The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - Terrifying but TRUE Paranormal Stories To Fall Asleep To (VOL 9)

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

It's time for a long over due entry into the scary stories to fall asleep to series. These are all encounters that have been sent in over the last year from listeners of The Tape Library. A chance to share their real life paranormal encounters, in their own words. Whatever you choose to believe, they claim these events all really happened. The first 8 stories are brand new never before heard stories, then we'll be listening to some highlights from the 2025 episodes of my second channel ⁨@NightDriveParanormal⁩ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Support the channel with Patreon - www.patreon.com/thetapelibrary Do you have a supernatural story to share? Drop me an email at [e-mail] You can check out The Tape Library in audio form on all of your favourite podcast providers. Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetapelibrary Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thetapelibrary Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Tape-Library/100094332411836/ Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. Additional footage and audio from Evanto, Artgrid, Epidemic Sounds, Singularity and Pexels. Music includes Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio and the youtube audio library. Additional music by @repulsive1908 All other footage used under fair use. Chapters 00:00 Scary Stories to Fall Asleep to 02:52 Rain 03:25 1 10:17 2 18:50 3 24:48 4 31:11 5 35:02 6 42:46 7 44:32 8 47:30 9 55:17 10 58:54 11 1:14:18 12 1:40:23 13 1:53:02 14 1:58:02 15 2:16:32 16 2:20:29 17 2:24:20 18 2:30:27 19 2:38:31 20 3:01:59 Hello 3:04:51 The Dark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's been a horrible accident, I said hastily. I don't know what happened. Corcoran's eyeless skull gawked. His lower jaw having sagged more since I first found him, making it look like his corpse was trying to scream. His body is just a casing to be discarded, the man said softly. What's important is that you will not deny him burial in the method we prepared for him.

We're his protectors. Stop us from doing his will and you'll be harmed. His transition has come and we are ready. Go back in the house. No one needs to know. Knife Point Horror. Tales of supernatural suspense written, produced and narrated by Soren Narnia.

Now transmitting from Spectrevision Radio, anywhere you hear podcast. Hello and welcome to the tape library. This is the long-awaited volume 9 in the scary stories to Fall asleep 2 series. These are a little different to my standard episodes, so allow me to quickly introduce it. First of, you will likely see an ad break after this intro, but after that there will be no more ad interruptions until the very end. For that reason, please do me a favour. Let me know in the comments where you're currently listening from. And if you're on YouTube, click the like button,

if you would be so kind. These little interactions help me to keep these episodes virtually add-free. These episodes are designed for you to relax or fall asleep while listening to creepy real-life tales of the paranormal. For that reason, sound effects and visuals are kept to a minimum. Tonight, the first eight stories of brand new never heard before encounters that I have been sent. Then after that I'll be sharing some highlights from my second channel, Night Drive Paranormal. So if you want more stories like this every month, then be sure to check that out. These stories are submitted to my inbox from all of you out there listening to this. Whatever you choose to believe, these people claim at least that their experiences really happened.

These do not come from professional writers, and in many cases English may not be the first language of the person submitting a story. But I try my best to keep their original words as much as I can. What they experienced is obviously up for debate. A logical explanation is almost always a positive. But if you wish to discuss these cases, please bear in mind that the witnesses will likely read your words, so please keep it respectful. With all of that out of the way, it's time to get comfortable.

Let's hear some true paranormal encounters. Between my junior and senior year of high school, I took a summer job of the infamous Golden Arches, starting out at the drive-through window taking orders. Since this was a small town, transportation back and forth to work was always an issue. From my house to work was about 8 miles, all back roads through farm country. At one point the road runs parallel to the train tracks, with the road dipping low under the tracks through a concrete overpass. That quarter mile from the last hard curve through the underpass is a steep winding downgrade and you would need to hit the brakes quickly to avoid hitting a massive concrete

pylon. The road has a four-foot drop on the left onto the train tracks and a natural wall of rock about seven feet high on the right forming a natural tunnel. There is nowhere to go. The road itself was known for being in desperate need of repairs and could be treacherous for novice drivers. After a month or so, of bombing rides from my mum and dad, I finally got my driver's license and was allowed to start using my mum's car to go back and forth. The car was a tank, a late model Dodge Diplomat, and yes, I know I'm dating myself. But by the close of summer, I was used to navigating the dip around the tight corners and enjoying the glide down the back road. There always seems to be a

section of the story where you say, then something changed. It's always that change that triggers a feeling of oddness or unfamiliarity, but doesn't immediately mean that something bad will happen. Mine came the last two weeks I worked at the Golden Arches. I got stuck with evening shifts. Normally I did mornings and weekends, which I loved, but now I would be going in around 2pm and staying until close. I was fine until Thursday of the second week. Only three days left until I would leave to start my senior year. My parents decided they needed the dip for a shopping trip and I would be given my dad's 1989 Ford truck to drive to work. First I was terrified to drive my dad's truck. He loved Big Brown to death. Second, I hated how slow and

and clunky, the truck felt compared to the dip. Not to mention I needed a 10-minute run-down and where all the controls were, including the constant reminder that the dimmer switch was on the floor next to the parking brake. Now, I've been fun-sized all my life, topping out at a whopping 5 foot 2, meaning I would be sitting on the edge of the bench seat to look out of the windshield and trying to make sure my feet were still all in the right places. Dad gave me a crash course and I nervously drove to work that afternoon.

My work shift went smoothly. I climbed into Big Brown and started towards home around 11.30pm. Halfway home I realised I was going quite a bit slower than I did in the dip and laughed a little, reaching over to turn up the radio. No worries. If I got home a little late, my parents wouldn't mind. I hit the overpass section of the road and immediately started pumping the brakes, making sure this Goliath

wouldn't take the curve too fast. Two seconds later, I saw a young man drop from the sheer rock face on my right onto the road and freeze like a deer in headlights. My heart stopped to my chest and I slammed both feet down on the brake pedal, causing Big Brown to shudder and squeal but come to an abrupt stop. I had squeezed my eyes tight waiting for the impact, and looked up from my white knuckled hands to see nothing. I finally took a breath, my brain screaming what the hell was at? I threw Big Brown into park in the middle of the road and scrambled to get the flashlight, my dad always kept in the glove box. I jumped out of the truck and started looking all over the place

to see where this guy had gone, hoping I hadn't hit him. I knew he wasn't in front of the truck. So I ran to the train tracks shining the flashlight around, trying to find the white shirt he'd been wearing, nothing again. Then the rational part of my brain woke up and told me to get back in the truck, and out of the middle of the road before I became a pavement pelt.

I scrambled back into the driver's seat and very slowly crept the rest of the way home. At this point I was almost half an hour later and I should have been getting home. I parked Big Brown and saw Dad sitting in the kitchen waiting for me. He knew there was something wrong when I closed and locked the door behind me. You're as white as a sheet. What happened? It's an animal on the way home. His tone was light, almost joking.

But changed quickly when I told him what happened. He nodded and said, Sit down a sec. You look like you're going to fall over. I think I know what you saw. Back in the 50s, there wasn't much to do around here. And younger guys would hang around the train tracks a lot, usually just drinking and carrying on.

Sometimes they'd get stupid and dare each hour to run out in front of cars to scare the drivers or they'd run across the tracks in front of trains to see who was the bravest. Other times they'd get really stupid and jump down from the rock hut and race across to the tracks in front of cars. I'm sure more than one of them got hit or killed.

That's probably what you saw tonight. You must have timed it just right. He grinned, hugged me and told me to go to bed. I've driven that road hundreds of times since then, most recently about two weeks ago, and I've never had the same thing happen again. In the house I grew up in, I've had numerous experiences which have stuck with me since I was little.

Nothing like bumps or taps or strange voices, I can't explain. but ones which I think are much more calm. I grew up in rural Indiana with few neighbours around me and especially not a lot of people my age. I'm only 19 at the time of writing so I'm barely an adult. But I've experienced these things my entire life. This house used to belong to a much older couple who had apparently lived in this house since the 1980s when it was built.

The husband, we don't know his name, we only knew him as Tony, which ended up being his wife's name, ended up passing away in the room next to mine. It was natural causes that took him, as far as we know. But still, it's a somewhat eerie detail given everything that's happened. My first experience happened when I was around four or five. I had just been put into bed for the first time, and had only been sleeping in it for a few weeks. It was a small low-to-the-ground bed, which used to belong to my cousin. Anyway, I vividly remember waking up and scanning the bedroom. It was the summer or late spring, so it was bright outside already. My eyes panned outside, looking to the peach trees,

which were 15 feet away from the window. As I prepared to stand up, I looked to the closet. It was a wide closet which took up the length of the entire wall. It used to have closing doors but my father had removed them when I was around two. But as my eyes focused on the closet, I saw a black figure whose outline was blurry. He was just standing there, looking at me. At least I think it was looking at me. I remember feeling this sense of dread and fear washing over me. and just screaming at me to run.

But little me didn't. She just looked at it. And my eyes traced a figure. It didn't move. After a minute when the fear finally became too much, I bolted out of the room, running it all the way across the house to my parents' room. I don't know how I came to recognise it,

but the figure almost seemed to have a noose around its neck. I remember telling my mother that it had a rope around its neck. I'm not sure if it was a malicious figure, but I've never seen it since. But I'm sure I felt it. Even as I type, I feel the same chill that tells me I'm being watched. And frankly, I'm sure I am. My next experience happened when I was a little older, maybe around nine years old. One of the places I felt this ghostly chill the most was our garage.

It was a pretty sizeable free car garage, and it had been incredibly cluttered for a long time. I remember one night my father sent me out to grab something for him. I don't remember what it was, but it was out there. Quickly I scampered out to the shelf, which wasn't far from the door, but it required I walk around a large trunk of shelf. and boxes, which were piled against the wall. As I grabbed the tool I was sent to grab, I felt the same familiar chill run down my spine. My hair stood on end, my blood ran cold, and the air surrounding me grew chilly.

I slowly turned around, afraid to see what was behind me. Across the garage in the very far corner, I saw a figure, crouched down and staring into the wall. Before anything could happen, I sprinted in, new item in hand. I made it inside and told my parents again, but they insisted it was nothing. My family did not believe in the paranormal. They just didn't think that our house was haunted, but I know what I've seen. My parents broke up around 2020. My father stayed in the spare room across from mine until we moved out that summer. and my father is a factory worker. So my mother was often out working during the evening after I got home and my father would get home around 6pm every night. My older brother

also did sports growing up so there were many times when my mum would drop me off and then leave me home alone. I was something of a latchkey kid. One day when I was home alone I went to the living room to sit on the couch when I felt the same chill I did before. Being older around 13 or 14, I looked around, being much more brave than I was when I saw the hanging man or the lady in the garage. The only thing I saw was a small shadow, slowly moving in the spare bedroom. It didn't have curtains and the window wasn't open, the AC wasn't on. Nothing could have been casting those shadows. When I saw the shadow I lost all my bravery. and fled to my bedroom, shutting me and my cat away in my bedroom.

My last one is the one that has always freaked me out the most. It was around 2022 and I was about 16. In fact, I remember the exact day. It was December 24th, 22. It was the day before Christmas and my mother let me open my gift early. It was a laptop. During that time I was in my big Minecraft phase. so I was glued to that computer as soon as I set it up.

I set it up by my closet. This was a different bedroom, but the closet is the same type of closet, and paid it no mind. As I was playing, I didn't feel the chill. But then the empty hangars in my closet started swinging, violently. They swung so violently that one fell off the dowel rod, hitting me as it fell to the floor. I snapped my head towards it and saw nothing. There was nobody there.

I slowly stood up before sprinting to my mum, who was laying on the couch in the living room. I think this was the experience that had stuck with me the most. I don't know who these entities are, but they have proven here that they can interact with me. They could harm me if they so wanted, not just anywhere either. The one place where I am safe,

and able to escape the stress of my messy home life. It's able to harm me in a place where I'm supposed to be safe. Now it feels like a good time to add I heard a very, very loud tap from within my trunk as I began writing the first encounter. The last situation I have is a somewhat sad one. I mentioned earlier that an elderly couple lived here, with the husband living here until we passed. Well, around 2023 my mother walked inside, holding a package.

My mother opened it and it was seemingly a box of trinkets. Random items, newspaper clippings, art supplies, twine and thread and other various items. The box had no return address, which means it would have had to be dropped off personally. Or maybe there is a delivery service which doesn't require addresses. I don't know. Anyway, we checked the person the box was addressed to and the name read Tony Thompson My mum contacted one of the neighbours who was friendly with the family

And got in contact with her son through them He revealed that Tony The lady who had lived in the house before us Had just passed away Not just on any random day as well She passed away the same day that the box had been delivered As far as I know the son didn't deliver the box and neither did the neighbour. This one isn't necessarily paranormal or ghostly but it's sad.

It may be a strange preface to a ghost story, but I have to say that I'm still not sure if I actually believe in ghosts. Ever since I was a small boy, I have been really fascinated with a paranormal, but I often doubted if they were actually real. Over the years, I'm in my 50s now. I have had several odd experiences that one could certainly deem to be paranormal, but the rational part of my mind always seemed to cast doubt upon them. For example, I'm aware that the human brain is particularly prone to hallucination, paradolia, and with a propensity to confirm false positives. I have no actual theory of the supernatural as to what it means or what is going on.

So if anyone listening has their own insight, I'd love to hear it. There is however one experience that I've had that I've never been able to fully explain, and to which I'm always coming back. I do apologise that there is a rather long preamble to events which, in of themselves, lasted mere seconds, but I really do think that it's necessary to set the scene as well as I can. It was 2010, and at that time, and at that time I had a girlfriend with a 12-year-old son. She had received the former marital home in her divorce settlement

and was a large brick Victorian house in a small city on the south coast of England where we both lived. The house was rather run down and needed a lot of work doing. The house always seemed cold, dark and miserable and had a dreary, somber atmosphere and many people have reported

having supernatural experiences there, that they attributed to the heavy bombing that this area suffered in World War II by German bombers, aiming for the nearby docks, but who knows? I, however, had not experienced anything myself until this happened. After having lived there for a while, the decision was taken that her elderly parents should move in with her and her son. They were becoming infirm, and this was a solution that enabled an eye to be kept on them,

without being too obvious, as the house was large enough for them to have their own space and to retain some independence. In fact, the only time that everyone could be guaranteed to be altogether was for Sunday lunch. This was always a traditional roast dinner, and taken very seriously. The household was completed by a very own. old, robust, silver tabby cat that was one of the toughest and combative cats I had ever met. Nearly 20 years old, and with a permanent scowl that said he wasn't going to take any of your bullshit. He had missing fur patches and lumps out of his ears from the many encounters with

local dogs, foxes, and any other cats foolish enough to encroach on his territory. Despite not being the kind of cat that liked to cuddle up on the sofa with you, he was a very much beloved pet, and most people couldn't imagine him not being part of the furniture. So one day, when he suddenly crawled under the sofa and died, it was a shock, despite being about 110 in cat years. There were more than a few tears in the days that followed. The aforementioned Sunday dinners were especially sad, as the cat would on cue emerge from his hiding place and take up position under the dinner table, ready to beg for scraps. This he would do with a very loud, distinctive meow, which sounded somewhat raspy and strangulated, rather like a very elderly person might have, if they smoked heavily all their life. I'd never heard another cat make a sound quite like it and its distinctiveness is important

it all happened two or three weeks after the cat had died and had been buried in the back garden the five of us were sitting around the kitchen table having Sunday dinner these seemed a bit flat and incomplete without the cat and that fact had been remarked upon when suddenly from beneath the table

came a loud meow. It was unmistakably the same distinctive meow that we all recognised. In shock we all stopped eating, put down our cutlery and searched everywhere for the sign of a cat to no avail. We looked under the stairs

in cupboards in the garden everywhere that a cat could have hidden itself but nothing This would have been strange enough, but two nights later, my girlfriend and I were watching TV, when I realised it was getting late and I had an early shift the following morning. I was getting my coat to leave when from the hallway came the same distinctive meow. Obviously, no cat. My girlfriend's mum, who had gone upstairs to get ready for bed a bit earlier, peered over the banister.

saying, yeah, I heard it too. So two occasions, with multiple witnesses, I still have no logical explanation for this. But then, cats are mysterious creatures, after all. Hello there, I have recently discovered your channel, and I often listen to your work while I'm at work. Many of these stories you've told remind me of the many stories I'd heard during my time of my cousins. They have always been interested in the occult until they used a Ouija board and a graveyard. Since then, they refused to tell their little cousin's scary stories of their adventures. The only warning they gave me was to never use a Ouija board. Thanks to them, my interest

in the haunted history of our world had bloomed. That interest was how I found myself at the Lizzie Borden house. The border murders are obviously one of the most famous murder cases in American history and compared to the boring farmland I grew up in it was a spectacle that I was quite excited to finally check off my bucket list of historical sites to see it was a freezing January I had traveled thousands of miles to visit my then boyfriend he had set up a one-night stay in one of the rooms it was the Lizzie and Emma suite that we were booked for and I was quite enchanted with how well the house had been maintained and restored in some spots. The only slightly current modern item was a fire detector. Everything else was like it had been taken out of time in history and frozen.

The moment I stepped foot in the house, I noticed just how quiet it was, despite there being people meeting in the dining room to prepare for the nightly ghost hunts. It was like the silence that you pay as respect to the funeral. My boyfriend and I greeted a few of the other guests, made idle chatter in the living. room before heading up to the suite. I'm an awkward person with new people anyway, but my senses were being bombarded by that silence, despite the growing amount of talking echoing in the lower floor. That silence grew heavier when we got to the suite. My boyfriend was highly superstitious, whereas I, despite being fascinated by the paranormal, often search for a rational explanation before arriving at the occult.

The habit I picked up after my often creaky room in the farmhouse I lived in. Of course, also as a coping mechanism, to the scary stories my older cousins told me as a kid. So instead of mentioning the heaviness of the place, I asked him my boyfriend wanted to get some food, which he eagerly agreed. We set our belongings down by the bed, and my trusty travel water bottle on one of the nightstands.

After a few hours we returned from the frozen winds that tried to blow us down those streets down to the harbour. As quiet as we could, we escaped upstairs, knowing full world that there were ghost hunts actively happening in the cellar that night. The day's activities have worn us out, so we went straight to bed. Only a few times did I wake up. once when the ghost hunt moved from the cellar to the attic. The other times though, they were from pain. It was around 4 in the morning that I finally woke up long enough to realise

that the pain was more than my sleep day's brain realised. It felt like my whole chest area. Centred on my diaphragm had sharp pains, like someone had stabbed me. Immediately it made me think of how Lizzie's stepmother was murdered. I was murdered upstairs with the famous axe. It gave my heart a start, and automatically I began to rationalise it. Indigestion, surely.

So I reached over to my bottle that I hadn't touched since the moment I set it down on the side table earlier that night. With the lamp on, I saw what looked to be a red droplet on the inside of the bottle. It wasn't there before I went to sleep. I went to sleep. That was the only thing of the entire experience I couldn't fully explain away. Of course, someone could have tampered with it while we slept, which would be messed up, but I never heard anyone else near our suite throughout the night, aside from the ghost hunting group ascending the servant stairs to the attic. So I just laid there for the rest of the night, trying to rationalise everything, and made certain not to tell my boyfriend, so not to make him panic.

The poor guy are already rather hesitant from staying there in the first place. By 8 a.m. we were both up and awake and ready to leave. The owner of the Lizzie Borden house was busy making the guests breakfast when we went downstairs. We thanked her for allowing us to stay, looked around at some of the items in the lobby and soon stopped at one of the guest books that were kept. Guests were encouraged to write down their experiences in there. And out of curiosity I searched through the comments that mentioned the Lizzie and Emma Suite. My stomach dropped when there were entries of similar pain that guests felt in the room.

I quickly shut the book, my already pale face growing even paler. Seeing this, my boyfriend asked if I was alright. He knew I hadn't slept well, but knew there was something bothering me. talking about possibly leaving a little early, he agreed. We thanked the owner again and escaped into the frigid air of the January morning. We ended up getting some Dunkins before going back to his apartment. As much as I love our haunted history, I was not prepared to be feeling what I can only assume was a fraction of what Miss Borden may have felt during her murder. It is often debated as to whether Emma or Lizzie committed the murders. But regardless of who did it,

the pain was real, the murders were real, and not some scary story to tell around the campfire. There the pain remains for people to resonate with for years to come, the ghost of the past ever begging, the present to remember it. I would like to share my experience with a paranormal. I live in the Pacific Northwest and a and was injured on the job 10 years ago. I lived my life the best I can. I enjoy hiking on trails and a bit of travel as well. Around 2001 I was working as a CNA,

certified nurse assistant, in a county nursing home in central Montana. I would work graveyard shifts for a few years. There are two parts to the buildings. The Northall was the original part of the building. That part of the building took care of the Native American, and farmhands over a hundred years prior to the main part being built. The north hall was always eerie.

When I worked there, that is when I would experience all the strange events. Imagine having to go down two long halls, and the second hall is haunted. That was the north hall with light green paint and yellow lights. As a CNA, I had to go up there alone every morning at 2 a.m. The nurse would come up later to give meds. The weird stuff wouldn't happen all the time. It would mostly happen during the wintertime. There were originally two patients at the end of the North Hall when I started working there.

One of the patients' gym passed away while I worked at the nursing home two years ago. That left Richard, being the only one up in North Hall. Before I would start my shift, the girls on the evening shift would share experiences they've had with a ghost in the North Hall, I would eventually share mine. As a CNA, I would make sure the elderly patients were comfortable and hydrated. I would also empty catheters with a picture called a graduate into the toilet. I would chart the patient's mood and vitals. After a few years in, I started to work with a new nurse named Marilyn. The first experience I had while working there was around 2am in the winter. I would empty Richard's cafeteria into a graduate.

When I went into the bathroom across the hall, I would empty the graduates into the toilet. While doing this, I could hear a lady talking on the other side of the wall. I couldn't make out what was being said though. That is scary when you're alone up in the north hall and there's no patient in the room. I could hear a lady talking. The only patient is up there were Jim and Richard. and Richard was unable to talk. I spoke with the administrator, Arlene.

She shared with me that a current resident's wife lived in that room for nearly a decade. But before I started working there, she had passed away. One morning I was up emptying Richard's cafeteria at 2am. I walked out towards the hall when I saw this glowing greenish-blue wall that was around the size of a quarter. Mid-leveled me, slowly drifting down the hall in a straight line, until it slowly turned into the dark wheelchair room. I would tell Marilyn what I was experiencing up in the North Hall before she would go up there.

She thought I was full of it. After Marilyn started working with me for a few months, Jim had passed away. She needed my help one morning during a 2 a.m. round. She had a bunch of packets in her hand for changing a cafeteria. This happened a week after Jim's passing. As Marilyn and I got to Richard's door, we both heard Jim say hello. Marilyn dropped everything and left me up in the North Hall as she ran towards the main part of the building. I grew up in a haunted house that we moved into when I was about nine years old.

I'm 39 now and haven't lived there in 20 years. I don't recall actually seeing many things or having things move around in front of me. It was more like a feeling of constant doom and dread and always being watched. When my mum sold the house last year, she had to tell the prospective buyers that the house was haunted. So the activity must have ramped up once the three of us kids moved out. I've woken up on three different occasions at that house with sleep paralysis. But rather than seeing an old hag, I'd see three witches or warlocks standing over me. They were wearing cloaks with hoods and I couldn't see their faces, but they had long, bony grey fingers.

It seemed like I was no longer in my bed, but on some sort of table, and there was fire all around us. I'd squeezed my eyes shut and either the first or second time of opening them, they'd be gone. When I was in high school, I was up until around midnight when this radio show I used to listen to would end. And as I was trying to fall asleep, I had one leg under the cover and one leg out. When something grabbed my ankle. I sat up and looked around but didn't see anything. I ran downstairs and brought my cat back to my room with me, but she ran out as soon as I let her go. I then covered my whole body with the blanket, including my head,

and felt the blanket pushing down lightly onto my face. I sat straight up and saw a grey mist, no edges, no real shape to it, about five inches wide and as tall as the doorway. It stood there for a moment, as if it wanted me to see it, then rushed out of the room quickly. When my son was not quite two, we were sitting in bed. I was playing block breaker on my phone. When I heard my son say,

Hi, and started talking in baby talk. I looked at him and he was staring at the ceiling. So I also looked at the ceiling and nothing was there. I looked back at him and was like, Mom, okay then? Then went back to my game. about two weeks later we were doing the same thing when suddenly he said

hi I missed you then said some more baby talk I asked who he was talking to and he said my friend Shaw I thought to myself that maybe it was a relative except I have no relatives named Shaw maybe my grandpa Stan who passed away two years earlier

or my uncle Chuck who passed away when I was a kid. This is when I freaked out a little bit. My grandma is a medium, so I called her. She lives two states away. And she basically said to keep him close and didn't make me feel any better. Another two weeks went by, and me and my son went up to live with my grandma in Washington State. I heard my son in the room down the hall yelling,

You're sure, you're sure. So I went in there and he was pointing at my cousin, calling him shore. I moved my cousin to the side because he was standing in front of a picture of his dad. They look exactly alike. My uncle Chuck. And I asked, is this sure? He got so excited and was yelling, Yeah, that's sure, over and over again.

I just instantly started crying because I knew that I meant my uncle. was watching over him. A few years ago by and I moved back to California. And me and my then boyfriend and our kids moved into a very old apartment building, built in 1911. And things started going missing. Things would go missing and not show up for a couple of weeks. Things would also be moved. This was pretty much the extent of what occurred there.

We got married and then moved to a bigger apartment. apartment and started seeing a small woman with long golden blonde hair wearing a long flowy white dress with long loose sleeves she would glide around and you could see her feet but she was a few inches above the floor she was always going back and forth from our room to the kids room but we were not afraid she gave off a very comforting feeling she She was always smiling, and it actually made me feel very good to have her there. The kitchen sink looks over the living room and one day when I was doing the dishes, my husband was watching TV in his recliner.

She came gliding from the hallway to behind him, smiling at me. Then she just faded away. We looked at each other for several seconds and it wasn't like I saw her out of the corner of my eye. We moved again about eight years ago. She came with us. Everyone in the house has seen her, but she's comforting. I like to think she's watching over us, like a guardian angel. The people who lived in the house before us were terrible, terrible people.

There was a lot of animal abuse going on, including finding several dead animals buried in the yard that my dogs have dug up. Nothing like waking up in the morning to find a sheep skull in your dog's bed. Am I right? right. My husband also told me he found dog feet hanging from the awning over the patio. Our neighbours told us that the family practised black magic. Since we've lived here there have been several darting shadows and mysterious noises or things being thrown or knocked down. I've been dealing with paranormal things my whole life so I'm not afraid, just annoyed. I believe there's a demon in this house that mocks our voices, calling out to my

kids in my voice or whispering in my ear in my husband's voice. I can't even count how many times my kids have come running to me. Like, yeah, Mama? I'd say what and they'd say, you were calling me? I think the only reason the demon hasn't been able to do more is because of our guardian angel. Also, I don't believe in demon possession. My son is a medium as well, but he doesn't understand that. He's 16 now. He sees what he calls God. He sees what he calls ghosts but they never have heads. He said it's not like the heads are cut off like they were decapitated. It's more like their heads are just missing. He sees a girl in the house a lot, a little girl with a white dress with flowers on, and she stays around my middle daughter a lot.

I asked if that one has a head and he said no. I told him I don't think they're ghosts. I think they're actually demons and he should try not to even acknowledge. them. I don't know if they actually are demons because I'm not religious and haven't done any research, but it just seems logical to me. A best friend of mine in his roommate renovated a trailer home in Dwight, Illinois. I moved six hours away years before. His roommate died in the trailer home in his bedroom. Cancer had taken him fairly quickly. It was rough on them both. About a year later, I came for a visit and stopped overnight at their trailer home. I had my blind old chalky with me. I had that dog 14 years, a precious little girl.

I went into the bedroom where the roommates had passed and started to drift off with my dog snored up to me. I laid on my side and felt someone plopped down beside me. My dog perked up and faced that direction. growling. There was nothing there, but it felt like someone was bouncing their fanny up and down in the bed behind me. I was not afraid. I called the roommate by his name and told him I was sorry what he went through and assured him I wasn't taking his room. I told him I desperately needed to sleep. I asked him to please stop bouncing and he did. I still felt the weight of him sitting behind.

me the rest of the night but saw no indentation on the bed my dog stopped growling but did not snuggle back down she sat vigilantly facing the wait until dawn I told my friend in the morning and he was so relieved we experienced it too he thought he was just going crazy from loneliness so to start my story off I would like to first keep my identity both anonymous and private. For the sake of confidentiality, I would simply like to refer to myself as Bob. I had been growing up in a quiet neighbourhood, of a small, sleepy town in the south-western part of the US, a little before the 2000s. Over the years, I'd had a pretty rough and traumatic childhood. There were moments where I could not explain how it had

happened, why it happened, or even what. One such incident took place in my parents' bedroom of the house I currently still live in. I slept in with them at the time, my bed and everything. I think somewhere between the ages of six and seven was when I saw them, late one evening in 2003, during the middle of the night. I awoke to see three shadow-like figures in their bedroom, each one standing inside each room it had with the doorways wide open. One door led to the bathroom, the second led to the closet, and the last one led directly into the washroom, where the kitchen could be found right next door.

The moment I saw them all, I was filled with absolute dread. Hours must have gone by when it may have been just minutes. At some point and in a brave attempt, I can't. tried to get a better look at what they were. The apparitions appeared to be humanoid in shape, when I got a better glance at all three. There was nothing human about these entities. I felt my gut instinct was warning me about them. Honestly, I've never felt so much fear in a moment, like that when I had witnessed seeing all of this firsthand. I was so afraid they were going to do something bad to me or to my parents, but they never did. Nothing happened. They just stood there,

staring at us, watching, never moving. At some point I must have passed out from the whole ordeal because being a small child my body had eventually given in from exhaustion. I don't remember anything else after that. I shared this with my family members in recent years. They think I must have dreamt the whole thing. But deep down I know I didn't. I was awake when it happened. I was mobile that whole time, so sleep paralysis has been ruled out. When seeing whoever or whatever those beings were while I was there, disturbed, my gaze fixated in terror.

I have not seen them again since then. I need some sort of closure to what I experienced that fateful night. all those years ago. You can call me tea, everyone else does. I work as a night manager for a large supermarket chain, not far from the supposed paranormal hotspot of Canick Chase in the UK. I've never considered myself a believer in the paranormal. Not that I didn't want to believe, just that until this point I've never experienced anything to convince me,

that there was something beyond what is considered normal. This all happened on an otherwise normal night shift. night shift just a couple of months ago. It was just after midnight closing and my security guard, let's call him Will, was doing his final checks before locking everything down for the night. There's often a few stragglers or drunks hiding in the toilets hoping to sleep off a night of drinking. So he has to be pretty thorough and sweep the whole building before the shutters come down. Around 1215 he called me over the radio to tell me he swept the shop floor, restaurants and toilets and that they were all clear. But upon checking the cameras for areas customers

had no access to, he had seen movement in the warehouse, up on the mezzanine level, where clothing and electricals are stored. Now it's worth mentioning that that area is secure, only my own and Will's access cards would allow us up there at night, and no other staff would have any reason to venture up there during the night shift. Will said it looked as if someone had run their hand along a rail of men's jackets and left them swinging. He guessed that it was perhaps a gust of wind from the AC, or even a bird trapped inside the warehouse. We occasionally get a few that sneak in through the outer doors, but he thought he saw a shadow too, and that was worth checking in person. So while Will went to

lock the main doors and dropped the shutters, I volunteered to check out the movement on the mezzan level, all the while in constant contact with Will via the store. radio the upper part of the warehouse has always been a bit dark and creepy due to its out-of-the-way nature relatively poor lighting and the fact that nobody ever ventures up there at night as I approached the area I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary over the radio I asked if he could double-check the camera to see if anyone had come running out of there or hidden somewhere else on hearing me climb the narrow metal steps up to the second floor. As Will was in the office, rewinding the footage, I continued to move the close rails

back and forth and generally investigate the area, still finding nothing. At one point even resorting to the flashlight on my phone for a bit of extra illumination, as the lights upstairs are dimmed through the night. Will came back over the radio, but this time with a strange urgency to his voice. In a slightly hushed tone he said, mate, the rail you just moved, the one with the coats. I can see clear as day now.

He's just standing right there, looks young wearing a dark hoodie, just looking right at you. You just shone your phone right at him. Well, I can't see a damn thing, so I'm straight back on the radio. Agitation probably quite evident in my voice. Will, is this a fucking wind-up?

There's nothing here. We don't have time for this. At this point, I'm expecting laughter, or an admission of, Okay, mate, you got me. But Will came back straight away. No, he's still there. I'm looking right at him. You just walked less than an armed length from the guy.

I'm not sure what to think. If it's a joke, he's taking it a bit too far. So I say, okay, I'm coming down. keep monitoring the camera so you don't lose him and I swear there'd better be something to see when I get there as I get to the office Will as the footage paused on an image it's myself just a few minutes ago arm outstretched pushing back a rail of men's coats

and no kidding clear as day there's a young lad stood right there just looking at me as Will hits play I can be seen searching around moving a few boxes and other rails of clothing. And this character, this young lad, just stood right there for the whole thing. Now, he wasn't transparent, floating or rattling chains. Just a guy stood right next to the coats, not moving an inch.

And at one point, as Will said, I had shone my phone torch right at him. Will switched back to the live feed which had been on one of the smaller screens. the guy was still there. So I say, okay mate, this is what I want you to do. I'll stay here and monitor the cameras to make sure he doesn't run. Grab a colleague off the shop floor and head up there. Don't go alone. So right now I'm working on the assumption that this is just a homeless fella, looking for a place to crash or a customer messing about. And I'm a blind idiot for not seeing him when I was up there. I'd split the camera feeds between the live view of our train, trespasser and tracking Will plus another colleague Chris moving through the store towards the warehouse.

As they approached the secure gate at the top of the stairs, my eyes were flickering between the two screens, them and the intruder. Now, I swear I only looked away for an instant, but just as my guys opened the gate, a mere 20 feet from where the lad had been standing, I looked back to the mezzanine camera, and he simply wasn't there anymore. Still on the radio to Will, I asked if anyone had seen him pass on the stairs, or have he heard any movement. There's only two ways off that floor, either down the narrow metal stairs that Will and Chris had just climbed,

or through an alarmed fire exit. He hadn't seen or heard anything, and on further investigation he could find nobody up there. With Will on his way back down, I started rewining the footage. to see where this individual could possibly have hidden in that split second. I was somewhat baffled to not be able to find the figure, even rewinding right back to myself being up there. They just weren't there at all. When we all got back to the office he did the same thing. Neither of us knew what to make of it, as we had both seen him, clear as anything.

We just kind of wrote it off as a side effect of fatigue or a trick. of the light. While the figure wasn't visible no matter how far back the footage was rewound, the rail of coats could still be seen to move, as if someone had run their hand along the rail and left them swinging. Honestly, I'm still not sure if this was something truly paranormal, or we were both tired and just imagined things. Our store wasn't built on an ancient Indian burial ground or anything. It's just your average modern-day supermarket building. But there have always been stories about weird stuff happening. Kids bear footprints in the car park in the early hours of the morning.

Or mysterious shadow figures caught only out at the corner of your eye. I never really put much stock into these stories, but now I truly don't know. I'm certainly a bit more wary of going upstairs on my own, in the dead of night. This was a real paranormal encounter that my friend experienced, and it's always given me the willies every time he's told it to me. It's definitely a creepy story in general, but what sets it apart? Is it may have a connection to a real girl who had died, just a few hundred feet from my friend's house,

shortly before this encounter happened. I'll talk more about this girl later on. I decided I should tell this story from my friend's first person point of view. It will help the story flow more coherently and feel more unnerving when told from his perspective. So here it goes. When I was 13 years old, I lived in a house with my parents and my older sister. One weekday morning, I woke up and saw a girl standing in my doorway looking at me.

Since I had just woken up, my eyes were blurry and fuzzy, so I couldn't make out the face, but I could tell it was a girl, and I immediately thought it was my sister. I got annoyed and said, Go away, I'm trying to sleep. I then rolled over on my bed. A few minutes later, I turned my head. around and saw my sister still standing there. I got angry again and said, why are you in my room?

Get the hell out of here, Candice. She didn't move and I yelled once more. She then turned around and walked out of my room. I leapt out of bed angry because I hate being ignored. I went out to the hallway and saw my sister at the bottom of the stairs. She was turning right and going into the kitchen. I called out to her, no response. I ran down the stairs into the kitchen, but she wasn't there. I walked through the kitchen to the short hallway, leading to the garage and opened the door. Nobody was in there, and the cars were gone, which meant both my parents had already left for work. I closed the door and then I heard footsteps behind me in the kitchen, going down into the basement.

At this point I was still angry and thought it was my sister being annoying and trying to scare me. I ran down the stairs and came into the basement family room. It was empty. I went into the laundry room, which also was empty. Then I heard footsteps behind me once more. I turned around and saw a quick glimpse of my sister going into her bedroom. I followed her in there. When I came into the bedroom, I didn't see my sister.

but instead there was another girl standing in my sister's open closet. She was a few years older than me, brown shoulder-length hair and was wearing a blue dress. It looked like a dress someone would wear to prom. She didn't say anything and just stood there, staring at me. I ran out of there as fast as I could and went to my bedroom, got dressed and bolted out the front door and ran to school. Earlier before the story I mentioned a girl who had done. guide. My friend lived right across the street from the high school football field. The back of the bleachers faced the side of his house just a few hundred feet away. A few months before my friend

encountered the strange girl wearing a dress in his house, a girl had committed suicide right outside. She hung herself off the back side of the bleachers on the football field. According to some rumours she was wearing her prom dress when she hung herself. He believed. that's who he saw. I haven't really talked about what happened to me in years. The people closest to me have heard my story at some point or another, but it's debatable on whether any of them believe me. I don't blame them. If I didn't know better I wouldn't believe it myself. I was 11, going on 12 years old. This multiple episode experience occurred between 1995 to 1996. I grew up in Washington,

Strait in a small rural logging town, built and settled in the 1800s. My town was nestled in a valley not far from the icy waters of the Pacific coast, population 8,756. At the time I was living outside the city limits. My childhood home sits on a horse acre, densely circled by ancient trees and well-worn forest trails. One night I awoke to this blinding light engulfing my room and my window. I was groggy, out of it, but I was awake and very confused.

The light was so bright I had to squint my eyes, and I heard unsettling and strange sounds. I thought maybe my neighbours were having an annoying loud party. I tried to go back to sleep, tossed and turned trying to ignore the intrusive noise, But things only got weirder. As I laid there, disgruntled and tired. I heard what I likened to footsteps echoing, as if someone or something were running up and down the empty street outside my window. But the street was not right outside my window, yet the footsteps echoed so clearly, the cadence

of them rising and falling. It was as if whoever was out there kept coming closer, only to turn around and run away again. Coupled with the footsteps was the noise I thought was a party. It sounded like voices, but they weren't speaking words. It was more like a wave of sound that would go from extremely loud to eerily low. It would become almost inaudible, then start building up again into an anxiety-inducing crescendo. Even more creepy, it was now distinctly what I identified as laughing and crying. The sound would get loud, laughing, laughing, laughing, and then start to dip down low,

low, lower, into a desperate crying. Then it would start to get loud again and back and forth. At first I was so hazy from sleep that I thought exactly what I said above, that the neighbours were having a party. As I became more aware I realised with a horrible feeling that it was 4.45 in the morning, and my neighbours were in no way having a party this loud, nor would I be able to hear them as clearly as I could hear this sound. And the sound was so strange.

It was not the sound of a party. It made my hair stand on end. I also struggled to reason that the bright light was a street light. But again, as I became more aware, I also knew this was false. Like I said, I lived in the woods, and there were no streetlights close enough or bright enough to shine into my window, let alone feel the whole pain. Then, just when fear had begun to take hold, a sudden numbness washed over me. It wasn't calm but more like utter indifference.

I remember getting out of bed. I can still see myself swinging my legs off the edge of the mattress as I stand and face the closet mirrors. Essentially it was a long row of mirrors that covered the closet doors lining my wall so I was able to see my reflection very clearly. The lights were shining in on me from the window to my left. I was wearing this pink nightgown that was always always. nightgown that was always too hot no matter what time of year it was. I still think back on this

and wonder why I chose to wear it that night. Afterwards every time I put that nightgown on, I hated it and would rip it right back off. As I stood there, held fast by my own reflection, the light dimmed to a strange orange glow as it seemed to scan over me, and I remember feeling like I was moving in slow motion, as if it were a dream. I can still see my face staring blankly into the mirror with no expression, as if in a trance. The next thing I remember was being back in bed, and the light was still at my window. This is where something happened that really sticks out to me, and it's the part of my experience that I can never seem to explain clearly.

My memories of it are very choppy, as if something scrambled my thoughts or understanding of what happened. I saw what looked like heads. I don't know how else to describe it. All I know is that I knew there were people, or something like people, standing outside my window. My bedroom window looks out onto the second floor of our house, so there was no way people were standing out there unless they were on my roof

and all I could remember was just thinking bald heads bald heads were moving underneath my window seal again this makes no sense but nothing about this particular the night does the heads were moving in a very strange pattern like one after the other following each other across my roof there was a fluidity to the movement, the figures flashing in and out, light then dark, then over again. It was almost as if they were silhouetted against the bright backdrop of the light.

When I found myself once again back in bed, I became truly scared, and I was aware that I was scared for a very good reason. Something didn't make sense. In my weird trance-like state I simply rolled over to face the wall, pulled the covers over my head and went to sleep. This time, it worked. When I woke up the next morning, I told my mum exactly what happened, and she got a very strange look on her face, and then quietly said,

If anything like that ever happens again, make an X on a piece of paper when it's happened. so you know you're not dreaming. I could hear the seriousness in her voice. It made me feel odd, as if something big has happened to me, but my understanding of it was all muddled. My mum then proceeded to tell me her experience. When she was just a little girl, barely a toddler,

she was living on a US naval base in the Philippines, some time between the years of 1952 to 1955. to 1954. One night in fragmented memories, she remembers crawling out of her crib, out from under the mosquito net, and into the living room of her house. She saw a bright light appear outside the large bay windows,

and it terrified her. There was a sound, an owl, and it kept hooting and hooting, just like I had experienced the sound, was overwhelming in volume. She remembers nothing after that. In the morning she woke up on the living room carpet in front of the windows. Over the years since this incident, I've tried to explain away my experience in a variety of ways. Sleep paralysis, hypnagogic hallucinations, false memory, a nightmare. I've attempted to convince myself of these things many times over.

But it's really just an exercise and futility. The truth is I'd seen that light before. I hadn't seen it up close, not like I did that night. But now, I'm sure I saw the craft it came from, and I saw it multiple times. As a kid, I documented it in my journal. The first time I ever saw a strange blue orb of light shoot across the sky outside my window,

I remember feeling at first amazed, then skeptical, then a little scared. My journal entry at the time was light-hearted, so I know it had to be one of the first experiences I'd had, or that I could remember. The second experience was different, one that I buried deep for many years. It was either January or July, New Year's or the 4th. I want to say July, because we were outside and it's Washington State. Nobody goes outside in January. My friends and I were playing in the woods surrounding my house, hide and seek tag in the dark. We were chasing each other all over my yard, each trying to find the best hiding spot, before the other person could. It was in the midst of this ruckus that out of nowhere,

we all saw something strange, hanging over the horizon in the clear night sky. At first it looked like a star, as it was up high and appeared very far away. But there was something about it, something that seemed to demand our undivided attention. Slowly, we had each left our respective hiding spots. Almost inadvertently we had come to stand together as a group. Then we watched in stunned silence as the star began to move. What happened next has never left me. This star or what we thought was the star, suddenly just dropped.

It literally fell hundreds of feet with an incredible and uncanny speed. This seemed to happen in the blink of an eye. None of us moved or said a word, as the object then began to dance and hover in the sky, while the three of us watched in utter shock. It was moving in the strangest way, not erratically but almost squiggly, performing this up and down vertical shimmy in the sky. We were transfixed by it, and time seemed to stand still in that moment. In my mind's eye I can't clearly recall anything else, but the sight of that light in the sky it overtakes everything else, the way it moved, a dazzling orb against the

inky blue of the night. Even the memory of it is eerily hypnotic. I've been thinking about it all day and into the wee hours of the night now. All I see is that light, and we were just kids. Before we could even grasp what we were seeing or comprehend its implications, this thing shot up and over the western horizon, with a speed unlike anything I'd ever witnessed. It was just gone. Being either very brave or very dumb little kids, we stubbornly stayed outside, running around deliriously in the dark, searching in the sky for the star. At once we all saw what we likened to multiple military aircraft, racing in the direction that the light went. They flew overhead as a collective with a very distinct purpose. We watched in awe as the aircraft sped

due west, following the same course of the light. It was such a surreal experience that for years I didn't believe I even really saw such a thing. That is until one day, not even two months ago. I reconnected with my two friends who were with me that night. Their brothers, one younger than me and one older. They're like family, but more distant now. After so much life has happened. It's been 28 years since that night.

Still, talking to them now felt like we'd never parted, no matter how far away we are now, or how many years have gone by. I did my best to edge around the small talk, so anxious to ask them only one but very simple question. Do you remember that night we saw the star? Both had begun to chatter excitedly when I asked them this. I spoke to them separately and over the phone. But once I hung up with the first brother, the other was already texting me, asking me to call. While I was on the phone with him, his younger brother was messaging both of us, almost frantically, as if he had been waiting to talk about this since we were kids. I knew the feeling because I'd been waiting too, and didn't even know it until that moment. Why it took us so long to discuss it,

I'll never know. As we talked, we all came to agree on one thing. This really happened. Our memories of the main event were almost identical, but for some reason, it's the time and date that none of us can seem to remember. It's as if the experience is just there. Stuck inside our heads, but we have no recollection of its exact happenstance. I don't know, it's weird talking about it. People think you're crazy when you say things like this. It is what it is, though. It happened.

happened. And now I have unexpected nightmares, flashbacks that take me to a place of blind panic and despair. Whatever I experienced that night, the night that something came to my window, it must have been beyond anything I was capable of comprehending. The fear that comes with the dreams is indescribable. It's animalistic. There are no appropriate words I can think of to convey the feeling of pure, raw terror that overtakes me. My whole body begins to vibrate. I feel myself being pulled up and away, and I wake up screaming in the dark. I still see that light in my dreams, and I still see it coming for me. They are coming for me. I knew it then and I still feel it now, all these years later. We are not alone. We never have been. I'm not much of a writer and there are

things now that make sense in hindsight that didn't at the time. I can't really explain any of it, so I'll leave it to you to decide if any of this fits your stories. I haven't thought about this part of my life for nearly 15 years but listening to your channel made me feel the need to write it all down. The only people who know what happened to me when I was younger, or my family and my husband. As for the other incidents, apart from those involving other people, I have spoken to some others to get perspective, but they've always leaned towards paranormal explanations. Just a bit background. My father was in the army, so my family moved around a lot. By the time my mother was pregnant with me, we lived in the UK. When I was six weeks old, we moved to Germany,

my mother's homeland for two years. Then we came back to the UK and settled in a small, old coal mining village in Northumberland, called Acom. I would have been just over two years old, around late 1987 or early 1988. Although I can't remember any of it, when we were in Germany, I spent time with my mother's family since both my parents worked. By the time I was one, different family members told my mother that I would look at, react to, and smile at things that apparently weren't there. Years later, I was told that my maternal grandmother had a sort of six cents, but I've never met her, and she died before I was born. Here's a side note about the first home we had in the UK. When I was in my early 20s, my mother and sister and I were going

through some of my mother's old paperwork. We came across lots of old photos and started looking at them. I saw a picture of my older brother and sister playing with trucks in the garden, with the house in the background. I said, I remember this house. Our nana had a rocking chair next to the fire in the front room, and we had that big silver mirror on the staircase wall. My mother and sister just stared at me, wide-eyed. I asked what's wrong. My sister couldn't speak, but my mother said, You never really lived in that house.

I was pregnant with you at the time, but you were six weeks old when we moved out. Yet somehow I was able to describe the entire layout of the house. These next few things I can't really put into a clear timeline, but I know it was when I was young, up until I was around 13 or 14. By then we were living in Aecom. My mother and father had separated, so it was just my mum, me and my sister, who's eight years older. and my brother, who's seven years older. It wasn't easy.

We lived in a small, old-fashioned, strongly Catholic northern village, and we were immediately seen as outsiders because my mother is German. We lived on the breadline in a council house mixed in with some rough families. My mother always tried to do what was best, but it was tough for her to be alone with free kids and no family support. She had only one friend who lived two doors down, and I was grateful for that. She worked a lot of little jobs trying to fit them in around the kids. But being as young as I was, I didn't really understand all these difficulties.

I just knew we were somehow different. Some children weren't allowed to play with me. I later learned it was because we didn't attend the local church every Sunday, so they thought I'd be a bad influence on their kids. And they told my mother that. But all I knew was my mother said not to play with them. So I didn't. Anyway, I'm digressing.

When I was very young, I was always a quiet child. I loved to read in colour and would spend hours in our dying room, where my mother kept a big bookshelf full of encyclopedias and a record player. I would browse through the books and lyrics from the records, copying them all down, then do a little presentation for my mother. I'm sure she probably didn't want to sit through them, but she always humoured me. I used to have a friend called Jack, but he would only appear in our house. I'd talk to him, read the encyclopedias to him, colour my pictures and just spend time with him.

But when I started school, Jack stopped visiting. Years later, my mother told me she'd sometimes see or hear me talking to someone. But she thought it was just an imaginary friend and left me be. At that time, I shared a bedroom with my sister. and sometimes saw a man in our room. He was always crying and looking out of the window. I never interacted with him, but I would tell my mother. She said she had seen him too,

though I don't know if she actually did or if she was just trying to comfort me. When I asked my sister, she said she saw nothing. Later I found out a man had died in the house, a previous tenant. I don't know if the man I saw was him or something else. My brother then joined the army, so I got my own room, which I was so excited about. I must have been around 9 or 10, and that's when the strange dreams started. I say dreams, but let me explain. This didn't happen every night, at first maybe once a week.

But as I got older, it got more frequent and intense. I would go to sleep and dream of people I didn't know, in places I'd never seen. Most of the time, the people in my dreams tried to get me to go with them somewhere, but I would always refuse. It was always a fight to get back to a familiar place, which I would eventually find after sometimes being chased or hurt in some way. For example, one night I went to sleep and woke up suddenly in the train station. There was a woman on the opposite platform waving at me and calling me over. I was confused not knowing where I was or who she was.

I just wanted to get home. Then suddenly she was on my side of the platform, coming towards me. An awful feeling filled me and I had a desperate urge to get away. She grabbed my wrist and told me I was going with her. She started pulling me and I fought back, screaming for my mother, brother, sister to help. But no one was there. We struggled and I kept shouting no. Eventually I managed to pull free and started running.

I made it out onto a street with houses I'd never seen before. I couldn't see the woman behind me but I could still feel her presence. I'd go in and out of some of the houses to hide and get away. But she always knew where I was and found me. Then I saw my house. I ran up the front steps and burst through the front door. And then I woke up. This is just one example, but over the years I had these dreams nearly every night.

Eventually I trained myself to recognise what I was dreaming. In my dream I would start to limp and drag my right foot. Sometimes I'd suddenly be running somewhere in the dream. and when my right foot began dragging, I'd realise, oh, I'm dreaming and wake myself up. When I woke I would often feel traumatised by the dream and go to my mother's room to feel safe. She would let me sleep with her until morning. Unfortunately, even at a young age, I had witnessed violence and suffered at the hands of my father. So when I told my mother about the dreams, she thought it was a trauma response to what I'd been through.

What I didn't know then but eventually learned was that every time I had one of these dreams I was actually walking around the house while asleep going from room to room standing frozen staring at my family members or my reflection in mirrors or just standing by windows and doorways as you can imagine I was exhausted during the day

as my little body was worn out from walking and standing all night My mother took me to the doctors, but all tests came back normal. They said it was probably a trauma response and that I would grow out of it. During this time, which probably lasted two to three years, my mother befriended an older lady named Norma. We lived in a terrace of about eight houses, and if you walked out the back gate, there was a small hill. At the top of the hill, there was a cluster of bungalows,

mostly occupied by older people. This is where Norma lived. From her kitchen window you could see the top two windows of my house. Norman was like the grandmother I never met. I spent a lot of time with her and her dog. She taught me how to cross stitch and I would go over just to keep her company. I walked her dog sometimes and she would cook me treats. I'd spend hours reading in her garden which had rhubarb growing.

I loved sitting there, eating rhubarb dipped in sugar from my little pot. The dream started to escalate. started to escalate. It wasn't just people anymore, but what I can only describe now as demons or monsters, aggressive and demanding. I also noticed that after every one of these dreams, the loft hatch in our house was always slightly ajar. Eventually I stopped sleeping in my own room and would sleep in my sister's room instead.

That didn't stop the dreams completely, but made them less frequent. Have a side note, you can imagine the horror my sister and I felt years later, when we watched paranormal activity for the first time, and saw the girl behaving exactly like I had as a child. One day I was at Normans, sitting in her garden reading a book and dipping rubal in sugar. When she came out looking very worried and told me to come inside, I'd never seen her like that before, but I obeyed. Inside, I was reading in the front room with her dog, while Norma and my mother talked in the kitchen, clearly concerned. Then they came to the front room and Norma sat in front of me and told me everything was going to be okay.

She began talking about God and how he could help me. She handed me some rosary beads. My family were not and still are not religious in any way. But when she spoke to me that day, telling me that if I ever felt scared or alone, I should hold the beads tightly and pray to God to see me, hear me and feel me with his love. It just made sense. My mother sat behind Norma looking worried, and I promised them both I would do, as they said. From that night on, I went to bed with the rosary bead tied around my wrist.

When I got scared in my dreams, I would call out to God, my house would appear in the dream. I would walk to it and then wake up. Sometimes in the morning you could see the imprint of the beads on my palm where I'd been gripping them so tightly. After that my mother installed locks on the loft hatch so it never opened, unless someone specifically needed to go up there, which to my memory never happened. Unfortunately, the dreams didn't stop completely. I still had them until I was about 20 years old, but their mood changed. They were no longer as dark and violent. I still saw people I didn't know and places.

I'd never been, but I was able to explore more calmly before waking up. As a young child I was terrified, but as I got older, either I learned to cope better or I became desensitized. I don't really know which. We moved out of that house the following year. I later found out that that day, when I was sat in Norma's garden, she and my mother had been in her kitchen generally chatting. She obviously knew about my issues of sleepwalking. but she looked out the window and saw a dark figure staring at me from my bedroom window. She called for my mother who then saw the same figure and then they called me in. Now my mother knew that no one was in the house.

And Norma being very religious thought she would step in. That's why she gave me the beads and told me to pray. She also organised for a priest to go over and bless the house. Obviously my mother did not tell me any of this until the day of the photos I mentioned earlier. That was the main thing that happened to me as a child, but other smaller events happened also. When I was about 12 years old, a new girl moved to the village called Holly. I became friends with her and she invited me and our other friend Philippa around her house. Her house was an old grade-listed building, absolutely huge, nine bedrooms, five bathrooms,

A complete contrast to my humble little council house. I think it may have been one of the oldest houses in Acom, but I don't know that for sure. We've been playing in her garden and we were called in for tea by the housekeeper whom I mistook for her mother. As soon as I stepped into the house, I knew something was off. I was going from my dream phase, although none of my friends knew about it, so I could feel it in the air. We then started walking down a hallway where there were all these plaques on the walls with people's names on them. I asked what they were for and Holly stated that these were all the people who had ever died there. She was giggling as if it was a joke.

But with what I had seen in my dreams, it wasn't a joke to me. We had our tea and then went to her room. We were just being typical 12-year-old girls and Gina G had just brought out her hit, ooh, ah, just a little bit into the charts. We all had a hairbrush or something similar in our hand, dancing and singing along to the song. Then a little bell rang in the corner, and we heard someone shout Holly's name. It was the housekeeper stating that someone had called for Holly. So Holly said, back in a minute, and left the room, leaving me and Philippa still singing in her room. All of a sudden, the door slammed shut. On one of Holly's walls, she was a little.

She had loads of VHS tapes on a shelf, and they started to fly off of the shelves. Me and my friend Philippa started screaming and made for the door, but when we got there it was locked and we couldn't open it. We were banging on the door and screaming for help. We heard Holly on the other side shouting at us to open the door, but we couldn't. What felt like an eternity but was probably only about 30 seconds passed, until we heard a click and the door swung open. We all stood there shocked and I said to Holly I had to get home.

I literally ran all the way home and didn't dare tell my mother, as she would probably not let me go back there again. When I next saw Holly she was trying to logically explain to me that it was an old house and her room had been fire damaged before they bought it, and the door must have simply got stuck with the wind. But I knew it was something more sinister than that. Despite already having that awful experience, I stupidly went back again to play in her room. Nothing actually happened this time though, which she was glad of.

What I didn't know until the next time I went over was that Holly had a tape recorder under her bed, and she had recorded us in her room the whole time. After I left, she had listened to it and played it to me on the next visit. You could hear us playing and talking. But you could also hear women talking, screaming and crying, babies crying, and what sounded like a low growling noise, amongst other things that just made no sense. It was then that Holly admitted to me that she was a kind of ghost hunter, and that she and her family loved all things paranormal.

I'm not quite sure what happened next as I was so angry at her, but I remember arguing with her, when the windows in her room started open and closed on their own, and then her wardrobe doors. It was then that I thought, I'm not getting trapped in here with whatever is on that tape, and I went to run out of the bedroom door, I wanted to get home and away from this place. I was making my way downstairs when I felt two hands push on my back and pushed me down the stairs. Luckily, I did not hurt myself. At the bottom of the stairs, now picking myself up, I remember Holly just looking shocked over the top of the stairs and I just ran out of the house. I never went back to that house and I never spoke to Holly again.

Just after my 14th birthday we moved down to Suffolk and to be honest I didn't have anything for a long time. I would still have the occasional dream but nothing that ever worried or scared me to the point it had when I was younger. Until I was 16 and I got a small cleaning job. I used to work with my mother. We would clean in an old building, being used as a solicitor's office. I would get off the school bus and meet her. We would then go and clean and then make our way home. This building gave me the creeps as soon as I entered it.

I had a number of incidents happened here. My personal items being moved, a chair being moved in front of me, paper clips flying off a desk towards me, bins being knocked over, doors swinging and if someone had just pushed past them, that sort of thing. My mother and I used to clean the floor each. But after all these things started happening, I asked if we could work together, doing the top floor and then the bottom floor.

Obviously she agreed, and the incidents did calm down, but didn't stop happening. We stopped working there shortly after this, as my mother was concerned about my welfare. After this, for the same cleaning company, we would clean a school in the summer hospital, summer holidays, so me and my mother went to this job. There was an older lady on the team when we all showed up for the first day.

The moment I saw her, I felt like I knew her. I couldn't explain it, it was almost like I had met her before but couldn't put my finger on it. She didn't talk much to me, and it was about a week later that we were sat outside one of the mobile art classes in the hot sun eating some lunch. Just me and her. I sat having lunch when she just blurted out. Have you ever been to a medium?

I was a little shocked but said, no, why. She told me that there were a lot of people around me trying to get my attention and that I wasn't listening to them. We just sat there in silence, eating our sandwiches. I didn't know what to say but it did make me wonder. Were the people in my dreams to people around me, trying to give me some sort of of message. Is that why I never recognised any of them? Always in an unfamiliar place, trying to get their unfinished business sorted so they could pass on. I really didn't know, and I still don't.

She didn't really say much else to me except that if I wanted some peace, then I should start listening to them instead of running away. All I can say is what happened to me later in life really did freak me and my husband out. My husband was a non-believering. before this happened, but now he believes. I was about 30 years old when this one happened. We had met a new couple, known them for about six to seven months, and they had invited us over one Friday for pizza and drinks, so we popped over. But before I get to that night, I need to rewind to the Wednesday before. I worked in community care and would work split shifts, so 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., and then 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. I would go home on my break to shower and sometimes now,

nap. On this occasion I was in bed having a short nap when I had a dream, but when I woke up, I thought it had actually happened. In the dream I was on the bed napping, exactly as I was, and my phone rang. I missed the call, but the caller left the message. When I called my voicemail, it was a woman telling me to meet her at the church nearby. I thought it was such an odd voicemail to receive, but when I went to call the number back, I woke up. Now, I was so sure this had actually happened, I immediately checked my phone log because I was sure I would see that I had a missed call from a random number and would see my call to the voicemail, but neither call was logged. I was so confused, I was so sure it had happened. Anyways, I put it down to me being tired.

I mentioned it to my husband the next day when I saw him and he agreed I was working a lot of hours. Thursday night I had a dream about this woman and she was asking me to help her get to church. something clicked inside me and I knew I had to help her We went to this church in my local area I have never even been to this church in real life And I even went there after all this to check if it actually looked the same And it did And we watched a young girl get married

The woman seemed so happy And then she just left And I woke up Fast forward to the Friday We arrive at our friend's house And I are outside in the garden smoking a cigarette They lived in a two-bed bungalow, with one of the bedrooms being at the front end of the bungalow opposite the front room. This was like a storage room, and it's where their cats spent the majority of their time, as they were house cats.

They also had a dog. When we arrived, I could sense they were agitated. Something was up. I asked if everything was okay, and they said something was wrong with their cats. They came out of their room on Wednesday afternoon and refused to go back in. I asked if they put something in there that had scared them and they didn't know. All they knew was when they got back from work on Wednesday. All three cats were out of the room and wouldn't go back in.

They also said they heard banging coming from inside, like someone banging on the walls. So I went in and as soon as I stepped into the hallway, it felt as if there was something standing in the doorway to that room, just staring at me. It was almost as if I could fill its eyes on me. We walked past the doorway and I was feeling so uneasy and we were in the front room which is opposite.

We start talking about our week and my friends said it had been a rough week as it was her mum's birthday, just gone and she had died last year. I was aware of her mother passing but not that it was her birthday. Anyways, we were chatting away and I tell her of my odd experiences throughout the week. I'm explaining about the woman and she is asking what she looks like I tell her

and a look comes across her face she quickly gets up and starts going through some paperwork when she turns around she holds up a photo and asks is this the woman I couldn't believe my eyes it was her the woman who wanted to go to church it was her dead mother

and Wednesday was her birthday As soon as she held the photo up, the room went freezing cold. The cats and dogs all started to howl and bark in the hallway, and then we heard three massive bangs on the wall. We all just stood there not knowing what to do. The room returned back to its normal temperature, and the couple managed to calm down their cats and dog. Then the cats suddenly just walked back into the room,

as if nothing had happened. We were all a little shaken up, but after talking with my friend, it turned out that she had fallen out with her mother just before her death. And after her death, she had fallen out with the rest of her family. I still didn't understand the church reference though, until a month later when she looked up who had been married. It turns out her little sister had got married there two weeks previously. So two weeks after my experience. Maybe it was her mother trying to make her daughters make up. from the other side. I don't know. But I do know my friend had a little closure on her mother's

death, even though they weren't talking at the time. She had been to her grave since and spoken to her, and she felt with what happened, she knows her mother hurt her. I have thought a lot about my dreams over the years, and have tried to make some logical explanation for it all. but I'm at a loss. I still do have dreams now with strangers and strange places. But maybe because I'm no longer mentally vulnerable, I'm able to deal with it all a lot better. I have a good, happy life,

and I've managed to deal with my childhood trauma, so I don't know if that makes a difference. I've read some studies on how I could have been attracting this type of paranormal activity when it was at its strongest. I was going through a particularly rough time. and felt very alone. When I was about nine or ten years old, my mother brought me along to visit her best friend and her family,

who had recently bought a small house on the other side of the state. Since we lived so far away, we were spending a few nights there, and making a weekend out of it. While my mother's friend was fairly nice, I really didn't care for her family. Her son was a few years younger than me, but he often threw fits when he didn't get a little. his way and was always trying to hit me with his toys. The kid even bit my nose once when we

were younger. You might think this was from a lack of discipline, but it was the opposite. His father was a large and imposing man with a mean disposition and a short temper. I'm not against disciplining a child, but this guy usually went just a little bit too far. I'm not sure exactly what he did for a living, but I know he always seemed to be working nights. Either way he was a tough guy with no patience for nonsense. The house they bought was a small, one-story place on the edge of town. They had neighbours but there were plenty of space between the houses. Despite really not wanting to be there, I had to admit that the house was much nicer than

the place they lived before. They even had a huge fish tank in their living room, and I spent most of the weekend watching the fish. Since the house was pretty small, they only had one spare room. So my mother got that room and I ended up sleeping on the couch, which I honestly didn't mind, because I got to sleep near the fish tank. The first night was very uneventful. But something strange happened on the second night.

From the living room there was a hall that led to the bedrooms and the bathroom, and at the end of the hall was a small room they were using as a storage room. They had only moved in a few weeks earlier and this is where they were storing their unpacked boxes. Sometime in the middle of that second night I woke up. I didn't know why, but I suddenly felt really scared. I hadn't felt scared the night before, but something just felt different that night. It was then that I noticed something strange. The door was closed at the end of the hall and there was light coming out from below.

The door to that room was normally open, but now it was closed, and the light had been turned on inside the room. That was strange, but I eventually just decided that someone must have gotten out of bed and went into the room to look for something, and closed the door to prevent the light from waking anyone up. Trying to calm down, I looked away to watch the fish swimming in the tank. After a little while I began to feel a little better, and started to relax again. I looked back towards the hall then and noticed that the light under the door was gone now,

but the door was still closed. By that point I was really tired and just thought that maybe I had fallen asleep just long enough to miss whoever it was leaving the room and going back to their own. Then I fell back asleep. The next day my mother's friend asked how I had slept and I told her that I slept okay. But later that morning I remembered the door at the end of the hall. Looking down the hall I could see now that it was wide open as usual. The situation was strange.

But I just figured I must have dreamt about the door being closed with the light on. I've always had a history of having odd dreams where nothing of interest really happens. So it didn't seem too out of the norm for me. Later that day we left for home. I didn't think about that house or that strange dream until years later. Sometime when I was in my teenage years, my mother and I were talking about her friend. She and her family had moved down to Tennessee about a year after we visited them, and now their son was always getting into trouble.

I asked my mother why they had moved down to Tennessee anyway, and she mentioned that her husband had friends in that area, and they decided to move down there after the whole situation. situation with their house. I asked what she had meant by that, and she must have realised that she mentioned something that she didn't mean to mention, because she said they just had to move. Genuinely curious about what interesting bit of gossip I was missing out on. I kept pressing the issue, until my mother reluctantly gave in and told me. It turns out, after we visited years ago, strange things started happening. in the house and it all happened with that room at the end of the hall. At first it was mostly

small stuff. One night my mum's friend woke up when she heard something that sounded like something moving around in that room. Thinking that their son was messing around in the room, when he should be in bed, she got up and checked it out, only to find that the room was undisturbed and her son was asleep in his bedroom. At that point she figured that it was just her imagination, or the house was just settling. Then one night after she put her son to bed, she was sitting in the living room watching TV, when she noticed that the door at the end of the hall was closed and that the light was on. When she went in the room to check it out, she found no one was in the room.

She thought it was odd, but assumed that maybe her husband had been in there earlier that night, and this was the first she noticed that he left the light on. Later on the family got a dog, and a number of times they would wake up to hear the dog barking or growling. Every time they would discover that the dog was focused on that room, at the end of the hall. But they could never find out what in there had gotten the dog so riled up. They eventually had to get rid of the dog by giving it to a friend, but would later recall that while the dog was fine in just about any other part of the house, it would never go into that room. Additionally, the new owner said the dog was perfectly normal in their house.

These incidents were bizarre and difficult to explain, but then things escalated. One night, my mother's friend had once again noticed that the light was on again. was on again, in the room, and the door was closed. Once again she got up and investigated the room. But this time when she reached the door, it wouldn't budge. By this point they had been keeping the door closed anyway, so she just assumed that her husband had locked the door and accidentally left the light on. It was a flimsy explanation, but any explanation beat the alternative. Anoyed and a little unnerved, she returned to the couch and continued watching TV. A little bit later that night she glanced back down the hall towards the door, only to

discover that the light was off, really concerned now. She went back down the hall and tried the door again. It opened freely this time. With no explanation for this, her blood ran cold, as she stared into the darkness of the room. The light in the room was one of those ones where you had to pull a string instead of a wall switch, so she'd have to enter the room to turn it on. Too terrified to enter the room at this point, she went to the living room and called her husband, asking him to come home.

For the next hour she sat on the couch, keeping an eye on the room, until her husband came back. Angry and annoyed, he walked into the room and yanked. into the room and yanked on the cord to turn on the light, but it wouldn't come on. Even more annoyed now, he retrieved his flashlight from his truck to check out the room. As always, there was nothing in the room, except for boxes. She was still convinced that there was something wrong with the room, but he insisted that

she was just being paranoid because she was smoking marijuana too often. He explained that the light had simply just burned out. she was making something out of nothing. When she insisted that the door had been locked and then unlocked itself, he pointed out that the door had no lock and it was probably just stuck in the jam. She then reminded him of the dog's barking and growling, some of which he had personally seen. But by this point he was just not having any of it and went back to his job. My mother told me that after that all was quiet in the house for about a month until something happened that couldn't be explained away. One night my mother's friend was

having a night out at the bar with some friends, while her husband was at home that night watching their son. Sometime around midnight he was sitting on the couch watching TV when he noticed that the light was on in the room at the end of the hall. Naturally he figured their son had gotten out of bed and was messing around in the room and he wasn't going to have any of that. He wasn't going to have any of that. Angrily he stormed down the hall to punish the boy, but when he tried to open the door, it wouldn't budge. Now, even more upset, he began loudly banging on the door and demanding that his son opened the door immediately. When he got no reply, he started yelling and cursing his son out, and then he stormed out of the house to grab a pry bar from his truck. When he returned,

He spotted what looked to be shadows of a couple of feet through the bottom crack of the door, and he yelled that he could see him, and that he had better open the door right now. When the door still refused to budge, he issued a last warning before he would pry open the door. It was then that he heard crying behind him. He turned around to find his son standing in the doorway to his bedroom, asking why he. he was yelling at him. Quickly he realised that it wasn't his son messing around in the room at the end of the hall. And it had to be an intruder. He had made a number of enemies in some of his shadier dealings, and this was probably someone looking to either hurt him or rob him.

Quickly he ran to his son and told him to stay in his room, and not come out until he said it was safe. He then ducked into his room to grab his pistol, but when he returned to the hallway, He discovered that the light was off again, and the door was slightly ajar. Carefully he moved towards the door with his pistol, and then violently kicked the door open. The room was dark, but threw the light from the hallway. He couldn't see anyone in the room. Quickly he returned to his son's room, scooped him up and drove off to his friend's house. Leaving his son there, he and his friend both armed, returned to the house.

and searched it from top to bottom. Nobody was in the house, and nothing was missing. To be on the safe side, he locked up the house and he and the family stayed at his friend's house at night. The following day they returned to the house. My mother's friend insisted that the house was haunted, but as usual, her husband insisted that it was someone just trying to rob them. Then she pointed out that the door had no lock, and they had never replaced the light bulb. Later that week they decided to sell the house and move.

It turns out while they were talking to their realtor, they learned that the previous owner of the house was an elderly woman, who had hanged herself. This was never disclosed to them when they initially purchased the house for a private seller, who turned out to be the woman's nephew. They would also later confirm something that they had already suspected. The woman had hanged herself in the room at the end of the hall. I've always been fascinated by paranormal stories and ghost investigations, but I thought they

weren't real or were very exaggerated. My story isn't the scariest, but it changed my beliefs in the afterlife. In 2016, my uncle took his own life. We were like brother and sister, really close. it was devastating losing someone that way. In the months after his death, I would always have the same dream about him. We were all in my grandmother's house and there he was, walking through the door, the happiest I've ever seen him, saying that he was okay and that he loved us all. I would wake up because it felt so real. After waking up, I could smell his cologne in my room.

That was the first time I thought maybe There is life after death In 2017 I got pregnant with my first daughter When she was about 18 months old She started not wanting to sleep in her bed So I let her fall asleep with me When she finally started talking She told me that a man used to come and visit her every night

And that he would sit on the end of the bed Look at her smile and then disappear. I asked my brother to send me a photo of my uncle through Facebook. I was living in a different country. When I finally gathered the courage to show the pictures of my daughter, she said to me, that is the man who comes the night.

I just started crying non-stop. He came back to meet my baby. And I felt that he was always with me. A few weeks after that, my partner started working night shifts. My daughter and I were home alone at night a lot. I used to put her to sleep and then go gaming or watch some TV to unwind from the day.

One night I saw the couch next to where I was sitting go down. Like someone was sitting next to me. I knew it was him. I felt so warm. I can't really explain it. In 2020 I had another baby, a girl as well. but since the couch incident nothing had happened

then one night I was asleep and I felt someone laying down with me on the bed I thought it was my older daughter but when I went to cuddle her no one was there I immediately opened my eyes and saw something running out of the bedroom I got up and went to check on my daughter she was fast asleep

I felt so uneasy that I grabbed her and put her in bed with me not wanting her to stay alone two nights later my bedroom door blasted open and hit the wall and my cat just lost her mind

jumping and hissing at the door I was pretty sure something was there but this time I knew it wasn't someone I loved many other little things happened I stopped sleeping so I could keep an eye on my children and going to work exhausted me. One day at work a lady who worked for me said, Hey, I know you need help. I'm going to help you. I thought, surely this woman has lost her mind. She then proceeded to tell me exactly how my toilet was arranged and how there wasn't much daylight

there. She also described my daughter's bed and how there was a man who sat there at night to protect her, but that there was something else too, something that didn't seem good. I said, okay, I believe you, what do I need to do? She asked me if she could video call me that evening, and of course I accepted. That night she called me and said what I assume were prayers, and my body started to chill. She then asked me to go to the bathroom with my phone. There, started to pray harder and louder. For a second I thought I had lost my mind because I was seeing some kind of black shadow disappearing in front of my eyes. Since then thankfully the house has been quiet but she did warn me that it might happen again and that if it does she will know and

will help me. So as you can see I went from not believing to believing that believing that there are people who can see, feel and deal with spirits or entities. Hi, my name is Kenny and I had a pretty crazy ghost experience back when I was in high school. In the summer of 2012, my friends and I had nothing but time and everything to prove. We were fearless as all teenagers are and believed that nothing could hurt us. One night myself and three of my friends, Nick, Nick, Lindy and Blake were all hanging out at Lindy's house. We weren't doing anything too exciting, just playing Paul in her upstairs loft and telling stories.

Eventually the conversation started to focus on a ghost show that we had all used to watch, called Ghost Adventures. Talking about the show made us realise that there wasn't anything stopping us from having some ghost adventures of our own. We started discussing some places that we might be able to go and investigate. When Nick mentioned a cemetery named Park Lawn Memorial Garden, about a 15-minute drive away. Thinking back, the word investigate is a stretch. The entirety of our plan was simply to go to a cemetery, walk around, and see if anything would happen to us. Nonetheless, we all gathered into Nick's truck and headed over. It was about 2 a.m. when we arrived at the graveyard.

During the day the graveyard was like any other, rows and rows of evenly spaced plots, a section in the back corner dedicated to the above-ground mausoleums, and a small shed dedicated to landscaping tools that sat roughly 50 feet behind the grave plots. The only entry into the cemetery was a small one-way drive that goes for about 200 feet, and new turns back to the street. At nights, however, any cemetery has a certain creep factor to it. it, and this one was no different. We walked around the property for about an hour, when all of a sudden Nick claimed that he saw something peeking from behind the tool shed. The other three of us turned to

look but didn't see anything, so we decided to walk over and take a look. Nick reluctantly followed. As we were heading to the shed making sure to watch our step, so as not to walk over someone's resting place. Lindy mentioned how it almost felt like we were being watched. I also felt that feeling, but didn't say anything. Hell, I was having a physical reaction to it. A sharp chill ran at my back, and all the hairs on my arms were standing on end. With every step closer to the tool shed, an uneasy feeling of something not wanting us there was growing in me. As we approached the last rows of plots before the small clearing between us and the sheds. shed, without saying a word. We all stopped. There was no obvious reason for us to stop like that.

Until now I thought it was just me, but at that moment I knew we all felt it. The tension was thick in the air. We shared a few side glances with each other and slowly started backing up. All of a sudden, Lindy said, we need to get out of here. With that, the four of us turned and began to sprint back to the truck that was on the other side of the cemetery. Now, I know that I could have just been hearing things. Or it could have been a smaller animal that we couldn't see in the dark, but I could hear something following us as we ran. I didn't want to turn around.

We got to the truck and Nick quickly turned the engine over, and we peeled out of the graveyard with the tire screeching. We were all sitting in silence on the drive back to Lille. Lindy's, when Nick shakily asked Lindy, why did we need to leave? She didn't really have an explanation. Honestly, we didn't need one. I won't speak for the other three, but to me, whatever was back there felt dark. Not in a, I don't want you here way, though. The feeling I was getting was almost a dare, as if whatever it was wanted us to get closer. I just know that at the time I felt vulnerable and that wasn't something I was used to feeling. Nick dropped us off at our respective homes

and left for his house. The next afternoon Lindy called to ask if I wanted to go back with her to the cemetery, they'd just look around to see if we could explain anything that happened to us the night before. I agreed so she made her way over to pick me up. On the way there she asked me what I had felt exactly the night before. I told her it felt like he was daring us to go to the back of the shed. When I said that, she looked over at me and said, so you felt like it was a man too. I didn't realise before, but yes, I never saw or heard anything, and yet I could tell whatever it was, was masculine. She told me that she always had a sort of six sense. when it came to spirits, and that she believed I did too. At the time I thought it was all nonsense,

but she encouraged me to lean into it and to trust my gut. I didn't give much credence to it, but I did allow myself to be open to the idea. Then she said something that gave me chills. She told me she didn't want to scare us more than we already were last night. But as we were running to the truck, she turned and saw a man. in a wide brim hat, chasing behind us. The day before the night we went out there, it had rained. Our plan was to go to the tool shed to see if there were any animal tracks that could explain the feeling of being watched, or even human footprints in the mud behind the shed.

Perhaps someone out there was just trying to get a scare out of a group of teenagers. We pulled in, got out and began to walk to the shed. there wasn't anything there. No footprint, no animal tracks, nothing to explain what Nick had seen or what we had felt. As we continued to explore the grounds in the safety of the daylight, me and Lindy had started to walk in our own directions, exploring different parts of the cemetery. I eventually made my way to the mausoleums. In the back centre, between two mausoleum walls, was a slightly large and a life-sized statue of the Mother Mary. I felt almost drawn to the statue

and was just staring at her face. For preference, I am not a Catholic. I was raised in a southern Pentecostical household, but at this point in my life I was in between faves. So the Mother Mary didn't mean much to me. With that being said, I felt as though I was supposed to go to the statue. As I began to slowly walk, I started to feel that same tension I had felt the night before.

All of a sudden I heard footsteps approaching behind me. I turned and to my relief it was Lindy. She simply said, we should go. I didn't question her. It was actually relieved that she came and got me. We got back to my house and began talking about if we should continue or not. We agreed that we should. If for no other reason than to put our minds at ease by proving that there wasn't

anything there. By this point my brother Brandon had joined our conversation. Brandon believed in ghosts, but he was more sceptical in his approach. He asked if he could come with us. Not for a sensational reason, but to actually capture evidence. We told him that he was more than welcome to come. We texted Nick and Blake and we all agreed on going the next night. Lindy said her goodbyes and headed home. Brandon and I were really excited at the prospect of doing an actual ghost hunt and were trying to figure out ways for us to gather evidence. We rummaged through the house and found our mum's digital camera and an old digital voice recorder. With that, me and my brother were ready. The next night came and now the five of us were all piled into Nick's truck.

Once we got to the cemetery we decided to split into two groups. Me and Nick with the camera and Lindy, Brandon and Blake with the digital recorder. While me and Nick, were off checking out the mausoleum area. He stopped a few times and asked me if I had said his name. I told him no and we wrote it off as just his nerves getting the better of him. The two groups linked up and exchanged what little experiences we had. Nothing of much note happened that night. A few muffled sounds on the recorder that might have been voices, but were more than likely just the ambient noise of being outside. A couple of pictures with the odd orb that could be explained away by bugs flying around, and no weird feeling from any of us.

I can remember that the cemetery felt, for lack of better words, peaceful. We came to the conclusion that we were most likely just scaring ourselves the night before, and Nick drove us back to my house, where we all stayed for the night. All except Nick, who drove back to his house. Later in the night around 3am, I got a phone call from Nick. I rolled over, tried to rub sleep out of my eyes and answered. Nick was on the other side of the phone, crying in fear. He told me that something had followed him home

and was on the other side of his bedroom door. His dad was away on a trip, so there shouldn't have been anyone in the house besides him. He continued and told him. told me that his hallway light was turning on and off. Each time the light would turn on, he would see a shadow blocking out the light coming from the gap at the bottom of his door. I had been to his house many times before and knew they had an alarm system because he had to punch in the code within a minute of opening the door, otherwise the alarm would go off

and the authorities would be called. So I knew that no one had broken in. I also knew that the light switched to the hallway was about 10 feet away from his door. It would have been physically impossible for anyone to be standing at his door, while simultaneously turning the light on Knopf. I stayed on the phone with him as he continued to pray the Lord's Prayer. While he was praying, I could hear in the background the knob on his door being shaken. After what felt like hours, but according to my call log, was only 15 minutes.

Everything went quiet on the other end of the line. He finally spoke and said that he thought it was gone. I told him to come over, but he said he'd be fine, and that he would link up with us the next day. As the next day came, Nick arrived, we had decided that we needed to go back to the cemetery one more time. I still don't understand why or how we came to that conclusion. Thinking back now, I believe the rest of us merely wanted to get evidence, while we disguised it as trying to get answers for Nick. We all agreed that we'd go that night, but more specifically that we would go at 3am, the same time that Nick had had his encounter at night before.

We spent the rest of the day just relaxing at my house. Brandon and I were making sure the camera and recorder had batteries and were working properly. Lindy attempted to do research on the cemetery without much luck. All she could find were a few obituaries of individuals that were buried there. Nick spent most of the day sleeping and I can't remember what Blake was doing. Eventually the time came and once again we all got into the truck and started to make our ways to the graveyard that at this point we dubbed the Red Rocket Cemetery

named after the firework warehouse that was close by. I was sitting shotgun with Nick driving. Brandon was in the back seat with Blake and Lindy as they slipped. I can still remember the silence and tenets. I was personally feeling as we made the turn on the road that the cemetery sat on. It was that same, I dare you feeling from the first night. And it was getting thicker with every second. Everyone in the truck could almost feel a tangible darkness.

As Nick started breaking in order to make the turn into the cemetery, it was almost unbearable. All at once, Blake, Lindy and myself shouted, Keep driving. Nick slammed off. on the gas and we sped away. I didn't physically see anything, but I could not get the vision of a tall, dirty-looking man in a wide-brim hat smiling at us out of my head. Nick was the only properly religious person in the truck, but we all agreed that we should go to church. Being in the

south, you were never more than a five-minute drive from one, so he pulled into a well-lit Catholic church parking lot. Once the truck stopped, all of us except Nick got out, and Lindy began passing out cigarettes to me and Blake. After a few minutes, I walked over to the driver's door of the truck to check on Nick. He was just staring blankly out of the windshield, with his hand still gripping the steering wheel. I told him that he should get out of the truck to get some fresh air, but he just ignored me. I tried to open the door, but as I did, it felt as though something were holding it from the inside. I looked again and Nick's hands were still on the wheel.

I tried again with a bit more force and the door swung open. Nick slowly turned his head to face me, saying nothing. I reached in to help him out the truck and as my hand reached his arm, I felt something burning on my forearm. I looked and had free scratches, going from my elbow to my wrist. With the sudden pain I instinctively took a few steps back. At this point the other started to notice the weird things that were happening and started to gather on the driver's side of the truck.

Nick just leaned out of the door and vomited. We all just sort of stood there looking at him and he suggested that we head back to my place. By this point it was almost 4 a.m. and we all had a very long night so he agreed. Nothing happened on the ride back to my place. Blake and Lindy have fallen asleep in the back seat. Brandon may have as well, but I can't remember. I was still riding shotgun and was too creeped out by everything happening with Nick to even begin to think about asleep. Once we got back to my house, Brandon went to the living room couch to pass out, while Lindy, Blake, Nick and myself went to my room. Lindy and Blake plopped down onto the futon that I had and went back to sleep. I sat at the car taking. I sat at the car

when I set up in my room, and Nick chose to simply sit on the floor with his back against the wall. I kept the light in my room on, mostly because I still felt very uneasy about all of the events of the night, and it didn't seem to bother Linda or Blake, who were already passed out. At a certain point, I decided to go sit next to Nick, because I was still concerned for him. When I got down on the floor, he turned his head to face me, and said, I've got to have a headache. I offered to go get him some Advil, but all he said was to turn off the light. I told him I didn't want the light off. When I said that, his facial features turned aggressive, and he almost growled out the words, turn off the fucking lights, in a very matter-of-fact tone.

Not wanting to start any problems, I reluctantly got up and walked over to the light switch. I looked over at Nick, still on the floor, and turned off the lights. The moment the lights turned off, that dark feeling swept across the room, and I could see shadows darting back and forth across the walls. Lindy and Blake shot up and started screaming at me to turn the lights back on. I could hear Brandon running to my room from the couch. I quickly turned the lights back on. At that, moment I looked at Nick. His face looked like he had just had a stroke, with half of his face, as though it were melting off of the bone. He was staring at me with what I can only call

pure hatred in his eyes. All he said was, why did you turn the lights back on? As soon as the words left his mouth he slumped over. As quickly as his head dropped, he shot back up, his face now looking normal. He started scanning. He started scanning. scanning the room almost in a panic. The other four of us were now all all focused on him. He looked over at me and Brandon and asked, When did we get back to your house? We explained that we had been here for about 45 minutes.

I asked him what he remembered. According to him, the last thing he remembered, before waking up, was us about to turn into the cemetery. We filled him in on everything that had happened. had no memory of any of the events of the night. We were never able to explain the dark thing that was attached to Nick. I wish I could say that was the last time we had to deal with it, but that's for another story. Most people probably would have stopped ghost hunting after those events, but for us, it just intrigued us even more to get answers for what happened.

Six months ago, I began a new job at my local hospital doing pharmacy work. The office space I work in is on the second floor. But to get there, you need to walk for an old decommissioned part of the hospital, where patients used to be housed for treatments. This area was basically a long hallway, about 35 to 40 feet long, that led to the part of the hospital I worked in. It was considerably less taken care of, as you would suspect. But nonetheless it was a shock to see it for the first time.

The walls were lined with white tiles that were beginning to yellow. The floors were browning and the lights hanging above were either very dim or just not working at all. Stations that once sat nurses were now empty and destroyed. Equipment that was once used to help monitor patients was now scattered and forgotten. The hallway was lined with doors all shut. Each door had a single pane of glass that if I had to guess was where a nurse could look through to check on a patient.

Now that I have hopefully given you all a good mental image, let me get into the paranormal experience. So when my experience happened, I had been with the company for around five weeks. On this particular day I was scheduled to work the overnight shift from 8pm to 5am. I walked through the parking garage to the employee entrance and used my keycard to unlock the door, as I have done many times before. I stepped inside and flipped the switch to the left of the door to turn on what little lights would work. With the long hallway dimly illuminated, I began to walk forward while scrolling on my phone.

After a few seconds, I distinctly remember feeling as if I suddenly was not alone. a feeling that I have not felt before walking through this part of the hospital. As that feeling completely overtook my body, I remember looking up from my phone and turning my head to the right as I was passing one of the doors in the hallway. As I passed in front of the glass that was in the door, I noticed in the reflection, following closely behind me, was an old woman,

about five foot tall with curly grey hair. wearing what looked like a red dress with a scarf around her neck. I remember getting the chills immediately throughout my entire body and whirling around to look behind me, but when I did, there was nothing there. At this point I decided to run the rest of the way to get out of that hallway as quick as possible and not stopping until I got up to the ramp to my office, where I worked,

looking behind me twice as I ran, but each time I did I saw no one. When I got to my office I immediately told my co-worker Ryan, who was leaving as I arrived, what happened? He looked at me with great concern and asked me if I was feeling okay, and again I tried to explain to him what I saw, but he did not believe me.

I worked the rest of my shift, periodically glancing up to the double doors leading down that long hallway, partially expecting to see that woman peering in. but I never saw anything. When my shift was over that morning, I made it a point to take the long way out of the hospital, avoiding that part of the building. To this day, I take the long way to get to my office.

I have never set foot in that part of the hospital since that day, and I don't think I ever will. Thank you for reading my story. I still think about this experience every day. I don't think I'll ever forget it. get it. I live alone in a block of flats on the third floor with one floor above. The building is not very well made, so you can hear noises from the other flats, fuds, cupboard doors being closed, footsteps from upstairs. I've lived here for so long that I'm used to the noise,

and I kind of know what to expect. Like I know my upstairs neighbour works nights, and at about 4pm until 10pm, you can hear her walking around. The building was built in 2010, so not old, not built on a burial ground or anything. My flat's always felt fine but for the last four to five months, from time to time, I feel like someone else is in the flat with me. You know that feeling you have when there is another person around you? It's not possible for anyone to sneak in, because my flat only has one door, and it's too high up for someone to climbing.

For a few nights I've had an experience where I lay in bed watching YouTube and I can hear footsteps coming towards my bedroom and they stop like someone is standing at my door At first I thought it was my neighbours from upstairs walking But it always happens at a time when my neighbour would be at work Every time it happens my whole body tenses up And I'm genuinely afraid to turn around and look at the doorway When I cook in the kitchen, my back would be turned to the door, and I feel like someone is there staring right at me.

I feel so afraid to turn around, but whenever I do, no one is there. Sometimes when I'm in the bathroom with the door shut, I feel scared to open it. Something tells me that someone is behind the door, so I stay there until the feeling disappears. lately something weird happens that is honestly freaking me out so my front door is a little corridor with two other front doors for the other flats and there's another door leading towards the building stairs when someone uses that door you can hear the door open and shut it's a fire door so very heavy also the light in the corridor automatically comes on it switches off after about 10 seconds if no

movement is detected. I also have a doorbell camera. Lately, someone knocks on my door and when I check, no one is there. The light in the corridor is off and I didn't hear the fire door open or shot. I can hear the knocks very loudly, as if a person is knocking. It's always free knocks, very distinct and loud. It has happened five times in the past month. I keep a diary of when it happens and it's at random times during the day or the evening, but never at night. The camera doesn't catch anything. No one is there when the knocks happen.

I come from a Slavic background and we have a legend that warned not to open a door if someone knocks but no one is there because that's an evil spirit trying to come in. I have no idea what's going on but my flat feels odd lately. It randomly gets cold even with the heating on. And there's this weird knocking. I don't play with Ouija boards. I don't do anything occult. I haven't been in the graveyard or a haunted place.

So I have no idea what this could be. Could it be a curse? Like someone has cursed me and it's manifesting. I don't know. This is about the time I encountered something strange in the woods. I lived in the Appalachians at the time, right in the the Kentucky West Virginia Range. I was around 12 or 13. I lived in a small town with no more than 600 people at any given point. It was a coal town, so all the small hollows were accented by the

massive four lane highways meant for the coal trucks. We lived deeper in the mountains, a small holler nestled in a valley of sorts. My family had two pastures on either side of our trailer. One was in a small flat by a tiny graveyard and the other was in front at the bend of the road. It was a humid summer day and I was on break from school. It was about five o'clock and I wanted to play on the mountain by the house. I had taken an interest in that at the time because me and my brother had ventured up there. It was so fun, always running around and jumping in the stream that ran off the side and through one of the pastures, or just knocking down the tiny dead trees. I wanted to I wanted to build my own little thing up there, like on the survival shows I was watching.

So I put on my survival clothes, just a ratty pair of jeans, a hand-me-down slip-knock shirt, and for whatever reason I had at the time, my brother's snow boots. I never had any real boots, so these were the next best thing. I set out up the hill at around 4pm. While it wasn't dark out, the sun had already set on our small holler, so there was no direct sunlight. The mountain was steep, but the cows in the pasture had created small steps that I used to climb up to the more flat top. I got up there and had a blast, breaking sticks and trying to make a small little shelter to the best of my ability. I had made what I thought at the time was the perfect survival shelter.

It was really just a loose collection of sticks I'd laid against a fallen tree, so you could lay under them and have some cover from the outside. I ran back down to the house, got a book and a can of raviolis, then shoved them in the small shelter. I was on top of the world. The day was winding down. I didn't have a watch, but it was starting to get to around 7pm. The sky was milling into orange and yellows of the evening. I heard the grasshoppers and the frogs along with the birds. The forest felt teeming with life.

I was sitting there reading the National Geographic magazine I brought with me. When everything just fell silent, my blood rang cold. What was once in a live soundscape of the woods was suddenly silent. My face flushed and the blood rushed my ears as my heart frowned in them. I stayed completely still. not daring to move. Just listening for a sign of... Anything.

I don't know how long I sat there. But eventually I heard the crack of a dead limb somewhere off. I was a pretty dumb kid, so I stupidly called out to it. I stuttered some sort of... Hello? My voice was quivering and I was shaking like a leaf. As I called out, I moved out of the small shelter to look around. at the relatively flat woods.

My heart only beat louder in the silence. I saw nothing. My hair still on end. I wanted to run to scream for my mum to come and get me. But my eyes and body were frozen, staring into the woods ahead of me. Another stick cracked in the woods, closer this time.

A strange, almost gasping sound came from just ahead of me. Not more than 30 feet. It sounded like when someone has the wind knocked out of them, gasping and trying to talk at the same time. It just didn't sound right. I was a gullible kid when I was younger, but I always tried to calm myself down by rationalising whatever I was scared of. But this, I couldn't.

I was too scared to. I didn't respond to the strange gasping noise. My knees ached and my heart pounded in my chest. My hands were cold as I tried to get my body to move. Another twig cracked, this time closer to me. Another sound came from whatever was there with me. A breathy, light, H-h-h.

Almost like a stilted exhale. It came in a sequence of three. The voice was shrill but got lower each time. it made the sound. My fight or flight kicked in and I bolted off the mountain. Tears were running down my face as I screamed for my mum. She met me at the back porch, utterly confused by what I was trying to mutter out through my sobs. I was absolutely filthy, having fallen down the small embankment as it levelled out. I tried to describe what happened. Her face went pale as I said someone was up there with me. She ushered me inside and calmed me down. I don't know what was up there that summer

day. I remembered the noise clearly, and I remember how scared I was. A part of me wants to think it was some sort of animal, but I don't believe it was. I've had an intense fear of the deep wood ever since, never straying off whatever trail I'm on. You don't know quiet until the woods go completely quiet. My name is M Fuji. I'm a huge fan of your show and tonight I was listening to one of your fan submission episodes and thought maybe now is the time to break the silence on this. Though it's not my first or only ghost experience,

it's the one that scared me the most. I hope you enjoy it and maybe someone in the comments can help me figure out what the hell it was. When I was a boy I spent almost every weekend at my grandparents' house. A beautiful brick home, early 20th century type deal. In High Park, Toronto, it had this beautiful Japanese maple out front. My grandparents bought this house in the 70s

and lived in it for the rest of their lives. So one weekend, my aunt and uncle, who were my grandparents' caretakers at the time, stepped out to grab a pizza from the bakery down the road. road, meaning it was just me alone with my grandparents. I was walking downstairs into the basement when I saw a man speaking with my grandmother. I didn't hear the doorbell so this caught me by surprise. He wore a tweed suit and was so incredibly tall that he had to slouch his neck to the side to fit in the basement without his head whacking the ceiling.

He would turn the television off my grandmother when she fell asleep on the couch. and run the water when she wanted to make tea. I never heard him speak, but I knew in my stomach he was a good person. When I spoke to my grandmother about it, she said, Oh, that's my friend. His name is Henry. He is kind. The next time I saw Henry, he was gently moving through the halls of the house, but that's when I noticed his feet.

like a mist, transparent. I came to the realisation at that point. Henry was a ghost. It's hard to believe that ten years had passed since then, but sometime in November 2016, when I was fresh out of high school, I decided to move into the basement to my grandparents' house, which was subsequently passed down to my aunt after they had died a few years earlier.

I wanted to be closer to the city to get a job or go to university. The move went really well and after having built all the furniture, I laid back on my bed and enjoyed a hard weekend's worth of work. But it was not a restful night. The occurrences started off slow, a television turning on here or a tap turning on there. Though these were weird events, they never really scared me, not with me practically growing up with these events. I just thought to myself, that's just Henry doing his thing.

But weeks later, I would learn of something darker that lived in the basement with me, something that makes my skin crawl even thinking back to it now. Coming home from my friend's house I passed my uncle's truck parked at the curb out front of the house I grabbed a handle to make sure the door was locked We'd had a series of break-ins the past week Which left me short one Canon 5D Mark 2 So this became my coming home ritual

I went through the side entrance and peered up the stairs To make sure the door to the main house was locked I wanted a game in my boxes and didn't need someone bothering me. I threw my street clothes into the hamper and in my boxes plopped onto bed and loaded up a game on my 3DS in silence. But that silence was broken by a scream from upstairs.

The scream turned to yelling. My aunt and uncle were having an argument when, in a crescendo of noise, the front door slammed shut. The moments following were filled with a death. And that's when I heard it. From the top of the stairs leading to the main house, my uncle called down to me. Emphagy, can I come down?

Ah shit, I thought to myself. This was going to be a super awkward conversation and I didn't want to deal with it. So I did what any person would do in that position. I pretended I was asleep. I pulled the blankets over my head and stayed quiet, slow, methodic, and booming footsteps, moved further down the stairs as my uncle had now entered my apartment. Can I come in? he said. But my stomach sank when it spoke.

It sounded like him, almost identical. But it wasn't him. That little voice of reason inside my head said, Whatever you do, do not talk to it. That's not your uncle. What could I do at this point? I heard the footsteps nearing the edge of the bed and then it walked over to the side. I could feel it right on the other side of the blanket.

Its lips almost next to my ear. Everything went silent when I heard it say, I know you're awake. Without warning, I felt it walk through me. And my body turned to ice. Fuelled by adrenaline, I shot up from the bed and ran towards the stairs to leave. The closet door, the bathroom door and the laundry room door all slammed shut at the same time. I swung the side door open and sat on the curb in front of the house, catching my breath. I sat there for almost half an hour before I realised.

My uncle's truck wasn't parked in front of the house. I was the only one home. But the story of the thing doesn't end there. You see, I kept that story to myself for months since I didn't want anyone to think I was crazy. That was until April 2018. My family and I had gone to Florida to surprise my dad for his 60th birthday. My girlfriend stayed at my place to play video games on my gaming PC. Two days later, I got a call from her.

She sounded panicked, scared. She was laying on my bed when she heard my aunt call down to her. She pretended to be asleep. She told me she could feel the weight of my aunt sitting at the edge of the bed in silence. Eventually broken by my aunt asking her, are you okay? My girlfriend told me she had this gut feeling not to speak back to it. And after five minutes of silence, she peered over the blanket to find no one in the basement. She was really creeped out, but left the house once I told her.

My aunt was sitting next to me in Florida. We moved out the next year, and my aunt and uncle sold the house the year after. No paranormal activity has happened to any of my family since. I hope the family that lives there now hasn't met Henry or whatever else lived in that house. I grew up in a very conservative community in Utah. My family was very religious, especially my father. In fact, he was a bishop for nearly half of my youth.

I never paid much attention to spirits or the paranormal outside of fiction and movies until I was about 11 years old. It was early autumn, cool enough for the leaves to fall and blanket the yard, in their beautiful death throes, but still warm enough to leave the large wooden front door open and allow the closed screen door to let in the fresh air. My father and I were alone in the front room watching the television. It was mash if you were old enough to remember.

It was quiet as my father didn't like loud noises. so it made for a tranquil evening. The tranquility was interrupted by the screen door, whipping open, and despite the lack of any wind, it stayed open. It was dark outside as MASH was the last show I could watch before I had to go to bed. It was also plain to see that there was nobody there who could have opened the screen door, let alone held it open.

My young and naive mind found it funny. So I decided to invite our invisible guest into the house. Hi, I called out. Come on in. I thought it was rather clever. My father, a clergy and an engineer by trade, reacted in a way I had never seen before and never saw again. He immediately stood up,

a nervous and slightly angry look on his face, and strode quickly over to the doors. He closed the screen door, closed and locked the wooden door, and turned to face me. I was the oldest child and through experience I knew I was in for a chat. Zach, don't you ever invite anything into the home like that ever again? Do you understand me? My father said. I didn't. Honestly, I thought the spirit stuff he talked about on Sundays was all there was to the unseen.

so there would be no need for any fear. But Dad, there wasn't anyone there, I protested. He calmed down and sat beside me on the sofa. Just because you can't see anything doesn't mean there isn't anything. There are things out there that aren't good that can't come into a home unless there are already bad things in the home. Or they've been invited into the home.

We were never allowed to talk about it again. This blew my mind. I have always been taught about the devil, about his angels, the third of all the angels of heaven that were kicked out and damned, but I never thought there would be a way for them to reach out to us here on earth. This conversation did two things for me. It opened my mind to the potential reality of the paranormal, but it also birthed a desire in me to know more,

to understand these forbidden topics. From that point through the rest of my teenage years, I continue going to church with the family, believing but also going to the local library to devour any information I could find that are related to dark spirits, the paranormal, the occult, or quite simply, to the race or kind of thing that opened the screen door, that fateful night. Now for the me to my experience, where desire, to learn turn to experience and dreadful knowledge. I was just under 19 years of age and had moved to Brazil as a Christian missionary and

immediately fell in love with the people, culture, language and food. I spent most of my time in the state of Minas Gares, in the capital city of Bello Horizonte. The longer I lived in Brazil, the more exposure I had some of the more exotic forms of spiritual worship. One of those was frequently called Macumbar. Many people in the part of Brazil I lived in talked about Macumbar, even though it isn't really a single religious group. Most of the people I talked to broke it down into White Table Macumbar and Black Table Macumbar. White Table Macumber was a combination of African, Yoraban religions and some Catholicism

that was forced on them during the Portuguese slave trade in the 1500s. Black Table McCumber is considered black magic, and it is more often referred to as Quim Banda, so it doesn't get confused with its tame cousin. To be blunt, Quimbanda is used by folks that have decided that evil spirits are a better fit to help them with their desires, justice, or simply the desire to worship, and gets help from King Exu, or Lucifer. There are a number of exu or evil spirits that Quimbanda, practitioners adore and worship, each with their own speciality but none of them are very friendly. A smart person or more pious person would steer clear of this kind of thing.

But ever since that evening with my father, I had developed an unhealthy interest in the subject matter. This was about to become problematic for me. During the kind of mission I was on, we all had a companion or two we went out with, safety and numbers. My companion was a massive guy that stood nearly six feet eight inches, or just over 203 centimetres. Before his mission, he was a start defensive lineman for American football. He wasn't someone anybody messed with, so I felt comfortable going anywhere with him. Luckily for me, or unluckily, as things would soon turn out, He had a mild interest in spooky stuff too.

We took time away from our missionary work and visited places in the area that were connected to the supernatural, including a marvellous little town called Sao Tome Das La Tras. It was an amazing place that more people should visit. Google it and see if I'm playing. Anyway, after spending some time there, we decided to go north a bit and find a nice town to rent a place in for a few months. before we headed back to the capital. We found the perfect town and settled down for a bit. The idea was to relax, prepare ourselves mentally, so we could get back to doing God's work

and leaving behind the things that we should have shown less interesting. The plan backfired spectacularly. During the middle of our second night there, I was ripped out of a deep sleep by drums that immediately made me think of voodoo. The sound for the sound for felt primal. It felt like a rhythm that exuded waves of pleasure and nausea simultaneously. This was in 1991, and to this day I clearly remember my heart pounding as if in sync with the drums, both dreadful and exciting. I felt almost spellbound, drawn to it. There was also a clear feeling, almost as if spoken within my mind, warning me. The heavy, The heavy thumping of my heart and something in the sound pulled me closer to the window.

Not physically. I was still in control, but it was a struggle between two different sets of desires. I knew deep inside that this sound was profane, hinting of things forbidden. But my will to speak with what I couldn't see when I was eleven was stronger. I knew I needed to open the window and look. Just look. Harmless enough, right? I swung my feet over the edge of the bed, all my movements seemingly slow and groggy, and I walked to the window.

Have you ever felt like you were standing at a precipice, not a cliff of rock and stone, but a cliff of consequences? This was such a moment, although only the second largest of such thing I would face in Brazil. The windows latch wind as I unlocked it, and opened the glass to the hot night air. before had been faint beating of drums, was now vibrant, melodic thunder, that I felt more in my soul than my ears. There was something else that I hadn't noticed earlier, something that had been weaved and noticed beneath the tapestry of drums, chanting, yelling, although not the yelling of fear or pain, but yelling that I couldn't put an emotion to. Beyond that there was something else. I don't know if I heard it or felt it, but it was as if there were unrecognizable noises

that felt macabre and dark. I was spellbound, interested and repulsed, curious and more frightened than I had ever been, but there I stayed for more than an hour. I kept thinking I needed to pull myself away from the window and close it, cruelly into bed and pray for sleep. But I was helplessly drawn to whatever was happening in the building next to ours. Against my common sense I stayed at the window. The hesitation vanished, leaving only curiosity and yearning. When I tried to concentrate on just a drum, something felt out of balance. When I tried to ignore the drums and listen only to the other noises, I became uneasy and felt way down. However, when I let go of my focus and just took it all in. It was in fralling and touched me with a clearly distinct feeling

of mingling with the unseen. Eventually the drums and the other sound stopped. I closed the window and crawled back to bed, utterly exhausted. But sleep eluded me for hours. The next morning finally arrived. I asked my friend about the drums. He slept in a bedroom that was on the other side, of the apartment and said that he heard them but it was creeped out and did his best to fall asleep he bugged me about it through the day but i didn't want him to think i was crazy that night we went to a small bar near our place and ordered some drinks i had a kashasa a kind of brazilian rum and decided to give in we started talking about what had happened to me we have both been in in Brazil long enough that we were comfortable speaking Portuguese, so an old lady that was sitting

at a table by us slowly stood up and walked over to us. Without asking for permission, she sat down at the table with us and spoke. You shouldn't talk openly about this, she said as she poured the little cigar out of her mouth. That was Quim Banda. It's dangerous. I was intrigued, as was my friend. So we started asking her questions and paying for a few drinks for her, so she had no reason not to talk to us. As I'm sure she has long since passed, I'll share her name. Regina was surprisingly willing to talk to us openly about all of this, after she had just said we shouldn't talk so openly about it. Her husband had been what she called a Macumbrio, a sort of priest in the group. Regina told us of the dark spirits that she had

seen frequently in her home. the ritual sacrifices at altars, and the power and respect that followed those who walked this path. She talked about sacrifice and magic, and the ritual use of possession to worship and perform special deeds. I told her about the drums I had heard the previous night, and how I had opened my window to listen to the chanting. Regina grabbed my hand faster than I thought a fragile thing like her could

and gripped it tightly. Don't be interested. These dark beings, things of the night, demons and spirits, they listen. If you show interest in them, they will show interest in you. If you reach your hand out into the darkness, don't be surprised if something takes you by the hand. I don't know if I was smiling out of curiosity or from the drink, but she looked offended and hurt that I didn't take her warning seriously. She released my hand and stood up from her chair. Regina started to leave, but turned back to speak one last time to us.

We have a saying in Brazil, she said in broken English. Falladu diablo, it ela moster, siorabo. She repeated this two more times and then left. The saying is simple. Speak of the devil and he will show you his tale. Those were wise words, but like, Like many young men, we paid little attention to the voice of experience and soon left a bar with darkness still rolling off our tongues.

The drums didn't play that night, so we sat around the kitchen table and drank a local tea and talked brazenly about everything we'd experienced and heard. The feeling in the kitchen quickly filled with angst and heaviness. We allowed ourselves to look beyond our walls of comfort and understanding. I felt like a young boy that had found his first new picture and was giddy with excitement at the possibilities that played on the fringes of my recently opened mind. My friend and I talked, speculated, continued refilling the tea with our boiling pot of water, probed the darkness of our understanding, and then we wished aloud that we could actually see something.

Not just tales, no folklore, but something real. That wish changed us both, our friendship, and impacted me in ways I wasn't ready for. In one moment we were filled with the euphoria of discovery of the unseen, the giddiness of forbidden exploration. And then in the next, my heartbeat abruptly increased dramatically. My face felt hot. I felt myself on the precipice once again. Only this time it felt much more dangerous, almost lethal. I heard a voice so clearly that I wanted to turn around to see you spoke.

But I knew we were alone. Stop talking about it. The voice was soft but urgent. It wasn't loud, it wasn't quiet, but it was unmistakably there. My friend must have seen the changed look on my face. he stopped immediately and asked me what was wrong. I couldn't tell him what I was feeling. I was a small guy, never popular, and didn't want to appear weak.

But I knew I was on the verge of something. So, I took a step. Nothing's wrong, I said. We kept talking about the darkness, Quimbanda, spirits and demons. My unease grew, and I heard the voice one last. time. Stop. This is your last chance. I don't know if my friend heard the voice but he must have felt something because he suddenly looked nervous and almost scared. There was not a single positive feeling or a bit of energy in the kitchen. The whole room felt like a vice squeezing

down on me. Despite the warnings I continued to talk about it. I walked over to the stove to put up the pot of boiling water for our tea. my friend was still sitting at the table looking at me with an odd expression on his face my feelings of anxiety began to be replaced by excitement almost a perverse joy as I put my hand on the handle of the pot of boiling water I picked it up and turned to my friend

I don't remember having any emotions at that point I was going to walk over to the table and fill the tea gourd with hot water and that's when it all went black. Have you ever passed out or gone under for surgery? There seems to be no break in time. You are awake somewhere and then instantly you are awake again. No sense of the passage of time.

That didn't happen to me. I was aware of time passing. Not how much, but there is a blank chunk of memory that has been lost forever to me. My friend wasn't so lucky. The first thing I remember after that empty chunk of memory was seeing my friend cowering against the kitchen cabinets. On the opposite side of the kitchen where I had been, this mountain of a man was pressed against the cabinets, cringing and as pale as if he had died. I noticed my vocal cords were sore. There was a strange noise that stopped coming out of my mouth.

And then I realised in horror. Then I realised in horror that I had been laughing. I felt my mouth relaxed from what had been a grin. As I regained more and more control over myself, I finally was able to speak, and my voice felt dry and weak. What's wrong? What happened? My friend's face didn't change expression at all, but his eyes did move.

He had been intensely focused on my face, but his gaze adjusted. moved over to my right, just over my shoulder. As his eyes moved, I clearly felt something lifting from me, like dark clouds. The lighting in the room suddenly normal, and I felt weak and spent. At this point I realised my friend was looking at something to my right. I turned, afraid of what I would find, and saw what he was staring at. It looked like a shadow, but it wasn't on the wall it wasn't something two-dimensional standing on the floor

it had depth and for a lack of a better word some kind of ethereal matter it stood in the middle of the kitchen it was darker than the shadow darker than under your bed in the middle of the night and it was humanoid in shape this thing remained there for a few seconds

as if to burn his existence into our minds and then began to move backwards. It went quietly, calmly, almost tauntingly, and then stopped when it appeared to be right up to the kitchen wall. I looked in awe as it simply slipped through the wall and was gone. I glanced down at the floor, becoming more adjusted to the change in the surroundings,

and realised I had moved quite a bit from where I was last standing. The pot I picked up was laying upside down on the floor. The spilled water already cool. I realized I was holding something else and looked down in my hands. I was holding one of the apartment's kitchen knives. I dropped the knife and turned around to face my friend. His face was a mixture of shock, terror and blame. I told him the last thing I remember was standing at the stove and grabbing the pot.

He quickly left the kitchen and went to his bed. It took me ten minutes to convince him to come out and talk to me. I begged for an explanation because I had no idea what happened. He finally came out looking both angry and scared and told me what happened. I wrote this down shortly after it happened so I wouldn't miss anything. This is what he told me. You were standing at the stove and you started to pick up the pot.

I told you that maybe we better stop talking about all of this. That was when you stopped. when you stopped. You were holding the pot when you changed. Everything around you went dark. It was like your aura turned black. Even your eyes changed. You looked at me and said, No. You dropped the pot. Boiling water went all over the kitchen, all over your legs, but you didn't even flinch. He stopped, lowered his head, and then looked at me again as he continued. His voice grew angrier. You started to laugh.

It wasn't your laugh, though, it was different. You kept laughing, and then you started to walk towards me. You picked up that knife and started walking towards me. Your eyes were dark, I didn't see any colour in them. But there was hate in them. Does that make sense? I told you to stop, but you wouldn't. Whatever the hell was inside of you were scaring me

You backed me up against the counter and started a laugh Louder and louder I was sure you was going to cut me up My friend went over and picked up the pot and angrily threw it in the sink I told you to stop but you didn't listen We shouldn't have been talking like that He walked around to the other side of the table Shaking with emotion and pointed a finger at me

You were possessed. We didn't talk to each other the next day and it took almost a week before we were almost normal. But there would never be a normal again. We didn't talk about that ever again. He left Brazil two weeks later and I stayed for another year. To this day I don't talk about this experience often.

In fact I've only ever told this story in person to four people. On my life this is really. drill. Do with it what you will. Believe it or not, it won't affect me. Let me leave you with a warning. We all have beliefs. If we act against our beliefs, we become vulnerable. We open ourselves to that which we fear. I was possessed. My body has been taken over, without a memory of my actions, yet aware of the emptiness where memory should have been. Darkness entered me because I invited it in. Don't reach out into the darkness and unknown.

For something often, we'll reach back. Last night I was standing across the street from a bar, smoking a cigarette. And these... Kids were leaving the bar, some young people, four of them. And this little tiny Chevy Sedan next to me beeped because someone unlocked it. And I took a step back and I looked at this tiny little foredoor. And these kids were walking towards it.

And as they got closer, one of them goes, Oh my God, the car got bigger since we were inside. And then another one goes, Oh, holy crap, it's an SUV now. And so I took another look at the car. And I had to sort of take their word for it because I was looking at a tiny little car. And I thought, I think that thought creates reality. Because to these kids, the car was really big.

I'm not going to argue with them. mostly because they were so excited about it