As The Raven Dreams Podcast - ATRD Ep. 127 - Chilling Past Life & Other True Scary Stories - 16 True Scary Stories

Episode Date: June 8, 2024

Welcome to the chilling 127th 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... 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... spooky_b1tch, LifeIsButADream_, FearFactory007, Joedamonke, Few_Maintenance_8151, bluebird6878, LairdPeon, olmudbone, N3Rumie, RobinJeans21, ZoeAndSophia, Mis, SoItGoes, williamiscool500, pearl nestor, Carla Base... As Well As Any Author That Has 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. 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. I experienced something with my first kid that I never could have been prepared for. Between family, friends, and forums, you learn a lot about what you need to know as a first kid. time parent. My daughter, Sophia, was an unexpected but welcoming surprise for my husband and I after being told that, due to medical conditions, it would probably be difficult for me to become pregnant. We had tons of help and support from others, but there are just some things you have to learn on your

own, such as how to handle certain conversations with your children, or even how you help them grow up and learn as they go into school. When Sophia started school, she was ecstatic. I know a lot of kids are. I was when I was younger, too. She couldn't unbuckle her seat fast enough to get out of the car. She told me a nearly minute-by-minute rundown of how her days went, but I loved it. I loved hearing about her day.

The good, the bad, the scary for her. She always told me how she felt about everything, too. I was happy when we got to do this. I got scared about that, and so on. But when it came time for her to start learning how to read and write, she seemed to struggle a bit. She said the letters were confusing to her. I assumed it could have been the letters that looked similar,

like maybe B, P, and D, or maybe some more abstract ones like O, C, and Q. So I told her I would help her, and we got some flashcards and other activities to help. They seemed to help some. She was learning the difference or understanding them, but unlike other assignments or things she did where she got animated after figuring it out,

she would just be still and explain that she did it. When I asked her about it, she said that they looked funny to her. I mean, how do you explain to a kid that that's just the way the words are and that you can't change them? because I didn't know how to. But then, I began to find hints that may explain the confusion for her.

One day, while cleaning up Sophia's room, I found some papers that she had colored and scribbled on. She liked to take paper from the printer and draw on it, and we were okay with that. I thought that she showed us all of the work that she had done, but I had never seen these before. But it also wasn't just a picture she drew. These papers had different symbols on them.

Symbols I had never seen before. They were drawn in semi-straight lines. Sometimes scribbled out and rewritten. Some of them were slightly changed, like a line drawn fixed or something like that. It was just so strange seeing these everywhere. Curiosity got the best of me, of course, and I asked her about it. I asked her what was the picture of, and she quickly corrected me.

It's my name. I'm trying to remember how to spell it. She lit up when she told me this like I was used to seeing her. I giggled about it. Knowing kids can have quite an abstract drawing to only tell you that it was a simple flower, right? But letters were something that she was learning, and I felt that it was appropriate to correct her, to help her with it. I showed her how to spell her name, showing her each individual letter and slowly annunciating it.

Once I was finished, her smiles slowly faded, looking more faked than anything. But she looked at me confused and insisted that I was wrong. She slowly pointed to the symbols telling me what each of them were, just as I had done for her. But what she was saying was not English. I didn't know what, she was saying, I asked her to explain more, but like an exasperated parent or teacher,

she had her hands on her hips and told me that that's just how they were. She then went into talking about something else entirely. After some quick playing and finishing her cleaning, I left the room, with the drawings in hand, all except for one. She asked to keep one of them saying that she didn't want to forget again. She had several, so I had no issues with letting her keep one. I was just confused by the statement.

I put the drawings aside, continued with my day, and to be honest, forgot about it. While Sophia was at school, I had been on the computer looking for something in my desk, when I spotted the drawings again. The curiosity all came rushing back to me, and I wanted to look into it more. One of the coolest things I've learned is how you can draw letters and symbols in a translator, and it can tell you what it is. So I slowly and meticulously drew these symbols the best I could, and it answered some questions.

The symbols my daughter was writing were Arabic. How on earth did she know Arabic, and where could she have learned it? I can't say that we were super careful with what we watched around her. She seemed to really understand the difference between real life and fake movies. We didn't watch anything graphic around her, but we still watched some more than PG-13 kind of things. But even after asking my husband, we could not think of anything we may have watched that had an Arabic writing in it, especially to that extent. But based on what I found,

Sophia was writing something to the effect of A-I-something-A-N. I don't know if I was writing something wrong or if Sophia did, but it seemed to kind of break in the middle. But what I was putting was definitely those letters. When Sophia returned home that afternoon, I asked her about it.

I showed her one of the papers that I had taken from her, her room a few days prior. I pointed to them, and I asked her again to help me with the letters. I spelled it out like I did above in English, but she was pronouncing them in Arabic. In between both of us confusing each other, I was finally able to get her to break it apart more and I could see the middle letter that I was missing. It was a D, so now I had A-I-D-A-N. I was trying to pronounce it to her, and she laughed and said, No, Nadia. She wrote it backwards?

I tried to mention this, but she again laughed and said, No, that I was in fact wrong and sounded it out, pointing from right to left. Again, I let it go, telling her that she could go play while I continued to look into the name. But once I put the symbols in, as Sophia explained, sure enough, it read back to me as Nadia. Sophia was definitely writing in Arabic. But the mystery still remained on how she knew this. I again left it alone that night, after showing my husband what I learned. He was just as astounded by it as I was.

When I was getting Sophia ready for bed, I brought it up one more time. I mentioned the name Nadia. She confirmed it was her name. When I told her that her name was actually Sophie's her. Sophia Grace, she agreed, but said Nadia was her original name. I asked her if she knew Arabic, since that was how she wrote it. She smiled and agreed, saying English was new and different to her, but that she liked it. That definitely could explain why it was harder for her to start learning how to read and write.

It was a completely different language for her, and it was written from left to right. I then asked her about her name, about her knowing Arabic, and she happily explained more. She explained the home she used to live in. She explained how it was always hot, and the homemade bread that her mother would make. She even said that she was sad that it was over because she missed her mother, but she knew that she had to go, that God had told her it was time. She explained it like how a parent would tell her it was time to go home. I asked her how that happened, how she had talked to God and she got quiet, claiming she couldn't remember.

The change in her mood was pretty noticeable, and what she told me already was not something I would have ever expected in my life. I certainly didn't want her to recall something traumatic, so I wasn't going to push it. I'd heard stories about past lives before, but it was never talked about when I was a kid, as it wasn't something my family believed in. I looked into it a lot more after Sophia's recollection. If I was skeptical at all before, I definitely wasn't afterwards. A past life was the only explanation that I could come up with. If she just heard one word or phrase, maybe from someone or a movie or show,

I could explain that away. Especially if where she heard it from also included the story. of a young girl with her mom. But the fact that she could pronounce the symbols correctly, and that she wrote them from right to left, and later she could even write more letters, she was trying to write out the whole alphabet, I believe. I just couldn't explain that.

She had to have learned that, or known that from something deeper. And the change in her demeanor when I mentioned meeting God, that nearly gave me the chill. I was convinced. I didn't want to press the matter, since on any given day it didn't seem to cause her any distress. She didn't have nightmares, and the most difficult part for her, just seemed to be learning how to read and write English. So, there seemed to be no reason for us to do anything about it.

Sophia is 14 now, and she doesn't talk about Nadia anymore. And she also doesn't write nor speak Arabic. I thought it would be really cool to learn it with her and maybe look into her life possibly, but I think I'm happy just knowing that we both got to share this experience. Lasagne surgellé, puissance-molyne for 15 minutes. We'd say that's their dojo. Pre-to-joo? Vive the pleasure with the Ojo.

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on a small dirt road with a few neighbors who also live on our small street. It's a quiet place. We all know each other and get along decently. Given that we host a little bonfire sometimes and invite the neighbors around to grill and have a few drinks, we often discuss things that we've seen lately in our little patch of forest.

A group of lovely deer, a mischievous raccoon, or the odd wandering bear often are topics of conversation. However, inevitably we often end up on the subject of a mutual experience that most of us have had, with unexplainable phenomena happening around our homes. It's no secret that my woods tend to make people a bit uneasy. It's dark, it's quiet, and that tends to make people tense. I'm definitely no different. I don't go outside at dark if I don't have to,

and I get spooked at times when an animal makes a ruckus. There are some things, though, that I just can't attribute to animals. To start, I have to go all the way back to when I was 13, when I first moved on to this property. I often felt watched, at night. I was terrified to sleep without the lights on. I tried my best to ignore it, but I was honestly terrified to be outside at night or be here alone. For my 14th birthday, I decided to face my fear so I could pitch a tent outside and camp in the yard with a few good friends. One of them

left in the middle of the night because they were so anxious. Another left early in the morning after barely sleeping at all. The last friend stayed a couple extra days, but was creeped out the entire time. She claimed to have briefly seen an apparition of a pale woman with dark hair standing in our yard and felt something touch her at night. She was truly terrified, and I could tell. When I tapped her shoulder, she startled very easily and almost hit me out of fright. This was very abnormal for her.

I spoke to my uncle who lives next door about the woman she saw, and to my surprise he claimed to have also seen the same apparition multiple times. He wasn't even surprised when I brought it up. I moved out not long after this, but recently moved back. Since returning as an adult, I've heard several stories from my family and neighbors about weird phenomena like this. my uncle has seen the lady, but also shadow figures, and heard some unnatural noises coming from the woods at night.

As a man who has lived out here for 40 years, he's very familiar with the usual sounds of animals and nature, and he didn't think these sounds were natural. His wife has also seen shadow figures and weird masses of black energy. She claimed to have been pushed over by an unseen force, after witnessing one of these black masses of energy. She has never gone outside at night since. My grandmother claimed to have been chased by a shadow entity

several years ago on this property while walking back from my uncles. It stopped at her front door and watched her while she cried and called my aunt and uncle for help. Understandably, they said nope and told her to light some sage. A couple neighbors have claimed to have seen similar shes. shadow figures, as well as the apparition of the lady on occasion. I still feel watched, and I regularly cleanse my house to keep whatever it is out there as far from my home as possible.

A good friend of mine when I first moved back in, called me with concerns over a dream that she had. This was before she had ever seen or set foot on my property. She described my house and property perfectly. and described seeing the same pale woman that multiple people now have seen. I was understandably shaken, considering she'd not once been to my home at the time, and I hadn't really discussed the weird happenings with her. She spent the night one time and refuses to do it again.

My street is super creepy, and I have come to accept that something more is here. With all the shared experiences, I can't deny that something is out there. It's been here a long time, and it seems to make itself known to anyone who spends enough time out here. Today, someone knocked at the door, and I opened thinking it was someone from my parents, and the whole experience was odd. There was a short, older, late-60s Hispanic woman, looking down holding some pamphlets. and a tall 6-4 Hispanic man with sunglasses and a cap wearing a leather jacket.

He seemed strange since it wasn't even a sunny day, and didn't even look at me when I opened the door. He stood a few feet back from the woman looking up at the siding. I looked back at the woman, who was now looking up at me, but still not saying anything, and then I noticed her eyes. They were light green slash gray. ray, and the pupils were thin slits. I couldn't stop staring.

I was frozen, not comprehending what the heck I was looking at. My toddler ran over to say hello, and I felt afraid and instinctively closed the door with just my head peeking out, and she still hadn't said anything. Usually, Jehovah Witness people would have started talking by now. Maybe she hesitated to speak as she saw that I was uncomfortable. After staring at each other for what seemed like forever, I forced myself to break eye contact and looked down at her hand to see what she was trying to pedal. They were brochures of pictures of Jesus,

and she stuttered in Spanish that she wanted to make an invitation as she flipped through the brochures in her hands but never actually handed one to me. I would have taken it to be nice, but she didn't. So after a short pause, I politely said no thank you and closed the door. I looked out the window and didn't see them go to any other houses. They just disappeared. I thought it was strange that they would drive to my neighborhood, knock on my door, and then drive away without trying the other houses.

For all I know, she was probably just a normal old Jehovah. Wova's Witness Lady, but I have never in my life seen or heard of anyone with eyes like that and was terrified. Has anyone else seen someone with eyes like this? I googled it and came across Colaboma, but it looks nothing like what her eyes were like. They were literal thin slits. Contacts, maybe? But that's weird for a woman in her late 60s to be wearing cat or snake eye contact. And just for the record, the location of this was in Washington State.

So, I want to start off this story by mentioning that I have disassociative identity disorder. My name is Ms. and I'm the only one in my system who is experiencing something like this. Basically, I can remember living an entire life up to the point of being 22 years old that I never actually lived. I have pretty severe memory loss and a strong feeling of disconnection from the life that I'm living now, which makes these fake memories feel a lot more vivid and real to me. And I'm not sure if this implies anything,

but all of my memories from my current life are in third person, while the memories from my past life are in first person. So this entire situation can be explained by me having D.I.D. since fake memories or pseudo-memories are somewhat common with it. But it's always felt like something more than that. And I figured you all would find it interesting either way. Anyway, I'll just summarize all of these memories to the best of my ability. I grew up in a trailer park somewhere in the Midwest.

My mother was an alcoholic, and my father was out of the picture. The town was very small and rural. the kind of town you drive past on a road trip and don't think twice about. I can picture it clearly in my mind. Badly maintained roads with no lines or sidewalks. Ancient buildings with cracked bricks and dusty windows. I can even remember the smell of motor oil and dirt. I lived in that town until I was 12,

when my mother and I moved into a tiny apartment in a city a few hours away. I found a group of friends at squire. who stuck with me until I was in my twenties. The oldest was Mac, who was two or three years older than me. He always wore a red beanie and tucked his shirt into his jeans. He was pretty tall, with curly reddish-brown hair and stubble. I remember having a major crush on him for a few years, and eventually losing interest when I was 20.

Then there was Landon, who also went by Lauren sometimes. She was only a few months older than me, but she acted like I was five years younger than her. She had long, dirty, blonde hair, and often wore a turquoise flannel. She was pretty wild and liked to mess with us, but was super protective of me and her younger brother. Her younger brother was named Conifer, and he was a year or two younger than I was. He was really timid and seemed uncomfortable a lot of the time, but I think he hung out with us because he wanted to fit in somewhere. I didn't mind having him around, but I did worry about him sometimes.

He was pretty short and scrawny, like a strong gust of wind could take him out. His hair was short and pretty messy. Basically, he looked like one of those small dogs that are permanently disheveled and just kind of pathetic. I remember hanging out with this group, a lot. Mostly skateboarding around the bad side of town, late at night, sneaking into abandoned buildings, and doing drugs. Basically getting into trouble wherever we could find it. There are two memories that feel the most important to me, so I'll explain those in detail. The first started out pretty typically, with us drunk out of our minds and skating around town

in the middle of the night. I was around. Around 16. At one point, a cop car started following us, and being stupid teenagers, we kept going and trying to lose them. The wheel of my skateboard caught a rock, and I wiped out. I was arrested, but my friends just kept on skating and left me behind. I remember the feeling of being handcuffed and the pain in my chest when I was slammed against the cold metal of the police car. I ended up only spending a night in jail. and was released with a warning.

Obviously, I was pissed that my friends didn't have my back, but I knew they didn't really have a choice. I forgave them pretty quickly. Another time, we were hanging out at our usual spot, the roof of an abandoned apartment complex downtown. I was probably around 19 or so. We were all pretty high, and we decided to play Spin the Bottle. At one point, it landed between me and Mac.

I still had a pretty big crush on him at this point, and I know it sounds corny, but, man, that was probably the best moment of my life. He pretended to be disgusted, wiping off his face in an exaggerated manner, and yelling about how gross it was. I tried to play it off in a similar manner, but I'm not sure how well I did. These memories stop very abruptly, and I can't remember anything past the point where I turned to 20. Currently, I am 22, though I am in a body that is not. I feel like I was taken from my real life and thrown into this one, and the memories stop when I was transported. I miss the people in my memories as if they were real,

and writing this felt like recounting actual events to me. I have this overwhelming feeling that I'm stuck in the wrong universe, and that I was put here by mistake. I've entertained the idea that this is kind of like a second chance for me, since I messed up a lot in my past life, and I do have more opportunities here. But honestly, I'm not really sure what to think. I could interpret it any way that I wanted, and it wouldn't make much of a difference.

I've read up on similar experiences, like the Reddit Lamp guy, if you know, you know. And I do find a lot of comfort in knowing that I'm not the only one who's been through something like this. If anyone listening has a similar story, I encourage you to share it. Thanks for taking the time to read this out, Raven. I hope your day has been a good one. And thank you for allowing me to read it. To be honest, I don't know what tag fits with this, but I honestly need some form of advice on this.

So I used to have a lot of imaginary friends in my early childhood. This is mainly due to my autism and early signs of slight anxiety to tie with the already struggle of being an autistic kid in the early 2000s. I loved my imaginary friends, and to this day, can easily describe and name all of them from when I was five to when I turned nine. I know me being nine is apparently too old for imaginary friends, but that's just what happened. Some disappeared as I aged, but one in particular remained by me for all my years. I remember that I named them Bambi, since this specific friend looked far different than the rest.

Most of my imaginary friends looked like normal kids, with a few being strange creatures, or human-looking people with wings or witch-hats that did adventures with me. But Bambi has antlers, a human-looking person with freaking antlers. Now, I rarely saw Bambi despite them, always having been beside me since childhood. Whenever I played or talked with Bambi, it was sometimes when the sun was setting or when it's really dark. And most times we talked via my bedroom window. or when we were playing somewhere in the gardens, where my bedroom faced growing up. But the few times I have looked and saw Bambi were times when it was a large group playdates,

or sometimes I would see them outside my window when it's dark. The weirdest part is that Bambi aged with me. My other imaginary friends were either older than me or weren't shown any form of age. But Bambi aged the same time I did. When I was six, Bambi was six. When I was eight, so was Bambi. You get the picture. But alongside Bambi aging, I recall they never seemed to have a gender.

Now I can easily pass this now as an adult in my twenties that, maybe this was my brain trying to make sense with some early form of gender dysphoria that hasn't been discovered yet, but it's still weird to think back on it. The first time I met, Bambi, was a day that I honestly can't recall. My childhood wasn't great, so I sadly suffer with some blocked-off memories, or fuzzy memories that get clearer with how people explain it. But what I do remember is I somehow ended up in my grandparents' backyard, playing with the ants pretty far from the house.

As if it wasn't obvious, I was a pretty weird kid already. When suddenly I looked up and saw them standing by one of the trees in broad daylight. My grandparents' old house was a very typical suburban house, with a backyard pool, but also was set up in the part of the backyard that I was in, with a long dirt hill that went down to the other suburbs, that honestly were nicer than I've ever seen. in a small forest that didn't hold caves or forest creatures as I liked to think back then, but more so led to the fence that blocks you from the highway.

So Bambi was standing by the trees of this small forest, and was just staring at me. I wasn't scared of them. Actually, it was the opposite, since I remember being very excited to see them. Now, here's why I kind of want advice, on if Bambi was really part of my imagination at the time, or if Bambi was somehow something else. There are a few things they said and have done that,

thinking back, makes me shiver. For an example, one summer afternoon, my mom brought me a bacon sandwich from the local grocery store, and I was eating in the garden with Bambi, which, thinking back, it was probably funny for my mom to see me toss half a sandwich to the bushes. When Bambi started saying how good

real pork tastes, and how I should try their pork one day. Another thing that as a kid I never thought about, but now is a little freaked out about, was how every once and a while during our late night games

or chats, Bambi would randomly pester me to sneak out of the fence. Sometimes they would even offer to introduce me to their family. and every time I would refuse only for it to start again the next day. Though I loved and deeply cared for them, I ended up never seeing Bambi again after I turned 10,

and we moved to a house to make room for my little sister and just simply grew out of the other imaginary friends and moved on with my life. I keep second-guessing who or what Bambi was, and currently my family and I made plans to look in our own. attic tomorrow to see if we can find the box of old stuff we had before the move, in which I hope I can find some drawings I had of Bambi, and hopefully I can share them here. To clarify, I did not have my phone with me at the time of the story because I was at a summer camp that has a strict

no electronics policy, so I could not record any audio or videos of the event that I'm about to describe. I was deep in the backcountry of the Rocky Mountain National Park, while backpacking with a group from the camp. It was a long hike to our first campsite, so everyone was exhausted. I had quite a few friends get on the program with me, so we spaced out in a few tents around the campgrounds. After we ate dinner, we all agreed to take it easy that night and go to sleep. A few hours after everyone had gone to bed, I awoke to heavy footsteps approaching my tent. A moment later, I heard my friend's voice silently call my name. He asked me to go with him to the bathroom.

It was protocol for a camper to bring a buddy to the bathroom at night, in case something happened. But the buddy was supposed to be from your tent. I told him to get someone from his own tent to take him. him, as I was tired and extremely cold. He continued to insist that I went with him, but I again said no. He sounded extremely frustrated, but eventually gave in and left my tent. As I listened to him walk away, the only footsteps I heard were heading into the woods around our campsite.

No tent zipper, no whispering about someone else accompanying him to the bathroom. just heavy footsteps slowly walking into the woods. I had an uneasy feeling after that, but I slowly went back to sleep. In the morning, I asked him if he got someone else to go to the bathroom with him, but he said he never woke up that night. Throughout the hike to the next campsite, I asked his tentmates if they heard him leaving or entering their tent, but they said they never woke up.

I asked my friend again if he wrote a little bit. remembers waking up that night before, but he said he's positive that he didn't. After that, my first assumption was that he was sleepwalking, so I asked him if he had a history of doing so, but he said no. After that, I started to think of how odd the interaction between me and him was. His words were a bit slurred, and he kept insisting that I go into the woods with him. To this day, I still wonder about the event, and the only explanation I have thought of that I have not scrapped is that what I was talking to that night was not my friend, but a Skinwalker. Update. To all the skeptical people asking why I jumped to Skinwalker, there are two reasons.

one, the voice I heard was 100% my friends, and two, after the encounter I was up for almost two hours, if I remember my watch correctly. In my eyes, not hearing any sound from the other tents for that long makes me believe it was not my friend messing with me. Who would stay out in the freezing cold, dark, snowy forest for that long, just for a joke? Also for the people saying that I'm lying and that they've heard the no phone excuse before, just look up Chile, Colorado camps. It will show you the no electronics rule on the website. I am the father of two wonderful and smart boys that are three years apart.

Braden was the oldest, Damien the youngest. Braden, being our first, we had to learn a lot of things as a first-time parent. and while there were some rough moments, we got through it, and he's a very happy and healthy boy. We wanted another kid close to Braden's age, so we tried for a second without any complications. Braden was also born healthy, and my wife had no other complications.

Life seemed to be as normal as one would expect for a small family, and I was thankful for what we had. So, one summer, we were trying to be. to make plans for a family vacation, but we wanted to do something different, and maybe something that would save us some money. So we decided to go camping. My parents had some old tents, one that would be big enough for the four of us. The boys were six and nine at the time. We could get together some food that would go well in a cooler, cook over a fire, and even go fishing. Braden had been fishing with me before, but Damien hadn't, so I thought it would be a fun experience for us all.

One day, we were all having dinner, and my wife mentioned something about the campgrounds we'd been looking at at some point. Damien stopped eating. We didn't notice until he was nearly whimpering in holding back tears. We stopped, and my wife asked what was wrong, thinking maybe he bit his tongue or something. We were eating spaghetti, which is one of his favorites, so we knew that it wasn't the meal. He then started crying and saying that he doesn't like camping and didn't want to go. We were confused because he had never gone camping. Neither of our boys had.

So how could he not like it? How could he even know what camping was? We did our best to calm him down and tried to explain what we meant. We just said we were going to be spending the night in the woods, in a tent. I even took him to the garage and showed him the tent. I did my best to hold it up so he could see it and see where we would be sleeping. It made him smile and he seemed to like the idea, so it calmed him down. We thought maybe it was just a new thing and maybe he wasn't good with change,

or with things he wasn't familiar with. We were maybe just a few days away from going on our trip, and with all of us in the living room, I mentioned something about camping again. And once again, Damien had a breakdown. He grabbed onto my wife's leg and pleaded with her not to take him. No, I don't want to go back to the camps. I'm sorry, I don't like the camps.

I don't want to go. Just non-stop pleading with fear in his eyes. I had never seen this from him before. My wife hugged him and tried to calm him down. again and we reminded him of what we were talking about the week or two prior. Once we got him calmed down, I wanted to know where this was coming from. Why was he so terrified? I asked Amien why he was so afraid of camping as he had never gone before. I asked if someone told him something, but I wasn't expecting his response.

He explained that he had gotten hurt in the camps before, and he didn't want to get hurt. again. We were still just as puzzled. He had never been camping, so how could he have gotten hurt? So I asked him again about it, to explain when he went camping and what he told me, it gave me the chills. I was a different kid. I couldn't wear my favorite blue dress. The mean man called them Lager and pushed me in with my old mommy. I was hungry and I cried a lot. I got really sick and I died. I don't want to die again. I don't want to go to the logger.

I was stunned. What on earth was my young son talking about? Dying? Lager? I didn't understand any of it at first. I comforted him again and we explained that camping was nothing like what he was describing. I told him it was a vacation outside. I explained that we would have plenty of food.

He would be safe and that we would be safe and that we would be. we would all be together. He would never be alone. It seemed to comfort him again, and from then on we just avoided using the term camping. We just referred to it as vacationing or going into the woods, or even tenting, anything but that word. I just assumed that maybe he saw something somewhere on TV and that he would soon forget about it, maybe even after we went camping. But then my wife brought up a crazy revelation. She had looked up the word Damien was using, Lager, L-A-G-E-R.

I just thought it was a beer, which was still weird that my young son would use the word because neither of us drank beer. But she said that it had a different meaning. Lager was a shortened version of the word camp in German. Those kind of camps. My son was talking about something he should know nothing about. So why was he talking about dying in one?

I finally started to figure it out, with my wife nearly spelling it out for me. It seemed our son was having memories or flashbacks. Memories of being in a German camp and dying in it. I haven't mentioned this yet, but Damien held his arm in a particular way whenever he was nervous. He would hold his inner arm with his right hand, like he was covering it with his palm. He had a birthmark there, so we just thought he was trying to cover it up. Maybe he was self-conscious about it.

But it appeared to have a bigger meaning to him. So we sat Damien down the night before our trip, just three of us, and we talked to him about it. I asked him to tell me about everything he remembered. And to my surprise, he remembered a lot. He mentioned how he was there for our first. a while. He mentioned being sick again. How many people were there, and how his mom sang to him on his last day alive. He even touched his left arm in the same place, and mentioned that his number used to be

there. It was truly unbelievable. You know, you learn about that stuff in school over time, but to hear things for my little boy, things that he shouldn't know anything about, was in case. And, you incredible and heartbreaking. All we could do was explain to him that what he remembers about camps was nothing like actually camping. We told him about all the fun things we would do out there and that it would be together, the four of us. Really just sitting him down and talking him through it seemed to help him understand and trust us more that it was about fun, not what he was remembering. When we actually did go camping, Damien loved it. He loved the tent.

He even loved the idea of the sleeping bags. He loved the campfire and making smores, even though the fire did make him nervous at first. And he loved fishing. He seemed to really have a great time and thanked us when we were leaving, with tears in his eyes. From then on, we were careful with our wording, but also didn't bring up his memories unless he wanted to talk about them. At one point he said that he couldn't remember his name, but that he thought it started with an L.

Over time, he's talked about it less and less, and nowadays he rarely mentions it. I feel like going camping did give him the opportunity to move on. And, maybe one day, he will no longer be tormented by those awful memories at all. This just happened today and it really shook me up. I'm casually shopping at the grocery store and it's daylight. I'm walking around and I pass this really tall black man, maybe in his 20s or 30s. I noticed him looking at me as I passed,

but that happens often, so I didn't think too much of it. But then I noticed him not only walking around me, but constantly staring at me. I went around to different aisles, just trying. not to overthink it, but every time I looked up, he was already there staring at me. I was too freaked out to even focus on shopping. After roaming around more, I noticed that he wasn't around, so I figured he left, thinking, thank God.

But then I looked out the sliding doors. It's a small store, so they only have one entrance and exit. And he's standing outside, and still looking at me. At this point I get really freaked out. I decide to roam around again hoping he'll leave, but then he comes back inside, still staring me down. I start thinking if I should ask other customers to help me, but I didn't know what to do. The guy was really tall, and he looked scary. He goes back outside and is waiting by the doors.

I decide to buy my stuff and leave. As I'm at the checkout that's right near the doors, I tell the cashier, Hey, that guy outside has been following me around and staring at me, and it's creeping me out. With my voice all shaky, because I was so scared. The cashier guy didn't respond to me at all, just looked at the guy outside. This just made me feel more powerless and helpless. I freaking hate being a woman in instances like things. these. I paid, and I got my bag and walked out really fast. The guy then starts following me to my car.

I freak out, but I immediately lock my doors, start my car, and got the hell out of there. When I was backing up, he was right next to my trunk. Thankfully, he didn't try to block me in. I started crying and shaking after. I felt so powerless as a woman, and I didn't know what to do. Does anybody have any tips on what to do in instances like these? Looking back, I wish I asked for a manager to walk me out. I just felt so dismissed by the cashier, and I felt like nobody would help me. Hello, everyone.

I want to talk about some things from my past life that have impacted my current life. My mom and I are spiritual, and she contacted the spirit of my best friend, yesterday when I was having a mental breakdown. He's from my past life as a Vietnam soldier. I got to know him since I was a young child, and we were best friends. I can vaguely remember that his name was Damien or something. I basically grew up with him, and his family treated me as I was one of them.

Very nice family at that time. But once the Vietnam War started, things took a turn. During our deployment, I was very paranoid of being ambushed by the Vietnamese, so I slept with a gun in my hands. Due to all the mental issues going on at that time in the dark environment, I accidentally shot my best friend, because I heard someone walking towards me in an odd way. I was devastated, and I turned bat crap insane after that. I was no longer suitable for duty, so they sent me home. I was full of regret, shame, grief. People around me were treating me harshly because we veterans, quote-unquote, failed to win the war,

and the family members of my best friend even placed a curse on me out of anger and resentment, the curse that I would never be happy and fulfilled again. This curse has haunted me into the current life that I've been reincarnated into. I always asked myself why I feel like I'm not worth it, or why the things in my life happened the way they did. Now I feel like the pieces of the puzzle are fitting together. The purpose of my current life is to lift the curse, and become mentally strong again.

I can finally have peace with myself now, which I wasn't able to achieve with psychotherapy before. Moral of the story, unresolved mental issues and curses can haunt you into your next life. Be sure to cope with them and be open-minded or disciplined to meditation. This way you gain insight about previous lives, and you can prevent yourself from making the same mistakes, this time. I just stumbled upon this subreddit,

and it reminded me of an encounter I had in Death Valley in 2017. I wanted to put it out there to see if anyone else has extended. experienced anything like it. So I was visiting the states from work, I'm from the UK, and had four days to burn before my flight home. I was in Denver and decided to hire a motorcycle and ride to L.A. where my return flight was from. I had an incredible ride seeing some amazing things as I sped through Utah and into Nevada, and I reached Vegas with two days remaining. I decided that I wanted to ride through Death Valley and up to Yosemite before blasting down California to L.A. By the time I got to Death Valley, it was getting dark, and as I progressed through the National Park, it became pitch black, with me being pretty much the only person on the road.

The only things I could see were the illumination of my bike's headlights, lighting up the road ahead, and about three meters on eye. either side of the tarmac. I hit a long straight and started looking around. Something felt off. Then I noticed a large shape on the side of the road ahead. That's a big cactus, I thought to myself. I would put it at about seven feet tall. As I got closer, I could see that it had humanoid features,

like a very obvious outline of something with the head, shoulders, legs. I was fixated on it as I rode and the closer I got, the weirder things felt. Then, as my bike's headlights lit it up, I could see that it was a humanoid figure, and as I rode past, it turned its body to follow me. It was nearly 50 Celsius, and I had been sweating all day. But in that moment, I was overcome with freezing cold and shivers. I still get the shivers when I think about it now. I twisted the throttle and got the hell out of there,

repeating inappropriate words to myself and my helmet. It was a very spooky and strange encounter. As anyone else seen or heard of similar encounters in Death Valley and able to shed any light on what I saw, I had recurring dreams when I was five years old. I even wonder if it was. was a dream because it's like I actually lived it. It took me years to try and understand it. I was a young Asian woman who lived on a boat. I had to take a smaller boat to get my father to

the mainland to see a doctor because he was very sick and coughing. He was so weak. He was laying down in the boat and I knew that he would probably die that night. I lived my life on the water and operating a boat was second nature to me. I remember being torn that I couldn't get the boat there fast enough and thought that I could be free when and if he did pass. I remember feeling shameful for that thought. I was so young, maybe 17 or 18. The waters were dark and calm,

and a big full moon was in view, and a gentle warm breeze combed my hair. I was in angst of my father dying, and yet giddy at the impending freedom. A mix of emotions for sure at the sudden turn of events. It was so real. I remember the sights and sounds, the emotions, the conflict within myself. How can a five-year-old child conjure up that repeatedly in a dream? Next, I had dreams of an American soldier who gave me a beautiful scar.

and we were to be married later. I was born in 1957, well after all the World Wars. I keep wondering how I could have known details about such mature, complex emotions and circumstances as a young woman in the 30s or 40s. The dreams were too vivid, too detailed, and I know that I once lived this. My father died before we got to the shore. sure, and I cried. I had the weirdest dream that I have ever had in my life last night.

It wasn't weird because of the content, but mainly my experience. It seemed that I was seeing, or feeling, multiple levels of my own psyche at the same time. I'm not much into paranormal stuff, but I do love the mystery of our consciousness and attachment to reality. I wanted to leave this here because I thought it was very interesting. I would love to hear some opinions about it. I had a dream while half awake and asleep. My psyche felt like it was split into three pieces.

I'll call them the dreamer, my deep R.m.'s self. The observer, a weird intermediate version of self that spoke in my voice, but seemed to have its own agenda, and was apparently studying the dreamer, and self, which is just my conscious, normal self. Dreamer was experiencing my daughter looking at a sunflower while talking, and eventually switched to viewing a 360 view of my bedroom as I began to wake more. My eyes were still closed, I was still dreaming.

It was really confusing, and I was seeing from the perspective of self and dreamer, at the same time, while also witnessing and listening to Observer. It was sort of like watching a scientist analyzing a video of an experiment, but also you are the experiment. My daughter's voice was strange, and high-pitched, but I knew it was her. Her and the flower's physical appearances came across as almost sentient heat maps. They were fluctuating colors of different intensities, but I could still recognize them. when she spoke the colors she was comprised of moved and flowed with energy and the sunflower's colors reacted similarly to receiving her voice

the bedroom appeared to resemble one of the early deep mind art images like a very confusing palette of colors and shapes but somehow I knew it represented my room even though it was entirely illogical observer was picking apart the dreams. Looking at their heat maps, he seemed entirely consumed with studying their fluctuations and didn't seem to notice my watching. Eventually it appeared that he noticed something was off, began to mutter, slightly upset, and then disappeared entirely, leaving only self and dreamer.

Then I woke up very confused, as if I'd been ripped out of a deep sleep. Suddenly, for her birthday, my wife wants to do a fairy photo shoot with a bunch of her girlfriends. As she has been planning this shoot, she's been joking about dressing me up as a giant leprechaun to serve them all tea and whatnot. Cool. For like the past week, our appliances have been struggling. RHVAC goes down for a thermostat issue. Our dishwasher starts smoking? just overall janky stuff.

A couple of nights ago, I woke up around 2.30 a.m., lift my head, and standing at the end of our bed with this goofy-ass smile on his face, is a three-foot-tall Alfred E. Newman. See, Mad Magazine, looking a-hole. I shake my head to clear my eyes, open them back up, and he is still freaking there. I said nope. Put my eye cover back on and grabbed my cat's paw. He sleeps sometimes between my wife and I.

He's the best boy. My heart was racing a million miles a minute. Later that night, I was woken up by this moaning sound. And the second time I heard it, my cat flinched too. So I threw the covers back over my head and went back to sleep. A vent over. Next morning, I mentioned to my wife that I accepted. experienced some mild sleep paralysis while we were sleeping.

No big deal. As I was explaining the height and the messy red hair of this dude, I was going to say he kind of looked like a gnome or something. But before I could finish my description, she asked if it looked like a leprechaun. I was like, that's definitely what it was. Creepy. She said she felt unusual all night.

She usually sleeps with her feet out and her breast. back exposed because she sleeps hot. But that night, she tucked her feet and covered her back, because she kind of felt something moving around her. She also felt our cat flinch and move around throughout the night. Anyways, here are some further odd coincidences about that night. One, RAC has been down, which is awesome. And that night we left the windows in our house open.

Two, it was a freaking full moon. Three, and here's the kicker. One of my son's best friends pestered me to use my debit card to pay for his and my son's Xbox battle passes for the next Fortnite season's skin, Poseidon, I think. And he promised to pay me back. He paid me back in Sacagawea dollars. He paid me back in literal gold coins. Where did we stash those gold coins? In a little ceramic pot we use to stash casino money.

We literally have a tiny pot of gold in our house. So that's our accidental leprechaun story. I guess they're not malicious or anything, but come on, man. We literally have a tech at our house looking at the AC and he can't figure out what's wrong with it. Just stop messing with our stuff. And yes, I am using those gold coins to buy. lotto tickets. It's my money and he's not entitled to it. I worked in a children's hospital in my town and took blood samples from neonatal intensive care, older kids, all the way from

birth to 17. Most kids didn't like to give blood by using a tiny needle and always preferred a finger stick. Yet the reality was that they hurt more. One day I entered the room of a super cute boy that I think was three. His parents had both stayed the night, and they moved aside at a distance to allow me to work. Kids need a parental transference so they behave, and this way he would listen to me better. But immediately in my heart, I knew that he was a man, not a boy of three, and an army man. I can't explain any of this. I said hello and told him why I was there, and he stuck out his arm like a little man.

I said, You are a man, not a little boy, huh? His parents exchanged glances, and I said, Like an army man. And he said, I was an army man. I saw them look at one another again and then back at our exchange. I quickly used a butterfly needle,

which is the smallest I could without humiliating the blood. That's ruining it by breaking up the cells in too small of a needle. I thanked him and asked him what army he was in. Well, the American army, of course, he said proudly. His dad spoke now after they'd witnessed our strange interaction with one another. He's been telling us all about being in the army since he began talking, he confided. So many patient interactions have made me understand that people do reincarnate.

Like my own memory. I know what things are, or songs that played in the 19-19. 20s forward. The image of the 20s seems to be always with me somehow. I think of people we love, who feel so familiar and think, there's really a richer past than we can ever know. Hello, everyone. Word of introduction first.

My name is Mark. I'm in my early 20s, and I've always been fascinated by paranormal stuff, but I've never been a believer. It was like atheists studying Bible. type of situation. But I actually happened to personally experience some weird stuff, and my room was, quote-unquote, haunted, on two occasions. The first time was when I was 11 and my sister was 9.

So, when my family was slowly moving to a new house and renovating it, a set of white walls, no furniture, me and my sister on many occasions followed to explore our new neighborhood. Once, when we got back from our exploring trips, we just sat in our empty room and threw the ball to each other singing some random nursery rhymes. We were going at it for something over half an hour, when suddenly the ball stopped midway to my sister and got back to my hand. I was freaking out, she was as well, and we refused to visit for a while. A small clarification. It was this like heavier dog chewing ball, and all the windows were closed, so no wind. And since the room was empty, no bouncing from something either.

As an adult, I actually spoke about it to my mom, suspecting it may have been a false memory or something, but she actually confirmed that me and my sister once really lost our nuts over something like that and even refused to sleep in our rooms for over a week, and that had made her so tired. The next, haunting, if you can call it that, happened four years later. This time I was not present, but it happened in the same room,

and I need to explain a bit of our room situation. I shared my room with my younger brother, ten years old at the time of the haunting, and my sister had her room next door. So I and my brother went to my cousin's place to have a sleepover. Since our room was bigger and we had a bigger TV and DVD player, my sister decided that she wanted to sleep in there. So she goes in there, watches a few movies, and goes to sleep.

In the middle of the night, my fitness stationary bike starts running. Literally like someone was just using it. It was electric, but all electronics were long overcooked and damaged. Besides, those were just trackers and were incapable of moving the bike. So my sister started screaming, and she went to our parents' room. When we got back, she said she was scared witless, and I actually needed to move to her room for a while since she refused to sleep alone at all. The story was also confirmed by our mother.

Also, I remember sleeping in her room on my noble exile. We had no pets at that time in the house, either. Everyone has their ghost, and this one's mine. But it's strange because I don't know how it could be a ghost. Anyway, read and you'll see. I was 17 at the time, living at my grandparents' house for the summer, in Lewes, Delaware. Their house is a 55-plus neighborhood, all-new house. houses, therefore there's no real way it could be haunted.

I had the second floor to myself, which was a bedroom, living room area, and bathroom. The house had great plumbing and heating and electronics, so there's no way the house would shake. And the way my grandparents were, there was no way laundry machines would be going off at this time of night. Anyway, I was sleeping in bed one night, and out of a dead sleep, I woke up, leaned forward, and stared at a painting on the wall. I don't know why, but I just stared at this painting. A few seconds later, the painting just fell straight to the ground. The lamp, alarm clock, and small dresser next to my bed, then flew about three feet forward and banged loudly on the ground. I immediately hopped out of bed screaming like a girl and turned on the light.

I turned around to look at the situation, and yes, the picture was still on the floor, and the other stuff was still on the floor. I stood there in shock waiting for it to not be real, but it was. After calming down, I assessed the situation. The back of the picture, where it hangs on the nail in the wall, was made out of cardboard, and it looks like it ripped down, though, like the picture was too heavy.

And below the picture was the power outlet, which has the clock and lamp plugged into it. And the cords must have been wrapped around the dresser or nightstand, which resulted in everything flying, but why did I wake up to stare at the painting? Hi 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 ashtherravendreams.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. sleep well.