As The Raven Dreams Podcast - Scary Stories For Dark Dreams - Vol 29 | ATRD Podcast

Episode Date: March 2, 2025

I wrote a book! It's a psychological thriller- check it out at the following... Amazon (Digital and physical): https://a.co/d/4voCEK1 Today we have more than 1.5 (a bit shorter this week, sorry) hours of true scary stories with a late night ambience. Scary Stories For Dark Dreams is a collection of older stories, remastered and put together in a long form episode. This Collection includes the following stories; Spring Stories, Late night scary stories and Other True scary stories from listeners. All of these stories are remastered audio from 2022. 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. Support the channel for Early Access AND more! Patreon ➤ https://patreon.com/AsTheRavenDreams Check out the Merch Store! ➤ https://teechip.com/stores/astheravendreams 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. Timestamps 00:24 10:56 16:26 22:18 26:20 29:55 33:47 41:44 52:51 1:04:55 1:11:43 1:16:55 1:21:26 1:25:03 1:30:06 One Midroll after the first story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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the appellate tited TD is made to to you If you have a true scary story you'd like to share with the podcast, go to as-the-ravendreams.com and click the button to send it my way. Also, if the platform you're on has the option to rate the podcast or leave a comment, please consider doing so. And as always, thank you.

This happened back in the spring sometime in the early 90s. I don't remember the exact year, just that it was the beginning of April. I could probably look it up, but honestly, it's not hugely relevance to the story. I do recall that as a kid I was probably around 12 or 13 when this happened. And while it's not the most eventful situation to ever happen to someone, it was enough to basically imprint on my memories and give me nightmares for a couple years. Nowadays, it's pretty much just an interesting story for me to tell others about, Like I said, this was back in April of that year.

It was the first week of the month, and our city had gotten hit with a bit of a surprise, early spring snowstorm. The weather had gone from decent and in the low 60s to well below freezing with tons of snow coming down in less than 48 hours. I remember that I was super happy about it because it meant we got at least one more snow day, But my mom and dad were less than thrilled. The weatherman had said there was going to be a decent amount of snow, something like three or four inches, but it actually snowed a lot and it just kept going. I swear it was over a foot, but I was also still really young,

so it probably wasn't quite that much. I recall the first night of the storm was actually a bit intense. There was a mix of freezing rain under the snow, then it snowed for several hours, and then it had kind of fallen into a weird mix of both. This caused a bunch of trees to freeze over and was causing a good amount of damage from falling limbs. We, thankfully, didn't have too much in ways of trees around the actual house, just a few in the backyard that were near the rear of the property. Unfortunately, there was one that was half dead and the ice was the catalyst to the whole thing falling over. Or at least half of it. On that first night, probably around nine or so, I remember I was on the couch, my mom was in her chair, and my dad had already gone to bed.

The two of us were waiting to see a school was going to be closed the next day, even though I knew it was going to be going to be. We were just sitting there, and I remember hearing a really loud snapping sound coming from the rear of the house, and then the entire house just went completely silent and dark. My mom told me to stay where I was, and went to wake up my dad, which really just made him angry, more than anything. But he went out to the garage and grabbed a flashlight from his toolbox, and then my mom and I lit some candles. It was seriously creepy to be there at almost 10 at night, with the whole house just completely silent, other than my mom trying to find the number for the electric company's emergency line in the phone book. Fun fact, for those that have never had a landline phone, those copper lines didn't require power to the house.

They worked even during most power outages. My dad just kind of sat in his recliner and went back to sleep while my mom was doing all the work trying to get a hold of them. I was just kind of sitting there, staring out into the front yard and watching the houses that I could see from the window and pointing out which neighbors had also lost power, mostly by their porch lights. There were a few houses that were still on,

but most of them looked like they had been affected. I remember my mom saying something about them not being able to send an emergency crew until at least the next afternoon because it was happening everywhere. And then they started talking like adults, trying to figure things out, so I tuned them out in my head. The next day was pretty much the same. My dad went to work, and my mom and I stayed home, just trying to stay warm and get some housework done around the same. the upstairs area. This may seem like a strange thing to point out, but it's important to what happens that night. That afternoon, the power company did come out, but they'd pretty much told us that they had to run a

new line from the pole to the pole in the back of our house, and that it wasn't going to be able to be done that day, which meant that we were about to hit day two of not having power or heat. Thankfully, our house was pretty well insulated, and we did have a gas stove, because we were able to keep it warm and make food, albeit by candlelight. That night is actually when the creepy situation occurred. That night we were all sitting in the living room. My dad was falling asleep in his chair, and my mom was reading a book by candle. I was just sitting there in the living room, and I was bored. I remember just sitting there and doing nothing, much of anything,

when my mom told me to go down to the basement to get something. I don't remember what it was, probably another candle or another blanket from the downstairs closet, and because I wasn't doing anything else, it was my job to head down to get it. The basement area in the house was set up in a way that it was mostly finished. When you went downstairs, there were a few main rooms, one of which was pretty much empty. Another that was a storage room with boxes and Christmas stuff, and then off to one side was the closet.

Whatever I'd been sent to retrieve was in the closet that was straight at the bottom of the stairs. So, I went down and opened the closet to grab it, and I remember that I heard something coming from the next room over. As a kid, I think I was mostly curious about what was going on. So I slowly walked over with my flashlight in hand, and I shined it at the door. As soon as I shined the light over at the door, whatever it was that was moving around stopped. This, of course, confused little me, so I went over to the door and I pushed it open, shining the light into part of the room. I think that part of me was expecting to see something like a mouse or some kind of animal or something,

but that was not what I ended up seeing. In that room, standing among the group of boxes, was a full-grown man. I had no idea who this man was, no idea why he was in our basement. He was just standing there and standing there and, staring at me, and I was silently staring back at him. Neither one of us moved for a few moments. It did take a few seconds for anything to move from this, because mostly I was just really confused about what was happening here,

and, well, he'd been caught by a child. As soon as he started to move towards me, I literally screamed as loud as I could. This caught this guy off guard, and he started to move. scrambling toward the window. I turned to run toward the stairs, and I ran into my dad who had apparently woken up from my screaming. He was asking what was going on. I was pointing toward the storage room, shouting incoherently, and the guy in there was trying his best to climb out of the window.

My dad pushed me to the side and ran into the storage room, and he tried to grab the guy as he escaped, but it only managed to snap the backpack off of him before he ran out into the yard. So, obviously, they called the cops about this, and they showed up to check out the situation. From what they could tell, the guy had broken in to the basement at some point from that same window that he had crawled out of. What's scary? We have no idea when he had broken in. We hadn't been in the basement.

for at least the whole day. And he didn't look like he had snow on him, so he had dried off. The backpack that he left behind had just some clothes and food in it, as well as a few polaroids of random people, at least seemingly random. We have no idea who any of them were or where they were taken, or why he even had them. But the cops did end up taking them from us.

From what I know, they didn't catch this guy, and they really have no idea what it was all about. It was definitely possible that he was a homeless person that was looking for a place to stay, but it was really weird that he decided to break into our basement and stay there. Plus, this wasn't a city or anything like that. It was a small neighborhood, and we didn't have any homeless people that were seen,

around the area. I think that's honestly the scariest part. No one had ever seen this guy before or after, and he was not a part of our community. That's honestly the scariest thing that's ever happened to me, and while some people may not think it's too creepy because nothing specific happened, it was enough to make me refuse to go to the basement alone, ever again.

I have to beaure, embarked and celebrate, wriggle, public, savouring, admire, and profite. Via Rae, the voice that we love. I have a weird story from when I was a little kid, probably somewhere around eight years old. The town I lived in wasn't one that had a lot of crime

or creepy things that happened, but there was always one place that seemed to always attract the only weirdos in town. And that was the local Walmart. Now, I'm not going to talk trash about Walmart. There's enough other people that do that already. And I do shop there pretty frequently, but I am going to say that, for some weird reason, Walmart always attracts people that are out there.

This happened on a late-night trip to Walmart to get a few things. I honestly don't even remember. what we needed to get. I just remember it being super late, and my mom told me that we needed to go. I got my tired back end into the car, and we headed out. We got there, and things went about as normal as they could. She took way too long to find what she needed, and I spent way too much time browsing at things that we weren't there for.

It was just how she was, honestly, and I was just there for the ride. and because there was no one else to watch me, obviously. At one point, my mom needed to use the restroom, so we walked to the back where the shoe section was, and she told me to stay with the cart. No eight-year-old boy wants to go into a public restroom with his mother, so I did what she asked, and stood outside the room with the cart.

While I was standing there, I noticed a woman looking at the shoes and looking like she was trying to figure out what to buy. Nothing out of the ordinary, really, but when she stood up from the lower shelf and started to walk away, I noticed that her wallet had fallen out of her purse, and she didn't seem to notice, because she was walking further down the aisle.

At that point, I kind of just went into, I need to be a helpful person mode, and I ran over to grab the wallet and shouted for her. As soon as I said, Ma'am, you dropped her wallet. She turned around and walked over with what I thought was a happy look. I handed her her wallet, and she just kind of stared at me with a smile that was sort of creepy.

After a moment of awkward silence, she said, Thank you, young man. I appreciate that. And then leaned down and gave me a hug. Again, I was eight, so I just kind of accepted it and thought that she was really nice and friendly. But then, after a few moments, the hug kind of got to be a bit much, and I started feeling awkward. Like, she was hugging me for way too long, kind of awkward.

After a few more moments passed and she finally let go, she then reached down to grab my hand and said, That was so nice of you to help me like that. Why don't you come with me and I'll get you. something nice for your troubles. Now, being a kid, I was interested in what this nice thing was going to be. But I had also been taught about stranger danger. Of course, there were some conflicting thoughts in this situation, because this was just a nice lady about the age of my mother, and she was just being polite, right? There was no way that she was some kind of creepy person

that was going to hurt or kidnap me. Thankfully, my mom came out of the bathroom at the right moment in time to see this lady holding my hand and start pulling me away. She confronted her, basically yelling and asking what the hell she was doing. It actually didn't end in just a few words being shouted between my mom and this woman. This woman started screaming back about how my mother was irresponsible and how she didn't deserve me as a child. She then reaches into her bag and pulls out what I now know to be a container of pepper spray and blasts my mom in the face with it.

At this point, there's a small crowd of other people starting to surround us, and a few employees had run over to see what was going on. By the time the crowd had formed and people were trying to figure out what was happening, the woman had already started running. One of the employees tried to stop her, but they showed up too late, and they didn't see where she had gone. They ended up calling an ambulance for my mom because they didn't know what to do about the pepper spray, and they insisted that they needed to get a medic there just in case she was injured. My mom ended up being fine, obviously, and the medics got her cleaned up and left. Unfortunately, no one ever found that woman. and all they could do was offer the camera footage to the police.

That was obviously the most exciting trip to Walmart we had ever gone on, and it's not something that we really even talk about to this day. I'm a 27-year-old guy, and I live in an apartment by myself. I'm also a bit of a workaholic, so I do spend a lot of time at my desk, until something like three in the morning, and then I go to sleep and start the whole process over at nine. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I guess, I work from home so I can pretty much spend every waking hour working. Yeah, I know, I'm wasting my youth, but that's all beside the point. As I mentioned, I'm usually up until close to three or four in the morning, and I live alone.

I do sometimes get a bit jumpy whenever I'm tired, but for the most part, I manage. The creepy thing that the story is about, though, happened somewhere close to a month ago. I was up late at night working on spreadsheets for the month so that I could give them to upper management when I thought I heard a knock on my front door. At first, I was sure that I was just hearing things, but then I heard the knocking again. I looked at my clock and I was certain that I was losing it. It was three-something in the morning. Who the hell was at my door?

I got up and went over to answer it, and I looked out the peephole, and there was a woman standing there. She looked like she was dressed somewhat professionally. She was wearing a nice shirt and a skirt, and from what I could see of her demeanor, she wasn't acting like she was on something, or like she had something wrong with her.

So, I went ahead and opened the door and asked her how I could help her. She immediately goes into the spiel about how her name is Michelle Sanders and that she was an officer with the CIA. She tells me that she's on a special assignment and that she's looking for a man named Douglas something or other. She then asks me what my name is, I tell her, and then reiterate that I am not the person that she's looking for. She looks at me for several moments,

then asks to see my ID so that she could verify that I was, in fact, not Douglas. I have to admit that it was stupid of me, but I agreed. I stepped back into my apartment to grab my wallet and get my license. As soon as I stepped back, she pushed her way into the entryway. I will say again that it was half past three in the morning, so my brain wasn't firing on all cylinders. So while this was weird, I also really wasn't sure what I should do about it.

I grabbed my license and I handed it to her, and as she was looking it over, I asked her what her name was again. She repeated that she was Michelle Sanders with the CIA. It was at that point that I realized that she hadn't shown her. me any identification, so I asked to see her badge. She looked at me, looked back at the license, and then handed the license back to me, saying, that won't be necessary. She then walked into my living room, and through the hallway pushing each door open, and glancing into each and every room one by one. Again, I just stood there a bit dumbfounded at the fact that this woman was walking through my apartment, glancing into each of my rooms, and just ignoring me.

After about ten minutes of this, my brain finally started working, and it occurred to me that this was not normal. I pretty much said that. I told her that it was weird to me that she had entered my home and hadn't shown me a warrant or anything, and then mentioned that she should probably leave. She stared at me for a moment, nodded her head, and then walked toward the door. She pushed it open, looking at me as she went to leave and said, Thank you for your time, sir. You will not hear from us again.

And then she left. She just literally walked out the door and down the hall and outside. I have no idea what the hell any of this was about, and I honestly don't know if she was legitimate or not, though I would guess that she wasn't. She certainly looked and spoke the part, but nothing about this was sensible. I don't think that the CIA would send a single agent to someone's home like that, and I don't think that they just peacefully enter and look through rooms. Plus, I wouldn't think that they would frequently get the wrong address for someone they were looking for.

I mean, they're the CIA, not the local PD. So, that's my weird story. Some random professional-looking woman came into my apartment at 3-something in the morning, claimed that she was with the CIA, and then snooped through my apartment a bit before just leaving. It was seriously weird. Nothing ever came of it. No one never followed through, never came back, or anything like that.

I would guess that she was looking for someone, sure, but I don't think that she worked for any government agencies. I guess that I'm just kind of thankful that I wasn't the person that she was looking for. For some backstory, my father died in February of this year for reasons that can be simplified as the result of years of debilitating alcohol addiction. I have two older sisters, and out of all of us, I can say for certain that I've had the most difficult relationship with my dad. His alcoholism didn't get really bad until the late 2000s, when a number of compounding factors likely led to him drinking more intensely. The recent loss of his mother, my older sisters growing up and moving out,

him getting his position and his job changed to a very unsatisfying one, and the compounding financial troubles that he always had with regards to my mom, lack of employment benefits. This coincided with the latter half of middle school for me and my entire high school life, so for most of my adolescence. I only knew him as this deeply despondent man, who seemed to have nothing to live for. While my sisters were able to grow up and move out, I did not have such an opportunity, and I had to bear the brunt of his neglect.

flash forward to September, and my mom makes an appointment with the psychic that we've seen before for similar reasons. We want someone to assess the spiritual state of the family and give us some advice going forward. Me, my mom, and my sisters all arrive sequentially to the home where she does her work. The first thing she notices when starting her session is that she felt a very heavy feeling of apology in the room. and that whatever was causing this seemingly walked into the room before we even arrived. She distinctly wanted to point out this feeling of apology towards each individual person in the room. This alone wasn't really noteworthy, but then she started being able to bring up details that were pertinent to his death, like a strong aroma of alcohol and seeing blood clotting within someone's body.

She was also able to bring up the fact that he was found deceased by my mother, down to the exact detail of being able to sense that she stopped momentarily before opening the door, having a strong instinctual feeling that he was dead. But what really got to me was that, in elaborating on this apologetic mood, she sensed that these emotions were directed towards me in particular. She made her a point to emphasize that this feeling of apology was directed towards me the most out of everyone in the room, even my mom. At this point, the unemotional days that I was in for the beginning of this session went away, and I nearly broke down sobbing on the floor. But I was able to control myself before that happened.

I still don't believe she was 100% accurate with what she was telling me, as it was. It comes with human error and the ambiguousness involved in the messages she received. But that? I'm most certain that was real. That had to have been my dad in some form, and it completely matches the apologetic personality he had in his life. Some other things worth mentioning, she was able to parse that we collectively wrote and contributed to a farewell letter to him that we placed in his casket during his

funeral before he was cremated. Of course, it was in the vague language of he's pointing towards something to do with writing like a written letter, but I still think that it was worth noting. Okay, so this happened to me last night, and I'm still pretty shaken up and freaked out. I got home from work yesterday, ate dinner, and passed out super early. I'd had a super long day at work and was exoner. exhausted, so I was knocked out by 8 p.m. I didn't wake up at all, but at 2.30 a.m., I heard a super loud, buzzing, motor, or drone sound coming from my front yard slash the street. I was in a deep sleep, so it took me a second to register what was going on. The sound didn't fluctuate. It stayed loud the whole way through, maybe 1.5 minutes. Not very long.

So by the time I realize what's going on and figure out that I'm fully awake and not dreaming, I open my eyes and there's this super bright blue light coming through my window. It looked wavy, almost, similar to the way pool water looks at night, but super bright with blue and white. I jumped out of bed because I have a previous experience where a drunk driver crashed in. into my parked vehicle in front of my home a few years back. And ever since then, if I hear something around my car late at night, I immediately get up. So, as this all is happening, I assume that it's like a person that's gone crazy in quarantine and built their own go-kart and was driving around at 2.30 in the morning. But by the time I walked to the front of my house, the light is gone.

and there's no more loud sound. I didn't initially check outside the window of my room. I walked to the front door because we have a thick sun protector screen in the room so you can't really see out or in. This is where it gets weirder. I checked the front door and there's nothing. While I'm checking outside, my sister comes out of her room. In our home you enter through the front foyer,

and there's a long hallway going right and left, and to one far side her room is at, and on the way other side is my room. The hallway's approximately 20 yards. It's pretty long and the yards are pretty far away from each other. But she asks me, did you hear that? She's clearly freaked out the same way that I was, and she said that she also heard a super loud buzzing slash motor sound outside her window. The only difference in what we saw is that she said the light that she saw was white and scanning her window up and down.

We live in a suburb with a lot of houses. There are no empty fields or huge power lines or room for a helicopter to land. Drones can't produce the level of sound that we heard, so I don't think it was that either. And it sounded way too close and loud to be an airplane. Any idea what it could have been? I want to ask my neighbors, but I'm kind of embarrassed. I'm just glad that I wasn't the only one who heard and saw something because then I would think I was going crazy. All right, so I'm 22, female, and this happened nearly 13 years ago.

I still remember it like it was yesterday. When I was a child, I went to a birthday party when I was eight, while visiting my dad, for the weekend. The birthday party was for a neighborhood friend of ours, and we were really excited. The other kids' parents told us it was going to be held at Monkey Joe's. Me, never having been to Monkey Joe's, I was very much excited. Time skipped to the party here. I remember it being really loud and crowded.

And then, all of a sudden, I see the Monkey Joe's mascot walking out of the doorway, and a bunch of kids start screaming and running up to him. I didn't really care about that, and I wanted to keep playing, though a few minutes later I felt like I was being watched. It was like that funny feeling you get when you definitely can feel someone's eyes just watching you. Anyways, I turned around and the monkey mascot was standing in the middle of the play area, just looking at me. I was a little girl then, so I was frightened by many things.

I slowly shook my head as of signaling that I didn't want to play, and I was feeling very uncomfortable. The mascot just stared back at me, and then shook his head violently up and down as if saying yes. I swear, I am not lying. As soon as that happened, he took off straight for me, and I backed up into another kid who pushed me twice, towards one of the indoor bouncy houses.

So I took off running into the bounce house, screaming my head off, and on the verge of crying. When I looked behind me, the purple monkey man was still chasing me, and I was yelling at him that I was going to tell my mom. He persisted, however, and chased me all around the bounce house. When I realized he wasn't going anywhere, I quickly ran out of that bounce house and into another a group of more kids all jumping together, thinking maybe I could hide. Monkey Joe ran in after me and started jumping with the other kids, so I took this as my chance to slip away.

When I exited that bounce house, I heard the other kids laughing and telling me that the monkey was following me, and I just started crying and ran towards one of the king purple slides and crawled into it. I felt a felt hand wrap around my ankle, and I looked down to see Monkey Joe as he tugged me down. I remember banging my elbows really hard on one of the grooves in the slide. I kept crying and telling him I was going to get my mom if he didn't go away, and then all of a sudden, he let go. I crawled up the slide as fast as I could. I waited for like half an hour before poking my head out of the slide.

and then running to my mom crying about how Monkey Joe chased me and scared me, but she just told me that I was probably being sensitive, and that it wasn't about me, and that it was my friend's birthday. After that, I sat at the table and ate pizza until we went home, and I never saw Monkey Joe again. I'm not sure why he chose to terrorize me, but I do know that I will never go back to Monkey Joe's ever. Again. This story actually happened about five or so years ago, back whenever I was 16 and still living with my grandparents. This was back before I got out into the world on my own.

I've always had a rough family life. My mom was in prison, and I've actually never even met my real father. Three years prior, my mom had done some pretty bad stuff. stuff that I won't list here. Because of this, when I was around 13, my brother Rowan, who was 16 at the time, and I ended up getting shipped off to live with Grandma and Grandpa. I wasn't a huge fan of my grandparents. They were both incredibly controlling and also incredibly dismissive.

Basically, you had to live by their strict rules, but they didn't really care what happened to you. I know it sounds contradictory, but it is what it is. The story takes place in late March of that same year, and I will say that it was during a really rough time in my life. I gave a bit of backstory, but during this year, when I was 16, my brother was actually killed in what was likely a mugging that went bad. It was assumed that some guys held him up.

up, and he may have tried to fight them back. They didn't like that, so they killed him. He was found in a nearby park and was pronounced dead when he was found. We found out through the phone call from the police. My grandparents didn't seem to really care and basically just said, oh well, but I was devastated. My brother was the only person I felt I could trust at this point in my life, and not having him meant that I was left to navigate everything on my own. Obviously, this hit me like a sledgehammer to the skull.

I was struggling to sleep, I didn't want to eat, and I had sunk into a super-heavy depression. After a couple of weeks of just feeling dead inside, I was at a loss of what to do. All I could think about was my big brother and the fact that he was never coming back. and that there was literally nothing in this world that was going to undo what that person had done. One night, during this depression, I was lying in bed and trying to go to sleep when I decided that I was going to go sleep in his bedroom. Looking back, it was obviously just me trying to cope, but it felt like a good idea. If nothing else, I could maybe just lie there and think of all the good memories,

memories that I had with him. So, I grabbed my pillow and headed towards the hallway down into the basement stairs. His bedroom was down in a small finished section of the basement, in a room that was connected to the laundry room, but he had its own door into the main area. It was small, pretty much just big enough for a bed and a dresser, but it was where he had slept for the three years that he lived there. So I got down there and I went into his room and I just kind of sat on the edge of his bed and thought about him more. I was sitting there and hoping that somehow he would respond.

I just sat there and begged for him to talk back to me, to tell him that I was going to be okay, to let me know that I needed to move on. I knew that I needed to move forward and I knew that I needed to move forward and I know. knew that I needed to keep living for the both of us, but I wanted him to tell me. It makes no sense from the outside, but to me, in that moment, it was the only thing that made sense. He had helped me navigate through my childhood while our mom would disappear for days at a time. He was my guide through my early teenage years. It was because of him that I felt like I could take on anything, and he was.

with him gone, I felt like I was just going to fall apart. As I was talking to him and telling him how much I missed him, the whole room started to feel strange. The only word that I can think to describe it is charged, like when you're outside during a lightning storm just before it rains. The air started to have this electric feeling to it. It was almost heavy on my skin. As I was sitting there and pretty much watching the hair on my arms stand up, the lamp that was on his dresser started to flicker down to a dim, almost like it was being disrupted. Then I heard a pop, and it burned out, leaving the whole room dark.

I was just kind of sitting there on the bed in the dark and staring at the now burned out lamp. I remember that I was thinking it was odd that it happened, and the whole feeling in the air was weird, too. While I was just kind of sitting there and taking it in, out of nowhere, I heard someone laugh quietly. It was kind of like the voice was far away from me, but also playing in my head. And it wasn't just any laugh, no, it was Rowans. I went from a little bit freaked out to honestly laughing my back end off at this. I knew then that Rowan had done this from wherever he was on the other side. It may sound stupid to some people, but I honestly feel like my big brother heard me crying and talking to him in his room,

and he wanted to make me laugh. So he played this dumb trick on me. I feel like it was him that made the air feel charged. him that shorted the bulb to make me jump, and when he saw that he had successfully scared me, he couldn't help but laugh at my reaction. When that clicked, I couldn't help but laugh with him. He'd gotten me one last time, and he was oh so proud of himself.

Afterwards, I just kind of crawled up onto the bed and fell asleep for the first time since he had died. I was actually able to get a full night's rest, and I'll admit that after that night, I pretty much set his room up as my own. I moved my clothes down there, as well as a few belongings, but pretty much kept it how he had it. Kind of as a way to say,

yeah, you got the last laugh, but now your room is mine, just in case he was still around. I know a lot of people don't believe in the afterlife, but I do. And I really do feel. feel like this was him playing a small joke on me to get me to liven up a bit. That was the last night that I felt miserable, and I only got better from there. I do still miss Rowan more than anything, but I've moved forward with my life, and things

have been going pretty well for me since. And I'm much more at peace with his death. I have a story about something that happened to my family back in the early 2000. and while I say family, it was centered around my aunt, but it also affected my mom and dad as well, and even lingered into causing harm to people we didn't even know. It'll make sense as the story goes on. To give a bit of background into my family, my mother half owns a salon with one of her college friends. The two of them have been in together on a family.

it for around 25 years, and they've always had a great relationship and pretty consistent clientele. They've made decent money since they started, and they have a good staff of people that work various shifts. Really? It's just your normal, successful salon. Now, my aunt has been a major part of my life since the day that I was born. and she's always been a stay-at-home mom, and when my mother had hit a point where she needed to get back to work, my aunt kind of took over raising me until I started going to school. Even then, I would get off the bus at her house after school

and would spend time with my cousins until my dad got off work and came over to pick me up. So, needless to say, my aunt has always been like a second mother, me. Unfortunately, she's also always been in a bit of a rough marriage. My uncle, her husband, and the father of her two kids, had taken to drinking to unwind. The problem is that his unwinding quickly turned into addiction and then full-blown alcoholism. He was drinking heavily every single night.

He was waking up with a hangover and not going to work. And then he ended up getting fired because he showed up to the dealership where he was a mechanic, and they could tell that he was at least somewhat buzzed. From there, things just started getting worse. With no income, they weren't going to be able to keep the house. They were struggling with the basic financial needs on a day-to-day basis, and my uncle had started to take his frustrations out on my aunt. I think that most of you can assume what I mean by that,

but she was basically explaining that it was escalating beyond what it was, and that things were seeming like they were just going to get worse. From there, she was talking to my mom about getting her own place and looking for some recommendations. My mom, being the person that she is, told my aunt that she was welcome to come and stay with us for as long as they needed to, and that we could move things around to make it work. At first, my aunt wasn't sure if she wanted to go through with it, but after a little bit of convincing, my mother had basically talked her into doing so. Then, on my birthday, which was that first week of April, my mom and cousins had gotten their things and moved into the house. She had successfully filed for divorce against my uncle.

My uncle, as one can expect, was not happy with how things were going, but didn't really have much of a say in the matter. They had gone through a lawyer that my mother knew, and it became a situation of, this divorce is happening. The kids are going with her because she has a stable place to live. As they were settling in to living there, my mom had actually talked with her partner at the salon, and gotten my aunt a part-time job there. Basically, my mom was going to make sure that this whole thing went as smoothly as it could, and that my aunt would be back on her feet in no time. That's just who my mom is.

Unfortunately, pretty much immediately, after they had moved in and they started to feel comfortable, the phone calls began. At first, it would be my uncle calling, and when my mom or dad answered, he would demand to talk to his wife. They would, professionally, tell him that she would, She was no longer his wife and that he needed to not call our residents.

Anything he wanted to say needed to be done through their attorney until things were settled. Then he would start calling and hanging up, calling from different numbers, calling and saying something that was vaguely threatening and then hanging up. He pretty much went through all the levels of being an angry creep. and sure I felt bad for him, as this was obviously something that was a huge change in his life, and it was hurting him, but he had no one to blame but himself. Any pity that I had for him definitely dwindled as the days went on, and when I say days, I do mean days.

It was still April when he started to really escalate and get aggressive. The first step he took that was beyond just calling, was showing up at the house unannounced. He only did this once, but he had basically showed up in the middle of the night, probably around one or two in the morning, and you could smell the booze on him. He banged on the door for several minutes before my dad answered,

and my mom was already calling the cops, mostly because he had driven over there and was very obviously inebriated. When the police showed up, they couldn't really do a whole lot other than ask him to leave the property and tell him that he wasn't allowed to drive. Because he wasn't in the car when they got there, they couldn't say that he was driving drunk as there was no proof that he had actually been driving.

He tried to argue with them, But they were beyond adamant that he needed to call a cab or call someone to pick him up. They then told my aunt to get her restraining order against him if this was going to be a big thing, as that would make it to where they could do more if he tried to get to her again. She told them that she would, and then mentioned that it had been a fairly rocky divorce, and that there was already a lawyer involved. They stuck around until he got into the cab, and then they left as well. That, unfortunately, was not the end of it, though the next day was.

After that night, my aunt was a bit shaken and apologetic about the whole thing, but my mom was very pushy about the fact that it was not her fault. Despite this, my aunt told her that she was, wanted to call my uncle and have him meet her at the salon so they could talk and try to set some boundaries on things. My mother didn't like this, but my aunt said it would be okay in that he just needed to be talked to like a child. So, my aunt called him and told him to meet her at the salon at around noon so they could

talk about the situation, and maybe come to some kind of. kind of agreement. Unfortunately, he had other plans. He agreed to meet up with her there at noon, and she thought that was it. They went to the salon, and they started working as normal. Around 11, they were busy, like they normally were, and they had a number of people in the chairs, and a few waiting for their turns. From what I've been told, my aunt was working at the...

the front register, facing out into the parking lot, when she saw my uncle's car pull into the lot. She sighed and made a comment to my mom about him being there early. My mom told her that, if she needed, she could head outside and just talk to him now. She agreed, and started walking around the counter, but as soon as she was doing so, she looked up and saw the look on his face. and she saw that he was seriously raging. She said that she had a bad feeling as soon as she saw him, but there was nothing that she could do. He had put his car back in to drive, and he had gunned it.

The way they described the sound of the car driving through the front wall of the building is painful. It was just a loud smashing sound, followed by the screams of everyone in the building, and then it just went silent as the weight of what happened took over. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt, though he had smacked into at least one person that was waiting, and they had minor cuts and bruises.

What's worse, my uncle tried to get out of his car and run away from the scene, thinking that he could get away and not get caught somehow. Ignoring the fact that he had driven his own car into the selection, lawn where his wife worked, was on camera, and had been seen by multiple people, he thought he would be able to get away. He was also drunk, surprise, surprise, so he was unable to really run very far. So, overall, he ended up arrested for several different crimes. The salon had to shut down for a month or so to get repaired, and a few people got to experience almost being run over while waiting for their haircuts. Thankfully, he did go away for a long time, and my aunt was able to

get things back in the right direction, but no one in my family has ever forgotten the day that they were almost murdered by my insane drunk of an uncle. I had the most bizarre experience, and I cannot stop thinking about it. I'll preface this by saying that I have always been a great sleeper for most of my life. However, I'm having interesting sleep experiences that seem to be escalating more and more lately. I'm 35 years old, and until recently I was one of those lucky people who could fall asleep within 10 minutes of lying down, and sleep through the entire night without waking. over the last year or so, this has not been the case.

It began as an occasional occurrence, but over the past couple of months, has become more of an every-night thing. I wake up at 3 a.m., wide awake, and I have a lot of trouble falling back asleep. It doesn't matter if I go to bed at 9 p.m. or 1 a.m., I will wake up at 3.m. almost every night. I've also begun sleepwalking in the past couple of months. To my knowledge, I have never done this before. I have no memory of the sleepwalking incidents. However, about two months ago while on vacation with my boyfriend and his family, I woke up around 3 a.m. and went to his mom's room and stood over her while she was sleeping.

She woke up and asked me what I was doing, and I told her I was lost. So she led me back to my room and I got into bed. The second time was a few weeks ago. Apparently I barged into my roommate's room and threw the door open so violently that it awoke both her and her boyfriend. I walked to the far corner of her room and I stared into the corner with my nose nearly touching the wall.

I can't remember exactly. how the conversation between us went, as she told me about the incident the following morning, and I was still a bit groggy. But I recall her saying they asked me what I was doing, and I became agitated that they were questioning me. We spoke for a few minutes, and then I hugged her and went back to bed. Not long after the second documented sleepwalking incident, I had my first ever experience with sleep paralysis.

I'm honestly not fully convinced this experience was a dream, as it felt completely real, and I felt completely awake the entire time. I've heard of sleep paralysis, and I've even had a few friends that have talked to me about dealing with it on and off throughout their lives, and I've always heard that it feels like someone is pressing on your chest, you can't breathe or move, and there's a dark entity or demon-like presence in the room. I've only ever heard of it being described as terrifying and horrible. That wasn't the case for me at all.

The night that it happened, I woke promptly at 3 a.m. as I normally do, lying in my bed. I lived in the Virgin Islands at the time in a two-story bright orange and blue house, overlooking the ocean. It was a very old house, and as a lot of the old island houses tend to be, it had a lot of character and interesting structural qualities. I had the upper level, which was kind of a large attic loft-style space, and she had the lower level. My roommate and I had many strange, unexplainable experiences the year that we lived in that house, but those stories are for another day. The house looked like a dollhouse at the top of a big hill in a neighborhood called Mariondoll. So we called it the doll house.

That night, my roommate was staying the night with her boyfriend, and I was home alone. After waking up at 3 a.m., I just laid on my back staring at the ceiling for a while. At 3.45 a.m., I texted my boyfriend to complain that I had woken up again, and I couldn't get back to sleep. Shortly after sending that text message, while still staring at the ceiling, I began to stare through the ceiling. Like, when you're staring at something, but you look beyond it and the thing you're looking at goes out of focus.

I looked at it like that for a few minutes, and I noticed stars beginning to start showing up on the ceiling. They were fading in and out slowly, and then patches of black sky with stars began to fade into focus as the ceiling faded out completely in response. It felt like 20 minutes or so that this was going on, and eventually the ceiling was completely gone from my view. I saw only the night sky above. I had a slight moment of panicked amazement at the fact that I had managed to look through my ceiling, and I lost focus, causing the night sky to disappear, and I was back to staring at my ceiling again. I decided to try it again, and I was able to bring the night sky into focus and lose sight of my ceiling entirely, much quicker the second time.

Suddenly, I realized I was no longer lying in my bed, but on top of my roof just above where my bed was. Every hair on my body stood on end, and it felt as if the static electricity was buzzing all over my body. And I wasn't alone. On either side of me was an entity. They were identical to each other, but I somehow instinctively knew the form they had chosen to show themselves to me. It was not their true form. The best way I can describe it is that they were some sort of interdimensional beings, But they chose to show themselves to me as ethereal, human-like, or slightly angelic beings.

I felt very strongly that they were not doing this to be deceitful. But they wanted me to be more comfortable with their presence, and felt appearing to me in this way, would achieve that. They almost looked like grown men versions of cherubs, with very pale skin and golden curls. In that moment, I thought to myself, it finally happened. They're here. And I tried to move or scream or speak, and I realized I was completely frozen.

I could only move my eyes and nothing else. The one to the right of me sensed my distress and spoke to me without moving or opening his mouth. He told me that I didn't have to be afraid, and he put his hand on my arm. He and I began to levitate while the entity to my left remained on the roof of my house. The one who was taking me up into the air said, We want to show you something. And I began to scream over and over in my mind. I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I am not ready.

All of the communication between the entity and I was through telepathy, as I was incapable of moving or speaking. and each time he spoke to me his face never moved. The entity who was still on the roof said to the other, Bring her back, she's not ready. And as I was staring intently to the right side of me to see what the entity who had a hold of me would do, he just looked at me with a slightly sad yet sympathetic expression

as he began to slowly lower us back down to the house. I continued to descend through the ceiling and back into my bed, while the entities remained on the roof just above me. I couldn't see them as I could no longer see through the roof, but I knew that they were still there by the goosebumps and static electricity feeling that I still had all throughout my body. I felt like they were discussing something amongst themselves, but I couldn't hear their thoughts anymore. Then, the entity who had tried to take me into the sky with him slowly descended through the ceiling and next to my bed, still on my right-hand side. He said, We just want you to know. You don't have to be afraid. And I responded with, You can't be real. I must be dreaming. He then said to me, if you're dreaming, how would you be able to feel my touch when I take your arm?

close your eyes and when you feel me touch your arm open them i did as he instructed and closed my eyes until i felt a warm pressure on my arm upon feeling it i opened my eyes and i strained them to look down at my arm discovering that he did have a hold of me again he let go and said we'll be back when you're ready and he ascended through the ceiling the static electricity feeling went away, but I was still frozen for what felt like at least ten minutes. I was trying so hard to move or make a sound, but I couldn't. And suddenly, I was able to snap out of it and jumped out of bed. I felt thirstier than I have ever felt my entire life, and I ran downstairs to the fridge. I pulled out a full glass bottle of lemonade, and I chugged the entire thing. That's the last thing I remember before waking up in my bed at 7 a.m. I don't remember leaving the fridge or going back up to my bed or falling asleep.

My first thought was, Holy crap, what the hell was that? As it didn't feel anything like a dream. I immediately pulled up my text to see if I really woke up and texted my boyfriend after 3 a.m. I did. I ran downstairs to check the juice. in the fridge, and the bottle was empty. I really was awake just before the experience happened, and I really did run downstairs to hydrate

immediately after. What happened after the experience and before waking up at 7 a.m., I cannot say. I have no memory of anything after drinking the juice. I know that sleep paralysis is a common thing, and hallucinations are common during these episodes, but I have never in my life experienced something even remotely like this. I was completely sober that night, and if this was just a hallucination, it was completely immersive in a way that I never thought possible. Has anyone else had sleep paralysis experiences with non-demon-like entities? I've never felt these two beings were evil or

trying to harm me, which seems unique from what I've read and heard about these types of encounters. This happened a few years ago, but it's one of those events that has stuck with me and will probably always have a place in my memory because of how weird it was. I've always been one that liked to go hiking and camping, and I spent a lot of time out in the woods when I was a kid. And that's all kind of bled over into my adult years. When I was 19, I went camping with a decent group of my friends.

There were about ten of us total. It's not important to know everyone that was there, because most of them were couples that stuck to their tents in the group, but it was important to know myself, M, and K were all best friends, and were on the trip together. We were actually sharing a tent, with the three of us if that tells you anything. It was starting to get late, and we had a fire going for the group,

and one of the couples mentioned that they had marshmallows, and they wanted good pointed sticks for roasting them over the fire. Another one mentioned that we also needed a bit more wood for the fire, which was pretty much just brush that we had found around the area. I said that we would go look for some wood so that the couples didn't have to leave their spots, Mostly because I didn't want to hear anyone complaining, and I knew that M and K would be willing to go out into the woods with me. So we got up and started out into the trees to find some suitable burning materials first,

and then find some good roasting sticks. We were walking through the woods and found some decent brush, but after getting what we needed, we started heading back towards the camp, and after a few minutes, it seemed like we weren't making any progress. I was certain that we were heading in the right direction, but for whatever reason, it seemed like we were only going deeper into the woods.

M was a bit panicky, saying that we were definitely lost, but I was telling her that there was no way we could have gotten lost so close to where we started. I stood there for a moment, and I looked around trying to regain my bearings on the direction that we had gone and where we had come from. And I was absolutely certain that the group should have been right by where we were.

I asked Kay what she thought, and she said that we had definitely walked in the right direction, and she confirmed what I was already thinking. I asked M to grab her cell phone and see if she could get a hold of one of the other people in the group, and see if they could yell for us since we had to be somewhere nearby. She then mentioned that she didn't have her phone on her and that she had left it in the tent. I asked Kay if she had hers, and she said no. I rolled my eyes annoyed and basically shoved the bundle of sticks that I was holding at M so I could get my cell phone out of my pocket.

Much to my frustration, my phone was showing that I had no service whatsoever. I kept trying to hit the call button to get a hold of any of our friends, and it kept canceling the call due to being outside of the service area. I then tried to pull up maps thinking that maybe I could get data instead of call service, but no luck. At this point, I basically said that we should just keep going to try to yell and see if any of our friends replied. We shouted a few times, but there was no response. After walking for a few moments, again in the direction that we assumed,

was the camp, we saw what looked like a shed in the middle of the trees. I thought it was weird, but I also figured that we may have ended up on someone's property, though it was a bit strange that it was just out in the middle of the trees, and that there were no other buildings anywhere near the little shed. I walked up to it to look into the windows and see if there was anything that could help us, or something like that, I guess, but it was mostly empty. I could see that there were some tools on the wall, like an axe, a shovel and all that. But there was also a small pile of clothing that was folded nicely on what looked like a small dresser.

That was literally all there was in the shed, just the tools, the dresser, and the clothing. Which was a bit freaky? It was someone living out here or something? I decided that we should keep moving, since if someone was living here. they might come back, and I didn't want to deal with some random person living in a shed in the middle of the woods. We kept walking for what felt like forever, almost like we had been going for a few hours, but then I heard what sounded like one of our friends shouting M's name.

I shouted back and asked if they were nearby, and they responded. The three of us pretty much ran to where their voice was coming from, and after a few minutes we could see the light of the fire as well as our group of tents. It was a major relief to see them, but what was really weird

was the fact that we had somehow ended up approaching the camp from the opposite side of where we left. When we got back to the camp, the one friend that was yelling mentioned that we had been gone for something like 15 minutes.

Though, to us, it felt like a lot more time than that. We then mentioned that we had to have been gone for a lot longer, but everyone confirmed that it was 15 minutes. I mentioned that there was a shed, but I don't think any of them believed us, and we never found where it was again. It was just really weird to me that we were headed to the camp and somehow got lost. There's no way that we were headed in the wrong direction, nor had we gone too deep into the woods. I guess my question is, did we end up finding some strange pocket dimension in the woods that we shouldn't have found? Was this some kind of

place outside of time or something? I have no idea, but it was seriously freaky, if nothing else. Back when I was a teenager, my house was in a cul-de-sac that was back to up against a wooded area. It was one of those underdeveloped sections of a suburb, where there was like three houses in the cul-de-sac, but then an entire section that wasn't cut down or developed, and it was actually kind of neat. My friends and I would spend a lot of time out in the shallow parts of the woods, and would do things like pretend to be soldiers fighting a war against aliens or whatever.

Obviously, we were always told by our parents that we shouldn't go deep into the woods because of wild animals, or whatever else they were scared of, but we would make it a point to test where we were and weren't supposed to go. None of our parents would enforce their rules or anything, so really, we just did whatever. There was one night that all four of us basically played a game of let's spend all night out in the woods, but, telling our parents that we were staying at each other's houses. I don't remember the full plan or how we did it, but we basically all spun a lie to our parents about where we were going, and we plotted out how we would spend the night out in the woods and make it home in the morning without any of them noticing. It was a dumb idea, but we were a bunch of young teen boys that thought we were the coolest

and most invincible people in the world, as young boys do. we all met up in the spot that we had designated with our sleeping bags and backpacks, and once we were all certain that we'd done enough to make it work, we headed out into the woods. To be completely honest, we didn't come up with any plans beyond let's go out into the woods for the whole night, and I'm not sure what we were going to do after getting there, but I think it was the rush of doing something we shouldn't have that made it all worth it. Once in the woods, we chose a small spot that was mostly clear, and we set up what was, more or less, a campsite. Only we didn't have a fire or tents or anything like that.

We did have sleeping bags, our backpacks, and a small lantern that one of the other boys had taken from his dad's garage. We were there for a little while, just chatting and being boys. I don't remember the full night in what we were doing, but it was a great time. Then, after what I would assume was a couple of hours, two of the other boys were talking about how tired they were getting, so we decided that we would go to sleep. The other three fell asleep pretty quickly,

but I was just lying there and feeling like something was off. I was feeling like something was out there in the woods with us, but I honestly had no idea what it was. Mostly because if there was anything, I couldn't see it. I sat up and looked around the entire area to see if there was anything there, but it was empty. I tried to shrug it off and go to sleep, but I was still struggling. After a little bit, I felt like I needed to pee, so I got up and walked over to a tree and did my business. At that point, I swear that I heard a voice whisper in my ears.

I heard something whispering, Hello, Daniel. Which seriously freaked me out for multiple reasons. The first of which was that the voice that I heard was my mother's. I heard it clear as day, and I know for a fact that I heard my mother whispering hello and my name. nobody but my mother calls me Daniel, and she only called me that when I was in trouble. I spun around half expecting to see my mother there standing over my shoulder, but thankfully

she wasn't there. This scared the hell out of me, to the point that I ran back to our camp and just lied there staring at the trees above me. I didn't sleep at all that night, and I made it a point to not go back into the woods after dark. The next day, whenever I went home, my mom asked how the sleepover was, and I told her that it went great. Part of me was half expecting her to tell me that she was out in the woods and knew that we

were out there, but she obviously didn't, which just confirmed the whole it wasn't really her thing. It was honestly the creepiest thing that has ever happened to me, mostly because I have no idea what it actually was. And I think it's that unexplained aspect that makes it so damn scary. So, for some background information, me and my friend are both reasonably scrawny teenage girls. We were camping, and it was very foggy outside, and it was like mid-evening. So my friend and I were hanging out at the beach looking at all the sand castles from the competition,

that took place earlier that day, and we had to use the bathroom and wash the sand off of our feet, etc. So she was washing her feet off, and I was going to the bathroom, and I heard the distinct sound of keys jingling. Keep that in mind as I think it's important. So after I got out of the bathroom,

my friend was waiting for me just outside, and I asked if she had seen any, leave the bathroom, but she had just gotten there apparently. We were just standing around when I heard the keys again. I looked up and saw a man. He was in his mid to late 20s, early 30s the latest. He had extremely greasy blonde hair, sunken eyes, a hoodie on with the hood up. Overall, just a pretty sketchy-looking dude.

He circled the bathroom that me and my friend were standing by a few times after the that, but he was always watching us when we were in view, which I took note of. My friend still didn't notice, though. Anyways, a minute or two later, she asked me if I wanted to go sit at a picnic table with her, and I accepted because I wanted to get away from him. So we walked over to the table, but he followed us, and I know because of his keys. We sat at the table and she was talking to her boyfriend on Snapchat, and I was reading over her shoulder as I normally do, but while I was reading with her, I told her that the guy was watching us, and about what I noticed before we went to the table. As I was telling her about it, I felt like I was being watched, so I looked over and made direct eye contact with the guy who had the keys. after we both gave an awkward smile, he broke eye contact, and he walked over to another man who I didn't get a good look at,

and they kept looking at my friend and I, so we got up and walked over to the little playground near where we were, and we just kind of talked, but this time she was paying attention to where the guys were. Not even a minute later, the two men walked by over to a small patch of a little bit of a little bit of, of woods that had a red car parked near it. Due to where I was sitting, I couldn't see the men anymore, but my friend could, and she said that the blonde one kept peeking back at us from behind a tree. The other one was out of sight, so we decided to use this to our advantage and ran over to the little restaurant-type thing, which gave us a clear view of them and them a clear view of

us. The blonde guy got into the car with who we believed to be the other guy. Now, our fighter flight was kicking in, and we both chose flight. So when we went behind the restaurant, which was closed and had been for around an hour, we both ran down the stairs to a spot behind a transport truck that had been there since earlier the day before, so we knew the driver wasn't there. My friend looked out from behind the truck and saw the car from earlier circling around the area. As soon as it was out of sight, we ran as fast as we could. And thankfully, there were other people around.

So we calmed down knowing that the guys probably wouldn't come for us with other people there. We made it back to our campsite safely and watched movies and stuff before we went to bed, and we didn't see the guys for the rest of the trip. Now, I know this probably wasn't the scariest of encounters out there, But it left us shaken to the core, because who knows what would have happened if I wasn't always hyper-aware of my surroundings. Just before my oldest daughter turned three, she finally found her voice. Let's just say it was a big deal because up until then, she'd been completely non-verbal. Then, almost overnight, our girl was talking.

Okay came first, then no, followed by Mama and Data. It was nothing short of a miracle for us. She hadn't been speaking very long at all, weeks at most, when I was giving her a bath one night. The bubbly water was filled with various toys, colorful pipes and jellyfish, foam letters and ducks. For as long as I live, I will never remember. forget how my daughter glanced at two foam letters stuck to the bathtub wall. She pointed to each in turn and said aloud very clearly, B is for Barbara, D is for Deborah. I froze. The hair on the back of my neck rose. Those were not names that I had ever mentioned.

There were no great-aunt-barbaras or Deborah's in the family, and all this was coming from a girl who had only just mastered simple words like, more and please. Fast forward a few months, and my now-chatterbox girl started giving me snippets about this woman, Barbara, who had evidently once meant a great deal to her. Barbara went to London after she got married. She lives in a big house.

Barbara and I wrote each other letters. Barbara loves the ocean. Her favorite color is blue. Barbara loves swimming and is a good swimmer. Deborah taught her how to swim. And then there would often be tears because she just misses Barbara so darn much. I also learned that Deborah was the oldest. Then Jane, I think.

And then my daughter. And then Barbara. And her other mother was named Maisie. Finally, one January day when she was, she was four and a half years old, my daughter came to me absolutely distraught, crying because she was losing her memories of Barbara. I promised her that I would treasure them for her, that I would remind her of them one day when she was older.

It was a heartbreaking scene, the two of us holding each other, my daughter mourning a woman she'd once loved in another time, another place. she told me that she was keeping one memory, a very special one, and that she was going to bury it deep down in her heart forever. The strangest thing is that only a day or two after I had conceived my daughter, an older woman that I had never met named Barbara, had sent me a Facebook friend request. I wish that I hadn't declined her request so quickly. It may well have been nothing, but now I'm just not so sure. If anyone knows a Barbara that meets this description, by the way, please do feel free to let me know. I have a creepy story from when I was a kid and still lived in the neighborhood that I grew up in.

It was a pretty quiet neighborhood, and everything was pretty normal. We had several neighbors that were really polite, helpful, and I even remember that one of the older ladies across the street used to watch me after school until my dad got home from work, and I loved going over there because she was the sweetest person I had ever known. But as with most neighborhoods, there was one guy that nobody really talked about or two that just kind of minded his own business. In my neighborhood, but his name was Pete. Pete was a really old guy that kept up with his house and yard

and talked to literally nobody. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, now that I'm an adult, I absolutely respect his decisions, almost to the point that I envy him. Nowadays, I wish people would leave me alone. But Pete was a bit weird in that he would make it a point to look unapproachable and angry,

at all times. If you waved, he would scowl at you. If you tried to say hi, he would scoff and ignore you. As such, I never really knew him or anything about him. So, imagine my surprise when, one night when I was 14, I looked outside and saw him literally standing in our yard and staring at my window. He wasn't necessarily at the window. He was just in the yard and staring at the window to my bedroom.

Obviously, I thought this was creepy, but I wasn't exactly sure what to do or what to think about it beyond that. I just closed my blinds and decided that I would go back to sleep and tell my parents about it in the morning, which is what I did, and they told me that I was probably just seeing things. I was pretty certain that I wasn't. but in the end I was a kid and my parents told me to drop it, so I did. Then it happened again, and again. It got to the point where I kind of expected it. It was annoying because I wasn't sleeping through the night,

and every time I woke up, I would look outside and see Pete just standing in the yard staring at the house. It got to the point where I would see him outside during the day, and he would stare at me, and I would just stare at the ground as I walked past his house. Then, one night, I finally learned exactly why I kept waking up in the middle of the night. It was early summer, and I was out of school, so I decided I was going to stay up all night. I was doing a number of different things to keep my mind occupied. I was sitting on my floor, sketching something in my house.

sketchbook and I started hearing a tapping noise. At first I wasn't sure where it was coming from, but then I realized that it was coming from my window. I got up and pulled my blinds open as quickly as I could. There, on the other side of my window, at face level with me, was Pete, and I'm pretty sure I scared him as much as he had been scaring me, because he jumped and then turned tail and ran. I'm pretty sure that I shouted something out the window at him, like, and don't you come back, you creep? Though I more than likely just mumbled something to myself because I was kind of freaking out.

That was, thankfully, the last time that it happened, and the last time that I ever saw Pete. My guess is that he was probably not well mentally. There was probably something wrong with him, and, he was doing things that weren't normal because of that. I don't want to speak ill of those with mental disorders, especially the ones caused by age or anything, but it was still terrifying to me as a teenage girl to have some random old man,

tapping on my window and waking me up each night, and then seeing him stare at me from the yard. I, again, told my parents, but they didn't seem like they cared too much. but I think that was just my parents really. I'm grateful that he never escalated or tried anything beyond just being a creep, but I'm also glad that I never saw him ever again. When I was a teenager, I went through the mandatory emo phase

and collected empty cans of monster to use as bedroom decorations. Classy, right? They were on a cabinet just as you entered my room, Once, after coming home from school and walking into my room, one of the cans was flung a good two meters through my bedroom. Now, I know what you're thinking. Maybe my backpack caught on it as I walked in. The wind from me entering my room knocked it over. I thought that too. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed off. One, I was already well into my room and had just stopped walking when the can was hurled across my room a split second later, like someone had smacked it. If I'd caught it with my bag, surely it would have moved with me.

Two, it wasn't on the edge of the very wide cabinet either. It was snug against the wall and none of the other cans seemed to be disturbed. The cans were stacked next to each other and touching, so for the direction the can went, it would have been impossible for me to knock over just that one and not affect the others. Three, no windows or doors were opened, so external wind knocking it over was impossible. I kind of forgot about it until one day in high school, a year later, I forgot my fairly large water bottle in one of my classes. I went in quickly before the next class to grab it.

The art teacher, who was like a mom to all of us, looked kind of off when I greeted her. Oh my God, O.P., that's your water bottle? Miss Smith and I were eating lunch in here, and something really weird happened. What, did it move like something had smacked it? I laughed remembering what happened. to the monster can.

She gasped, nodded, and jokingly refused to let me into her class anymore because I was haunted. Later, I talked to Miss Smith and confirmed that my water bottle was flung just like the monster can. It was sat a good few feet into the huge conjoined art desk that we all used, and not near any windows. Even if it were, the windows in the art room were extremely. extremely tiny, like windows in a nightclub bathroom. This time, though, the bottle was half full, so it would have taken some force to fling it. It's not super exciting, I know, just weird.

I remember being quite stressed both times, so maybe it was something latching on to that. I don't know. I just wanted to be hydrated and decorate my room a little, and it seems that something had an issue with that.