The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - 5 Terrifying but TRUE Paranormal Stories From Around the World

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

Tonight we will be hearing the real life spine chilling paranormal encounters of a handful of our viewers & also have some big news about the future of The Tape Library. All stories have been kept anonymous, but if your story is featured feel free to make yourself known in the comments. These stories include a haunted hospital, a horrifying tall man and a reservation with a dark presence hanging over it. Subscribe to Night Drive at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4fPwwH8tJYPb_whSxl3R-g 👻 Don't forget to subscribe for more hair-raising tales of the unexplained and hit the notification bell to stay updated on our latest paranormal investigations! All stories have been submitted directly, please do not copy these stories without the original authors permission. Do you have a supernatural story to share? Drop me an email at [e-mail] You can check out The Tape Library in video form at www.youtube.com/thetapelibrary Stock footage and additional audio courtesy of Artgrid, Envato, Pexels, Midjourney, Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio and the youtube audio library. Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thetapelibrary Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Tape-Library/100094332411836/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetapelibrary Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. The Tape Library brings you the creepiest stories, to keep you horror junkies up all night. True scary stories of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and true crime. Chapters: 00:00 Hospital For Souls 07:01 Tape Library News 08:30 The Tall Man 14:08 Night Lights 16:42 The Long Hair 24:42 The Reservation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the tape library. I'm currently working on the next deep dive into a topic that I promised you all I would cover. But while I'm working on that, I thought this would be the perfect time to share some more real-life paranormal stories that have been sent in by listeners of the tape library. All stories are told wherever possible in the experience's own words. And as I often say, if you believe these accounts or not, or think there is some sort of logical explanation. The people who experienced them all claim that they really happened. I've got some pretty big news about the future of the channel to cover. Things are going to be changing a little bit. But let's get into our first story before we talk about that, shall we?

Grab yourself a warm drink. Dim the lights and get comfortable. Our first story tonight takes us to a hospital. This happened back in the early 1960s. forgive me while I first set the scene with some detail. I had to go into hospital for a couple of surgeries as a very young boy, the second of which was for a tonsillectomy, when I was roughly six or seven, although the main part of our local hospital was old Victorian architecture.

The children's wing was newly built, in the 50s or 60s, a modern design out back amongst the grounds. As such, there were two bedrooms rather than the old-fashioned multi-bed wards I'd previously been in. The outside wall of each room was pretty much one huge window, floor to ceiling and side to side, covered by full-length vertical blinds that were left open most of the time. This afforded a lovely view during the day of the grassy lawns and trees of the hospital grounds, with some other buildings in the distance. These days, a simple operation such as mine is an in-and-out day job, But back then it required me to be in for at least three days, barring complications.

So I was admitted one afternoon, with surgery scheduled for the next day, and put in the bed nearest the window. Another boy already occupying the other bed. My parents stayed to settle me in for as long as they were allowed, but eventually were shooed away by the matron, and I was left alone. I won't say I was a brave little soldier. I was crapping myself about the surgery. but I had enough of my own toys and stuff to occupy me, until the nurses said, lights out for the night. Now here's where things got weird for me.

I awoke some time during the night and realised that the nurse had left our blinds completely open. The grounds outside were pitch black, a stark contrast from the daytime view, but that wasn't what was scaring me. Right in front of me, as I lay on my side facing the window. There were ten or more people pressed up against the glass.

Imagine the sort of zombie crowd like in the Walking Dead, but without the gruesome makeup, all vying to be at the front by pushing against each other, the ones at the front being squashed against the pain by the ones behind, in an effort to be noticed. What was most odd was that, although it was pitch black outside, and almost no light from the walled corridor, These figures were highly detailed, as if lit by their own source and black and white, like old photographs. They looked like everyday people varying ages and both men and women.

I would have expected if they were normal people to have heard bangs or squeaks on the glass as they were moving against it, or their grunts and voices, but there was a conspicuous absence. of sound from them. Just the normal sounds of the nightly routine of the ward from further within the building. Needless to say, I quickly turned over and quaked under the blankets for quite a while, not daring to look at the window again. The next morning the hospital bustle carried on as usual, and I was eventually prepped and taken down for surgery. I awoke from anaesthetic that afternoon, with the discomfort of removed tonsils, and awaited my parents at visiting time. I never told them about the people at the window, as with my previous weird experience. I feared their ridicule. The nurses told them I was mending nicely, and I could be discharged to go home sometime the next day.

As the end of visiting hours rolled around, I tried to get my parents to take me with them, in typical whining childlike fashion, but to no avail. I was doomed to another night in the ward. Sure enough, the nurses had left the blinds open again. I had checked earlier to see if there was some way to close them, but they didn't seem to be. At least not to a six-year-old anyway. Night soon came, but the pain in my throat kept me tossing a turn in, instead of going into my normal deep sleep. In the fitful sleep of the wee small hours, I turned over to see those same creepy people at the window again. They looked almost pleading, like, see me, see me, sort of thing, instead of threatening or trying to be scary.

But scary they were, to me, by their very presence. So in a repeat of the previous night, I turn over to cow run under the sheets, eventually giving in to sleep again. I could not get out of their quick enough when my parents arrived to take me home the next day. Lots of jelly and ice cream for my sore throat helped to soon remove the experience from my young mind. but not to be forgotten entirely. You may attribute this experience to pranksters or trespassers on the hospital grounds, but they were a pretty mixed bunch, both old and young,

which I would have to say was an improbable grouping, unless they were some sort of cult family. Bear in mind that it was in the early 60s. That would have been some bizarre behaviour back then. Me? I've looked back on this many times as an adult. and can only summarise that I attracted them for whatever reason, and that they were spirits of the recently deceased,

from elsewhere in the hospital, confused about their state and looking for some guidance. Quite why they were held back by the glass of the window, I'll never know. One would have expected them to drift right through as if they were nothing. Perhaps being recently parted, their essences were still somewhat constrained by physical laws and the solidity of material objects. I do hope they soon manage to move on,

and aren't still there, trying to attract someone else's attention. Okay, so I mentioned we had some news, so let's go over that quickly before we continue. Chapter times are available if you just want to skip to the next story. A lot of you love these story compilations. I know others just want the more documentary-style videos I do. This is actually going to be the last subscriber compilation I do

on the channel for the foreseeable future. But I'm actually launching a second show called Night Drive. This is going to be a bit more of a minimalist approach visually, but it's going to allow me to share loads more stories with you, without clogging up the main channel. I'm approaching it almost like an old-school paranormal radio show, where every couple of weeks we'll take a drive together, and I'll read you the stories I've been submitted,

but also occasionally discuss other paranormal cases that I think are interesting, but maybe don't really fit a full tape library episode. tape library episode. If you only enjoy the full deep dive episodes, nothing is changing there. If you love both styles of video, this will actually mean you get even more of my content than you would have previously. So, I hope you can join me on this new venture. I will have the link to the new channel in the description and comments below, so please head over there and click subscribe. The first episode of Night Drive might be out sooner than you expect. Thank you for your continued support. Now let's carry on with tonight's

story, shall we? For our second story, we will be heading over to a small house in the English countryside in the early 90s. I moved by my parents to the Hartfordshire countryside in 1993, and from the moment we settled ourselves into our new bungalow, there was a strange series of occurrences. A young girl chattering away to herself in my bedroom at exactly 4 a.m. on successive mornings. My record player starting up with the manual arm play. on the vinyl disc and the volume being cranked up to full, almost blowing the speakers when I was in a different room, to a weird couple of weeks of flashing lights in the sky and in the neighbouring woodlands that were experienced by others, but were met with dismissive responses when the local observatory was called.

It's within this strange and eerie setting that my most disturbing encounter happened 13 years later. I keep a diary so I know with absolute surfing, to date. It was Saturday, October 14th, 2006. My parents were away that particular weekend, so I was left to look after the bungalow and to care for our golden retriever Bailey. I had made his lunch and shortly afterwards proceeded to take Bailey up the footpath, parallel to our home, and then walk him down the path that clung by the hedgerows over two recently ploughed fields, separated by a seawroad. It must have been raining that morning, or the day before,

as the soil was claggy underfoot, and the clouds above were grey and racing fast. At the end of the second field, and the end point of the walk before turning back, there is a thin stretch of woodland that only takes 20 seconds to walk through, but has always felt as if something terrible would happen there. It feels wrong and disquietening, even in daylight.

In the dusky summer evenings it has bats flittering around which only adds to its uneasiness. Once through it and you reach a narrow style it opens out into a rather lovely healed meadow. On this day however, I took Bailey

to the start of the thin strip of woodland and decided to turn back. I felt as if the trees or something else was watching me and the oppressive feeling was more heightened than usual I could sense my walk changing with the curvature of my spine pushing forward more, as if to create the maximum amount of distance between the woods and myself.

I did not look back until I had come to the end of the field, convincing myself that we were now safe. It was then that I noticed, Bailey looking back and growling. He had started to stand on his hind legs, and it was a struggle to keep him on his lead. I was so concerned that he was going to be the victor in this struggle that I put all my force into getting him moving but then I looked up and saw what was distressing him

there in the field was a male figure and possibly tall dressed in what I can only describe as black funeral wear from the Victorian em a large top hat on his head and coat tails down to the ground his arms ending with straightened hands beyond his knees. The atmosphere was charged with evil. The figure looked at me and ran across the field in her direction, faster than any person I have ever seen. When I say ran, I really mean stride. His enormous span carried him with ease across ploughed wet mud with no difficulty, as if it were

tarmac below his feet. His arms swung in a weird, exaggerated fashion, in tandem with each other. I grabbed Bailey's lead as close to his collar as I could and ran with him while he was still rearing up. It's one of those moments in life where you develop superhuman strength. We made his across the road without even looking for traffic and into the other field. At this point Bailey completely changed and was now pulling me home as if fear had replaced his previous defensive stunts. I looked back one last time and to my amazement the figure had run across the field and it had been back. of seconds and had placed himself between two oak trees staring at us whilst mimicking the crucifix pose with those hideously long arms his black shape silhouetted against the gray sky behind him

to be permanently etched into my mind as the most terrifying experience of my life we got back home but it took another 10 to 15 minutes for bailey to settle himself after scratching at the windows and patio door while I was frantically trying to make sure everywhere was locked. I have been back to this place many times since, and the woodlands are still as eerie as they ever were. But whoever this figure was, and what his purpose was, I will probably never know. And fortunately, I have never seen him again, nor do I want to.

This is a true story, and one I wish had never happened. If you have a true story you would like to share, then please drop me an email at the tape library at protonmail.com. Please include your name if you wish it to be used, where the story took place, and as much detail as you can remember. I love reading all your strange encounters with the unexplained. On to our next story, and this time, we're off to Arizona. An experience I'd like to share with you is more other-worldly than supernatural. I was about maybe eight years old when this happened. I don't know what month had occurred, but it was 2007 in Phoenix, Arizona.

My family and I went to a cousin's birthday party. Even at a young age, I was intrigued by the supernatural, odd phenomena, and all things horror. I recall being outside with my family, along with everyone else. I remember eating at the time when I overheard guys telling each other in Spanish to look up at the sky. asking each other what it could be. Turning away from them on my look up, I remember feeling myself catch my breath. There, in the night sky, was three huge lights in a triangle formation.

Soon everyone in the party was looking at these lights. They stood still in their formation, moving very slowly along the night sky. People around thought it might have been military in training. But then the free lights halted. their movement. Somewhat stopped over the location we were in. This is when one of the lights began to move slowly. The music had stopped.

Everyone was just watching at this point. Wondering what was going to happen. Were we going to get abducted? Since the lights were in a triangle formation, the pointed end was on the top, while the other two were obviously at the bottom. It was moving in a way that it could have been some sort of aircraft, But while the bottom left light was moving, it was getting closer to the right bottom light.

Closer and closer it got. And right when it made contact, the light simply sprinkled. I'm not sure how to describe it, but it collided in a very quiet, non-flashy way. The top light was the only one still there. I think after a couple of minutes, the light began to fade away. And it just simply disappeared. After some time waiting to see if it reappears, everyone went back to what they were doing and carried on with their nights. I'm not sure what it could have been, if it was UFOs, stars or something that just happens once in a lifetime.

For story number four, we're off to Slovenia, for an encounter that takes place over the course of several years. Here's my story of the haunted house I have lived in for seven years And let me tell you And that was more than enough So my mother met her ex-husband in 2002 And she got pregnant Therefore she and her new man decided that we should move in his house His house is in a small area

A village or whatever you call it It's very small Few houses on the countryside And we did In February or March of 2003 The day we moved in and everything was fine. We met his two daughters, their dog, who was such a sweetheart, and a cat.

A blissful family, right? It was. We had some type of picnic and we were having a good time. His daughters were already grown up, so they went home. My older brother and I were getting ready to go to sleep in the same room, and my mother and her boyfriend were going to get some more stuff. from our old apartment. So basically me and my brother were alone.

Everything was fine for the first 20 minutes or so when we were alone in our beds. And then we started hearing creaking noises on the wooden steps. We were staring at each other wide-eyed, thinking what was that? And my brother stood up and went to go and see. But it was nothing.

When he came back and got under the covers with the lights off, it started again. We were awake and till four in the morning before we fell asleep. A couple of months later, when our half-brother was a few months old, we had a family gathering and were all at a table except for the baby, who was asleep. We were talking and laughing.

When suddenly my mum pats me on the shoulder and says, Are you seeing this? She was looking up those stairs where the bedrooms and the bathroom was. And I was like, what are you talking about? I don't see anything. And then we hear the baby crying. And my mother was too terrified to go in check so she sent her boyfriend. He calmed the baby down and came back to the table.

And I asked my mum, what was that? She was debating if she should tell me or not. But then she did. She told me that she saw a woman in white, with blonde hair floating across the floor from their bedroom, where the baby was sleeping, to the bathroom. right opposite the bedroom.

I was like, no, I haven't seen her. You're freaking me out. Then she said, never mind. She might have had too much to drink, even though she wasn't drinking because she was breastfeeding. She told her boyfriend, he's a sceptic, but he took her to see a psychic or something. And the psychic said,

there was a demon in their bedroom. Fast forward two to three years later, and they got married. everything was fairly quiet at that point my mum had to pray a specific thing each day on the specific time of day I think three times a day if I remember correctly and all of a sudden it started to escalate I was becoming the centre of attention

apparently and not her so much anymore I was 16 when it started the first thing was constant nightmares every night and then it progressed to waking up at exactly three 3.14 a.m. every morning for six months. Then it started to pull my blankets off me. I was literally wrestling for it. Now I know this was mean of me but I said, can't you give me a break and do this to my brother instead? And it listened and it did. It started pulling off blankets off my brother too. He started complaining in the mornings, not understanding what was going on. I couldn't hold it in anymore

and I told him what happened. We kind of laughed it off. My brother was quite a skeptic. one night when we were woken up by a loud bang in our room and turned on the lights we were searching for the source of the bang but we eventually gave up because we couldn't find anything unusual so went back to sleep in the morning when we woke up my brother says did you read my books last night

I was like no why he said they're both on the shelf but they were up on the bookshelf up there and there is no way they could fall off because they were so stuck in there and you had to use quite a lot of force to get them out. I said wait a minute. So this is probably the source of the loud bang in the middle of the night. He said I shouldn't joke about these things. It's not possible. But I asked him how do you explain this then? And he was speechless. It went a little quiet from then on until a few months later, another incident.

I was in the bathroom downstairs and my brother was in the bathroom upstairs. The one that my mum had seen the woman in. So I'm doing my business and all of a sudden I hear the front door of the house opening and closing. It was right beside the bathroom I was in. And then I hear an almost whispering outside my bathroom door in my mother's voice. Hey, hey, call your brother. I just said yeah, he's upstairs in the bathroom. You can call him yourself, you know. And you don't need to whisper. And then my mother's voice says again, call your brother. A little more forceful and urgent this time. And I said, okay, okay, I'll do it.

And then I hear the main door of the house opening and closing again. I finish my business and I start shouting to my brother that our mum needs him and to hurry up. And right when I finish telling them this, or rather shouting it out, my mum comes in, she asks where my brother is. I said to her, I've told him already that you need him, he'll come. And she looks at me wide-eyed, and she said, I was working in the vineyard. I wasn't in the house at all. I said, you were here five minutes ago.

She was wide-eyed staring at me and said, Don't play me like that. I swear to God I wasn't here. I said, I'm not. You were here. I heard you coming in, telling me that and then leaving. She said, no, I didn't. We were both terrified.

A day later, when I woke up. up, she asked me if I had called her by her name. And I said, I just came out of my room. Plus, I always call you mum, not by your first name. She said that's true, and that the voice had come from the living room, not upstairs. And then it all went quiet again. Well, mostly, except when we were occasionally sleeping in that room, and we visited. But I tell you this, my brother and I moved out, and five or six years later, I came home for a week just for the hell of it. In that room that my brother and I was sleeping in, was made into a storage room,

so I had to sleep on the couch in the living room. Thank God. Every time I had finished my shower and had to dry my hair, the hairdry was in that room, right beside the door on the floor so I could easily reach it with my hand. Something was preventing me from grabbing it. I was filled with dread and didn't want to step or put my hand into that room any first. So I called my mum to get it for me.

I know, I'm all worse. She was laughing at me. I'm ridiculous and I still didn't do it. In that room there is something so dark that I do not dare even look at it. Our final story for the night takes us to Canada in the early 2000s. Don't forget if you want to hear more creepy real life tales

then please do subscribe to our new channel Night Drive. You can find the link below after this episode. is finished. I grew up in a small First Nations reserve in northwest BC Canada. I have a handful of events that range from mildly odd to downright frightening that happened within our home over those years. Around 2001 to 2002-ish, I would return home alone from school as my father was working on housing construction, on our lower reserve areas, and both my sisters were gone, one working at our local gas station. and the other with her boyfriend at the time, way up north with his family.

My mother at the time had been away from the family, as she was attending and completing a bachelor's degree programme in another city, just shy of 600 kilometres away. When I would get home from school, I would immediately upon entering the home, be filled with a sense of dread and unease, as though someone was watching, unhappy about my presence. More often than not, I would leave the house and hang out with one of my cousins, either at their place or just play outside in the woods or something.

But when that was not an option, I would gather up my dog or one of my two cats and head straight to my room and try to ignore anything that would happen. We had four great chairs that had small wheels, and on more than one occasion I would hear them rolling by themselves in the kitchen, dining room area. My sisters also had their fair share of scares in the house, as well as my cousins who had come to visit. It really seemed like everyone except for my dad

was affected by the strange happenings. One night while trying to sleep, I had just got comfy and got that feeling of unease and dread. I opened my eyes and looked at my door and saw my oldest sister standing in the doorway. I asked her what she was doing. No answer. So I yelled,

What the hell do you want? No answer. It wasn't until I finally said, go away and go back to bed, that she turned around and went back to her room. She had no recollection of this the next day, so either it was my sister, something that just wanted to imitate her. Far more strange occurrences happened before my mum returned home with her bachelor's degree a couple of years later and was home for good. But something that was always stuck with me happened when she had done.

just made it back. I was in my middle sister's room while my sister was getting a stern talking to by my mother about boundaries with her boyfriend in her home, watching like any other annoying little brother would do. There were multiple small holes in the wall that separated her room from mine and her bed was against that wall. I was standing next to my sister's boyfriend and we were facing my mother and sister on her bed while the lecture was happening. Out of nowhere, Two very long, bony fingers came through the hole in the wall and started feeling around. They were bony but very large and a sick purple colour. After feeling around for what felt like a few seconds, the fingers retracted back into the other side of the wall, into my room.

I looked at my sister's boyfriend and his jaw was on the floor. He gathered himself and he ran to my room. within seconds of that happening. There was nobody in my room, let alone a sickly purple decaying person. From there, my mum, being a very spiritual person, blessed our home, with smudging, and shot glasses on every window seal with water and sea salt. On top of this, working to retain normalcy in our home, the salt in my eldest sister's room, turned black. It's worth noting that my childhood home was not the only house on our result. serve to have very strange occurrences, and from what I've heard over the years.

Ours was far from the worst. When the GT Railway came through our reserve in the early 1900s, the rail company and the Canadian government made our band members move our graveyard and bodies, issuing $5 a member moved, and $20 for a higher-ranking person's grave. With our local Indian agents saying not to pay at all, this again happened when the highway was put through during World War II. Between all that and the very real and extreme trauma that some band members took home with them from the residential schools, I believe the negative energy feeds whatever is stirred up around here. The odd thing or two still happens around my own place now, that I'm an adult and moved out of my childhood home, which is odd as my house, while on the same reserve, is very much new with no prior occupants.

a huge thank you to everyone that submitted their experiences to make up this episode of the tape library. As I said earlier, we're changing things up a bit here. So all future stories like these will be included in the Night Drive series. I'm working on our next full tape library episode, so I'm hoping to have that with you all very soon. Don't forget to like and subscribe if you haven't already. It really helps support the channel and lets me haunt to even more people's ears. Until next time, pleasant dreams.