note that I have a gray cat. He often sleeps with me, right on my chest or against my neck. That night he was on the opposite side of the bed on the far corner. When the thing jumped on to the bed, I watched from position on the ceiling as the cat ran away. When I awoke, the cat was gone, which is out of the norm. It's not unheard of, but typically the cat wakes up when I would get up in the morning. I would post this elsewhere, but it's important to state that later in my waking life,

I was out in a state park, way too late, around four, am. I saw that entity across a clearing in another tree line. Again, I could see its face, and I knew that it was beaming at me with a smile. I don't know how, but I just knew that it was smiling. I've not seen the entity since then, and these incidents were only a few weeks apart. Hello, Raven. As everyone says when they submit a story, I've been a long time listener. I love your work, and it's been great to see the podcast grow so much over the last few years. Thank you. I have personally had a few of what I would classify as paranormal experiences in my life.

Nothing too severe, but this one left me kind of chilled. I guess that it can be classified as both a sleep paralysis and a glitch in the Matrix story. My wife works as a nurse. at our local hospital. She had up until last week worked a 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. schedule. But because of our children's schedules, a little girl aged two years and a little boy aged four months, she switched to a 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. schedule.

Less days, but longer days. This event happened yesterday morning. My wife was getting up and ready for work, around 5.45 a.m. When our son woke up crying. She made him a bottle, burped him, changed him, and got him back to sleep. That took a good chunk of time, and it was about 6.10 when she came in to say goodbye to me. I was in the groggy half-stage between a sleep and awake.

Those of you with ADT and similar security systems know that when a window or door is opened, the system chimes to let you do. know that a sensor has been triggered. This is a primary safety function, and one of my favorite aspects of the security package that we purchased. After she left and I heard the faithful ADT security system chimed that the front door was opened, I immediately fell back asleep. And that's when the weird things start.

I entered a dream. One of those fully fleshed out dreams that seemed to be a little. so real that it was frightening. In my dream, my wife woke me up again after leaving, excited about an app that she found. She knows I love horror, and with the Halloween season coming up, it just seemed like a perfect time to show me. The app was an analog horror story about a man named Williams' interaction with an

Onrio, a Japanese spirit of vengeance. In my dream it was still early morning, so I fired it up to read it out. And sure enough, the game starts with a series of journal entries about the protagonist's interactions with the spirit, and photos that he had gotten of the spirit. This app was terrifying to the dream me, and I opened the Play Store to look up reviews. And all of the reviews were saying the same thing. This app is terrifying, and after a certain amount of time, I started experiencing my own paranormal activity. There were a dozen or so reviews that said the same thing, so Dream Me deleted the app and the dream more or less faded out.

This is where it gets even more perplexing. I've always had the occasional bout of sleep paralysis. Nothing terrible, no malevolent beings. no hat man, nothing like that. My typical sleep paralysis entity is a black cat that joins me on the bed. I imagine it's because I used to have a cat named Kitty. Very creative, I know, when I was little,

but she's been dead for almost a decade. And it's almost comforting to have these paralysis events. But I haven't had an experience like that in a few years. I woke up and was obviously in an episode of sleep paralysis. Couldn't move, couldn't talk, but I was almost fully conscious. I was expecting my usually harmless feline friends to enter the room and climb in bed. But that's not what happened. I heard a shuffling above me from our ceiling,

and as far as I could tell, a being was burrowing through our ceiling to get to me. It dropped to the floor next to the bed, and I felt its eyes staring at me. It went on like this for a few minutes, but eventually I heard it shuffle out of our room, into the hallway, creak on the hardwood in our living room, and then open the front door. I knew it did, because of the ADT chimed signaling that it had been opened. The paralysis did not subside. and I had the feeling of eyes on me for some time. I imagine it was staring at me through her bedroom window.

The paralysis ended and my daughter woke up, and I heard her footsteps coming down the hall. As a parent, you learn the sound of your children's walks, especially on hardwood. So, I roused myself up, and with the dream and paralysis experience still in my mind, I texted my wife the whole experience, and asked her if any of it were true.

She had left that morning, and our security cameras confirmed it, but she did not return, and she did not show me a horror app. I then searched the App Store for this app, and, surprise, surprise, it doesn't exist. Our security cameras and ADT app showed that no one left the house, or was in our yard after my wife left. I have no idea what to make of it. Not only did I create a whole horror app in my dream, I also had a strange sleep paralysis experience that,

more or less, went hand in hand with the concept of the app, and the experiences the app users complained about. What does it all mean? If I have any similar experiences, I will post an update. I tried to condense this as, much as possible, but it spans most of my life. SP refers to sleep paralysis, and before 22 this all takes place in Aurora, Missouri.

So I have SP, undiagnosed. But one of my first memories I have is waking up in my bed, probably at the age of 10, and not being able to move. But seeing a very tall, dark, gray, being resembling what most people would call an alien. It was hiding in the corner of my room. I remember not feeling scared, but was more so startled that something was in my space. About four years later, we moved to this very old Victorian house, one of the first built in the city.

Sometimes in the summer, I would play video games in the basement to escape the heat. and right above where my TV would sit, there was a hole in the wall leading to the crawl space under the house that was pitch black and very ominous. While down there one day, I went into a sort of trance, and when I came to, I was still sitting where I was, but staring blankly into the dark hole for an unknown amount of time. This house was so old that it had two sets of stairs,

one for the people living there, and the other for the servants. One day I was headed down these servant stairs, staring at my feet, and I looked up to see a girl at the end of the stairs in a white gown, with black hair in her face, almost exactly like in the movie The Ring. Another time I was home alone, and I heard something upstairs run from one room to the other, and it was so loud that my dog started.

stood up and looked at me. I did go upstairs to check every room, but found nothing. Then, no issues for years that I remember. And then fast forward to about the age of 22. The sleep paralysis is worse than ever, and at this point, I cannot sleep without having the feeling that something is watching me. It's interesting to note that when I would go,

were very far, like being deployed to other countries, I would be okay for about a month, and it would start again almost like it took a while to find and travel to me. Then I started seeing things while not being asleep. At one point, I can't remember if I had fallen asleep, or if I was in the process, but I looked up and saw the same girl as before from the Victorian house on my ceiling right above my bed, and I jumped up to turn on the light, and it was gone. After that incident, I've never slept without a light on ever again, although it didn't really help. At the beginning of 2021, 27 at the time, I would try to fight my body to try to get it to move

during sleep paralysis more and more. After fighting it so much, I would start waking up without being able to move, but also hear a loud ringing in my ears, and feel extra daisy, almost like being hit by a stun grenade. I also started hearing noises of something being moved or manipulated, like someone touching or moving things. Some things would fall randomly, but not very often. often. I also bought a town home and have always heard loud walking and scratching in my upstairs

crawl space while completely awake. My girlfriend also hears it and refuses to sleep upstairs when it happens. I went to check when she begged me to look in the middle of the night, and there was nothing there. Not even a place an animal could get in. I also had an incident where my girlfriend was crying downstairs in the dark. while visiting me. Her dog had run away back home.

And she looked up to see what appeared to be me standing there by the stairs, shrouded in darkness. Not being able to see the front of the form due to the dark, she called out to it thinking that it was me. There was no response, and when she wiped her tears to look back, it was gone. The O.P. has added an edit. I forgot to mention my neighbor that I share a wall with at my town home, has also stated that ever since I moved in, her bedroom and hallway light turns on and off by themselves throughout the night. It all happens less frequently now, but I still never sleep in the dark.

I also have never felt rested and thought I had sleep apnea for the longest time, but was tested and found not to have it. any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Hey there, friends. I hope that you enjoyed this collection of scary stories on this episode of the As the Raven Dreams podcast. If you did, make sure that you follow the podcast on whatever platform that you're utilizing. And if the platform you are on has a rate the podcast option, please consider doing so. Those ratings push the podcast into the algorithm, and we all know how the algorithm controls everything, so yeah.

I also do have a Patreon. If you go to patreon.com slash as the Raven Dreams, you can support the channel further. For as little as a dollar a month, you can get early access to all of my content in audio format. The content's a little different, as it's based on what I upload to my YouTube side, but it's the same stories. just in different collections of stories than how they're presented here. Speaking of stories, if you have one you would like to submit to me, please go to as-the-ravendreams.com and click the button in the middle of the screen that says submit your story.

These stories are mostly sourced by listeners, so let's keep the podcast alive. If you've got one, I'd love to read it. Anyways, friends, I hope you're all having a beautiful day and a lovely week. And I hope I see you again very soon. But until then, remember you're loved, you're valid, you're important. You're the best you can be. Never forget it. And until next time, much love and sleep well.