As The Raven Dreams Podcast - ATRD Ep. 171 - Scary In The Woods, Attic/Basement and Other Strange & Scary Stories

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Today, on the 171st episode of the As The Raven Dreams podcast, we have 13 True Chilling stories. These stories come from the shadowy corners of reality, where everyday life takes an eerie twist & ordinary people experience the extraordinary. Today we will be diving into some terrifying stories in the wood, stories about attics/basements and Other true strange and scary stories! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like or rate the podcast, and leave me a comment with your thoughts if the platform your own supports it! Scary story episodes 2 to 3 times a week (New stories On Wed/Fri, Comps/remasters on Sundays) If you have a story to submit, would like to find where to listen to the podcast, or want to find me on social media platforms, all of that info can be found at https://www.astheravendreams.com You can also send stories into my subreddit (r/theravensdream) or email them to me at [e-mail] Want to check out some ATRD Podcast Merch? ➤ https://teechip.com/stores/astheravendreams Or for signed merch ➤ https://ko-fi.com/AsTheRavenDreams I wrote a novel, "The Insomniac's Experiment" by Raven Adams! Check it out on amazon (Or you can email me for a signed copy!) Join Patreon to get early access and support the Podcast! ➤ https://www.patreon.com/AsTheRavenDreams Check out my gaming channel with my pal Ghost_Ink ➤ @superNefariousBros On YouTube Disclaimer ➤ Episodes include a content warning for language and sensitive/disturbing content. Listener discretion is always advised. ALL Audio and visuals on this podcast are copyright of AS THE RAVEN DREAMS / RAVEN ADAMS and may not be duplicated, in any format. Bless This Mess. #AsTheRavenDreams #TrueScaryStories #GlitchInTheMatrix Thank you to all of the authors that have stories in todays episode... HeatherAZ, ThatOldHouseGuy, IAlwaysFeelLike, Sarah, Melissa, Wellden, SARAH, Lola, Tango, Mel Rose, Chris, Barbara Mccracken, Mohammed Lee, thenonn As Well As Any Author That Has Requested Anonymity. TimeStamps… 1 ➤ 00:57 2 ➤ 15:29 3 ➤ 19:47 4 ➤ 25:17 5 ➤ 38:36 6 ➤ 42:05 7 ➤ 44:59 8 ➤ 48:08 9 ➤ 58:05 10 ➤ 1:03:17 11 ➤ 1:06:35 12 ➤ 1:15:26 13 ➤ 1:29:37 Ad spots at about 15 min 63 min ----- #TrueScaryStories #AsTheRavenDreams #GlitchInTheMatrix #RedditStories 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

Hey friends, hope you're all doing well. I wanted to do a different intro for today's episode for no particular reason. I was told I should do more personalized intros for the episodes, and I kind of agree to that, so I think I'll start doing these from here on out. Today we have a collection of In the Attic and Basement Stories, scary in the wood stories, as well as some strange and scary stories, just miscellaneous ones, some good ones in that, so hopefully you all enjoy them. Hopefully you're all having a great week.

I'm packing and cleaning up our current place because we will very likely be moving soon, so that's fun. All that said, I hope you guys have a great day. Leave me a comment down below with which story was your favorite, which one was your least favorite. How are your weeks going or really just anything to say hi, I would appreciate it. And of course, my friends, enjoy these scary stories. I was one of those kids that you could spook easily.

I didn't like scary stuff, scary movies, stories, ghosts, any of it. I remember many times my older sister and mom telling me more or less to get over it, and that I was just imagining things. No, it wasn't always mean like the way I just made it sound, but I'm sure they also got tired of comforting me too. Don't worry, I did grow out of that. Otherwise, I certainly wouldn't be here. But sometimes it wasn't always just in my head.

Our family's situation had gotten a little bit. complicated. My mom had been through three relationships, one divorce, by the time I was nine, and we'd moved around a lot before settling into the little two-story house where this event took place. I guess after relying on whomever she was with at the time, she finally got her own house in the hopes of just kicking them out instead, and not having to uproot our whole life each time. Believe me, I certainly preferred it. Our dad was long out of the picture. Mom had full custody, and he more or less wanted nothing to do with the family anyways. They were never married. My older sister and I shared the same dad. My little brother, however, was from the second guy she

was with, the one she married, and thankfully no new ones with the last guy. I think we all had a feeling they wouldn't last, and I'm not sure what she saw in him in the first place. He was very odd. He didn't work, claiming he was disabled, but I don't know what was wrong with him, considering he did everything but work. I was still a kid, though, so I didn't know everything going on, I'm sure. But I know they fought a lot about him spending more money than she was bringing in. He would always talk about hitting it big, but that only seems.

to enrage my mother more. He also made some weird comments to my sister, and that made me feel really uncomfortable, but my sister always told me not to worry about it because he only said it when he was drunk. Thankfully, we didn't have to deal with it much longer because the relationship only lasted about two years before they split. That's when we got our own place. We were actually just settling into it when they finally split, so he had been there and stayed there for only a little while.

To be honest, I think my mom used him to help us move in because he lifted all the heavy stuff with ease. Then about a month after we moved in, she kicked him out. Like I said, I have a weird family and I'll just leave it at that. Anyways, it was just the four of us now in our new home. My mom, my sister, Jesse, 15, my younger brother, Adam, six, and then me, ten. After finally getting more comfortable with our new home and routine, my mom shared with us that she was going to go back to school,

wanting to finish her nursing career. We were all excited for her because I could just see how much she wanted it when she talked about it. Her smile was always so big and bright, her eyes glowing. If it made my mom happy, then I wanted to do whatever I could, even at the age of 10, to help her achieve her dreams. What that meant for us kids was that there were two nights a week where we would be alone. She would have dinner prepared for us, so all we had to do was use the microwave on those nights. The other three week nights, we would just be home alone for about two hours until she got home.

This meant that Jesse and I were given spare keys to get in. I rode the bus with Adam and Jesse was typically already home. Her school let out an hour earlier than ours. but it was those lonely nights without mom that I would hear weird things in the house. Things that I would be told were just my imagination. I would hear these creaking sounds above us. I remember, and I don't know why, but I remember thinking, Oh my God, we have rats in the attic.

But my mom would laugh and say that we don't have rats. If anything, we may have mice. So not much better, but I would. was scared that we had mice in our home, in our attic, since I heard it was above us. She told me it was possible since it was an older home, but since she hadn't seen any, she didn't seem too concerned about it. But something about it really freaked me out. I would always just stare up at the ceiling.

Something didn't sit right with me. Sometimes it was the creeks, but other times it sounded more like shuffles, like someone dragging their feet. But again, I was told it was just the house shifting, maybe the wind blowing, something against the house. Anything they could really think to try to calm me down. But then I started noticing patterns. Late in the night, when I was in bed falling asleep,

I would hear the familiar sound of someone walking up those four steps that led to our bedrooms, except the sounds were coming from above. There was no way to explain that away. Those were footsteps. I remember wrapping myself in a blanket with just a sliver open to look out as I stared at the ceiling in fear. I feared something was going to fall through it and land on me, or worse, be watching me up there somehow.

The ceiling was solid, so the chance of someone being able to see me was impossible, I'm sure. But as a kid, being afraid, there was no rationalizing it in my mind. Surprisingly, I shared a room with my brother and he was out cold, not awake at all to witness these things. I didn't understand how any of them could sleep through it, let alone dismiss my concerns. This happened almost every night. The same pattern thuds across the ceiling? A shuffle of sorts. some creaking, and then silence.

There was even one time late one October night that I was watching TV with my mom when I heard one of those shuffling and creaking sounds. I remember looking up, and then my mom followed. I asked if she heard it too, thinking, finally, she hears it. But she just chuckled and said that it was Santa doing his monthly check on kids. Her way of trying to reassure me again. but how could nobody think that it sounded weird? The other places we lived had creaky floorboards here or there.

I know what that sounded like. These were footsteps. I was sure of it. I started becoming a bit more paranoid. I would carry something with me to use as a weapon, be it one of my brother's play tools, a plastic shovel. Hell, I even stole a butter knife and kept it under my bed. If no one would believe me, then all I would do was prepare for them to attack us and hopefully help out.

Jesse made fun of me when she saw me carry the shovel to the bathroom one night. She said that I was being dramatic. Old houses settled, and all I was doing was stressing myself out and scaring our little brother. But Adam seemed entirely unfazed by it all. So I did my best to not let it show when they were around me. but in my room, alone in the dark, I was terrified. Then, there was that day in late November. My mom was going to be home earlier than normal, as all she had to do was take an exam.

And then she would be out for the holiday break, but that still left us with about two hours before she got home. Adam and I got off the bus, and Jesse was already inside, watching TV on the couch and doing her homework. My mom told us that we had to have our homework done before anything else, so we made it a habit to just do it when we got home. Adam and I were sitting on the floor at the coffee table, working when I once again heard the sound I've become all too familiar with. I looked at the ceiling, and Jesse immediately told me to ignore it. But as I looked back down at my work, I heard a thud, followed by someone very clearly saying, Oh, shit. This time, I know Jesse heard it too.

I'll never forget the look of pure terror as she looked at me. Pale-faced? She slowly got up from the couch and told me to take Adam out front to play. We both headed for the door when I saw Jesse heading for the kitchen. Once we were outside, Adam went to his swing, so he was pretty well occupied, but I couldn't leave my sister in there alone with the potentially dangerous stranger. I walked back inside, and I could hear my sister talking on the phone. She was nearly whispering, but I heard her talking about the sounds in our roof, and saying that we were kids, alone.

The phone was a wired landline, so she was still in the kitchen. She saw me standing nearby and said okay to whomever was on the phone, and then put it down, without putting it on the receiver. She then demanded that we go back outside, and this time she followed, shutting the door behind her. Adam was plenty distracted. He was having fun without a care in the world, not knowing why we were going outside without our coats. My sister and I stood by the fence gate shivering, looking back and forth between the street and our house. Did the person in our attic know that we had called the police? Would they come out and try to harm us?

Or maybe just try to run away. Finally, the police arrived, and we told them what had happened. Two of them went in, and I remember that scaring me even more because they had their hands on their guns. A third cop stayed outside with us and tried to keep us calm and distracted. Adam ran over and started asking the cop all kinds of questions, which I guess did work because it made me smile if. few times. Then everything moved so fast when we started hearing shouting from the house.

We heard the cops yelling, get down, don't move, followed by more shouting. The cop that was with us told us to stand by the swing sets, and they took off into the house. That's when we turned towards the street, and saw my mom pulling up. She had barely parked before she was running into the yard toward us, hugging us. we explained more to our mom what had happened when we noticed the cops walking back out of our house I was getting myself prepared to see them bring someone out worried that they would see us and take revenge on us for calling the cops

I know I was a bit dramatic but again I was a scared kid what I was not expecting was to see my mom's last ex Steve being dragged out by the police dirty and crazed looking. Mom looked just as confused and horrified as us. There was a lot of talking at this point. Mom and the cops. Us and the cops.

Me speaking to another cop with my mom. Just so much talking. In the end, I could piece things together. When Steve was kicked out, he decided to take it upon himself to stay there anyway. He even took a seat. spare blanket from the closet and a decorative pillow from the couch to give himself a makeshift bed in the attic. My mom noticed the pillow was missing, but she thought that maybe one of us had taken it, playing around, and eventually it was all forgotten about. When no one was home,

he made himself at home using the shower and eating our food. There were no extra wrappers or dirty dishes, so no one noticed it, but as he did the same thing, when they were together, he just had a pile of trash and dirty dishes up there, too. He hardly ever cleaned up after himself. The most unsettling part of this whole thing for me was his method of coming and going. The attic door was right outside my bedroom door, and since he didn't have a key to the place, he had broken the lock on my bedroom window, so he would use it to enter and leave. It faced the backyard so people wouldn't see him.

For almost a year, Steve was living in our attic. Almost a year he would watch in our room where Adam and I slept waiting for us to fall asleep so he could leave. All those nights I lied awake, fearing that I was being watched, it was real. All those times I heard thumps and shuffling, it was Steve up there moving around. living a parallel life to us below him, and everyone said that I was just imagining things.

After this, I really did have a fear of being watched, and I was even more terrified to sleep in my room and in the dark. Those bumps in the night, as kids, were always explained away, were always told that it was just my imagination, but it wasn't just in my head. And now as an adult, myself with two young children, I fear how to react if they come to me with the same concerns. Lasagne sur-gillet,

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I, 34 female, have had one encounter with a psychic medium that I still think about to this day that has always stuck with me. Back in about 2012, I was a 22-year-old, very, very heartbroken young woman.

I'll spare the details, but to sum it up, my first love shattered my heart in the way that I viewed love in relationships forever. I was working as a server at a local pub. The pub was open until 2 a.m., seven days a week, which is relevant to the story.

One weeknight, I was the only server on the floor that night, and typically the dining room area is closed by this time. However, I chose to leave it open, because it didn't bother me if people chose to seat themselves in this area. It just meant more walking for me as the server, which I was okay with. I was going about my typical server duties, attending to tables in the bar area, when I noticed a man about mid to late 50s appeared out of night.

nowhere, seated in the dining room alone. I quickly made my way over and apologized for not greeting him at the door. He said that he preferred to sit in the quiet area of the restaurant because it's too loud and crowded areas. However, on this particular night, it wasn't loud or busy on the bar floor. Nonetheless, I took his drink and meal order and went about my work duties. The drinks and meal were served without any issues. And as I was checking on him to see if he needed anything else, as servers do,

he decided to tell me that he can read Auras. I could tell that he was sort of testing the waters to see how open I would be to this type of conversation. I must have shown interest because he proceeded to tell me that my aura was blue, amongst a few other characteristics that I found very interesting, and that he was a psychic reader and can sense these things around him, which is why he prefers to stay away from the crowds, because it gets too overwhelming. I've always kept open mind about these sort of things,

even though I've never personally experienced anything like this before. The exchange was pleasant, and I made one last round to cash him out, and as I dropped off his card, I noticed his demeanor had changed somewhat, and he looked very intensely into my eyes. He then said, Don't let him hurt you anymore.

Now, I was very much taken aback by this comment, because I had never met this man before. And to my knowledge, he didn't know anything about my life, and I had not divulged any personal information to him this night either. I asked him to repeat himself, and he did not repeat himself. But he instead just looked at me with intense intention,

and in that moment it was understood that we both knew what he meant, and he didn't need to repeat it. Tears rolled up in my eyes immediately, and I muttered something to the extent of, okay, thank you, and rushed away. I had just made it to the back kitchen area as I burst into tears. I just couldn't believe how strong of a reaction this one comment evoked in me. Was it so obvious just by looking at me that I was that heartbroken? Could he read it on my face?

honestly, probably. Or was this man truly clairvoyant or psychic and was able to know my current struggles without being told? Possibly. Either way, this one interaction with this man I had never met will always stick with me. Because of him, I do believe in psychic abilities. I wasn't able to speak to him again because by the time I returned back to the bar floor, he was gone. So, man, in the dining room, I hope that we meet again someday. I love your podcast and have been listening to it for some time now.

It's given me inspiration to finally write down all my crazy stories, mostly paranormal, so I'll likely be sending more in. The story is one that had me really creeped out, and have never been able to explain what it was. After some deep dives online, I've come to the conclusion that it must have been some sort of crypted, like a mimic, a rake, or something similar to a walker. It took place in 2021, three years ago, at my family's cabin in the mountains of southern Utah, just north of Zion's National Park. I was visiting family in that neck of the woods, pun somewhat intended,

and wasn't even planning on going to the big family cabin, and all of my relatives shared on my mom's side of the family. But I was chatting with my aunt who was staying with her kids and grandkids that weekend, and she told me to stop by while I was in the area. I hadn't been to my family cabin in quite a few years, being busy and not living nearby anymore, so I figured what the heck. It'll be fun. I ended up staying later in the day than I was expecting due to enjoying visiting family,

and I didn't want to drive the windy, bumpy, dirt roads in the dark. So one of my cousins was nice and insisted that I stay, and pulled out the hide-a-bed from the couch on the main floor near the front door of the cabin to sleep on. Needless to say, there was no rebuttal for me. It was fun being there again, and in those familiar mountains with lots of memories from my childhood, none of which had ever been creepy before. That night, after everyone had gone to sleep, some cousins upstairs sleeping on beds,

one cousin and his family sleeping in their camper trailer outside, and my aunt sleeping in a tent with her dog just right outside of the cabin. Because she liked that sort of thing, I decided to go out onto the front deck with a blanket by myself to look at the stars. Since I was at an elevation of about 10,000 feet, I knew I would get a good show of the night sky. and I've always been a night owl and loved the moon. It was about midnight and the sky was clear and scattered with stars, and it was breathtaking.

I'd only been outside for maybe five minutes or less, enjoying the quiet mountain night air before I had a sudden rush of what felt like tunnel vision, where everything suddenly getting darker and more enclosed. Things just started feeling really eerie out of absolutely nowhere, and even more quiet. I sat there for another minute wondering what is going on. Why do I feel weird? It was almost like the stars got dimmer and I was feeling really uneasy,

like someone was watching me, and like I couldn't breathe. So I immediately went back inside the cabin and crawled into bed to shake it off and just go to sleep. After lying under the blankets for not even two minutes, My eyes popped right back open as I started to hear a faint cry in the distance of what sounded like a female voice saying, help me over and over. The inflection of the cry didn't change, and it was just the same slow, high-pitched cry of,

Help me. If I'm being honest, it sounded really whiny and off. It continued for about ten minutes. I thought maybe someone out there really needs help. Or what if one of my cousins is just watching a movie on their iPad and I can hear it? But that wouldn't make any sense. A movie of a woman repeatedly saying, Help Me Over and Over for 10 minutes straight?

It was so creepy and I was frozen in place. So I just laid there until I inevitably fell asleep. The next morning I woke up to little cousins laughing and playing and others making breakfast. The sun was shining and I didn't feel too weird anymore. At breakfast, I started to ask everyone if anyone had heard a woman yelling in the distance, saying, help me. Or if anyone had been watching a movie on their iPad or phones. Everyone shook their head no. I even asked some of the older kids, but no one heard a thing.

Then my aunt, the one who had slept in a tent just outside the cabin, piped up. I didn't hear anything, but my dog was growling at my tent door, a little after midnight and woke me up. She said that he didn't lay down to sleep the whole night, just sat there staring at the tent zipper door. If I've learned anything so far in this life, it's to always trust a dog when they're uneasy. So, it turns out that only me and my aunt's dog

heard whatever was out there crying out for help. Although, I think if I had gone looking for whatever was making that cry, I never would have come back. While I was in college, I tried to find cheap places for rents to live in. College took so much time that I couldn't always work full-time weeks, so it was what I could afford. In the times of Craigslist being more popular, I found a place to rent that wasn't too far from campus, and they actually advertised that it was good for college students. I set up a meeting with the owner

and got to do a walk-through of the place. The owner's name was Roger, and he seemed like your average, middle-aged guy. The place was a house that had been turned into a duplex. He talked about how he didn't need all the room since it was just him, so he split it. He lived on one side and put in walls and furnishings, like the washer and dryer for the other side.

There were even separate doors, and the basement was split, too. It looked nice, clean, and kept up with. After providing a few bank statements to prove that I could afford it, he accepted my application, and the place was mine. I was actually pretty excited to live there as it wasn't a dorm or a large apartment with a lot of neighbors. I could actually get some peace and privacy, and I was looking forward to it. We did a final walkthrough on the day that I got the keys to go over guidelines and check for any damages. I remember calling out that while there was an access door to the attic on my side,

to not use the attic due to structural concerns. He said that he hadn't been up there in years and that the insulation was probably all over too, so he asked that I not use it. I wasn't interested in crawling through fiberglass. to store some old decorations, so it was no problem for me. At first, everything was normal. No problems on either side. And I would occasionally see him when I got home from school or when I checked my mail.

I remember wondering if he worked because I never saw him leave either. I didn't dwell on it, though, because honestly it wasn't any of my business. And it didn't affect me. but sometimes when I would see him at the mailbox or an into him at the store, the conversations would get weird. His conversation seemed too forced. It wasn't just a, hey, funny seeing you here, how are you? It would be a specific topic.

Like one time he called out to me at a nearby convenience store. He asked me if I liked doing puzzles, and at the time, I laughed and said, Yeah, funny you mention it because I've been working on one during my time off. He started talking about how much he enjoyed them too, but that he had been stuck on one for some time now, and then offered to have me over to help him with it, offering to make us dinner or something too. I thanked him, but declined, saying that I rarely got time off, so I would hate to make plans and then have to cancel. This wasn't a lie, but I also thought that that would be too.

too awkward. I wasn't interested in doing a puzzle with my landlord that was also about 20 years older than I was. I liked doing puzzles to unwind by myself. But he seemed to take it well and we moved on. The conversations were always like that, though. Very specific topics that wouldn't normally come up in a natural conversation. But I just let it go. Then there was the incident. with my friend's cat. My friend Samantha had a family emergency that would end up with her going out of town for about a week.

She needed someone to watch her cat, Oliver. But she didn't have many options. She lived a little over an hour away from me and she didn't have anyone near her that she trusted enough with their keys. But I loved little Oliver. He was the sweetest cat that I'd ever met. An hour drive twice a day would be

be too much for me, but she trusted me enough to let me take all of her home for the week. He's a gentle and laid-back cat, so he settled in quickly, and otherwise it was going to be a normal week. I brought him home in the afternoon on Friday, but by midday Saturday, Roger was knocking on my door. When I answered, he had a pretty concerned look on his face. I asked if there was something wrong and he very matter-of-factly said that there were no pets allowed on the property. I didn't really think about it at first, so my first reaction was to apologize, and I explained that I was just watching him for a friend due to an emergency. I told him I would only have him for the weekend, and even made the joke that he was housebroken. He still had a concerned look on his face,

but then nodded, saying that that was okay, but any longer, and I would have to be. He was a to pay extra while he was there. I again reassured him that he would be back home that following Friday, and he left. I went back in to finish my lunch, and, as I do, started dwelling on that conversation. And that's when it dawned on me. How did he even know that I had a cat in there? At that moment, Oliver was sleeping on my bed, bathing in the sunlight. I had opened the curtains in my room, and had opened the curtains in my room,

he seemed to love it. So he wasn't walking around in the background when I answered the door. Oliver also didn't meow. He could, but I only remember hearing him meow at Sam's place, when he was playing with his catnip toy, and even then it would come out as little whisper muse. He certainly hadn't made any noise since I brought him home. And even if he did, there was no way Roger could have heard him in his side.

But he came over. over like that was his only intention. He didn't mention anything else but the cat. So how could he have known? At that point, I became pretty paranoid. My parents were very strict and never gave me privacy, so it brought me back to being watched with everything I did. I couldn't close my door so they could stand and watch me play,

especially when I had friends over. The relationship with my parents now as an adult is pretty strong. restrained. Anyway, I started feeling like I was being watched, but I kept telling myself that I was just overreacting. But because I couldn't let it go, I thought I would try to test my theory. I thought, either I would prove that I was just being paranoid, or prove that something possibly creepy could be going on.

I told my friend via text about my problem, and together we came up with the plan. She came over two days later to hang out, and since she smokes, she brought her cigarettes. And we both held one both unlit, pretending to smoke. I don't smoke, and Roger made it very clear that it was not allowed either. So there was no smoke, no smell, nothing. Yet a few minutes after holding them, there was a knock on my door. We put the cigarettes away, and I answered it, to once again, see a disgruntled Roger. He said that smoking was absolutely not allowed. No exceptions.

I told him that we weren't smoking, feigning ignorance to the whole ordeal. But he was adamant that we were. I told him he was welcome to come in and see, but we weren't smoking. He walked in and my friend said, What makes you think we were smoking? But he couldn't answer. He almost mentioned the smell, but I think he realized that there wasn't one so he couldn't use it. The only way he would have known was if he saw the cigarettes.

It's not like we were waving them around outside for him to see. He left, but not before saying not to smoke or that he would charge me for a cleaning fee. After he left, my friend was just as spooked as me. How the heck would he have known? Was there a hole in the wall somewhere, or worse, cameras? She said that we needed to look for them sooner than later, but we didn't know if there were mics too, and we were afraid to talk too loudly.

So we took my laptop and went to a coffee shop nearby, and started thinking about what to do. We started Googling things about hidden cameras, the best places to hide them, or even how to find them. We read some pretty scary and disturbing things, but then we read something about organizing the cords. That stood out to me. There had to be cords attached to them for power at least, right? So there had to be a spot where it all connected.

We started thinking about places they could be when I remembered Roger's comment about staying out of the attic. He couldn't possibly... Could he? So, we went back. back home. We went to my closet and pointed out the access door. My friend pushed on it, and surprisingly, it opened pretty easily. We waited for a moment and then said the hell with it, and opened the door all the way. There was a short ladder that came down that we had to hoist each other up to get to, but once we were up there, all of my suspicions were confirmed.

There were boxes strewn about, an old sheet spread out on the floor, with an old tube computer tower and monitor on it. Behind the computer were two power strips, both completely full. No wonder he agreed to pay for electricity. This would have been an alarming red flag. The cables from those power strips ran all over the place connected to extension cords and other strips. We followed those cables to other divvets in the wall

and small holes in the floor. We did our best to map out the floor. floor below the attic and based on the cables, if we were correct, there was one that led to the kitchen, two in the living room and dining area, one in the bathroom, and one in each bedroom. I was so freaked out and disgusted. This was my home. It's supposed to be where I felt safe, but now it was the opposite. We left the attic and I called the police not knowing what they could even do. To my surprise, there was quite a bit they could do. I had two police there soon after. I showed them the attic, and after that, he then walked into the kitchen and pulled down the smoke

detector. I thought I was going to be sick as I watched him pull a small box with a wire attached to it. They asked us to wait outside. Poor Oliver was confused by all the commotion, so I put him in the spare room. To my surprise, Roger hadn't come out yet. They had to knock on his door several times before he finally came out. I couldn't hear what was being said, but they ended up putting him in cuffs. They told me that Roger said that he owned the place so he had the right to install cameras. However, they told me how very illegal it actually was. If he was living in the place and had cameras, that's one thing, but he couldn't install cameras in places where other people lived or hadn't given consent.

They gave me a little rundown of what was going to happen now, and then I left with Oliver to stay at my friend's place because no way was I going to be staying there. Fast forward a bit, I ended up moving in with my friend and just split the rent with her. I wanted my own place, but at that point, I would rather live with someone I trust. trusted. Roger was charged with the few things, including stalking, some sort of invasion of privacy, and illegal surveillance. I don't know what happened to the place, but the thought that it soiled with surveillance video now locked up in a police station somewhere is pretty terrifying. And now I still have that skepticism about any place that I rent. And unfortunately, I'm not sure how to get past that.

This morning was the worst morning of my life, and let me tell you why. I woke up around seven in the morning like I would always do for work. I turned off my alarm and swiped up to unlock my phone. After unlocking my phone, I went to my camera app to see if I had any pimples on my face because I was too lazy to go check in the mirror as I was still waking up.

Then, I went from 10 to 100 real quick, when I saw an image or video at the bottom left of the screen. I don't remember having this on my camera because the last time I took a photo was three days ago, and I remembered exactly what I took a photo of. When I clicked on it, I saw that it was a video. I pressed play, and when I watched this video, I felt as if my whole world was coming to an end. The video shows a person entering my room, walking up to my bed, and coming right next to me. The person then clearly kneeled down and it showed my face facing the camera, capturing me sleeping and snoring. I felt like I was going to vomit after watching it.

I'm very surprised that I didn't wake up from this. I tend to not be that deep of a sleeper. This person was most likely an intruder. I then walked around my whole apartment. apartment and checked if anything was stolen. Thankfully nothing was stolen. I also saw that I accidentally forgot to lock my door after I came home, and I felt like a complete idiot for not doing this.

What person could do that kind of thing? This person just walked through my apartment, came into my room, grabbed my phone, then walked out of my room only to come back and take a video of me sleeping. I then texted all my friends asking if they did this just to message. with me or play a joke on me. Everyone responded with a firm no, and I believe all of them. I felt like even more of an idiot for not having any sort of passcode or face ID on my phone. I changed that after eating my breakfast.

I then went to my photos app and checked if this was actually recorded on my phone. I went to the media type selection, and it said that it was airdropped to my phone. I decided that I would not report this to the police because there was nothing that they would be able to do. After all, I do live alone with no security cameras and simply just forgot to lock the door. I then got myself together and went on about the rest of my day, pretending like it had never happened. I don't know what the intruder's goal was with recording a video of me sleeping and not stealing anything in my apartment. It's very strange to say the least. Maybe they were trying to scare me and have me intimidated every night.

I hope not. I'm about to go to sleep now, and I hope something like this doesn't happen again this morning. This time I remembered to lock my door. However, I'm still paranoid that this will happen again sometime, and I have a bold assumption that this person never left my apartment and is still hiding somewhere as I speak. Hello, Raven, and thank you so much for reading my story.

I hope you're doing well and I wish you a happy holiday with your family and close ones. I have another story that I'd like to share with you. Recently, I've been dealing with insomnia and can't seem to sleep properly. Most nights I just lie in bed listening to your videos. Some of the stories that you've shared remind me of a strange dream I had when I was in secondary school about 13 years ago. I still remember every detail of that dream vividly. It happened on a summer day. After lunch, I took a long nap, and in my dream, I found myself back in my primary school.

I was in my classroom on the third floor, chatting with a friend during recess. It felt like an ordinary school day. Then I walked out into the hallway, and suddenly I heard a frantic voice calling my name. It was a female voice. I turned around and saw a ghostly figure of a girl. She asked if I remembered her and then leapt towards me, wrapping her arms tightly around my waist. The entire time she kept begging me to help her,

crying out that she didn't want to die. I couldn't see her face. She appeared as a shadowy figure with no legs just floating there. As she held on to me, I was shocked and a bit frightened. Then I realized that both of us were floating outside the hallway fence, about 10 meters above the ground. It was terrifying. That's when I woke up, drenched in sweat.

I immediately wrote down the dream in my notebook, though I'm pretty sure that notebook is long gone now. The creepiest part wasn't just the dream itself but the physical sensation that I felt afterward. You know the feeling when someone hugs you so tightly that your body aches or feels compressed afterward? That's exactly how my wish. waste felt, the same spot where the ghost had hugged me in my dream.

After graduating from primary school, I lost touch with most of my friends. Every now and then I try to search for them online, but I've never been able to find out if any of them passed away, or if the dream was just a strange coincidence. Even so, that dream has stayed with me all these years. Thank you once again, and when I have more time, I will write to use some stories of my aunt, who does have a sixth sense, she can talk to ghosts and can lend them her body so they can possess her. Please do.

Those stories, I really don't have any explanation. It was the summer of 99, and, like most days, my best friend and I were playing in the woods near our neighborhood. We spent countless afternoons there, riding our bikes along the dirt trails or running around with our cap guns. Those little toy revolvers that popped when you pulled the trigger, leaving behind the sharp smell of burnt caps. That day we weren't on our bikes, just playing and running around.

At some point, I ended up at the bottom of a dirt hill, about ten feet tall, where the woods started. My friend stood at the top out in the open. I looked up at him, waiting for him to do something. Instead, he just froze. His face changed, his expression, twisting into something I couldn't understand. Then without a word, he turned and ran. I yelled after him,

Hey, where are you going? As soon as the words left my mouth, I heard his voice yell back. It isn't safe here. Run! I didn't stop to think. I ran. I scrambled up the dirt hill as fast as I could. If I had my bike, I wouldn't have made it up in time. I would have been stuck, struggling.

I didn't stop running until we were back at his house. When I caught up to him, I was yelling, What the heck are you doing, man? He was pale and still out of breath, and his voice was shaky. There was something behind you. A sinking feeling hit my stomach. Who? It wasn't a person.

I didn't understand what he meant at first. He wasn't saying someone. He was saying something. It was all black, no face, no features, just black. And its eyes, they were red. A cold wave ran through me, but I forced a nervous laugh. Well, good thing you told me to run. That's when his face changed again.

He looked at me like I had just said something that didn't make sense. I didn't tell you to run, he said. I stared at him. Yeah, you did. I yelled where are you going and you yelled back. It isn't safe here, run. He shook his head slowly. I never heard you yell anything, and I never said anything back.

I just stood there. My mind racing. If he hadn't yelled back at me, then who did? To this day, I have no explanation. I never turned around. I never saw the thing he saw, but I know this. Something was there. Something that shouldn't have been.

And something, or someone, made sure that I didn't stay long enough to find out what it wanted. I've been flipping houses for most of my life. I did it with my own father for many years and continued doing it independently after he retired. I've seen many weird things in unique homes, as well as some interesting things that were left behind. but there was one time that I found something that was actually quite terrifying, something that I never really got answers about. This was back in the early 2000s. I had bought this property at a bank auction that had been abandoned for quite some time.

The previous owner had been moved to hospice care, and with no family stepping up to handle the estate, the bank had taken possession of the home. The price was a steel considering the name, and the overall condition, too. It definitely needed some care since it sat empty for so long, but structurally, it was sound. I would only need to clean the place out, do some thorough cleaning, and make a few cosmetic repairs. My first walk-through revealed what I typically found in those situations.

Some scattered personal items turn about, a few boxes in the basement, and the usual deba-bushed. of a life suddenly interrupted. It was all that I was used to seeing, maybe even less remarkable than normal, which was fine by me. After the walkthrough and securing the required permits, I could finally begin working on it. When it comes to cleaning and throwing stuff out,

I like to start on the first floor and then the basement and then go up. This way I have a clear path to the door. The first floor, was pretty clear and not worth doing more until I ripped out the carpet, so I decided to work on the basement. I knew there were a few boxes down there anyways, so I started there. The basement was unfinished, but dry, with concrete floors and block walls. Nothing unusual was noted in the inspection, and to be honest, it was plenty for me. If there were leaks or cracks in the walls, it could become a bigger problem. So, being good enough,

dry and unfinished was perfect. I started by gathering the boxes and being curious. I wanted to go through them before tossing everything in a dumpster. After all, I did own the place now, so the items in it were also mine. The contents in the box started out pretty normal. There were some random cables strewn about, two dragon sculptures that were broken, a small plastic organizer box, think tackle box style. but in a box underneath a few sheets

were some newspaper clippings about a car accident from the 80s as well as an obituary for a woman and a man there were some photos of three people I assume maybe the previous owners and a sketchbook with some random drawings in it that's when I noticed something that hadn't caught my eye during the inspection a slight depression in the concrete floor near the back wall Looking closer, I could see what appeared to be a trap door painted over to match the concrete floor.

There was a small dip in the paint, and even a few cracks forming on it, results of a quick and cheap paint job. But this door wasn't mentioned in any of the paperwork, and I thoroughly went through it all, so I was certain the bank probably didn't know about it either. Now, I'm a pretty practical guy. After many years of renovating old houses, you learn not to jump at shadows. Secret rooms aren't that uncommon in older homes. People use them for storage, storm shelters, or bunkers maybe. And some were even used during the Prohibition era. But something about this one felt different.

I pulled out my multi-tool and broke around most of the painted crevice. then finding the concave curved handle, I pulled it open. There wasn't even a lock. I looked down and it was just pitch black. At first glance, you couldn't even see the ground and how far down it went. I pulled out my small flashlight that I had attached to my belt, and surprisingly, it wasn't that far of a drop. Again, I don't scare easily, and after shining my lights around in the room and not, not seeing anything dangerous, I dropped down into it.

It was probably about six feet, exactly, because I was six-four, and in my work boots, I had to duck a bit. Thankfully, I had decent upper body strength because I didn't notice until after I dropped down there that there was no ladder, no steps to get back up. I would have to pull myself back out. I shined my light around the room, and what I saw was frankly curious and unsettling. There were deep gouges in the cement walls near the trap door, as well as in the wooden door itself, like scratch marks. The room was very small.

Reaching my arms out, I could almost reach from each side to the opposite wall. The wall furthest from the door had a dark stain on the concrete and an old empty metal bucket in the corner. But even with how empty it was, it spoke loud and clear to me. It's hard to explain, but something felt deeply wrong. Something bad happened in there. I got out of there and not wanting to disturb anything else, I called the police. Maybe I was being overly cautious, but those scratch marks and that stain and the cover-up of the door, it painted a picture that I didn't want to think about.

The detectives came and I explained to them that I was the new owner and showed proof. They took a lot of photos, and they asked if they could take the boxes that were left, to which I agreed. They spent several hours down there, but then that was it. I was told to not do anything to the house until they reached back out. A few days later, I got a brief call saying that I was free to proceed with my rentals. They never told me if they found anything significant or asked me any questions. But I was far too curious to just let this go. I started looking into the history of the house and its previous owner.

I briefly mentioned the old man who lived there previously, but he ended up in hospice care with dementia. He was once married and they had one child together, a son. His wife died many years earlier, and he was left to raise their kid alone. Here is where it gets creepy. The son had lived at home, with his dad, and was a suspect in his girlfriend's disappearance back in the 80s. The girlfriend was never found, and the son died in that car accident, the one I found the newspaper clipping for, before the case was resolved. It's still listed as an open cold case. I barely found that information because of how old it was.

Sometimes, I wondered if the truth about what happened to that girl and what took place in that secret room in the basement were related. Hell, I thought about reaching out to her family myself with what I found, but what would you even say in that situation? Hey, I found a creepy room and some newspaper clippings. It doesn't really prove anything. I also wondered how much the father knew, how much was locked away in his deteriorating mind. But I had no right to really pry into something like that.

No matter what did or didn't happen, I'm sure two families were devastated by the events, and I didn't want to drudge it all back up. So all I could do was when I did best. I finished the renovations. I replaced the creepy trap door with a proper cellar door and added some steps to it, and even installed some shelving to try and give it a less sinister purpose. The rest of the house, I completed it as normal, and I didn't find anything else near as interesting as the basement.

The house sold quickly to a younger couple. When I was alone with the guy, I told him about the basement because I had a feeling no one else would. I couldn't not tell them. I'm not sure that I totally believe in the paranormal, but I do believe in karma, and I'm not putting that on me or anyone else. But the guy seemed more impressed by my cover-up job than anything, and it didn't dissuade them from buying the house either.

I don't want to name where the house is or the previous owners, because even though it's been years, decades even, People still live there, and I don't want their privacy interrupted. But just knowing that I may have found out about a dark family secret, a secret that some may have taken to their grave, still kind of haunts the back of my mind. Back in the late 1990s, during the summertime, I would work as a camp counselor for a sleepaway camp in the Poconos.

I did this for three summers. I would have fun with the kids and would befriend every camp counselor. Every Wednesday night we would play Manhunt. Basically what Manhunt is as one person is designated as the hunter, while the others try to evade capture. The hunter tries to find and tag the other players who hide and move stealthily to avoid being caught. I would love playing this game every Wednesday night.

However, the last time that I ever played this game made me quit my second. summer job after that sleepaway camp ended that summer. To start this off, the night went as usual. At eight, we would have our evening games. Tonight was, of course, playing manhunt. One counselor, who I will call Sean for privacy reasons, volunteered to be the hunter that night. Sean covered his eyes and counted to 30.

We all ran. I ran into the woods along with a lot of men. many others, but some of us went in different directions. I then hid in my spot. As stated before, I will continue to call people different names for privacy reasons. I saw two other boys, named Owen and Griffin, run in the same direction that I went. But they ran much further into the woods until I could no longer see them. At that time, I thought they were going to be fine and would be.

caught eventually. But I couldn't be more wrong. I then moved to a different spot where it was less visible. I saw a bunch of campers and counselors being tagged out already. When we played this game, we played with a time limit. At 8.30 a loud buzzer on the intercom went off, and we all had to report back to the home base area. I then got back to my spot where the game began. I waited for three minutes, and pretty much everyone was already back. Sean, who was it, then asked us, is this everyone? Are we still missing some people? I then looked around to see everyone standing together.

As I looked around, I did remember something. Those two boys, Owen and Griffin, who ran past me in the same direction that I went, were nowhere to be seen. I told him this, and he ordered all the campers to go back to their bunk, cabins as the staff would search for them a half an hour passed by and we still couldn't find them I was getting really worried the camp owner who was called to help us told me and all the other counselors to go back to our bunks as the administration

would then look for them I then walked back to my cabin that whole night those two boys would be on my mind the next morning they were still nowhere to be seen The police were called and they all searched the woods and would try to find any clues, but nothing came up. There was only one week of camp left. As the whole week went by, the police would come every day to search, and there were still no leads yet on the case. After the camp ended, I then decided that I would no longer come back to be a counselor at this camp every summer, because I couldn't help that I would beat myself up about how I just allowed those two boys to go missing, never to be seen again.

I would also look so ignorant and unprofessional to everyone if I continued to come back every summer. The worst part about this story is that as of today, Owen and Griffin still have not been found, and they're still listed as missing people. I still feel so heartbroken and guilty. I could have told them to stop in the same spot that I was in, and that we would have been would stick together for the whole game. I can only imagine that they wanted that, too.

I do have a few theories onto what could have happened to them. My first theory is that they could have run so far into the woods, so far to the point where the camp wasn't visible anymore and got completely lost, and that they didn't know where they were. My second theory is that they could have run far enough only to be attacked by a wild animal. or my third theory, which is more likely, the harsh reality is that they could have been abducted. Every time I see woods outside of my car

or when I'm at someone else's house in a suburban or country area, the thought of those two boys, Owen and Griffin, disappearing into the woods never to be seen again, always haunts and comes back to me. Hi, Raven. I heard you needed more. stories, so I decided to dig around in my memories, and I found something that I think is right up your alley. I actually have quite a few stories I'll be submitting. This is just the first one

that I started with. I would say that this is more of a scary story, but what I can't explain was how the magical object of great importance got there. When I was a child, I lived in the middle of nowhere, Illinois. Illinois has Chicago. Cornfield. fields, bean fields, and many spooky places. Oftentimes, I would go for short walks in the woods in my parents' backyard. I didn't really find anything besides cool rocks and pieces of old structures from the old Colchester that existed during the smallpox epidemic that was destroyed. This isn't about that.

But one time I was foraging for rocks in that area, and I found an old medicine bottle from that time. not broken, might I add. And it ended up in the local museum. Now, some people in Illinois choose to ignore this fact, but Native Americans lived there and it's not uncommon to be strolling and randomly find an arrowhead on the ground. They actually just kind of show up, which is part of the glitch. Before this day, I never found an arrowhead in our woods,

and I haven't since. I picked it up. and I brought it back to my parents' house. They were accustomed to me bringing back rocks that I found in the woods. It was my collection of sorts. At first, everything seemed normal. The night after I brought the Arrowhead home, my mother suffered extremely bad nightmares that she didn't discuss in detail,

but she was shook. My mother is defoutly Christian, and she takes it more seriously than most people I know. She doesn't show fear, to things like this and claimed to not believe in ghost. As the day went on, she would keep looking over her shoulder in the kitchen, as if she was seeing something that wasn't normal. The lights and electricity were glitching out too,

but I myself didn't experience anything out of the ordinary. Around 4.30 that afternoon, my mom sat me down and told me to take that thing back where you found it. But I knew that my sister, Mr. Carmen would enjoy the artifact because she enjoys collecting such things. I put it outside on the patio in the backyard so I wouldn't lose it. I called her on the house phone, and she showed up a couple of hours later to collect the artifact. But after I took the arrowhead back outside, the weird things stopped.

Hopefully the spirit detached itself from the artifact before Carmen came over to get it. Now, whenever I see an arrowhead in the same, the woods, I leave it right where I found it, because of this experience. Hi, my name is Muhammad and I'm from New York City, and I am a Muslim. Back in 2015, I would always get bullied in middle school for being Muslim. People would call me terrorist or other names, but nobody came close to these two bullies of mine, whose names were Frankie and Johnny. They would go to an extreme other level. The things they did to me, including pantsing me, beating me up, chasing me, shoving me into

lockers and dunking my head into toilets, all because of my faith. I had some friends with me who weren't like that, but they didn't really come to my defense when they saw me getting bullied. Now, I will get to the point of this story. It was around the first weekend of December, and winter was approaching. My parents had nothing to do that weekend, so they wanted to go upstate to our country house, which is in the Catskill Mountains. I invited my friend Jaden to come with me since he was, and still is, my best friend. We drove out of the city at around 6 o'clock on Friday night, and got to the house at around 8.30 to 9.

When we got there, we all unpacked, took our shoes off, got dressed into night clothes, brushed our teeth, and then we all went to bed. My parents stayed in their bedroom while Jaden stayed in the same bedroom that I was in. The next morning, we ate breakfast and after that, me and Jaden wanted to go geocaching since we lived right next to a state forest, which had plenty of hiking trails. Jaden and I loved geocashing, and we've been doing it ever since first grade. My parents told us that we were allowed to go do it,

but we were only allowed to go do it, but we were only allowed to do it. to do it for a maximum of four hours. So, we set off. An hour and a half passed by, and we already found like four or five treasures on our hike. We wrote our names down on a sheet with a pen to say that we were here and traded valuable objects, and then we placed them all back in the hiding spots. We were now at a waterfall. The site was very pretty, and the next cache was 0.4 miles away.

As we were walking, talking, and trying to locate the next geocash, we heard a pst sound from behind us. We turned around and saw something even more scarier than the scariest horror movie ever. There were two people, and take a guess who it was. Frankie and Johnny. My two biggest bullies in school. How in God's name they were in the same exact place that we were in? Did they secretly have a house up here? Did they follow us?

How would that even be possible? They couldn't have gotten here by themselves since they were the same age as I was, and we were all in middle school. My mind was still processing all of it. I said to the both of them, What the heck are you two doing here? How did you guys even find us? Frankie then spoke and said, You thought you could get away from us?

No, you're wrong. I remember very descriptively that he said this. My eyes gazed in front of me and I saw a large knife in Frankie's hand. That really frightened me. All of a sudden Johnny's sprint walked towards me and before I could even run he grabbed my entire body from the back. It was impossible to escape him as he held on to me with a monster grip. He was taking me somewhere. We were going right to the edge of where the fall was.

There were no bars to prevent us from falling into the deep water below us. It was all open. I was now scared for my life. Did he actually plan on killing me? I didn't want to know. I heard Jaden wailing for help and I turned around only to see Frankie holding him with a knife to his neck. Both of our lives were now in danger.

I was now at the edge of where the fall was and I was still trying to break free from Johnny. He then started to speak. I very clearly remember him saying this all to me. This is what you're going to get. You people killed my great uncle when 9-11 happened. His tone was now more angry than ever. I pleaded with him not to kill me, and I said that me and my parents were born in America

and that we weren't even that religious. He didn't listen to me. Instead, he kept holding on to me, still filled with rage. I started to cry and kept yelling like a little girl to just let me go, and he still wouldn't listen. You know when in a movie scene, when a protagonist is saved from the antagonist? Well, that's kind of what happened.

Right from behind me I heard gunshots. We all turned around and Johnny let go of me as I fell to the ground on my knees. We all saw a hunter running towards us with a rifle in his hand. He kept shouting, let them go, over and over. He was now feet away from us. He shouted again, and this time he said, Get the hell out of here, you two.

Scram! This was directed at Frankie and Johnny. They both ran and disappeared out of sight. He then walked slowly towards us and asked if we were okay. We said that we were okay, and we thanked him for saving us. He then asked us who those two punks were, and we told him the truth and said that they were school bullies of mine and that they somehow managed to follow us all the way from the city to upstate.

This man was in such disbelief hearing this. He then offered us a ride home and we accepted his offer. We got home in 10 to 15 minutes and they allowed the man to come inside the house as he was our witness. We walked through the door and my mother asked, Who is that? My parents were pretty confused at the house. that moment and I don't blame them.

I said that this guy had saved us from the two bullies who regularly harassed me at school. They didn't seem to believe what I said at first, as they looked very suspicious, but we told my parents the story. After telling them the story, their moods had shifted beyond horrified. They were in shock hearing all of this,

and they told me, Jaden and the man to all go to the police station to report it. And I couldn't have agreed more. We got to the station, and myself, Jaden, and the Hunter all told the investigators the events that went down. As my parents were waiting in the lobby. They thanked us and told us that they would try to get in contact with the school board back in the city. Hearing them say this put me in a much better mood. That night and the next day were just pretty chill.

We didn't do anything, and we went back to the city Sunday late afternoon. I was still a little shaken up by the incident, but I was able to calm down. The next day then came, and it was a Monday. I was called into the principal's office, and I was told that Frankie and Johnny had both been expelled after what they did to me and Jaden. I was so happy to hear this, as both of those A-holes would not have to bother me anymore. The rest of my school years went pretty smoothly. Every once in a while I would get called names.

like before, but it never came to a physical bullying situation again. And I didn't take it too personal, because we were all still ignorant young kids. I never saw or heard from Johnny again. I did see Frankie one last time in 2019 on a street. I was walking on a sidewalk, and he was walking the other way on the same sidewalk. He didn't even look at me, as if he was too scared to. As of today, nobody makes fun of me for being a Muslim as New York City has become more accepting. I eventually got over this incident, but whenever I see someone online or in person saying bad things about Muslims,

the memory of what happened almost a decade ago plays back in my head. And it serves as a reminder that there will always be screwed up people in this world. Hello, Raven. There's another story that I'm submitting. I've been on vacation this week, and I had a little downtime, so I sent you one last week called Mom in the Mirror, and now I'm sending you this one, which is also about my mom. Sorry, they're in random order, and are not sequential. Both stories are bizarre experiences that have happened since my mom has passed away.

I have quite a few more, but time is always a factor in getting them fully written out. Like many people all over the world, the New Year inspires me to clean, organize, and purge things from my homes, closets, workspace, and even my phone. 2025 wasn't any different. I was going through my cell phone, deleting duplicate photos, old messages, and unnecessary things that I saved in my notes. I was hoping to free up more space and be rid of what I wasn't using. My enthusiasm for purging items in my phone came to a screeching halt when I came across a note that I wrote in January 9th, 2024. I had all but forgotten this occurred.

I have so many bizarre experiences that I now write them down as a friend of mine suggested. She offered this advice, as she has witnessed decades of unusual events and paranormal encounters that I've encountered, concluding that nothing I've ever shared with her was coincidental. She always believed that by writing it down, I may one day learn the meaning behind the event or experience. So on this, the ninth day in January, I was at work. I was in the middle of teaching when suddenly the sound of an unexpected ringing disturbed the focus of my class. It was my phone.

Now, normally my phone is automatically set to silent. I don't even have it set to vibrate. I do this for a variety of reasons. This would include my disdain for chronic telemarketers and spam. And I generally don't like being bothered while working, especially when I'm teaching. My phone is on my desk and always within reach in the event of a family emergency or something. My cell phone was sitting in its usual place at the time.

the top of my desk, across the room. I was over by the lectern and screen, which was on the opposite side of the room. Then I heard my cell phone ring. I was a bit startled at first, but I paused to lecture momentarily and made my way across the room, hoping not to miss the call. Who could be calling me right now? I wondered. My husband and kids know that I'm at work, and they're at work or school. Perhaps this was an emergency of some sort. I thought. As I made my way to my desk, I thought it was unusual and slightly surprising to hear the sound of my phone ringing. I was certain that my phone was set to silent.

By the time I reached it, the call had been missed. The main screen on my phone indicated it was a missed call from France. France? Wait a minute, that's odd, I thought to myself. Well, many of my relatives live in France, but who and why, would they call me? They barely ever reach out and most of the relatives don't have my number. If they ever wanted to contact us, they would likely go through my older sister.

I opened my phone and screenshot the call log. It showed the time was at 9.30 a.m. I don't actually know what motivated me to screenshot the call, but I did, and then I set my phone back down on my desk. As I made my way back to the lectern and settled my students, I apologized for the interruption and mumbled something about it being spam. In that moment, I didn't actually know whether or not it was spam. I just made that comment as not wanting to lose momentum.

I dismissed the call for my mind and recapped the last concept from the lesson I was teaching. My only focus in that moment was recapturing my student's attention and getting back to the lesson at hand. Later on that day, my mind drifted back to that call. It seemed, well, like a little more than a coincidence. First of all, I have lived most of my life in the U.S. Secondly, although many of my relatives are from France and there is some rare communication between us, we're not close where we would call each other out of the blue.

This doesn't mean we dislike each other, that's not it at all. It's just that families tend to grow apart when they are separated by time and space. It happens to families from every walk of life and families in every configuration. Life can get busy and complicated. The demands of work, children, and running a household often leaves limited time to connect or reconnect with extended family. Never mind family separated by oceans or a continental divide.

Furthermore, when the patriarch and or matriarch of a family passes away, this too can contribute in families not maintaining cohesive. Ultimately, there are a host of reasons that can cause a lack of closeness, but this isn't really pertinent to the story. Just know that although my roots are from France, a call from there would be considered quite rare and unusual. You see, my parents moved to the U.S. before my sister's brother and I were born. My parents traveled to different countries because of my father's job before settling here in America. They did, however, move back to France a few times after we were born. My mother even moved back to France shortly after my father died when I was four years old.

That move was short-lived, and she returned to the U.S. due to her strained relationship with her mother, my grandmother. So, as I examined the phone number, I noticed the correct country code, 33, was before the phone number. The phone number also didn't come up as spam. When I checked the time, I got the call. It was 9.30 in the morning. My time. But according to the phone log, the call came in at 10.10 a.m. on January 10th, 2024. This was the date and time in France.

Not my location. At the time I received the call, it was 9.30 a.m. on January 9th, 2024. But wait, that didn't make any sense. France is ahead by six hours from my time, based on my location in the U.S. I know for a fact I did not mistake the day in the time. I couldn't have mistaken the date to be 1-10-2024 at 10-10 here in the United States. That would be impossible, because I'm not lecturing at 10-10 a.m. The date was also clearly printed on the dry erase board, January 9, 2024, in the classroom.

Furthermore, I wrote a note about this event on January 9th, 2024, in my cell phone, in the notes, and I took a screenshot of the call log. This was a little more than strange. France is six hours ahead of my time. That's indisputable. So if the call was made at 1010 in the morning from France on January 10th, why was I getting the call on January 9th at 930, That's way more than six hours ahead.

That's simply not possible. Was this a call from another timeline or another dimension? Was it a technological phone glitch, or was it spam? Even if it was spam, why would the date and time be so far off from France to my location? Was it possible that whomever was calling was using a fake phone number and also was in a different country or location? Is that even possible? Also, if it was spam, then why didn't they leave a message to call them back about some expiring warranty or pretend to be a credit card company or something? It just didn't add up.

As I further investigated this strange matter, I noticed the Crescent Moon icon next to the time I received the call. This Crescent Moon indicates that the Do Not Disturb feature on my cell phone was turned on. This means my calls are silenced, and all of my alerts and notifications were also set to silent. So then why did my phone ring in the first place? That shouldn't have been possible. Then I began to wonder what motivated me in the first place to screenshot the call earlier that day when I got the call during the lecture. I never do that. The more I dug into this matter, the further down the rabbit hole I felt that I went.

I had no concrete answers, and the more I tried to make sense of the call, the more questions arose. Then, something inside of me was telling me to think about it from a different lens. I gathered what that meant was that I needed to think about it from a more spiritual perspective, since nothing logical seemed to make sense or emerge from all of this. I've had a lifetime of many strange and unusual experiences. Maybe there was something supernatural or glitches, like that could explain this call. Suddenly, this call began to feel as if it was connected to my mother directly.

I couldn't immediately put my finger on it. The more I thought about the day and time, the call was made from France. The more the number 10-10 kept jumping out at me. Then it dawned on me. My mom was born on the 10th of a month, but not January 10th. She always chose 10-10 for her pin on her bank cards, her ATM cards, debit cards, and online accounts, and used this number sequence in her email address handle. She even used 10-10 as a passcode on her tablet.

This somehow had to be connected to her, but my mom has been dead since July 1st, 2019, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't her calling. As I'm old over this situation, I soon remembered something I hadn't thought about since she died. You see, when my mom died, it was in Bar Harbor, Maine on vacation. I got the news from my sister, and it came as a shock, even though I had a very vivid dream about it two days prior to her death. The next day, after learning the news about her unexpected death,

my husband and I were walking aimlessly around the shops in Bar Harbor, Maine. I was planning the funeral with my sister over the phone, and we were having intermittent phone conversations throughout the day. I took a break from talking with my sister and wandered into a little shop as a distraction. I walked around feeling numb. I had no desire or interest in buying anything. Then something caught my eye. I saw this beautiful hand-painted ceramic bell.

I felt compelled to buy it for my mother to put into her casket on the day of her funeral. While purchasing the bell, I thought that if I heard a bell, that would be a sign that my mom was near. I know that might sound a little crazy, but I wanted a sign to know that she was near me. I guess I was looking for something, anything, to hold on to. You know how people say that when they see cardinals, dragonflies, feathers, or pennies? They believe these things are signs that their loved ones are near. Well, I wanted something like that too, but I wanted it to be different. I wanted something unique to her.

In that moment of being drawn to the little bell, I thought of how hearing a bell ringing would be her way of showing me that she was near. Maybe this sounds silly, but I was mourning and wanted a sign. Perhaps it was something that emerged from my subconscious, or from watching the 1946 movie It's a Wonderful Life. You know the part. When Clarence gets his wings and the little girl, Zuzu says, Look, daddy, teacher says every time a bell rings and angel gets his wings.

I don't know. All I knew was that I was in shock that she had died and was feeling guilty because I had a dream about it two days before it happened. And I didn't get to say goodbye. Instead, I was hours and hours away from her on vacation. I just had to have that little ceramic bell. I knew she would have loved it and I wanted her to be buried with it

and if I heard a bell ring that sound would let me know she was close that thought gave me comfort in that moment I never got a logical or reasonable answer for this strange call it wasn't spam and it wasn't a call from anyone I knew maybe it's something that can be explained but I just haven't figured it out or maybe it's something I'm not meant to figure out could it be that the call was a sign that my mom was near? My phone did have a bell-like ring

and rang even when my phone was set to do not disturb. The call did come from France, where she was from, and the call happened to be on January 10th at 10.10 a.m. A date she was born on in a number that she almost always used for all of her bank cards and passcodes. I really don't know for sure, and I'm not for sure if I'll ever find out, but I do wonder. And what do you all think?

Hey, Raven, it's Lola again. In 2017, I got my first apartment. I was 24 and ready to be on my own. It was a very nice one-bedroom with a laundry room in the bedroom. I was lucky with my apartment because I got one of the apartments that had its own private entrance, even though it was a second floor apartment. To get an idea of the layout, you walk in the front door and are met by steps to go up and directly into the apartment.

You have the living room to the left and the door to the balcony taking up most of the far wall. On the right was the dining room, and you turn right to go into the kitchen. If you go straight, you get to the bedroom door and a little area that has a bathroom door in a coat closet. When you enter the bedroom, the closet and a utility room are on the left that share a wall with the living room, and on the right at the back is the laundry room in a space sharing a wall with the bathroom. With all of that out of the way, let me get to the incidents. In October of 2018, my brother's then-girlfriend and their two kids stayed with me for about two weeks, while they were between places.

They slept on an air mattress in the living room. It was set up by the wall that was shared with my bedroom and closets. She had a perfect view of the top of the steps. Late one night she was changing the baby. He was just a few months old, so she checked on him often at night. She felt eyes on her, so she glanced around and noticed something at the top of the steps. When she did a double take at the top of the step, she saw this tall, dark shadows, that she described as man-shaped, run and disappear as if it went down the steps.

For a second, she thought maybe my boyfriend at the time had stopped by, but then realized that she never heard the front door open, either before or after she saw the figure. It just seemed to appear and then disappear. Second incident, I had always felt eyes on me in that apartment. I had been dating a guy for two and a half years while I was living in that apartment, I had given him a key to let himself in whenever he came over. He worked until late and would normally come over after work.

I normally would fall asleep before he got off and came over, but I would always wake up when I heard the front door. I'm a fairly light sleeper. Usually he stopped at the store and grabbed something before he got to my place. And when he got to my place, he would enter the apartment, go to my bedroom, place the bag with whatever he got. on the bedside table of the bed closest to the laundry room, remove a layer of clothes and then get into bed next to me.

Well, one night I woke up to toss and turn and then heard a noise out in the living room. I was confused for a moment until I heard what sounded like someone entering my room and go to the other side of the bed and then heard the normal sounds that came with my boyfriend whenever he would come over. I heard the normal fabric sounds,

the sounds of someone watching, a plastic bag, the sound of a can, and then more sounds of fabric like when my boyfriend would remove clothes. When I didn't feel the normal dip of the bed that accompanied him getting in bed with me, I was confused. I still hadn't opened my eyes, so I just listened more intently but didn't hear anything else. Confused, I told my echo device to turn on the lights and turned to that side of the bed. There was nothing there. No bag, no can, nothing. I got up and looked around the rest of the apartment, but I was alone.

I was so very confused. I recently moved to a new apartment in a different state, so... So far, all I've felt here is eyes on me whenever I'm alone. Let's see if anything abnormal happens here. Thank you for what you do, Raven, and stay safe out there. Hey there, friends. I hope that you enjoyed this collection of scary stories on this episode of the As the Raven Dreams podcast.

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It is formatted differently as it goes in line with what my YouTube channel is, but it is the same stories, just different collections. There is also a website astherravendreams.com, where you can check out pretty much everything about me, my social media platforms, fiction stories I've written if you want to read those, as well as submitting your own stories, which there's a big button on the front page you click to do so.

And those stories basically keep the podcast alive, to be honest with you. So, yeah. All that said, friends, I do hope that I see you again here very soon, until then, remember that you are loved, that you are valid, that you are important. You're the best you that you can be. Don't forget it. And until next time, much love and sleep well.